It’s a Dirty Job But I Pay Clean Money For It
The success of “Mad Men” has been in part due to its compelling storytelling and characters but also, I think, due to an interest in the dinosaur days of American society and how we behaved during the 1950s and 60s. Did PR ever have it’s “Mad Men” era, as advertising did? As a student of these decades and a collector of lore I think the answer is yes. Exhibit A: 1957′s “Sweet Smell of Success.” Written by an ex-PR guy, it’s the story of a Manhattan press agent, Sidney Falco (Tony Curtis), whose job it is to place items in the metro rags about his clients. His number-one target is the powerful columnist J.J. Hunsecker (Burt Lancaster), with whom he has a sycophantic relationship. Its most famous line, amidst other great ones, is “Match me, Sidney,” a gesture with an unlit cigarette Lancaster uses to convey his power over Curtis.
I recently used a reference to this film in a presentation to illustrate how the nature of social media has put the personal touch of desksides back into PR. Obviously, PR these days isn’t all about cocktails, jazz clubs, reefer heads, crooked cops and setting clients up with hookers, if it ever was. But it’s nice to take a step into that neon fantasy land, so if you’ve got room in your Netflix cue, won’t you consider making an appointment with Sidney? And let me know what other movies you know of that fit this genre. Hat tip from MS&L’s midwest director Joel Curran and next up for me is Jack Lemmon in “Days of Wine and Roses,” a film about alcoholism that also happens to involve PR. Coincidence?
- Date: 05.26.2010
- Category:
- Comments: [0]
