Dealing With A Journalistic Dilemma p.

By: Mark Fitzgerald

Academy Award nomination announcement ruins plot twist of
movie; does the press print it with a warning to readers?
WHO SAYS THE press can't keep a secret?
Sure, television cameras may light up the beachhead when Marines go ashore in Somalia. And a certain retired president probably wishes two Washington Post reporters had kept Deep Throat's information to themselves.
But when it comes to revealing the plot twist in the cult movie The Crying Game ? well, by golly, that's just something the press will not do.
Or, at least, something they won't do without giving readers fair warning.
Dozens of otherwise aggressive entertainment reporters ? who would crawl over their grandmothers for an exclusive on Roseanne Arnold's latest tattoo ? passed up an opportunity to spill the beans about The Crying Game when one of its players was nominated for an Academy Award.
And most of those who did tell sounded a loud alarm to warn readers who have not yet seen the movie.
"Don't Read This Before You See The Crying Game," the Chicago Sun-Times headlined its article on the nomination.
Even then, most newspapers followed with a vague, read-it-between-the-lines explanation.
The nomination itself ruins a critical plot twist that has made the low-budget film by Irish director Neil Jordan a cult success by being the least talked-about film of the year.
"I can't tell you anything about it," friends tell friends about the movie, which begins with the kidnapping of a British soldier by the Irish Republican Army and becomes a meditation on the nature of love and politics.
In that spirit, Editor & Publisher will now also officially warn readers who have not seen the film: The Crying Game is a wonderful movie and if you want to enjoy it, STOP READING RIGHT NOW.
Because try as we might, there is no way to write clearly about the journalistic dilemma without telling why Jaye Davidson's surprise Academy Award nomination for best supporting actor is so
. . . problematic.
Not that some journalists did not try.
Janet Maslin, in the New York Times, manag-ed to write an interview with Davidson without once identifying Davidson's gender.
Maslin wrote of the "attention-getting nominee for a supporting role."
"This eyebrow-raising nomination," Maslin wrote, "will have a profound effect on the secrecy that has thus far surrounded The Crying Game."
A prenomination Los Angeles Times interview with Davidson also managed to avoid referring to Davidson's gender.
Here is the deal on Davidson, who plays Dil: Neither the audience nor leading man Stephen Rea's character realize Dil ? Rea's central love interest in the movie ? is anything other than a woman until he disrobes about halfway through the film.
Though Jaye Davidson is a little-known actor in the United States, the "actor" designation is enough to spoil The Crying Game's secret.
When Davidson's nomination was announced, top executives of Miramax Films, the movie's distribution company, worked the phones feverishly asking journalists not to reveal the secret.
"I'm just calling you to ask you if you'd like to be a good sport. If you reveal the secret, you'll be the only one," Miramax co-chairman Harvey Weinstein told Chicago Tribune writer Jessica Seigel.
When Seigel would not give Weinstein that reassurance, the reporter wrote, Weinstein added: "You reveal it at your own risk. People don't want to know. You'll be the only stinker in Chicago who gave it away."
Not quite. Under a warning headline, entertainment critic Lloyd Sachs referred to "one of the nominations [that] gives casting information that will spoil many people's chances of enjoying The Crying Game to its fullest."
Miramax co-chairman Weinstein vigorously lobbied the Associated Press as well.
"I'm begging," AP quoted him as saying. "You're not hurting me financially. You're ruining the movie for the audience."
In the end ? and after vigorous debate between top editors in New York and the Los Angeles bureau ? AP took the same route as most newspapers.
"We put a cautionary note in the third graph about what was to come [but] we never really came out and said the nomination is to an actor who you think is a woman until halfway through the film," said deputy managing editor Mike Silverman.
AP's pictures, however, spoke a thousand words: The wire service moved a combination photo showing the supporting actors in their roles ? including Jaye Davidson as the songstress Dil.
"So it looked like the Academy had nominated four men and one woman for best supporting actor," an AP reporter in the L.A. bureau said.
At the Los Angeles Daily News, entertainment columnist Phil Rosenthal wrote about the secret without saying anything more than this: "Let's suggest at least one of the six Oscar nominations tells us more about the movie than first meets the eye."
Los Angeles Times writer Robert W. Welkos also referred to the supporting actor nomination ruining the secret, but the story is never explicit about why the nomination would do that.
USA Today may have published the most discreet story of all: It began, "Warning: Reading this story is hazardous if you haven't seen The Crying Game" ? and then did not even refer to the supporting actor nomination.
Even that famed tattletale, the Washington Post, was relatively discreet.
Although Carla Hill's story blows the secret explicitly in the third paragraph, the story ran under the headline: "If You Haven't Seen The Crying Game, Don't Read This."
So which news organization was the most indiscreet?
By consensus, it was probably Reuters, which in its lead said, "One of Hollywood's best-kept secrets was partially let out of the bag."
Without further warning, the story by Michael Miller goes on to tell exactly how the supporting actor nomination reveals the movie's chief plot twist.
Reuters has apparently received quite a bit of flack about its treatment of the nomination and seems touchy about the subject.
"We're not commenting," Los Angeles bureau chief Matt Spetalnick said, "other than to say we stand by the story."
Overall, however, Miramax was delighted with the way the press covered the nomination, said senior vice president/marketing Gerry Rich. "I think they did a fantastic job," he said.
Miramax was worried that editors were "pressuring" reporters to reveal the plot twist, Rich said.
"It's not newsworthy to compromise something like that," Rich said, comparing the twist to any movie's ending, which is not normally revealed in reviews.
Rich said the company is not impressed with "warnings or caveats as a significant way of protecting the audiences. I think that's a way of urging people to read on."
In any case, the coverage apparently did not make a big impression on those who haven't seen The Crying Game.
A poll taken for Miramax several days after the nominations showed that 75% of people aware of the movie did not know the critical plot twist, James said. Further, he added, the same three-quarters majority did not want to learn the twist.
Among the more unusual journalistic efforts inspired by the nomination was a column by the Chicago Tribune's Eric Zorn.
After the requisite warning, Zorn interviewed three professional female impersonators ? all of whom said they were not fooled for a minute.