Tony Curtis died yesterday at the age of 85 at his Las Vegas area home.  Among his greatest roles on the big screen was as the sleazy press agent opposite Burt Lancaster’s J.J. Hunsecker in the “Sweet Smell of Success” (1957).  Flackery, hackery, influence peddling, beat-downs and shake-downs–this movie is an absolute classic and probably the darkest movie to come out of the 1950s.

If you haven’t seen the Sweet Smell of Success, run to your video store or fire up your Netflix queue immediately, and ponder what Choire Sicha told us when asked about the film during my rambling “Gawker on PR” series a few years ago: “Enemies are for destruction. People *enjoy* being evil. Try it! It feels great!”

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First it was Wired editor-in-chief Chris Anderson. Then it was Lifehacker’s Gina Trapani.

Now, former Gawker editor Choire Sicha, who is blogging at his own start-up, The Awl, has posted a list of PR firms that are banned from his inbox for sending him too many bad pitches.

Indeed, bloggers have started to figure out this formula: if I publish a list of PR people that do a bad job, it will not only get me attention and page-views, but also hopefully get them so stop sending me bad pitches.

Some of the pitches Sicha received are pretty funny. Our favorite: “Blog Material – Jennie Garth in Grand Central Station.”

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New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.