Fight night: Mickey Rourke vs. Sean Penn

Gerald Posner is a crackerjack investigative journalist, best known for "Case Closed," a smart book about the JFK assassination, and "Secrets of the Kingdom," which delves into the incestuous relationship between the House of Saud and the George W. Bush-era White House. So what is Posner doing writing a shockingly shoddy, completely anonymously sourced showbiz "expose" on Tina Brown's Daily Beast website?

Titled "Rourke Trashes Penn," it claims that Mickey Rourke has bashed Sean Penn, whom Posner calls his "chief rival" in the Oscar race, attacking him in a text message to a friend as a "homophobe" and an "average" actor. (Hmmm, I wonder which one of those insults hurts the most?) Since I was away for the holidays, I missed Posner's post when it first surfaced on the site early last week, but one of my friends e-mailed the link, wondering if, even considering the silliness of the media's mania with All Things Oscar, whether reporting on an actor's private text-mail was now fair game.

Good question! I haven't been a regular reader of the Daily Beast, but Posner's story--which is still up on the site's front page, billed as an "exclusive"--is pretty much a textbook example of how little quality control we get in online showbiz journalism these days. Posner's sources are all anonymous, one of them being "an entertainment honcho," another a "veteran Hollywood lawyer," another billed as a "longtime acquaintance" of Rourke. According to Posner, Rourke wrote a text message to the aforementioned honcho, which Posner saw on Dec. 28. It reads [this is its original, unedited form, so typos included]: "Look seans an old friend of mine and i didn't buy his performance at all--thought he did an average pretend acting like he was gay besides hes one of the most homophobic people i kno."   

The only person who vouches for the authenticity of the text message is the unnamed "entertainment honcho," who, of course, could be anyone from a Hollywood caterer or out-of-work actor to a studio chief. Posner pads the story with a long recitation of previous Oscar badmouthing incidents, going back to the Miramax-DreamWorks feud over "A Beautiful Mind." However, he disingenuously claims that Rourke's bashing of Penn is "the first time anyone can recall an actor dissing another actor so openly" for his performance. The key word here is "openly." As in: How could a private text message to a friend possibly be "openly" dissing someone else's performance? It's only out in the open because Posner chose to turn it into a story.

To further weaken Posner's case, Rourke is quoted in the upcoming Jan. 7 issue of The Envelope, where he singles out Penn's performance in "Milk" for special praise. He says: "I thought [Sean] made some very brave choices as an actor and I don't think it was that easy of a character for him to do. He really did some great work in it."

Posner managed to contact Rourke's publicist, who is quoted as saying "there is no Oscar feud between Mickey and Sean. They have been friends for a very long time," adding that Rourke is "completely unaware of the text." In today's era of corner-cutting Web journalism, I guess that wasn't a firm enough denial to get the story killed. But I think Posner, and the Daily Beast, should be embarrassed. If this is the kind of reporting that Tina Brown thinks is going to help her carve out a niche in the blogosphere, she's well on her way down the slippery slope into tabloid swampland.

Poster created for the opening sequence of "The Wrestler" by Kristyn Hume / Fox Searchlight

Comments

[Tom Carter]

How can a text message even be verified? And what about a text message is "open"? And what does Sean Penn's alleged homophobia have to do with his film portrayal of a homosexual? He's an actor! That's like saying Christian Bale did an average job in American Psycho because he doesn't kill people in real life. "How little quality control we get in online showbiz journalism these days" - understatement of the year!

[Rick Mitchell]

This from someone who accepts anything posted by the appropriately named Nikki finke, of whom's actual existence I have yet to see any proof?

Rick Mitchell
Film Editor/ Film Historian

[Motorcycle Boy]

Thanks for this critique. Far too often, real journalists seem very happy to abandon their professional standards and judgment when writing for the web, largely because they erroneously believe that the "culture" of the web demands it. (That's their excuse, anyway.) There was absolutely nothing to Posner's "exclusive," otherwise he would have held onto it as the starting point for a larger piece about Rourke vs. Penn. Instead, Posner wrote a quick, lazy story and padded it with anonymous nonsense. It's an unimportant story, of course, but this revealing episode should perhaps raise some questions about the quality of his books on political intrigue as well.

[Wild Bill]

Slumdog Millionare was without a doubt the best film of 2008. Penn was brilliant in Milk. I'm excited to see "The Wrestler."

[Harry]

Does this make Rourke an anti-Semite for referring to the Wrestler director as "a little Jew", as he did during an industry q and a? Every time Rourke opens his mouth, that Oscar gets further and further away (not that I think he has much of a chance). This is like the Burt Reynolds nom for "Boogie Nights". It's not a comeback, because nobody really wants him to come back.