Below is the response I received from The New York Palace Hotel when I complained, as an Ob/Gyn physician, about their support of The Gossip Girl's premeire program endorsing underage drinking. Thank you for informing us of this unacceptable use of a public accomodations endorsement of destructive behavior.
Sincerely,
Richard Fry, MD
Response to your email regarding "Gossip Girl" From: Pete Holmberg (PHolmberg@nypalace.com) Sent: Mon 10/08/07 10:27 AM To: rjfry2004@hotmail.com Dear Dr. Fry,
We received your email and we would like to address the issues your raised about our role in the filming of Gossip Girl. First of all, thank you for contacting us directly with your concerns and giving us the chance to respond directly to you.
Most importantly, I would like to confirm for you that in real life absolutely no underage drinking goes on in this hotel. We firmly believe in carding and we have zero hesitation in doing so. We also firmly believe that there is a very clear line between the dramatic depiction of certain behavior and the endorsement of ceratin behavior.
Unfortunately Dr. Fry, there are places in New York City, and throughout the country, that do serve alcohol to minors. Indeed there are even some bars in New York that are somewhat publicly known for doing this. The producers of Gossip Girl made it very clear to us from the beginning that they did not want to shoot the underage drinking scene in any of those places, or even a place that vaguely resembled one of those real-life Manhattan bars, because they were adamant that they didn't want to provide some kind of real-life road map for teens looking to drink by steering them to the kind of place that would be irresponsible enough to serve them. We fully agreed with them on this and we also read the script to confirm that underage drinking would not be glorified in any way or depicted without showing some negative consequence to the fictional character engaging in the behavior.
Having read the script beforehand, supervised the actual filming, and viewed the episode on air, we are confident that the fictional characters' underage drinking depicted on the premiere episode of Gossip Girl is in no way an endorsement of the behavior. Our opinion is that it portrays the behavior as comprising to one's safety and certainly not cool.
I understand your concerns and I certainly respect them. I have two teenage nieces that I truly love and Gossip Girl has prompted conversations between myself, my brother and them about drinking that might not have happened otherwise. I'm not going to say that I enjoyed hearing all that I heard from them, but I think the open dialog served a valuable purpose in that it opened my brother's eyes up a bit in regards to what's going on out there, and it gave him and I the chance to share some rather blunt anecdotes about the negative consequences of drinking at any age.
Again, I thank you for taking the time to contact us directly. If you would like to discuss this matter further, my contact information is below and I would welcome the chance to speak with you directly.
Ms. Vigilante,
ReplyDeleteBelow is the response I received from The New York Palace Hotel when I complained, as an Ob/Gyn physician, about their support of The Gossip Girl's premeire program endorsing underage drinking. Thank you for informing us of this unacceptable use of a public accomodations endorsement of destructive behavior.
Sincerely,
Richard Fry, MD
Response to your email regarding "Gossip Girl"
From: Pete Holmberg (PHolmberg@nypalace.com)
Sent: Mon 10/08/07 10:27 AM
To: rjfry2004@hotmail.com
Dear Dr. Fry,
We received your email and we would like to address the issues your raised about our role in the filming of Gossip Girl. First of all, thank you for contacting us directly with your concerns and giving us the chance to respond directly to you.
Most importantly, I would like to confirm for you that in real life absolutely no underage drinking goes on in this hotel. We firmly believe in carding and we have zero hesitation in doing so. We also firmly believe that there is a very clear line between the dramatic depiction of certain behavior and the endorsement of ceratin behavior.
Unfortunately Dr. Fry, there are places in New York City, and throughout the country, that do serve alcohol to minors. Indeed there are even some bars in New York that are somewhat publicly known for doing this. The producers of Gossip Girl made it very clear to us from the beginning that they did not want to shoot the underage drinking scene in any of those places, or even a place that vaguely resembled one of those real-life Manhattan bars, because they were adamant that they didn't want to provide some kind of real-life road map for teens looking to drink by steering them to the kind of place that would be irresponsible enough to serve them. We fully agreed with them on this and we also read the script to confirm that underage drinking would not be glorified in any way or depicted without showing some negative consequence to the fictional character engaging in the behavior.
Having read the script beforehand, supervised the actual filming, and viewed the episode on air, we are confident that the fictional characters' underage drinking depicted on the premiere episode of Gossip Girl is in no way an endorsement of the behavior. Our opinion is that it portrays the behavior as comprising to one's safety and certainly not cool.
I understand your concerns and I certainly respect them. I have two teenage nieces that I truly love and Gossip Girl has prompted conversations between myself, my brother and them about drinking that might not have happened otherwise. I'm not going to say that I enjoyed hearing all that I heard from them, but I think the open dialog served a valuable purpose in that it opened my brother's eyes up a bit in regards to what's going on out there, and it gave him and I the chance to share some rather blunt anecdotes about the negative consequences of drinking at any age.
Again, I thank you for taking the time to contact us directly. If you would like to discuss this matter further, my contact information is below and I would welcome the chance to speak with you directly.
Sincerely,
Pete Holmberg
Director of Communications
THE NEW YORK PALACE HOTEL
455 Madison Avenue (at 50th Street)
New York, New York 10022
Direct: 212-303-6075
Cell: 917-402-3901
Fax: 212-303-8534
pholmberg@nypalace.com
www.NewYorkPalace.com
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