Today’s Page Six is all but dead and almost forgotten Hollywood blogger Nikki Finke.
They say her estate, whoever that might be, is shopping her old manuscript around. It was supposed to be an “expose” of the movie biz and all the people she viciously attacked over the years.
But I say, wait a minute. Page Six doesn’t mention that the proposed book, called “Pay or Play,” had a publisher once upon a time. That was Turtle Bay Books.
Finke never turned in a manuscript. It was a long running inside joke. She was unable to complete one despite venting her spleen several times a day online at Deadline.com, the website she invented.
No, Nikki did not like deadlines for long piece. Back in the late 80s, when she was at the LA Times, Nikki was supposed to write freelance articles for me at Fame magazine. Getting them was an adventure. This was before email. She’d insist she was faxing over her work. Assistants would stand at the fax machine, waiting for the famous grinding noise of missives being printed out.
They were few and far between.
Years later, she wrote pieces for my friend Peter Kaplan at the New York Observer. He and I talked about it all the time, how extruding work from Nikki was just like pulling teeth with a string attached to a doorknob.
So maybe someone has finished “Pay or Play,” hoping to cash in. But it’s all old news. Nikki died in 2022. She hadn’t been active for years after Jay Penske bought her out and she was prevented from writing about Hollywood. Most of the people she knew are dead or sitting a comfortable chair with a lap blanket. Does anyone care now about what Ron Meyer said to Mike Ovitz at Spago when it was on Horn Avenue?
Think of it. There was no streaming in Nikki’s time. Netflix sent discs out in red envelopes. Blockbuster was where you got movies. William Morris was an agency. So was ICM. It would be a little like when I walk into a restaurant and say, “Do you know what this used to be?” I just get blank stares.
So, have at it. For the dog days of August, this is something to chew on. But I’d much rather see the outtakes of the late Julia Phillips’ “You”ll Never Eat Lunch in this Town Again.” I read them, back in 1988. The full manuscript was like the Leaning Tower of Pisa on my desk. Then the lawyers came in and vetted it. Whoops! No one will ever know what Ryan O’Neal was really up to.
And many reading this will ask, Who is Ryan O’Neal?
