Russell Brand, Amy Winehouse, Comic Con, and Hollywood Publicists

Comic Con is a giant bubble that can block you off from the World’s events – just see my Tout stream for evidence. It wasn’t until I visited the CNN Express Truck on Saturday that I learned famed singer and favorite of mine, Amy Winehouse, passed away.

Russell Brand, who blogged a great post at RusellBrand.tv as a tribute and called it “For Amy” on Twitter, wrote “When you love someone who suffers from the disease of addiction you await the phone call.” I think the World’s been waiting for that phone call about Amy Winehouse, but never – at least for me – thinking it would actually happen. It did happen. It’s sad.

Someone, I can’t remember who, said it best at Comic Con: she was trying to find happiness in all the wrong places. As Rusell Brand reminds us by the fact that he too fought an addiction with drugs, that there are a lot of people dealing with some kind of addiction – some way of coping with this reality we’ve created. That really got me to think about why people come to Comic Con. And really, it’s too seek that same happiness but in a right place. Comic Con is an addiction.

You and I are addicted to the creative activity on display, to the stars and celebrities, to the sheer size and scope, and to the comics that fuel our imagination. I think, in a way, we’re all addicted to something. We just have to make sure it’s located in “the right place.”

Right now, I know that Amy Winehouse is in that right place.

And on top of that, she’s free of dealing with some Hollywood publicists, who’ve become the hated scourge of Comic Con.

What that means is I’m not the only one who’s had the same problems with some of these publicists, who either don’t reach out to all of the press, or bump one celebrity for another celebrity for Comic Con party lists, or tell you you’re confirmed for a red carpet, then say there’s no space for the same event, and in general have succeeded in pissing off most of the blogging community that comes to Comic Con.

Someone has to say something – might as well be this blogger.

Many Hollywood publicists don’t know how to measure online media activity or place a true dollar value on the online media generated. If they did, many of them would have to be fired for the lack of media they generated versus what they could have done had they not been so “exclusive.”

It’s different from politics, where the effort is to accommodate bloggers that reach a pre-set group of traffic stats. Many Hollywood publicists don’t know how to craft a credible evaluation system – and the people who hire them don’t know any better, yet happen to be studio heads, so it winds up being the blind leading the blind. Since they have “names,” others, many with irrational fears, let the system continue in operation, as is.

Who suffers? Not me.

Hollywood suffers, and especially the same actors who star in these “tentpole” films that come to Comic Con. At a time when a savvy publicist could have set up a “Comic Con Captain America blogger lounge,” and had a company brand it, thus leading to Captain America dominating not just Twitter Trends, but Google Trends, too, we have the seat of the pants Comic Con effort for the film that failed to take advantage of the social-media, and blogger-rich environment that Comic Con is.

It’s not Marvel Entertainment’s fault; they suffer from what the studio does or doesn’t do, as well.

What masks the publicists’ failure is Captain America‘s cult-figure place in American Culture. Because of that, they think they can rest easy.

My energy for blogging this comes from learning just how many people – bloggers, writers, celebrities – were treated inappropriately by Hollywood publicists at Comic Con. The shenanigans of some Hollywood publicists are the talk of bloggers here in San Diego; it’s got to stop.

If it doesn’t stop, bloggers will take up arms against the publicists and start naming names before Comic Con 2012.

Enough is enough.