THE DARK LEGACY OF NIKKI FINKE:

Everyone in Hollywood who was active during Finke’s reign—and it was a reign; she dominated the landscape from 2006 to 2013 in a way that is difficult to explain to those who didn’t experience it—has a Nikki story, and most of them are awful. She was awful. Screaming threats. 3 a.m. phone calls. Outright blackmail. I’m all for being super-aggressive on a story—but she’d try to destroy lives, to get agents and assistants fired if they wouldn’t do her bidding. She’d torment publicists with email subject lines like “today’s the day I ruin your career.” She once attempted to sabotage the book deal of a rival journalist I know, just because. She’d have her lawyer send frivolous and harassing letters, and in 2011 she convinced Penske to sue THR for $5 million over some website code we mistakenly used from a Penske site. (It settled.) Nobody does anything in Hollywood unless they’re afraid, she once told me. There’s an element of truth to that, and good journalists know how to exploit that fear, but Nikki took it to a destructive and selfish end.

We all loved to read when she went after someone, but Nikki once told me in blunt terms that she occasionally wrote horrible things she knew to be untrue about people in order to get them to play ball with her in the future. That’s pretty much the definition of libel, but to her it was just a casual Hollywood power play—a way for her to exert control over people with more power than her. And to control the nextstory, and the one after that. Most journalists, even those with a pointed voice and a perspective (myself included), wouldn’t write anything that they wouldn’t say to someone’s face. But Nikki sidestepped those ethics by being unseen by anyone. Her absence from events and lunches, and the lack of any boss or owner to call and complain about her, made her simultaneously ubiquitous and untouchable—hence that decades-old file photo hovered over Hollywood like a cloud of toxic smoke, and you never knew when she would decide to announce that, say, Paramount executive John Lesher was allegedly “whacked out and shit-faced and falling down drunk.” With Nikki, the power play was disguised as a righteous crusade. Like I said, awful stuff.

That’s why it’s amusing to see all these glowing obituaries and eulogies from journalists on Twitter today after Finke died at age 68 in Florida after a long illness. “Fearless.” “Disruptor.” “One of a kind.” That type of praise. It’s all true, of course—people can be innovative and terrible—but what’s been largely left out of the conversation about her legacy is the terrible part, the tactics by which Finke became so disruptive. Certainly unethical, arguably criminal, in most media environments, Nikki’s bullying would have been rejected, or at least countered. But for some reason—the egos, the fear-based culture, and the transactional nature of showbiz come to mind—Hollywood people not only tolerated her tactics; she was actually celebrated.

In a company town whose execs are legendary for their anger issues, and who lionized Roman Polanski and Harvey Weinstein? I need to borrow Sarah’s shocked face!