From my (junk) mailbox, a message from the Strumpette:

Scott,

As we are finishing the first draft of the screenplay for the movie, thought you’d like to know: the Scott Baradell character is a total [expletive deleted], petty and jealous. He exemplifies the worst of the PR bloggers.

FYI.

– Amanda

Did you hear that? I’m in it! Yesss!

The photo? Oh, just two minor characters in the movie — Brian Connolly and Howard Solomon. More on them later.

Update:

Shortly after this was posted, I was cc’ed on the following e-mail from Brian Connolly to Howard Solomon:

Howard:

Hey, you made Media Orchard:
http://www.ideagrove.com/blog/2006/07/update-on-strumpette-movie.html.

Sounds like Baradell is going to write about the “Eric Samuelson” emails in TMR. You just may end up the MD of the Ruder Finn office in Hawaii, or more likely Pago Pago.

Regards,

Brian Connolly
President
WePublishing, Inc.
312.482.9229

Just kidding. When even Michael Jackson’s publicist says you’re in trouble, you’re in trouble.

From the Washington Post:

With occasional exceptions, newspaper people usually get the hero treatment in movies and TV shows. This is in sharp contrast to TV reporters, who are just as likely to be trashed. TV journalists might be prettier and better paid in real life than their ink-stained brethren and sistren, but on screen there’s no contest about who comes off better…

Sure, newspaper reporters in the movies can be a cynical, tough-talking, hard-drinking bunch who aren’t above cutting a few corners to get the story ([Scarlett]Johansson’s character, for example, sleeps with two of her sources in “Scoop.” But all is forgiven when they expose the truth.)…

TV reporters? They’re not nearly as lucky. Television journalists tend to be depicted as fatuous pretty boys and girls, mostly out for career advancement. The truth? Not only can’t they handle it, it’s not even very important. Think of William Hurt’s character in “Broadcast News” (1987) or Bill Murray’s cynical weatherman in “Groundhog Day” (1993), or more recently, “Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy” (2004). The most devastating portrait of all might be the deranged TV newsman Howard Beale (Peter Finch) in the satirical “Network” (released the same year that Woodward and Bernstein were being lionized in “All the President’s Men”).

We’re not crying for the TV reporters. Have you ever seen a single positive portrayal of a PR practitioner on film? Us neither.

Here, by the way, is our list of the Top 10 Films About Journalism and/or PR. We’ll drag it out again in case anyone would like to discuss it — even though we don’t expect Scoop to alter it:

1. Citizen Kane
2. Capote
3. Sweet Smell of Success
4. Network
5. All the President’s Men
6. Broadcast News
7. His Girl Friday
8. Good Night, and Good Luck
9. The Insider
10. Wag the Dog

The video’s director and I had some differences over my wardrobe for this one. But he convinced me that Strumpette is such a hot property right now — after the Kurtz column — that I should throw caution to the wind and go for it.