Rivalries sharpen H'wood's buzz saw

By PETER BART

According to rumor, Paramount's Gail Berman has been said to be out of her job as production chief.

A curious change has taken place in the way people react to rumors: They actually believe them.

Hollywood has always coveted its rumor mill, going back to the buzz that "Birth of a Nation" was going over budget. Today, however, the rumor mill has become more like a high-tech echo chamber thanks to blogs, instant messaging and agency chat systems. The upshot: The process of planting a rumor has become an exercise in instant gratification.

Hence the buzz of the moment comes at you, not from a muffled phone call, but from a dozen different directions, each suggesting increased credibility. This past week, for example, you'd have to be a complete loser not to believe that:

• ICM has completed its acquisition of Endeavor.

• Gail Berman is out as production chief at Paramount.

• Stacey Snider is becoming a partner at DreamWorks.

• William Morris and UTA are back in intense merger discussions.

When I told a couple of my alleged sources that I didn't believe any of these rumors, I could tell they felt I was hopelessly out of synch with the zeitgeist.

And I suppose they're right to this degree: Not only do I reject 99% of the rumors echoing out there, but I think it's fairly obvious that most were planted, either as strategic ploys or idle mischief.

Is it pure coincidence that the signing of a major star by a talent agency always triggers a fusillade of dire rumors? Endeavor signs Reese Witherspoon and suddenly the buzz is out there that the place is in distress and its leader, Ari Emanuel, is headed for Paramount (so many people are headed for Paramount on the rumor mill that I have alerted studio security of a possible stampede through the front gate).

To be sure, I'm persuaded that at any given time almost every agency seems to be chatting it up with a rival about ultimate consolidation, but the combination of big egos and bigger salaries keeps these deals from happening.

That doesn't discourage the buzzmeisters. Not many months ago, the William Morris Agency was both selling its building and acquiring UTA. Mysteriously, none of this actually took place.

There are a variety of theories as to the identity of the rumor-planters. Some top agents believe that what they consider "the CAA mafia" enjoys destabilizing rivals. The chief of another talent agency believes that disgruntled agents trigger rumors about their own companies. Executives like Berman and Snider feel the rumor-mongering reflects the fact that most people really don't have enough to do.

What everyone agrees is that there is no appropriate defense mechanism to the contagion of rumors. Bloggers believe fact-checking is an insult to the basic precepts of blogdom. Chat systems are designed to spread buzz, not refute it. The PR types believe that in denying rumors they only lend them credibility.

I heard a rumor out there that I was going to write a column about rumors. Trust me: There's no truth to it.

Choking on costs

Pop culture pundits were so enthralled with the socio-political implications of this year's Oscar nominations that most overlooked the simple numbers.

The median cost of the nominated pictures, excluding "Munich," was $8.6 million, which was roughly the craft services tab on "Superman Returns" (excluding imported In-N-Out Burgers). That means that, as the average cost of tentpole pictures soars past $100 million, the budgets of potential Oscar-quality films are headed in the opposite direction.

Inevitably, Hollywood outsiders, not to mention random stockholders, might be led to ask, "If you can make an Oscar-quality picture for under $10 million, why do the big studio pictures cost 10 times that much?" Ask that question of talent agents or studio executives and you elicit a range of "it's not my fault" responses.

So the answer clearly must be -- again -- craft services. The cast and crew eat too well on these big tentpole movies. The time has come to trim those tents and bury those poles.