Nikki Finke

It may well be the most high-profile job in Hollywood, certainly the most influential, but no moguls need apply. And even though the position is soon to be vacant, the last place you’ll read about editors from The New York Times traveling here in the coming weeks to begin the......

He opens his big mouth and sounds off twice a week, lives large inside a paid-by-Hollywood mansion in Los Angeles, chooses Eminem's 8 Mile soundtrack as his favorite music, has a well-known stylist fashioning his put-together look, and gets free head-to-toe wardrobes from a famous clothing store. Yes, there he......

As they said during the Vietnam era, "What if they gave a war and nobody came?" So think of the significance, with this insoluble invasion of Iraq coinciding with the insipid Oscars, if they gave the biggest awards show in the world and nobodies came. By Wednesday, neither ABC nor......

SHOW-BIZ SUCCESS HAS MANY FATHERS, but failure is an orphan. Just look at Fox entertainment television. When ratings tanked during November sweeps and Rupert Murdoch talked about the unit's "very disappointing year" in his staff Christmas message, honchos Sandy Grushow and Gail Berman were said to have their necks on......

ALONG WITH "NEVER STOP DECORATING your office" (or you've overstayed your welcome) and "Never refuse to work with anyone" (since you may need that person tomorrow) comes that other show-biz adage "Never leave a paper trail" (because it may come back to haunt you). The latter explains why Hollywood has......

THERE WE WERE, SIDE BY SIDE IN THE MOJAVE Desert, Steven Spielberg and I. Like me, he had made the odyssey from Cape Canaveral to Edwards Air Force Base to see the first space-shuttle mission begin and end. We were just two dozen strangers, all standing a few hundred yards......

  If you accept the premise that the film business is the folly of the filthy rich, then the independent-film business must seem the folly of the stupidly rich. Look at the winner of this year‘s documentary award at the just-finished Sundance Film Festival: Capturing the Friedmans, produced and directed......

Too bad Steve Case isn’t a better actor. Palpably pathetic as he made the endless rounds of TV interviews this week, the AOL Time Warner chairman played victim, repeating his “I‘m resigning because I’m a distraction” mantra even though everyone knew the mea culpa was as phony as AOL‘s cooked......

A few weeks before the midterm elections, South Carolina‘s Democratic senatorial candidate Alex Sanders crowed, ”The Sundance Kid’s coming to town.“ And there was Robert Redford, shaking hands and talking politics in front of a wall-size painting depicting the final bullet-riddled scene of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. Before......

A FEW YEARS AGO, A FAMOUS SCREENWRITER sat in a newly minted studio mogul's office and pitched a script. It was about the comedic mishaps of men on a hunting trip. The executive was known for his sense of humor, but he sat there stone-faced, then passed on the spot......