Hollywood’s leaders work with the understanding that facts are not fixed pillars but trial balloons that you inflate with the gas of vehement assertion. The truth is always negotiable. In October, 2007, Finke posted a story about Jeff Robinov, Warner Bros.’ president of production: ‘Warner’s Robinov Bitchslaps Film Women.’ The story said that after two box-office disasters with films starring women, Robinov had announced, ‘We are no longer doing movies with women in the lead.’ Finke cited three unnamed producers as sources. She quoted the feminist lawyer Gloria Allred calling the comment an insult to women, the story winged around the Web, and Robinov’s chauvinism was discussed on ‘The Early Show.’
Robinov says he spoke with Finke a few days later to explain, off the record, that he hadn’t made the comment—that, in fact, the films’ producer, Joel Silver, had. Robinov says Finke told him that she didn’t believe him, and refused to discuss her sources. ‘It was a sort of McCarthyite inquisition in certain ways—I couldn’t defend myself,’ he says. The studio, at that point, decided that its leaders would stop talking to her altogether. In June, 2008, Finke wrote another story—based, she says, on information from three people at Warner Bros.—which declared that Robinov had acknowledged making the remark, but as a joke.
Finke says that neither Robinov in their 2007 conversation nor Silver at any point told her that Silver was the culprit. Silver originally confirmed to me that he had made the remark. Then, after Finke sent his publicist a sharply worded e-mail—’WHY ARE YOU AND JOEL SILVER LYING?’—Silver got back in touch to say that he and Robinov ‘both may have said it.’
Though Robinov still insists that he didn’t make the remark, he is at pains to observe that Finke is ‘very talented and has a vast network of sources. For me and for Warner Bros., I would prefer to have a different relationship with her, based on some level of mutual trust and respect.’ He and Finke say they’ve recently achieved a working rapprochement, brokered by an industry consultant. Trust may be harder to establish—particularly as a person close to the situation maintains that the producer who first leaked the fact that Jeff Robinov had made the damning remark was none other than Joel Silver. (Silver denies it.)
