Arts Reviews by Brayfield Celia

Author:Brayfield, Celia [Celia Brayfield]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781842434185
Publisher: Oldcastle Books
Published: 2010-09-14T17:00:00+00:00

THE GATEKEEPERS

If everybody loves to hate critics, nobody has the right to hate them more than the gatekeepers, the people who pitch their stories, fix their press passes and, far more often than any critic will admit, write their copy. Oh yes, they do. Just try checking the words of a book’s press release against its ‘reviews’ in the provincial press.

Most of these people are publicists. It is a honourable profession, although a lot of its practitioners have a highly individual sense of honour. Did you read or have you seen Christopher Buckley’s Thank You For Smoking? There really are public relations officers for the tobacco industry, for the arms industry, for brutally repressive governments and for even less attractive institutions and people. When you’re dealing with an arts publicist, remember that they could have entered much more questionable branches of the profession. Even if you’ve just caught them out in a great fat lie and they’ve given your prized exclusive interview to your biggest rival.

When you have an influential role on a major publication, publicists will call, email and text you day and night and they will be warm, friendly, clever, thoughtful, charming and probably flirtatious. The minute I was on Facebook I was blitzed by messages from publicists wanting to be my friend. When you are a wannabe trying to break into the business, however, publicists will ignore you, block your emails and delete your number. Then it will be up to you to bring every ounce of interpersonal skill to the task of getting their attention. It’s a good idea to have a goldfish memory when it comes to the behaviour induced by the inherent cruelty of media life.

As with journalists, straight-dealing professionalism is the foundation of a good career for a publicist and many of the gatekeepers with whom a reviewer does business will choose this path. Feel free to develop a close working relationship with anyone who speaks the truth and delivers what they promise. Remember, of course, that a working relationship is realistically all you can develop in this situation. Okay, a few people every decade fall in love and get married, but it’s rare. Generally, a publicist may act like your best friend but when the manure hits the air-conditioning they will remember that their clients pay their salary, not you. Like artists, some publicists are professionally very friendly. One who I talked to a lot even asked me and my partner to her big swanky wedding. A few months later, when I moved jobs and was no longer any use to her, she never called me or returned my calls again.

There are toxic publicists. Especially in pop music. Thinking about it, every single one of the publicists I’ve worked with whose client was an all-time-great rock star has been a total shit. May it be different for you. May you talk to a PR for a golden god of rock’n’roll who is a genuine, 22–carat, absolute pussycat. I’ve never met one, but the law of probability suggests that they must exist.

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