My déjà vu moment came along with a lovely Kodachrome image of my former boss’s face when, just out of college, I worked at such a Hollywood entertainment publicity company with offices in Hollywood, New York, and London.  After reading the story, I pictured an updated version of my twinkly-eyed, hand-rubbing, beaming ex-boss seated at the head of a conference table of an L.A. high-rise office.  At Miracle Mile perhaps?  An idea meeting of how to promote Ron Howard’s new picture had just turned into a raucous celebration because the good bishop had done the press agents’ work by feeding into this church vs. Hollywood controversy.

In case you don’t know, the word controversy in PR lingo is a synonym for FREE PUBLICITY!  So what’s Dan Brown’s newest book-to-movie all about?  A secret society of intellectuals, called the Iluminati, seeks revenge for the past brutal massacres by the Church.  While church officials from around the globe, forgetting Coleridge’s dictum that fiction requires the suspension of disbelief, deny, accuse, and battle it out with Sony, Dan Brown, Ron Howard, and his team of writers and stars, the presses are running overtime, literally and figuratively!

With arguments and accusations slung back and forth between the opposing factions of religion and entertainment, press agents like my old boss are able to watch the show from the sidelines while collecting a retainer, while the trades, the Huffington Post, Reuters, Regis, Whoopi, et al write and talk.  While The Da Vinci Code earned the highest gross sales in movie history, Angels & Demons is expected to surpass those, with or without a brilliant PR ploy.  The tie-in novel of the picture, sold on Amazon, boasts a sales ranking of #148 in paperback and #33 on the Kindle e-reader, and Mr. Brown is taking advance orders for The Lost Symbol, his third installment of the Langdon series with a September publishing date. 

Hard pressed for some contribution his team might still make to the happily churning publicity mill, my former boss (as seen only by me in my déjà vu moments), bestowing his benevolent smile at his eager staff of newly minted college grads and old hands grouped around the large conference room table, asks if anyone has heard any rumors.  Death threads?  Authors claiming stolen plot lines?  No?  Let’s start one.  It couldn’t hurt!

DISCLAIMER:  There is no truth to a rumor planted by a certain Hollywood entertainment publicity firm that this author holds the copyright to a book with a plot line similar to Angels & Demons.  LOL!