PR Firm That Developed Swift Boat Campaign To Work On Stone's Movie

Odd Bedfellows Align to Market Film About 9/11

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/27/mo...ge&oref=slogin

By DAVID M. HALBFINGER
Published: July 27, 2006

LOS ANGELES, July 26 — Oliver Stone, that symbol of everything about Hollywood that conservatives love to hate, is getting help in marketing his newest movie from an unlikely ally: the publicity firm that helped devise the Swift boat campaign attacking John Kerry’s Vietnam record in the 2004 presidential race.

And so Mr. Stone, the director of the antiwar movies “Platoon” and “Born on the Fourth of July,” now finds himself sharing something in common with a group of Vietnam veterans who insisted that their comrades who demonstrated against the war were misguided, misled or traitorous.

Mr. Stone said that he knew nothing of the firm’s political work until he was contacted by a reporter on Wednesday. The director’s “World Trade Center,” a largely factual drama about the rescue of two police officers from ground zero after the 9/11 attacks, is to be released on Aug. 9 by Paramount Pictures. But it is already drawing rave reviews in some unlikely quarters.

L. Brent Bozell III, president of the conservative Media Research Center and founder of the Parents Television Council — best known for its campaigns against indecency on television and for stiffer penalties on broadcasters — called it “a masterpiece” and sent an e-mail message to 400,000 people saying, “Go see this film.”

Cal Thomas, the syndicated columnist, wrote last Thursday that it was “one of the greatest pro-American, pro-family, pro-faith, pro-male, flag-waving, God Bless America films you will ever see.”

(Mr. Stone, for his part, has insisted in the past that the film is “not a political movie,” while acknowledging in a recent interview that this “mantra” had been handed to him by his employers.)

To top it all off, a writer on The National Review’s Web site, Clifford D. May, actually wrote the words “God Bless Oliver Stone.”

This about a filmmaker whose conspiratorial tirades — not to mention his hyperviolent “Natural Born Killers,” polarizing political films “J. F. K.” and “Nixon,” and the lesser-known television documentary on Fidel Castro — have driven conservatives batty for decades. Only last year, The Washington Times, in an editorial, called the hiring of the “conspiracy-addled” Mr. Stone a “maliciously inspired choice” to direct “World Trade Center.”

Such glowing reviews for an Oliver Stone movie might have seemed blasphemous to many conservatives until recently, when Creative Response Concepts, on retainer for Paramount, began pitching “World Trade Center” to pundits who would not normally be considered part of Mr. Stone’s core audience.

A screening in Washington last week, for example, drew members of the Family Research Council, the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies and the evangelical Wilberforce Forum, along with a producer for William Bennett’s radio show, writers for The Washington Times and a reporter for the Web site of Human Events, which first reported the event. Creative Response Concepts has played a prominent role in promoting conservative causes. Heading into the 2005 Supreme Court nomination battles, it advised members of the Federalist Society on how to handle television interviews and was active in promoting the nominations of John G. Roberts Jr. and Samuel A. Alito Jr. When the AARP came out against President Bush’s plan to overhaul Social Security, the firm went to work for a conservative group that took on the AARP. And it promoted Newt Gingrich’s 1994 political strategy, Contract With America.

But it was in the 2004 campaign that Creative Response Concepts made its biggest mark on the political landscape, advising the group Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, which assailed Mr. Kerry’s Vietnam record as a Navy officer and as a leader of the antiwar movement after he returned home. Its well-funded attacks were among the most damaging blows to the Kerry campaign.

The firm also played a major role that year in assailing CBS — then a corporate sister of Paramount at Viacom — for the “60 Minutes” report on President Bush’s record in the Texas Air National Guard that led to Dan Rather’s resignation as anchor of the “CBS Evening News.”

Reached in Boston, Mr. Stone said he knew nothing of the public-relations firm’s background other than that it had helped to promote “The Chronicles of Narnia” last year for Walden Media and the Walt Disney Company. “Believe me, I didn’t cave,” he said. “They do it their way,” he said, referring to Paramount’s marketing executives.

Mr. Stone said that he condemned the “Swift-boating” of Mr. Kerry, but cautioned that he himself had “hired publicists in the past that had skeletons in their closet.” He added: “It’s not a holier-than-thou street here. It’s an impure market.”

In addition to Mr. Bozell’s two groups, clients of Creative Response Concepts have included the three national Republican campaign committees, the Christian Coalition, Manhattan Institute, Free Enterprise Foundation, National Taxpayers Union and Regnery Publishing, home to conservative authors like Tony Blankley and Michelle Malkin, who were also at last week’s screening.

But its clients also have included several Hollywood studios, according to the firm’s Web site. Neither the firm’s president, Greg Mueller, a former spokesman for Patrick J. Buchanan, nor Mike Thompson, an executive who arranged the screening, responded to several telephone messages.

Rob Moore, president of worldwide marketing, distribution and home entertainment for Paramount, said he would have hired the firm regardless of who had directed the movie, because of its strong elements of Christian faith and its depiction of men sacrificing themselves for one another: “the definition of patriotism,” he said.

In a telephone interview, Mr. Moore cited Creative Response Concepts’ connections in the evangelical and conservative movements, and its work promoting “Narnia.” “You need somebody who has credibility with those groups,” he said.

A Paramount spokesman said that the studio did not similarly pitch liberal groups in its multifront promotional campaign, reasoning that the entertainment press had covered that base. The spokesman said that Creative Response Concepts has also helped promote the 20th Century Fox movie “Because of Winn-Dixie” and the CW network’s show “Seventh Heaven.” It has already been hired to help promote “Charlotte’s Web,” which Paramount has scheduled for release in December.

As it happens, the strange bedfellows in this marketing relationship include Tom Freston, Viacom’s chief executive, who with his wife Kathy contributed at least $14,000 to help Mr. Kerry’s campaign in 2004, federal records show. (All told, Viacom executives gave more than $69,000 to Mr. Kerry, far more than to Mr. Bush, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.)

But Mr. Moore said that marketing a movie is, after all, strictly business. “When we walk in that door and put our Paramount business cards in our pockets, our job is to get as many people as possible to come see a movie,” he said. “When we walk out the door, I could be leading rallies for John Kerry.”