The implied error page on Vanity Fair's website. (VF.COM)

Zero Dark Thirty actress Jessica Chastain must have some friends over at the Graydon Carter offices. Last night, Nikki Finke was able to reproduce, word-for-word, a pulled essay from VF.com that slightly criticized the actress as an "empty vessel" (honestly, it sounds much worse out of context) and using one of her own quotes--"I’m the unknown everyone’s already sick of"--to explain why she didn't quite work in the film Mama.

Deputy editor Bruce Handy, the article's author, has a lot of good things to say about Ms. Chastain as well! But you would have never had known that, because VF.com pulled the article--which ran January 25, during a crucial build-up week for Oscar-baiting, with ballots going out to Academy members that day--from the site within 24 hours.

From the article obtained by Nikki Finke over at Deadline:

The Jessica Chastain Conundrum: Greatest Actress of Her Generation or Found Art?

By Bruce Handy

Movie acting is a strange, alchemic art. This weekend, for instance, you can go to your local multiplex and see Jessica Chastain play a credibly fierce C.I.A. officer in Zero Dark Thirty. Then you can go next door and see Mama, in which Chastain plays the least fierce, least credible punk rocker in the history of film. Maggie Smith could have done it with more edge and nerve. (Actually, that’s not a bad idea: a movie about an aging all-girl punk band starring Smith, Judi Dench, Helen Mirren, and let’s say Rebel Wilson as the dead original drummer’s drummer granddaughter. Billy Nighy can be the manager. It could be a sort of non-sequel sequel to The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel, and you’re welcome, Harvey Weinstein.)

But back to Chastain. Why is she so excellent in the one movie and so not excellent in the other? To the extent we can bat around theories—and ignore the collaborative nature of movie-making—we can begin to solve the even deeper mystery that is Chastain herself, who, as if she were Hollywood kudzu, has starred in half of all films released over the past two years. If that weren’t accomplishment enough, last weekend she had the No. 1 and 2 films at the box office. She has also received an Oscar nomination for the second year in a row and is currently on Broadway starring in The Heiress. And yet, as a public figure and performer, she is as elusive as she is ubiquitous, one of the most curious stars ever anointed by Hollywood. As she herself put it to Evgenia Peretz in a Vanity Fair profile, “I’m the unknown everyone’s already sick of.”

She’s obviously beautiful, but there’s something about Chastain’s features that doesn’t quite hold your eye. To me, Cate Blanchett is from the same mold; maybe they’re both too perfectly beautiful, almost burnished. When you get past the dazzle, a lot of movie stars are actually kind of funny looking, like Julia Roberts with her big upper lip or Emma Stone with her huge, Bratz-doll eyes or Channing Tatum with his blockhead; the classic examples are the Dumbo ears on either side of Clark Gable. Other stars are better-looking versions of people we might know in real life—Reese Witherspoon or Ryan Reynolds, say. But one way or another, their faces have visual “hooks” analogous to the musical hooks in pop songs; we’re drawn back to them again and again. Actors and actresses who lack that quality, who are too blandly beautiful, we dismiss as “soap-opera-y.” Actors and actresses who are even more beautiful than that, who approach a classical ideal, as Chastain and Blanchett do, we call “timeless” or “ethereal,” but that can be limiting. Put another way, whom else but Cate Blanchett would you cast as an elf queen?

Looks aside (a phrase rarely spoken in the film world), on-screen Chastain seems disinclined to convey a sense of who she really is—she can often be a recessive presence. (As she also told Peretz—perversely for an actress—“I don’t want people to look at me.”) All acting is a combustion of craft and personality, but the personality quotient tends to run high for movie stars. Once you’ve seen Jennifer Lawrence in a couple things, you get a sense of her as mischievous, smart-mouthed, scrappy—perhaps a false impression, but there’s an underlying beat in her performances that, aside from her talent, goes a long way toward making her a star. You know what you’re going to get with her the way you do with Katherine Hepburn, so it’s easier to welcome them as your make-believe friends, at least for two hours.

Plenty of actors are said to “disappear” into their roles; Meryl Streep and Sean Penn come to mind, but even they throw off a consistent charisma no matter the thickness of their accent or putty on their nose. Chastain is more like an empty vessel, and I think she’s at her best when she either has very little or very much to do. Terrence Malick used her as if she were found art in Tree of Life, where she had almost no lines but filled space wonderfully as an idealized mother figure, more symbol than character. The truth is, she doesn’t really have that much to do in Zero Dark Thirty, either, where a lot of the performance takes place in reaction shots, and she’s mostly required to just look fierce and determined. She’s very good at that—and I doubt it’s easy—but I’m surprised it’s being hailed as one of the year’s great performances, and that it has earned her an Oscar nomination for best actress. It’s not the sort of flashy thing, like playing a transgendered murder victim or quadriplegic boxer, that the Academy normally rewards.

On the other end of the Chastain spectrum was her role in The Help as a sexy, white-trash housewife. The part, like every other one in that ridiculous film, was a caricature, but Chastain brought depth and nuance and vulnerability to the caricature, if that’s not all a contradiction in terms, which made her the best thing in the movie and won her a well-deserved supporting-actress nomination last year. (She lost to her co-star Octavia Spencer, for her update on the time-honored Sassy Black Maid part.)

The problem for Chastain in Mama, a modern-day Gothic-style ghost story that opened last week, is that her role is not particularly well written or interesting; there’s not much there there, though it’s a busy part all the same, larded with stair-climbing and closet-door-opening and screaming. Another actress—Lawrence, say, or Kristen Stewart, either of whom would have also been more cast to type as a punk—could have filled out the part with their personalities. Chastain just looked lost, as if she couldn’t find any traction in the dialogue or action. (Unlike on Zero Dark Thirty, where she got to model those boss aviator shades, she wasn’t helped on Mama by a weird shag haircut or an uninspired wardrobe that, as my colleague Juli Weiner says, looked like the costume designer Google-imaged “punk” and then went home.) She was better in Lawless, last fall’s dopey moonshine drama, but still seemed adrift. Perhaps the lesson is she’s a performer who needs either too much scaffolding from a script or almost none at all.

(Mea culpa: in a similar post a couple of weeks ago where I sought to explain the appeal of Ryan Gosling, as my wife pointed out, I neglected to mention his most salient attribute as an actor—that he’s “fucking hot.”)

At least the magazine owned up. According to a VF spokeswoman who talked to Deadline, "We took it down because it ran counter to what a number of people at the magazine believed.”

Maybe. Ms. Chastain has a sort of "hot sister of Cate Blanchett" thing going on, which isn't in and of itself interesting. Maybe try doing a rom-com next, and see if you are the next crossover hit or Katherine Heigl.

Nikki Finke weighs in: "Certainly Entourage had its ups and downs quality-wise. I was mixed in my assessment over the years, alternately castigating it for not showing the down and dirty Hollywood, and occasionally praising it for less predictability and more realism." She notes that Mr. Ellin has offered her a cameo role, an offer that the reclusive blogger would be unlikely to take up.

NYU Young Media War Rages On: The young folk of NYU Local—the pirate NYU news publication/blog, as opposed to the officially-mandated NYU publication, Washington Square News—is going to wage further war on its rival by putting out its own print publication. It's going to be called NYU Local Magazine. The scrappy youths at NYU Local have sold us on it as follows:

It's going to be a mix of guides to life at NYU (A guide to smoking pot in your dorm room written by a former R.A.), some long profiles of NYU students and New Yorkers (Rapper Cakes Da Killa), and there's some servicey content of stuff that we think NYU students need to know (Where you can drink with and without a fake id). Essentially, now we're the most exciting print publication at NYU too.

 
Cakes Da Killa? I feel older than Fran Lebowitz in full-on nuclear NYU-hating mode. Advice to these young media entrepreneurs: Get a lawyer. Or rather, just: Don't write about Nikki Finke without a lawyer.

Jay Penske Has Falling Down Moment After Too Many Years of Employing Nikki Finke: Have you read this whole thing about Mail.com owner (and Nikki Finke's boss) Jay Penske? It is beyond. Penske and his brother were arrested in Nantucket for breaking into the Nantucket Yacht Club. And this is after two women claimed to have been assaulted by the Penske Bros. Apparently, Jay Penske pissed on some woman's boots after she confronted him for pissing in the parking lot. Obviously Penske has spent too much time around Nikki "Devil May Care" Finke. Anyway, the women declined to press assault charges but the Penskes were still locked up. Also, this:

Wow. Nothing more. [Nantucket Inquirer and Mirror]

Music Editor Real Talk: Your favorite new "Real Talk by an Editor In GIF Form" Tumblr (not an obscure form at all, by any measure) is Music Editor Real Talk. It is not Village Voice music editor Maura Johnston. Editor Real Talk "editor" and erstwhile GOOD Magazine editor Ann Friedman says it isn't her either. Do you know who it is? Tell me.

New York Times Trolls Lolo Jones, Pt. 9: Arthur Brisbane, who is still the Times' public editor, has finally had enough hate mail about Lolo Jones. "I think the writer was particularly harsh, even unnecessarily so." [NYT Public Editor]

The Audacity of Hope: Communications grads saw an uptick in job numbers. They should have majored in economics, regardless. [Journalism.org]

Robert Thomson Can't Lose: The Wall Street Journal is covering the Olympics with puppets. Couldn't make it up if I tried. [Beet.tv]

Tips? Scriptures? Adam Davidson fan mail? Cowboy Barn discount codes? Please, by all means, send them here.

fkamer@observer.com | @weareyourfek

Her justification for continuing to update, posted yesterday morning?

"It may seem callous to post about less-than-packed theaters around the country and North American and worldwide box office this weekend after the Colorado movie theater tragedy. And of course our hearts go out to those killed and wounded. (I stayed up all Friday post-midnight/pre-dawn reporting on the shooting as the horrendous event unfolded.)  But this is an entertainment business website that tracks movie grosses."

Ms. Finke, currently squaring off against author Bret Easton Ellis, has already posted a full box-office report for the weekend.

The result of the American Psycho author embracing the platform has him seeing a new phase of glory for his far-too-entertaining feed, where he's written treatments for an American Psycho sequel and given out helpful (and hilarious) ways for the world to further embrace 50 Shades of Grey, including open casting suggestions to actors on Twitter. And then there was that whole thing about the threesome with Rielle Hunter.

Today, Mr. Ellis had a particularly wonderful tidbit for his followers: A claim concerning Deadline Hollywood Daily Editor in Chief and business journalist Nikki Finke, who's widely known as one of the more vindictive, unforgiving, relatively feared and fairlyshadowy trade reporters Hollywood's ever seen (context: also, someone who once famously claimed to have "bitchslapped" New Yorker editor David Remnick over the process of trying to publish a profile of her).

Though Mr. Ellis would dare to argue otherwise:

What spurned Bret's issues with Ms. Finke? Five minutes later, he Tweeted:

ICM: International Creative Management, the monolithic agency whose Amanda "Binky" Urban has been Ellis' longtime book agent (who also made a brief appearance as part of the plot of Ellis' novel Lunar Park). And from what The Observer hears, Mr. Ellis' claim that Ms. Finke rang up ICM (and basically threatened to wring them dry) is true.

A few folks who got word of what happened tell us: Ms. Finke rang Binky Urban's office, and not being able to reach the agent, gave her assistant what was characterized to us as an epic, otherworldly screaming-at, the likes of which the assistant had never previously experienced. What we didn't hear was: Why?

UPDATE: One reader writes in with the theory that a Tweet in June from Mr. Ellis may have inspired the call to Binky Urban's office:

It'd certainly make sense. As we noted above, Ms. Finke is notoriously private: Gawker once offered a $1,000 bounty for a photograph of her, while The Daily once published what they allege to be a photo of Ms. Finke, which she adamantly denied.

UPDATE 2: Gawker's John Cook saw that Penske Media (under which Deadline Hollywood Daily operates) is listed as the owner of an apartment in Bret Easton Ellis' building. Neat! No word on whether or not it belongs to Finke in any way or if she happens to occupy it, but Cook points out that the Hollywood Reporter once tried to poach Finke with an offer that included an apartment in Malibu. Was it Cook's query to Finke as to whether or not she lived in the apartment that alerted her to the Tweets, resulting in the enraged call in the first place? Who knows!

Ms. Urban and her assistant declined to comment; Mr. Ellis (who hasn't Tweeted anything about the fracas since) and Ms. Finke did not immediately return requests for comment.

Do you know if this is the beef between the two? Any specifics about what Ms. Finke screamed at Ms. Urban's (vacation-deserving) assistant? We'd love to hear it.

fkamer@observer.com | @weareyourfek

Long story short: Hollywood Reporter formally accused Ms. Finke of "a concerted and unlawful attempt to disrupt THR’s business" that includes telling advertisers that the Reporter has financial problems and harassing THR staff. Nikki Finke responded as Nikki Finke would:

To: Debevoise & Plimpton LLP, NYC

You can stick this letter up your asses if you think you can intimidate me as a journalist who has spent months now reporting and preparing an article about The Hollywood Reporter which I plan to publish very soon. If anything I have been very circumspect about informing Hollywood about the truth regarding THR. Because the truth hurts:

– This week THR laid off/fired more staffers in addition to the other staffers laid off/fired this summer alone.

– I have contacted THR staffers only when they claim ‘exclusives’ that aren’t (because Deadline had the true earlier ‘exclusive’) or when THR staffers steal Deadline content (our exclusives with no reference or link). [See cease and desist letter which Deadline sent to THR on February 25th, 2011.] I have been warning other reporters and other media outlets about this as well. Which is why I plan to start “naming names” of reporters who slap their bylines on Deadline’s exclusive information. They deserve humiliation for it.

Rather than be named by Ms. Finke, we'll let you read the rest of the letter here. There is so much more to enjoy. In the Legend of Nikki Finke, this is kind of a classic chapter.

fkamer@observer.com | @weareyourfek

Screenshot from Deadline.com

A million Deadline readers isn't cool. Know what's cool, Nikki Finke? A Farmville manqué.

Nikki Finke's Deadline has apparently opened to the public its Facebook game in which players can pretend to be an actor (or actress), director, producer, or (if for some crazy reason they desire this) screenwriter, and try their hands at the moviemaking business in a concocted simulation. Ads on Deadline, featuring a silhouette purportedly of Ms. Finke, currently read, "The (allegedly) most powerful woman in Hollywood is watching you play. Don't bore her." Surely the good-humored Ms. Finke, who told The Observer "I regret to say I’m not holed up in the fetal position" after the Daily applied the "most powerful" label, doesn't mind her reclusiveness being tweaked in this manner!

Studio news, according to the copy on Deadline's site, changes the nature of the simulation--good luck to those players assigned an avatar of Lionsgate executive after that studio's Conan the Barbarian remake flopped. While we're not interested in playing (we're not sure we want Ms. Finke to have "access to [our] information"), we imagine the game as being a bit like the old CD-ROM game "The Movies," with a Bowser-like figure that can end your life by yelling "TOLDJA!"

ddaddario@observer.com :: @DPD_

Is this the most Nikki Finke-beloved woman in Hollywood? (Getty Images)

“Unlike most Web-based journalists who cover Hollywood, Finke is not a film buff. Her favorite movies include ‘Legally Blonde.’” –Tad Friend’s New Yorker profile of Nikki Finke, 2009

“We all need a little more Penny right now.” –Nikki Finke on Penny Marshall, 2011

ddaddario@observer.com :: @DPD_

Coming...

Presumably, this refers to the reality of a busted server? Or reality TV--Ms. Finke also had in the offing posts on "Simon Cowell" and "Chuck Lorre." (In an email, Ms. Finke told us, "Message is self-evident. I'm doing a lot of administrative catch-up.") Or maybe the blogger has some great epiphany she's going to share with us about our reality. Deadline is the Matrix!

ddaddario@observer.com :: @DPD_

Finke has more to worry about, perhaps, than a photograph. She's been keeping remarkably busy as editor of Deadline and its awards-season print publications, conceived of by marketing professionals and not a Finke passion project: "Parts of it are like crawling through barbed wire--you're doing a lot with very little." Both the site, though, and the print edition are doing well, Finke says, though working with small staffs (Deadline's print edition works with a freelance art director and copyeditor; the website has settled on a new editor in Los Angeles and "very senior" reporter in New York, to begin after March 1.)

Until then, it's a daily grind for Finke. Since last Sunday night, during which she liveblogged the Super Bowl ("On the other hand, no one couldn't love dogs cooking and serving Bud Light"), wrote about AOL's Huffington Post acquisition, and posted without comment new movie trailers debuting during the game, Nikki Finke has been nearly entirely silent on the site. John Cook at Gawker wrote that she was particularly nervous and incensed about The Daily's plan to publish an image of her, though she contradicted that in interviews with Cook and with the Observer.

On Monday, Finke published, under her own name, three items: a video of the Writers Guild Awards in Los Angeles, an anodyne report on the delayed release of Mel Gibson's film The Beaver, and a strongly worded takedown of Michael Moore. On Tuesday, she published a long item on the next James Bond film--an item co-bylined by Mike Fleming and running under Fleming's New York vertical; on Wednesday, Finke embedded the trailer to Disney's Prom with a sentence about its provenance ("This is the first movie release which Walt Disney Studios Chairman Rich Ross greenlighted."). That makes five items in the first three days of this week (Finke has not published anything yet today).

Television reporter Nellie Andreeva has posted seven items so far today, sixteen Wednesday, fifteen Tuesday, and fourteen Monday. New York-based Mike Fleming has published seven items so far today, six Wednesday, fifteen Tuesday, and six Monday (counting his lengthy shared byline with Finke.)

The act of quantifying such numbers is unusually different as the site's bylines do not act in a traditional fashion--Fleming's links to the "New York" vertical, which contains various authors' work. Andreeva's name is in plain text and does not link to anything (Andreeva, when asked about her status and schedule at Deadline, declined to comment). Finke's links back to the Deadline Hollywood vertical. (A search for an author's name is similarly ineffective.) Perhaps it's all irrelevant, as Finke runs the site, though her famously snarky and vituperative voice, as evoked in a 2009 New Yorker profile, defines only her own work there, and even then only sometimes. "I didn't want Nikki clones," said Finke. As for strong reactions to her style--and her--Finke has her own theories for her unpopularity, referencing the Internet's aversion to strong-willed women: "I think people"--she interrupts herself, to talk to what sounds to be a cat, "you are the cutest!"--"I don't know why. They're people who don't know me."

Not everything gets a reaction, even from Nikki. By this time last week, Finke had posted eleven items, but they ranged from repurposed press releases to the classic Nikki-as-perceived bemoaning Justin Bieber ("Please, just kill me now"). Her schedule fluctuates (she said she was closing an issue Saturday, and further told the Observer she'd been on vacation to Hawaii in September and Mexico during the holidays: "I have a life, you know") but perhaps something was different this week. Maybe it was just the attention this so-called "private person" was getting. Another phone rang while the Observer began to form a question. Finke made frustrated noises. We let her go. She called back. Her first question: "Can I ask what you're going to write?"

ddaddario@observer.com :: @DPD_