A few years ago we were peeved by the New York Times' cheap shot at our arts scene, writing that Los Angeles is "where interest in culture starts and ends with movie grosses and who is on the cover of Vanity Fair."
But obviously in some circles it is terribly important to know who's on the cover of glossy publications, how much a movie grosses and whether it's getting any awards buzz as the year wraps up. Nowhere is this more true than in the cutthroat world of Hollywood trades where much of the writing—even to the regular moviegoer or pop culture junkie—can feel insidery and myopic. Exhibit A just might be Nikki Finke's widely-mocked tweet about Nelson Mandela's death.
So while the rest of the world's first reaction to Mandela's death was to ponder his role in ending apartheid in South Africa, Finke was thinking about Oscar season and Weinstein Company's "Mandela: Long Walk To Freedom:"
No, we didn't expect Nikki Finke to live tweet a "deep examination of the geopolitics of the United States’ reluctance to support him during the Cold War" or "a personal story about how he changed her life." But it is jarring—to those of us outside the trades, at least—to announce his death and wonder about awards buzz for a movie that's gotten middling reviews in the very same tweet. Fair or not, this is why everyone hates us!
Finke defended her tweet:
And here's Weinstein's take on Mandela's death in case you were wondering (we weren't, personally, but we're not the target audience either):
Anyway, it started a hilarious hashtag called #FinkeObits:
