Monday, February 05, 2007

Premiere Magazine For Sale

And it may just shut down after years of losses. I can still remember when the first issue of "Premiere" magazine came out -- it was revolutionary in covering the film indsutry seriously. Very few other publications did on-the-set pieces. Premiere did them all the time. Premiere launched the Power List, a ranking of everyone in Hollywood by their amount of power. Brilliantly, it made PREMIERE powerful since everyone wanted to be on that list and higher than they were the year before. Premiere also perfected the ranking of Summer and Fall movies -- they used to give actual tough predictions, unafraid to say what looked like bombs, etc. Now EVERYONE has a Power List and everyone ranks or previews summer movies. Premiere did great, meaty in-depth stories and while they weren't afraid of colorful personal lives, the focus was firmly on great artists making (or trying to make) great films. They took movies seriously but still had fun. They've been so copied and beaten by the nimbler Entertainment Weekly, that Premiere has faded in recent years. But it was extremely influential and it was the only place I wanted to work at when I first moved to New York and it gave me my first internship and job and byline so I will always be fond of it.

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