Was the Time cover story on Steven Spielberg and 'Munich' initiated by the magazine after Spielberg's and Dreamworks' reps decided not to go forward with a standard pre-Oscar blitz? Or was it, in fact, part of a deliberately understated marketing plan? In the LAT, Patrick Goldstein chronicles the short and complicated history of 'Munich' and the press.

Until recently the entire project was shrouded in secrecy. Spielberg's only comment, a two-sentence prepared statement, was released last summer, Solomon-like, to an Israeli paper, an Arab TV station and the New York Times. Even as the film reached completion, Universal Pictures and Marvin Levy, Spielberg's longtime publicist, insisted that the filmmaker was turning his back on a cascade of interview requests and would avoid any overt Oscar campaigning.

But on Dec. 4, just days after Levy had again said Spielberg would remain silent, lo and behold, Time magazine showed up with an exclusive interview with the filmmaker, who appeared on the cover next to the breathless tagline: "Spielberg's Secret Masterpiece."

Since then, Levy has maintained - as he told me Friday - that the Time cover came "out of left field." As it turns out, Time critic Richard Schickel was shown "Munich" on the same day Levy told our reporters Spielberg wasn't talking, but Levy insists: "It happened all of a sudden. Boom! The call from Time came in. So we did have a plan [not to talk], but when Time calls, how do you turn that down?"

Levy has a better sense of drama than accuracy. According to Schickel, the magazine's decision to do a Spielberg story came on Nov. 17, nearly two weeks earlier, when his editors in New York, after receiving assurances that Spielberg would talk, asked him to do the cover story.

Media trainspotters should note that on November 23rd, Nikki Finke reported thusly in her LA Weekly column about the plan for 'Munich's' muted media marketing:

"The official strategy is for the movie to speak for itself," an insider told me last week. "All they're going to do is just show the movie to people. You have to be Steven Spielberg to get away with that."

But competitors mutter that's because Spielberg's Munich may have snagged the coveted cover of Time magazine. (I'm told a final decision is pending.)

The point being that Levy's pants may be on fire at this very moment. But given that studio publicists live perpetually in a trouser-singed state, it's not really that big a deal.