Top entertainment publicist Leslee Dart is fired at PMK/HBH

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New York: A premier entertainment publicist, Leslee Dart, is generating some publicity of her own. PMK/HBH, the agency she had helped lead for two decades, has ousted her over differences reflecting the potential difficulties in directing traffic at the intersection of Hollywood Boulevard and Madison Avenue. Ms Dart, a managing director of PMK/HBH, based in New York, said that she was fired by Pat Kingsley, her longtime colleague who is a managing director based in the Beverly Hills, Calif, office of PMK/HBH, a part of the Interpublic Group of Cos. since 1999.

“At this point, I’m still so shell-shocked,” said Ms Dart, whose client list of actors, directors and producers includes Martin Scorsese, Harvey Weinstein, Woody Allen, Wes Anderson, Tom Hanks, Ron Howard, Nicole Kidman, Anthony Minghella, Mike Nichols, Sydney Pollack, Scott Rudin and Meryl Streep. “It’s probably going to hit me tomorrow, when I don’t get up and go into the same office and say good morning to the same people I’ve said good morning to for 23 years.”

According to an e-mail message from PMK/HBH, the agency decided not to renew Ms Dart’s contract, which expires at the end of December. The decision comes as the nature of the business handled by PMK/HBH continues to broaden beyond its reliance on representing Hollywood celebrities. The agency has a growing roster of corporate advertisers like AOL, American Express, Motorola and Reebok, which hire the agency to smooth their entrance into the burgeoning, lucrative field of entertainment marketing.

Several of Ms Dart’s longtime clients expressed shock at her firing, particularly because many of them are readying big holiday movies that are the subjects of the “For your consideration” campaigns for Academy Awards.

“It’s outrageous,” said Rudin, who is producing three such movies, Closer, Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events and The Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou” adding that it “shows an unbelievable lack of respect to her and the filmmakers to do this at this moment.”

“She has handled my movies for 10 years,” Rudin said. “I would be out of the door about 10 seconds after her.”

The reason for her firing, Ms Dart said, was that she and Mr Kingsley “had different ideas about the future of the company,” which began as Pickwick/Maslansky/Koenigsberg under Mr Kingsley and two other partners and grew into a Hollywood powerhouse as PMK under the aegis of Mr Kingsley, Ms Dart and a third partner, Mr Lois Smith, now retired.