John Koblin did his heroic best to explain What It All Means: The accelerating decline of Variety, the rise of celebrity Twitters; the enduring but increasingly preposterous hope of the Los Angeles Times, the swagger of self-made blog bigfoot Nikki Finke; the "clubby" world of pre-internet Tinseltown reporting, the ambitions of upstart blogger Sharon Waxm—

"I do think it's kind of surprising that Sharon Waxman even has a blog," [former LA/NY Times reporter Anita] Busch told us. "I think she's even one of the worst journalists I've ever encountered."

Uhhh...

"Her site is getting no traffic and is inaccurate and boring..." Finke said.

OK, well, maybe we could get back to a constructive dialog about how the economic misfortunes of movie studios have maybe accelerated the decline of printed med...

[Variety's Brian] Lowry, in a blog post singling out [LA Times' Patrick] Goldstein, calls him lazy, petulant and a weak reporter. "Now you have this blog, ‘The Big Picture,' so I'm thrilled to see... you squeeze out more than 800 words a week," wrote Mr. Lowry.

Right. We'll skip right over the discussion of economic viability amid the decimation of advertising revenue in the print-to-online transition, then, and just ask if anyone else want to hurl some fecal m...

"The way [Finke] twists things and the way she always manages to bend the facts-and I put facts in quotes-is in a way that suits her..." Ms. Waxman... added. "People around Hollywood are terrified of her."

Alright, fine, bottom line: In case the example of New York wasn't clear enough, Los Angeles media also illustrate how technology and fragmentation are reviving the old tradition of feuding. As longtime Variety kingpin Peter Bart explains to Koblin, we're going back to the 1930s, when Louella Parsons competed ruthlessly with former friend Hedda Hopper to dominate Hollywood gossip. Everyone is at one another's throats.

No, the Waxman-Finke rivalry isn't exactly hot news, but the point is that more of these little squabbles are erupting all the time, if only because there are so many would-be media alpha dogs in this period of flux, before the inevitable consolidations and shakeouts that make life boring again.

Seeking a final bit of illumination on that, we excitedly emailed Koblin's piece to a media source who quickly replied, "I thought only Hollywood bloggers cared about feuds created entirely to bait traffic, but I totally forgot about the New York Observer!"

Oh, my.

Then again, what did we expect? Welcome to the future. It's kinda bitchy!

[NY Observer]

(Illustration via)

According to The Wrap, Reed Business Information, Variety's parent company, is laying off 7% of its total staff, and warning employees that unpaid furloughs may be coming next. Among the victims: Michael Speier, Variety's executive editor.

Update: All told, we hear that around eight or ten editorial jobs were cut in today's round of layoffs. Others to go include several copy editors, a web editor, an art department staffer, New York-based assistant managing editor Dade Hayes and L.A.-based reporter Dan Frankel. These follow a previous round of cuts in January.

Bart was a power broker as much as an editor, which helped keep him in charge even though he doesn't use those newfangled "computers" and whatnot. He was replaced with Tim Gray—which Bart says was his decision:

"There was a stipulation that I could step down at my 20-year mark if I wanted, and I did," he said on Monday in a telephone interview. Citing his age, Mr. Bart added, "The speculation on these blogs that there are intrigues behind this move is surreal."

The assumption is that Gray will focus on strengthening Variety's online product, as its print edition continues to crumble ("several issues ran a scant eight pages and contained a lone quarter-page ad"). But Gray says he's a believer in print:

Gray said the paper is turning a profit, so there are no immediate plans to shutter the daily or weekly editions in favor of the online version. "Our goal is to give them different identities because they have different audiences," he said.

He echoes this "distinct identity" bit to The Wrap. And let's face it, it makes sense! Gray's main challenge is finding a business model that pays, in US currency; Bart's main challenge now is not to become a caricature of himself, without a huge amount of influence to wield. But any trade mag that can survive the next few years without folding is a winner, to us.

It was Bart's longtime rival Tad Smith who shunted him aside and gave him another title ("vice president and editorial director").

The bad blood between the relatively young Reed Business Information CEO, based in New York, and Bart goes back at least eight years, to Amy Wallace's devastating 2001 profile of Bart for the debut issue of Los Angeles magazine. Wallace alleged "Hollywood's Information Man" had trafficked in racist and homophobic comments over the years, and that he was in business with his sources; this earned him a suspension.

Bart could have been fired, but his standing at the paper and influence in Hollywood gave him the upper hand, not only in the dustup over the Los Angeles article but in the years to come, when the paper faced pressure from Reed to cut costs in the manner of its hollowed-out rival the Hollywood Reporter.

Between the tanking economy and the rise of Web publishing, Hollywood studios have lately been less inclined to advertise. Bart, 76 and notoriously hostile to the online world, has seen his influence shrink with the paper. In January, Reed laid off 30 Variety staffers.

Reed abandoned an effort to sell itself in December, after nearly a year on the block.

Now that Bart is gone, it has placed his nominal successor Tim Gray under Group Publisher Neil Stiles — abandoning a tradition where the editor and publisher of Variety were coequal and, one might plausibly speculate, leaving the paper far more vulnerable to Smith's whims, in terms of restructuring generally (a more aggressive online strategy is expected for starters) and layoffs specifically.

As for Gray, he's already made one Web-savvy move: rushing news of Bart's departure onto Variety.com before Nikki Finke could post it to her widely-read website. His reward? Finke is already trafficking in speculation he's placeholder for someone else.

Nikki Finke got a list of affected personnel a little while ago, and "disheartening" doesn't begin to describe it — especially with veteran industry reporter and columnist Anne Thompson leading the column out the door. She's followed by Diane Garrett, Mike Jones, Phil Gallo, Andrew Barker, Lisa Weinstein, Martha Hernandez, Alys Marshall, Byron Perry, Ben Fritz and Jeff Sneider — many of them among the tireless staffers most qualified to help the venerable trade transition to an online future.

Way to go, Variety. Only last week Thompson had the definitive scoop behind the 2009 Sundance Film Festival's hottest story. Now we are left to dab Peter Bart's spittle from our cheeks. Cancel our subscription.

• List Of Variety Layoffs [DHD]

Peter Bart wrote a column of his own (Headline: "Will fiscal funk trip kudo contenders?" WTF) bitching about the lack of Oscar-related ads from the studios in Variety. Patrick Goldstein appropriately tells him to shut it:

Anyone paying attention to the outside world knows we're in the midst of a hideous global economic recession, with corporate profits plunging, the biggest U.S. carmakers teetering on the brink of bankruptcy and tens of thousands of everyday Joes being laid off from their jobs. But Bart, like most Hollywood insiders, lives a life of privilege, putting those nice Campanile lunches on his expense account. So when he hears that GE's hurting or Sony's having a tough time, his reaction? "Hankies, please."

Ha ha! He just told Peter Bart to shut up. And also told him his magazine is poor. Goldstein even gets a quote from Harvey Weinstein about why studios should buy lots of Oscar-related ads, then goes on to dismiss it:

Imagine how you'd feel if you were one of the hundreds of employees that's been laid off at a media conglomerate, only to see that your company's film division still has plenty of dough left to run Oscar ads in Variety or the New York Times or my newspaper.

Of course, the LAT started its section "The Envelope" for the same exact purpose: to get Oscar ads. But whatever. Dude has balls! He can go into porn when he gets laid off because his newspaper didn't sell enough Oscar-related ads to pay his salary. [LAT]

I wasn't in Saigon before its fall or in Berlin before the Nazi clampdown, but I wonder if those cities were gripped by a similar sense of helplessness that afflicts Hollywood this week.

Excuse us as we wipe off the last of the Diet Coke spit-take currently speckling our monitor. There—that's better; now we can see what it is we're typing. Now there are those who would certainly find objectionable Bart's likening of Hitler's rise to a failure to reach a workable solution over jurisdiction for low-budget made-for-Internet productions. In fact, you can find examples of said individuals in the blog's comments section, which begins, "Burt [sic], you're a moron," continuing through to the trenchant observation that "missing one season of One Tree Hill is worse than the Holocaust." But we're inclined to give him a pass on this one. He said up-front he bore no witness to any of the listed historical atrocities; maybe Hollywood's current mood is a lot like them, maybe it's not! Maybe it's more like the Cuban Missile Crisis. Upsetting? Sure. Potentially destructive on a scale of which humankind can only barely begin to conceive? Definitely. But avoidable through some tense, 12th hour negotiations? You betcha, kiddos.

• Down Town [Peter Bart]
• Networks Lie Low on Actors' Contract [NY Times]

Although the film has yet to be completed, several people I trust have seen Valkyrie and testify that it's a superb thriller. "Bryan Singer is back in form," says one source, referring to the Valkyrie director whose last film was Superman Returns.

Cruise will be shooting three scenes in North Africa within the next three weeks. In one, his character, Col. Claus Von Stauffenberg, is badly injured but survives, a key moment in the film's first act.

It gets really good from there, with 130 comments and counting by everyone from a disgruntled Joseph Stalin to a contrarian Adolf Hitler, who claims, "There is no way that someone so short as Tom Cruise nearly assassinated me. This film is a farce." Look for Hollywood's original blogger Army Archerd to crack the Rolodex and have a fully reported follow up by noon.

• Tom Cruise Dons His Eye Patch and Starts Shooting Again [PeterBart.com]

"We have a sense of humor and that's lacking in this business. People take things too seriously—some people are just whacked out. It should be a lot of fun, if I can make people smile."

After the jump, smile along with the highlights from Bart's first day — including a revisionist Sydney Pollack obit and Variety's latest round of Che-hating.

On Sydney Pollack: "Sydney Pollack was a gracious man and an accomplished director, but he never knew how to work the press. That was reflected (inadvertently) in the tributes extended by critics and film writers following his death last week."

On Che and Steven Soderbergh: "Che was a Communist thug who, through myth-making like Soderbergh's, has been transformed into an iconic hero, especially around Europe where Che caps and T-shirts are a major industry. ... Perhaps Soderbergh's next film will be a biopic about Stalin that, oops, forgets to mention certain trivialities like mass murder.

On Sex and the City: "Witness the shrill critical contradictions being hurled at each other by two journalistic doyennes. 'A movie for grownups of all ages,' enthuses Carina Chocano in the Los Angeles Times. 'Vulgar, deeply shallow and totally "ick," ' rants Manohla Dargis in The New York Times. ... Sarah [Jessica Parker]'s not 'deeply shallow,' nor is her movie. In fact, I think any critic who uses that expression needs a better editor."

Hilarious! Traffic City, here we come!

• PeterBart.com [Variety]
• Variety Chief's Blog Spicing up Life [Portfolio via Anne Thompson]

But in an attempt to keep the conversation regarding the unpleasant reality of having tragedy impinge upon art from getting too heavy, Peter Bart shares an amusing anecdote about how the death of Jim Carrey's career during the first week of shooting the 2003 Fun with Dick and Jane remake forced him to try and "cut around" his star, a tough decision that ultimately could not salvage the doomed project.

• Shootout [AMCtv.com]

In your GQ interview, you suggest that if your public knew much about your background and personal life, they might have a difficult time accepting you as a tough guy — indeed, a killer — in your "Bourne" movies. Should you be that defensive about your privileged background? Humphrey Bogart and Lee Marvin both played tough guys yet came from prep school backgrounds, and I don't remember them apologizing about it.

Living in denial seems mildly pathological, Matt. In a recent interview, Christian Bale, another charter member of the give-me-privacy club, acknowledged that he routinely lies to reporters on those rare occasions when he is cornered. Asked by The Los Angeles Times why he does so, he replied, "I have no desire for people to get their facts right about me." Does Bale have such a riveting story to hide? I doubt it.

I'll give you this, Matt: Amid the media onslaught, it has become much more difficult for stars (or public figures in general) to maintain their dignity — or their integrity. Would much of the media be downright thrilled if you had a few too many and launched into a public rant against some minority group? Damn right they would. A forced trip to rehab under a police escort would make a good piece on "Extra."

Still, there's got to be a middle ground between the Life of Lohan and "boring and elusive." I'd like to think you can stake out a piece of that ground, Matt, and look like you're enjoying yourself a little more.

Look at Clooney: The Limbaughs of the hard right have made him a whipping boy, but he still seems to be out there, having a great time and making some meaningful movies.

Think Clooney, Matt. Brando is so not today's role model, either in terms of behavior or heft.

While all of this seems like a backdoor invitation to join Bart and TV partner Peter Guber for a penetrating discussion about the privacy-for-fame tradeoff made by A-list actors on Sunday Morning Shootout, we nevertheless hope Damon heeds some of the above advice: We'd much rather see the Most Likable Movie Star On Earth evolve into a Clooney-style personality who intelligently plays the Hollywood game than into a Brandoesque recluse who, ten years hence, shows up to the set of Ocean's Eighteen pantsless and three-hundred pounds overweight, and demanding that the script notes his favorite Polynesian houseboy offered as they ran lines in his trailer be immediately integrated into that day's shoot.

• Where did Matt Damon go? [Variety]
• Previously: Breaking: Thing In Matt Damon's Ear Supposed To Be There [Defamer]