From an interview in today’s Metro with Steve Martin, the head of publicity firm Nasty Little Man (Radiohead, Beasties, Foos, K-C & Jojo, etc.) and former Agnostic Front member:
A writer from Pitchforkmedia once called you a “prick” in his review of “To the 5 Boroughs.” Discuss.
We’ve kissed and made up. They got rid of that writer and now everything’s great. The writer’s defense was, “I wrote it in character because I’ve had difficulties with you, not getting access to your clients.” I was like, a lot of people have [had that problem] and they don’t make up a story about how I’m totally irresponsible. [The editor] was a stand-up guy about it and now we have a great relationship.
What Martin doesn’t mention is that the kissing-and-making-up part came only after he made the website print one of the most ass-whupping-avoiding retractions of all time. As for the writer in question, Brent DiCrescenzo, he’s never been heard from again; either he’s been locked away in Thom Yorke’s 27,000-foot eco-friendly wine cellar for the last two years, or, if this rarely updated staff listing is accurate, he’s back at Pitchfork, along with the rest of the chronic bullshitters.
My Day: Steve Martin, founder, Nasty Little Man Public Relations [NY metro]
quirky independent film that nobody has seen
Precisely.
Steve Martin is the worst publicist I’ve ever dealt with. Asshat to the nth degree. He’s even worse than Jessica Hopper.
He wrote it “in character”? I always wondered if Pitchfork was a really long-running practical joke (or, performance art piece, either way).
Oh yeah! Wasn’t Sylvester babbling on about something similar at Harvard? I couldn’t take too much of it, but didn’t he say something about how he was subtly satirizing the expectations of objectivity, more than giving the whole “who what where why and how?”
It wasn’t outrageously bad journalism–you just didn’t get the joke, dumbass.