On page 24 of the Grey Lady Art & Leisure section in the New York Times, there was a production mix-up with the ad today. The limited series on the Paramount-owned cabler, SHOWTIME, has a full-page ad full of over-the-top fake quotes from different top-tier outlets, according to Deadline. While the limited series George & Tammy has earned its fair share of praise, the printed quotes that were on the ad were not actually authentic quotes that came from the attached sources.
“Despite what you may read in the New York Times today, I nor anyone at Deadline ever wrote review declaring that Showtime’s George & Tammy had an ‘intense storyline,'” stated Dominic Patten of Deadline.
As soon as the mishap became known, the New York Times published a statement that read, “Due to an error, the version of the George & Tammy ad printed in the Dec 11 issue of the Arts & Leisure section ran with incorrect quotes. The below ad is correct.”
According to Outsider, the New York Times prints and publishes most of its non-website material days in advance, and only the breaking news section goes to the presses on Saturday night–hours before the Sunday delivery. Somehow, that particular promotion somehow got lost in the mix and sent to print well before it was intended to. Despite the error being noticed prior to the rest of the world seeing it, the problem was too late to fix.
Patten from Deadline says, “That error was actually the result of a communications breakdown of sorts, I have discovered. In a standard practice for putting promotions in print publications, Showtime’s marketing team sent a mock-up ad over to the New York Times to serve as a placeholder. Unfortunately, that fake ad ended up being incorrectly slotted for today’s paper.”
“George & Tammy succeeds where so many other biopics fail,” reads a real review by The Hollywood Reporter, “by bringing its subjects to life not as legends — but simply as a man and a woman, profoundly and imperfectly in love.”