Feeding the beast

For some the drug of choice is nicotine. For others, it’s marijuana or gambling, alcohol or shopping. For Mark Lisanti, the one-man band behind Hollywood’s website du jour, Defamer.com, the addiction is hits -- page views, computer eyeballs -- from the working men and women whom he’s distracted from their jobs with his pithy running commentary about celebrity hubris, the multitude of foibles that grow in Hollywood like tumbleweeds on the prairie.

“It’s almost exactly like crack addiction,� says the affable 31-year-old from his command station, a Sony computer in his home office -- a modest Los Feliz apartment. He doesn’t have air conditioning or any pictures on the wall of his office save for a black-and-white publicity still of Ralph Macchio in the forgotten 1980s flick “Crossroads.�

He does, however, have a site meter on his computer that shows him how many page views he’s getting at any moment. “I check it all the time. Any given hour if you ask me how many page views I’ve had in the last hour, I could probably tell you. That’s how our performance is benchmarked, so it turns us into crack-addicted McMonkeys.�

Although Defamer, the L.A. branch of the Gawker blog media empire, has been in existence for only 15 months, the site averages about 220,000 page views a day. In June -- the unholy month of celebrity meltdown -- when “Brangelina� played footsie with the press and Tom Cruise went on his couch-hopping, psychiatry-bashing spree, Lisanti’s site received 5.2 million page views. According to Technorati, a San Francisco-based company that ranks blogs according to the number of people linking to them in the last 90 days, Defamer was recently the 69th most popular blog out of an estimated 14 million blogs worldwide.

Lisanti’s craving for page views is turning this Eastside hipster into a leading purveyor of gossip to a nation addicted to evolving permutations and subtle nuances of Lindsay Lohan’s hair color and Jude Law’s broken engagement. Lisanti is the newest and hottest foot soldier on the front lines of the celebrity takeover of modern culture. He’s the witty meta-counterpoint to the point -- which is America’s obsession with the clothes, hair, skin, romances, professional indiscretions, ludicrous vanity and personal triumphs of famous people, largely actors and musicians but now also including media figures, politicians, reality TV stars, anorexically thin, sexually exhibitionistic heiresses, vile but good-looking criminals, and the invariably winsome collateral damage of major news events.

“Tom Cruise was good for business for anybody who writes about Hollywood,� says Lisanti on a recent afternoon when the world of online dish has begun to die down for the day. “Sometimes I think I sound crazy when I say this -- but it’s probably one of the biggest Hollywood stories in the history of Hollywood. No story in the new media age has been that big. Every day more Tom Cruise coals [were] thrown in the engine. I had to start to do roundups in the morning.�

He’s wearing a T-shirt and jeans and the slightly grubby sheen of someone who’s just spent the entire day inside blogging. But the blogging gig is a definite step up for the Georgetown grad, who formerly toiled ignominiously as a writers’ assistant on sitcoms.

In his short career as the voice of Defamer, Lisanti has posted about 3,800 items -- about 12 a day, not including weekends. He says that if an item lies in his inbox, or his consciousness, for more than six hours, then it’s usually too old to get on the blog. “Who’s going to want to hear about six hours ago?� he posits, much like in another era when Hamlet asked “to be or not to be?�

In the world of gossip, he’s broken such stories as the Colin Farrell sex tape, Cruise’s impending engagement to Katie Holmes, the Miramax layoffs, and too many agents changing agencies to be enumerated (with a little picture of Endeavor partner Ari Emanuel laughing maniacally every time an agent is mentioned).

His biggest claim to fame, however, might be his photo montage of Cruise’s “Oprah� interview -- done on his cellphone with his girlfriend, Kristen Stancik, manning the TiVo. Lisanti turned Cruise into mesmerizing Kabuki theater, perfectly capturing his monomaniacal intensity. When his effort was reprinted (with credit) in the New York Times, it helped the Cruise freakout transform from blogosphere chitchat into a national obsession.

For his devotees, however, Lisanti’s column is less about actual gossip than attitude. He’s more Jon Stewart than Page Six -- a wisecracking Virgil leading readers through various circles of celebrity hell, linking to stories all over the Web, and to weird ephemera often sent in by readers, such as the casting call for the “Pirates of the Caribbean� sequel, which called for “hideously unattractive types ... odd body shapes or very lean to extremely skinny. Missing teeth, wandering eyes and serial killer looks with real long hair & beards.�

He often live-blogs seminal events in celebritydom, including the Michael Jackson verdict (“2:18 pm. The aftermath: Gravity reverses itself, sending everyone on the planet hurtling to fiery deaths in the higher reaches of the atmosphere. Jackson however remains firmly on the surface of the earth.�) or the Oscars (“8:05 Hilary Swank wins Best Actress (uuum, duh)! Tragically she wasn’t able to find a stylist to dress her on her big night, and had to settle for slipping into a three-dollar navy blue stocking from JC Penney ....She goes to the ‘girl from a trailer park’ thing, which is obscene for someone who’s just won their SECOND Oscar. Um, you’ve already overcome the Cheez whiz sandwiches and GTOs on blocks in the driveway years ago? White trash cred expires after the first awards, Hils.�).

Lisanti blogged the last bit on his laptop from his friends’ Oscar party, although he’s heard since that his feed was playing live at an Endeavor party.

Nailing it down

For a blogger, Lisanti tries to exact higher standards for information than his burgeoning rivals such as Thesuperficial.com and Jossip.com, which have published items about a prominent young actress’ alleged cocaine habit, or the unexpurgated text of e-mails sent in by readers purporting to offer the scoop about the supposed fling between Cruise and Matchbox Twenty singer Rob Thomas. Even with routine disclaimers attached, the urban legend got so much traction on the Net that Thomas actually issued a denial.

Lisanti gets tons of submissions from fans. He also has real sources at all the studios with whom he checks real facts, although that standard doesn’t seem to require him to name names or even to use firsthand accounts, merely “someone who’s authoritative, or who I trust.�

When he does deign to write rumors, he adds acerbic warnings to readers about the questionable nature of the material. In the case of the Cruise-Matchbox Twenty myth, he wrote dismissively about getting a mass e-mail purporting to lay out their relationship. “If it’s in the air, and then ends up in a mass e-mail, it doesn’t exactly help its credibility,� he says, and then mockingly quotes the e-mail, “ ‘My friend who works at a studio told me this secret thing that I’m now going to tell everyone in the world.’ The other blogs decided to just post it. I’m kind of amazed they haven’t been chased around by lawyers. It seems kind of reckless even for blogs.�

In his seminal study, “The Frenzy of Renown,� a history of fame, USC professor Leo Braudy dates the origin of fame to Alexander the Great and the Greece of 4th and 5th century BC. But back then they had to rely on word of mouth and Ptolemy instead of In Touch and E!.

Kent Brownridge, the general manager of Wenner Media, which publishes Us Weekly, points out that as recently as 1999 there was only one mainstream celebrity lifestyle magazine, People, which sold 1.4 million copies a week on the newsstand. Now there are seven which sell a combined 5.5 million issues on the newsstand a week. And there will soon be nine, with the addition of OK in August, and the revamped version of the formerly staid TV Guide. “If you look at just the newsstand, the category has exploded. That’s a fact,� says Brownridge, whose publication Us is up 38% on the newsstand. The market leader, People, has a total 3.8-million circulation, with a readership of 39.5 million, according to Mediamark Research Inc., which tracks magazine audiences. With the recent perfect storm of TomKat and Brangelina, People’s website landed 7 million page views -- on a single day. And that’s only magazines. There are also TV shows such as “Entertainment Tonight,� “Access Hollywood,� “The Insider� and the E! channel. And then there are the blogs such as Defamer.com and TVgasm.com.

Gossip is crawling into mainstream media with such fan-friendly concoctions as Britney Spears and Lindsay Lohan appearing on the front pages of newspapers and in the network nightly news broadcasts.

“Back in the early days of the ‘90s, I said this obsession with celebrity can’t continue any longer,� says journalist-turned-entertainment-publicist Allan Mayer, who specializes in crisis management. “It’s not only continued, it’s exponentially more intense. Bizarre is too low-key a word for it. If you’re an actor or a performer, it’s impossible to control because there’s such an insatiable appetite.�

Like many who traffic in the arena, Mayer posits several theories behind the explosion. There’s the technological explanation: “It’s just like building more roads increases traffic. Having more media outlets creates more audience and interest.� Then there’s the sociological / psychological / spiritual theory. The ongoing soap opera between Brad and Jen and Angelina distracts us from our lives of quiet desperation. Without a celebrity president such as Clinton or Reagan, the national attention has drifted back to entertainers.

Celebrity has always been intertwined with America’s concept of itself as a democratic nation, says Braudy. “It’s the Lincoln myth -- if you can go from the log cabin to the White House, how much more democratic [a country] can you be?� He adds that celebrity can act like an opiate. “It distracts you from real issues. It’s consoling. It’s not inconsistent for someone to be very worried about the war in Iraq and fascinated by what happens to Brad Pitt. It’s a kind of solace. The original meaning of escapism.�

Others say that the unholy alliance between stars and fashion created an unstoppable juggernaut, particularly for women who are the prime consumers of infotainment. Wenner Media’s Brownridge points to the time in the mid-’90s when celebrity stylists took over the red carpets knocking out such memorable moments in bad taste as Demi Moore in her self-designed bicycle-short gown. “We crossed over from a model-driven concept of style to a celebrity-based concept of style,� says Brownridge. “Bob Mackie used to come out with some outrageous dress for Cher to go to the Academy Awards, you don’t see that anymore. You now see people in the most beautiful Valentinos and Prada and Armani. It’s not some model who gets paid to walk the runway.

“It’s our celebrities who are doing this. That’s upped the fascination factor. The first people to figure this out was InStyle magazine, which came out in the mid-’90s and caused fear and loathing to descend on all the monthly beauty-fashion magazines. All those magazines now have celebrities on their covers.�

While celebrity hawking dates to the 1920s, now celebrity itself has become a commodity. “They’re not just actors or actresses,� says Bonnie Fuller, chief editorial director of American Media Inc., which publishes Star and the Globe. “They’re totally brands who sign licensing deals for fragrances, clothing lines, cosmetics and furniture.�

And of course there are all those media entities that need the stars to continue to prosper. People, often seen as the world’s most profitable magazine, generates $15 million a week in ad revenue. Braudy wonders if America is indeed more interested in celebrities or if the media is just shoving Jessica and Britney down our throats. “It’s a self-fulfilling process,� he says. “We need more stars so we need more stories. It’s a snowball running down the hill.�

One quality that does get obscured, if not lost in all the competition and the Internet-fueled rush to be first, is truth. A magazine like People, still the standard-bearer for the industry, employs a platoon of reporters and uses traditional methods of verifying facts. “People traditionally built its reputation and its readership by printing celebrity news. Something has to happen,� says People Managing Editor Martha Nelson. “There has to be news in order to be a story in People.�

For example: In a recent bestselling issue, Renee Zellweger actually did get married. “In a lot of magazines now, all you have to do is hear a rumor. A rumor becomes a story, and even if it’s an unfounded rumor, it’s still presented as a legitimate story. That’s certainly changed the playing field,� says Nelson.

Talk to any celebrity publicist about this phenomenon, and watch them fume. “The Internet has exacerbated the problem -- the desire for instantaneous coverage,� says publicist Ken Sunshine, who represents Leonardo DiCaprio and Ben Affleck. “Say anything you want about Ben Affleck. Put a post up. It gives 100 outlets an excuse to use it as a source. My job, to discount it, becomes well nigh impossible once it’s up.�

Lisanti says he does not have the site’s material vetted by a lawyer. Defamer has never been sued, and the few complaints he’s received he’s tended to post on the Web, which gives pause to those who want to kvetch. By contrast, 21-year-old David Hauslaib, who runs the Manhattan-based Jossip blog, says he routinely receives nasty communications from socialites, publicists and “legal teams who have asked me to remove stories or issue retractions. Up to this point, I’ve never been forced or willingly removed a story from the website.� Hauslaib adds that, unlike magazines, which might need a celebrity for the cover, “there is no relationship between blog editors and publicists or talent representatives. It’s all more transparent.�

Historian Neal Gabler, author of “Life: The Movie: How Entertainment Conquered Reality,� says that truth in the celebrity news business is not even the point. “People don’t care about accuracy. They only care about immediacy.� Indeed, he says what really entices the public about Brad and Jen is less their actual beatific presence than the narrative, the soap opera. “It constitutes an alternative entertainment. Why is it more popular than conventional movies, or conventional TV, or any forms of conventional narrative? One is it’s real. It’s genuine suspense.

“The one element that you don’t want to discount but is so obvious is sex,� adds Gabler. “Almost every celebrity narrative deals with sex. People may not be making or going to R-rated movies, but they’re watching R-rated movies in People magazine and ‘Entertainment Tonight.’ Every celebrity narrative is about voyeurism or sex.�

Basking in the backlash

While much of the coverage about celebrity is adulatory and focuses solely on the lithe, young and beautiful and their triumphs over the trauma of sudden wealth or pudginess, there’s also the hostile strain that crops up, mostly when a celebrity (e.g., Cruise this summer) seems to have crossed the Rubicon from de rigueur humility into unchecked, self-congratulatory narcissism. Then the populace rises up to say “off with their heads!�

Leading the charge are the likes of Defamer, part of the Gawker blog company that owns and operates a dozen other mouthy blogs such as Gawker, about New York’s media world, and Wonkette, which gooses the denizens of Washington’s beltway. “I think a lot of the Internet, it’s very much engineered for backlash,� says Lisanti. “That’s where people can get out and make their voice heard about what they’re being force-fed by mainstream media. Lindsay Lohan, Britney Spears, Paris Hilton -- they’re sick of these people, but at the same time everybody wants to read about it. They’re simultaneously enthralled and appalled.�

Indeed, even with its smart-aleck tone, Defamer boasts advertising from such Hollywood product as HBO’s “Entourage� and such Paramount films as “Bad News Bears� (as well as the saucy clothing outfit American Apparel).

Still, Lisanti does not feel he’s been co-opted by the industry. Although studio heads and producers say they read him, he’s been invited to only a handful of lunches. He has attended only a few premieres -- as a guest of friends (and blogged snarkily about it) -- and even pays for his movie tickets. He declines to say how much he makes. In an interview published on the Iwantmedia.com website, Lockhart Steele, Gawker’s managing editor, explained that contributors get paid a set fee of $2,500 but can earn bonuses based on how much Web traffic they draw. (Ergo, big stories, such as those involving Cruise, or Hilton losing her sidekick, put money directly in Lisanti’s pocket.)

Lisanti offers what might be termed the “Office Space� theory about America’s voracious appetite for gossip.

“I think the better part of it is having the Internet at work. I don’t know what people did at work before they had the Internet. There must have been a lot of time spent staring off into space or wandering around the office trying to look busy. Now you can sit and have all that information come at you in the same window where your actual work is happening. Our job is to keep people from doing their work as much as possible.

“I want people to come to our site 25 times a day to see if there’s something new. That’s 25 times where they’re not looking at a spreadsheet. People are in their cubes for a long time, and they resent it. They’re trying to steal some time for themselves. This is what’s easy to absorb while they’re sitting there -- what idiocy has Tom Cruise done today?�

There are days, however, when traffic is off, and no one is much interested in gossip, days like a Thursday this month, when four bombs went off in London, killing 56 people and wounding about 700 others. It made Lisanti have existential qualms about how he spends his time. He would have turned off the blog for a day if he could have. Traffic was about half what it is normally.

“I was just trying to get through it,� he admits. Then he pauses, and his puckish self reemerges. He pulls up a press release he received from the rapper-actor Omarion’s publicity team. “It’s too hilarious to be invented,� he says and then reads, “Omarion was in London during the tragic bombings. He would like his fans to pray that he has a safe trip and a safe return home.�

“You shouldn’t waste your time praying for people who have already died or who might be hurt,� Lisanti says. “Omarion is safe! Yea!� he cheers ironically. “Could Hollywood be any more solipsistic?�

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Contact Rachel Abramowitz at C[email protected].