Premiere Magazine Folds

March 20, 2007 10:42 AM

Premiere Magazine, "The Movie Magazine", one of the first mainstream magazines to cover the moviemaking business, is shuttering after twenty years and 200+ issues. The current issue (with Will Ferrell on the cover), on newsstands now, will be its last. Premiere.com will stay in business. I was a subscriber for most of the 1990s, until I began to notice a shift from news and features about movies to a celebration of Hollywood celebrities. I let my subscription lapse in 2001, when Premiere re-launched itself with a more celebrity-friendly slant, and celebrity It Girl Penelope Cruz on the cover. Reminisce about the golden years with Premiere's Cover Gallery.
posted by Lord Kinbote (42 comments total)

That shift is precisely why I canceled my subscription as well.
posted by NationalKato at 10:54 AM on March 20, 2007

I thought Premiere was okay for awhile.
Too bad about them folding.
I wish there was something like SPY
Magazine, but for films.
Film Threat and Psychotronic come close.
Loves my Cinefex.
posted by squidfartz at 10:56 AM on March 20, 2007

Am I the only person who isn't saddened by this?
I always found their articles and reviews to be from the absolute center of the pretentious, pompous universe.
posted by Chocomog at 10:56 AM on March 20, 2007

.
posted by mds35 at 10:57 AM on March 20, 2007

(pause, 2, 3...)
posted by mds35 at 10:57 AM on March 20, 2007

NOT!
posted by mds35 at 10:57 AM on March 20, 2007

lt was always too slick. But what's the matter with Penelope Cruz, exactly? Is "people who like corporate entertainment magazines but don't like an Almodóvar favorite" a new, obscure snob category?
posted by raysmj at 11:09 AM on March 20, 2007

Sounds like Premiere died in 2001, and it's just taken this long for the corpse to stop twitching.
posted by Faint of Butt at 11:13 AM on March 20, 2007

with Will Ferrell on the cover)

good riddance.
posted by matteo at 11:14 AM on March 20, 2007

Back in the day, Premiere published a piece by David Foster Wallace (writing under a psuedonym, though you could run your fingers over the footnotes in a coalmine ant midnight and tell it was him) where he visited the Adult Video Awards, and it's probably the best thing on porn I've ever read.
posted by Heminator at 11:20 AM on March 20, 2007

Huh? Under what criteria are you measuring in order to make a magazine that began in the late 80s "one of the first to cover the moviemaking business"? That claim is utterly absurd. One could easily name more movie magazines that predate Premiere's launch than came after it.

And yes, the magazine has sucked for years--long before 2001, that's for sure.
posted by dobbs at 11:22 AM on March 20, 2007

I wish there was something like SPY Magazine, but for films.

There was. In the mid to late 90s. For the life of me I can't remember what it was called but it was a british publication that did a good job of covering Hollywood's releases while lampooning the industry and its celebrities. It was a fave of mine and my friends at the time and was often laugh out loud funny. We still refer to Tom Cruise as The Cruiser as that's what the rag called him. I can't believe I'm drawing a blank on the title.
posted by dobbs at 11:26 AM on March 20, 2007

I can't believe I'm drawing a blank on the title.

Maybe some lawyers cease and desisted your recall neurons.
posted by DU at 11:34 AM on March 20, 2007

Bye-bye
posted by Falconetti at 11:36 AM on March 20, 2007

Aww, you guys are harsh. I guess it was a dumb magazine, but I have fond memories of it.

I'll admit that I first read Premiere because of this cover - I was 12, and like a lot of other adolescent girls in 1996, I thought Chris was awfully cute. But I like to think that because I was reading about cute actors in Premiere, I ended up reading a lot of the other articles and maybe learned a bit about moviemaking and about really good films, stuff that my peers who were reading about Chris O'Donnell in Seventeen and celebrity gossip magazines didn't know about. So I credit Premiere (at least in part) with the extent to which I am a movie buff and not just a celebrity gossip junkie.

Also, I will never forget how infuriated I was when at 14 I came home one day to discover that my mom, tired of all the clutter in my room, had decided to throw out all of the old Premieres had been piling up on my bookshelf for the last 2+ years (I had kept pretty much every one - God I loved those things).

The 2001 changes were crap, though.
posted by naoko at 11:38 AM on March 20, 2007

Since when was Penelope Cruz a celebrity IT girl?
posted by fire&wings at 11:40 AM on March 20, 2007

At least I won't have to continue to read Glenn Kenny - Premiere's resident critic - through a red mist of rage - even if Libby Waxman-Gelmer (sp?) was almost compensation enough.
posted by Jody Tresidder at 11:42 AM on March 20, 2007

Thanks dobbs, you're the reason I get laid.
-long story-
posted by squidfartz at 11:46 AM on March 20, 2007

Hmm. I've got a former co-worker who was working for them. I wonder if he still is.
posted by klangklangston at 11:48 AM on March 20, 2007

Lucky chair (Apr, 2002).
posted by Jay Reimenschneider at 12:03 PM on March 20, 2007

Is it only the US version that is folding, or is it taking its French predecessor along with it?

I wonder if they plan on spinning premiere.com into some sort of data services company or something. Without the actual magazine, what's the draw?
posted by mkb at 12:06 PM on March 20, 2007

Son of a bitch. I begrudgingly renewed my script last year on the hope that its dark slide towards Pop and Glittery away from 'The Movie Business Mag' was starting to work its way back. Foo. I sure miss the older Premiere. It was as close as I could get to say, reading Variety, without, you know, paying an arm and a leg to read Variety.
posted by cavalier at 12:14 PM on March 20, 2007

mkb, per the Variety link,
Company will continue publishing international editions in territories such as France, where the mag started in the 1970s.
posted by cavalier at 12:16 PM on March 20, 2007

Since when was Penelope Cruz a celebrity IT girl?

During her audition for the role of Mrs. Cruise. I hear the script changed considerably as a result of her input.
posted by Slothrup at 12:17 PM on March 20, 2007

Talking about French magazines, Cahiers du Cinema is now available in a very slick English online version.
posted by muckster at 12:18 PM on March 20, 2007

The name of the David Foster Wallace story is "The Big Red Son" and it's been published in his recent collection "Consider the Lobster". It is fantastic.
posted by Roach at 12:21 PM on March 20, 2007

Premiere put Penélope Cruz on the cover because she was dating Tom Cruise, not for her work with Pedro Almodóvar.
posted by Lord Kinbote at 12:21 PM on March 20, 2007

dobbs: I should have said "one of the first mainstream American magazines to cover the moviemaking business".
I would be happy to hear your nominees for an mainstream American magazine which covered the movie business before Premiere debuted in 1987.
posted by Lord Kinbote at 12:25 PM on March 20, 2007

I still think they changed their focus because movie studios started pressuring them *not* to put their movies/stars on the covers: when I was working in film distro it was a widely known joke that whatever big budget film got profiled up front would tank at the box office.
posted by FlamingBore at 12:35 PM on March 20, 2007

Why is it that Penelope Cruz always has to be propped up on something? Is the woman drugged, or invertebrate, or semisolid? It's like when she's not activly filming a movie they keep her penned in a triple-gravity field, where photographers taunt her with their flashbulbs while she moans and oozes in weak protest.
posted by hermitosis at 12:38 PM on March 20, 2007 [2 favorites]

And Lord Kinbote - there's BoxOffice magazine that dates to the 20s; Hollywood Reporter from 1930; and Variety since 1905.
posted by FlamingBore at 12:40 PM on March 20, 2007

Dobbs: I think the mag you're referring to is Neon. Rip, sadly. I miss it more than I will ever miss Premiere, my affection for Paul Rudnick notwithstanding.
posted by Fennel B. at 12:42 PM on March 20, 2007

Lord Kinbote, American Film and Film Comment immediately come to mind as does Cineaste (the latter two mags started in the 60s). Cinefantastique is another--Fangoria as well (both 70s, I believe)--though obviously they specialize.

There were also dozens of movie mags published from the 40s onward that focused on film and, mostly, celebreties. Hell, I think there's a monthly mag about Barbara Streisand (and only Babs) that predates Premiere and is still running.

squidfartz, I hear that a lot so it doesn't surprise me.

Fennel B., indeed it was Neon.
posted by dobbs at 12:42 PM on March 20, 2007

The American Film Institute published American Film magazine until folded it sometime around 1987. It was a pretty good magazine.
posted by Man-Thing at 1:31 PM on March 20, 2007

muckster writes "Talking about French magazines, Cahiers du Cinema is now available in a very slick English online version."

Well, that's pretty damn big news. You should make a FPP about it.
posted by mr_roboto at 1:54 PM on March 20, 2007

Well, that's pretty damn big news. You should make a FPP about it.

And it only costs 35 Euros a year!
posted by Wolof at 2:56 PM on March 20, 2007

Its French parent isn't in good shape either. The last issue was 2 weeks late, with a new layout and trying to cover other topics than movies: more celebrity stuff on one hand, more culture (theater, art shows...) on the other. From what I've read, the problem is that a lot of movie information is now available for free on the internet, so while there's still a niche market for in-depth analysis Cahiers-style, the shallower type of movie reporting that Premiere did (in the French version at least) has definitely lost its appeal for a large part of its readership. For instance, one of the last issues of the French Premiere featured an interview of Sylvester Stallone, which was basically a much, much shorter version of the one Stallone did for Harry Knowles' AICN website some time before.
posted by elgilito at 3:14 PM on March 20, 2007

I'd like to put in a good word for Empire Magazine. I've been thisclose to coughing up the $12/issue subscription fee. For now, just read it when visiting my friend's house.
posted by bullitt 5 at 3:18 PM on March 20, 2007

I wish there was something like SPY Magazine, but for films.

Movieline used to be one of my favorites back in its Joe Queenan days. It used to look back longingly at Old Hollywood while having snarky good fun with the New. Now it's just People for elitists. I'm no Premiere fan, but frickin' Movieline's Hollywood Life shoulda gone first.
posted by dgbellak at 4:37 PM on March 20, 2007

hahahahahahahaha!

thanks, I needed that.
posted by killy willy at 7:40 PM on March 20, 2007

Movieline used to be one of my favorites back in its Joe Queenan days.
posted by dgbellak at 7:37 PM on March 20

While I did have a fondness for "If You Ask Me," the column by "Libby Gelman-Waxner," usually Premiere used to sit around for days until I had time to casually leaf through it but Movieline was always a different matter. I ripped into that baby as soon as I could get my hot little hands on it. Queenan's article about Melanie Griffth's ass, "The Dark Side of The Moon," was Queenan --and Movieline-- at their finest.
posted by Secret Life of Gravy at 8:46 PM on March 20, 2007

I wish I could find it online, but Premiere had the very entertaining story of Alec Baldwin and Kim Basinger going nuts on the set of The Marrying Man. I'll remember that fondly.
posted by solistrato at 9:04 AM on March 21, 2007