Was Stephanie Cutter paid to make favorable comments about movie?

http://twitter.com/#!/stefcutter/status/302159373717872641

Oscar week — who are you routing for?bit.ly/YJdNHp

— Stephanie Cutter (@stefcutter) February 21, 2013

The link in that second tweet goes to an article about the movie Silver Linings Playbook.

Why was Stephanie Cutter, a Democrat political operative, talking up Silver Linings Playbook for a Best Picture Oscar?

According to Vulture reporter Claude Brodesser-Akner, Cutter was paid to do so by The Weinstein Company, which made the movie:

With top rivals Lincoln and Zero Dark Thirty both having big political angles that resonated beyond Hollywood, our sources tell us that Cutter was hired to tout SLP not just as a well-made movie, but a culturally relevant and especially politically significant film that was shaping the national conversation about mental health triggered in part by the shootings in Newtown, Connecticut. Indeed, in the run-up to the Oscars, Silver Linings seemed to undertake a series of self-administered pats on the back “for making progress towards removing the stigma of mental illness,” as proclaimed by a February Center for American Progress press conference featuring Silver Linings star and Best Actor Oscar nominee Bradley Cooper, along with two Democratic pols, Senator Debbie Stabenow of Michigan and former Representative Patrick Kennedy of Rhode Island.

In a web extra Q&A for ABC’s This Week, Cutter said Silver Linings Playbook was her favorite movie of the year.

As far as we know, Cutter did not publicly disclose any payments from The Weinstein Company. There is no mention of any such payments on ABC’s website.

And it was disclosed nowhere in her frequent mentions of SLP in all media that she was being paid for it. That makes me uncomfortable.

— Logan Dobson (@LoganDobson) February 25, 2013

Us too.

Read more: http://twitchy.com/2013/02/25/was-stephanie-cutter-paid-to-make-favorable-comments-about-movie/

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