So yesterday I attended a movie junket for the first time in over 20 years. I’m not gonna tell you the movie I was covering, or the outlet I was covering it for, until this information is actually pertinent (although you can probably guess the former), but I thought you’d enjoy this little, um, personal tidbit.
I was scheduled to do two video interviews, so I hung out in the breakfast/lunch buffet room of the facility, hoping maybe to get a little makeup and/or finish the Times’ crossword. In keeping with the facility itself, a midtown Manhattan hotel known for, among other things, a spectacular breakfast kitchen, the grub was as good as buffet style gets. The junketeers around me, mostly TV types, were pretty much as I remembered them, albeit prettier, and slicker. But still prone to pronouncing inanities in too-loud voices. As in, “Y’know, it’s funny, I’ve been seeing a lot of art flicks lately,” and “What Conan failed to understand is that ‘The Tonight Show’ is NBC’s car; they were just letting him drive it.” I ran into several senior publicists who evinced surprise at seeing me there, and I shrugged. Soon I was herded to the waiting area, outside the makeshift studios wherein I would have two minutes with Star #1 and three minutes with Star #2. Over by the bit room where the press conference was to be held, another online film writer spotted me. He, too, look surprised as he came over to greet me.
“So,” he asked, “you got a one-on-one with [name of major American film director redacted]?”
“Not today,” I shrugged…again. “Those were different times.” I looked around at the harried assistants with headsets all rushing around.
“Guess so,” my acquaintance chuckled.
I shrugged once more. “I feel kinda like Tyrone Power at the end of Nightmare Alley.”
“I don’t get that reference.”
Lucky you, I thought. But I didn’t say it. Instead, I said, “It’s a good picture, you should check it out some time.”
I’ve seen the film (it’s on my top 10 of 1947, between MISSISSIPPI HARE and FIREWORKS), and I’ll admit I had to think about it for a second. Hope you haven’t fallen on hard times! If anything, the process of interviewing in such a freeze-dried, nutrient-free manner must be as grueling for the stars-for-now as they must be for the journos. On one side, what can you ask in two minutes? On the other, what meaningful answers can you give to those kinds of questions? I don’t envy anyone in any component of the whole operation.
A man has got to do, what he’s got to do.
Glad the grub was good.
“How does a man get to be a geek?” Not with free breakfasts and one-on-ones with [star name redacted], surely! That’s gotta be better than a bottle of rotgut a day.
“I don’t get that reference.” FEH.
Working in the open air! The adulation of the crowds! Getting paid in booze! What cruel fate doomed me to work in cinema-related writing and teaching when I could have become a circus geek?
“It’ll only be for a little while… just until we get a reall geek.”
I watched NIGHTMARE ALLEY this morning, having been shamed into it by this post, and good Jesus, you were feeling low, weren’t you?
Also, it was a fantastic movie, that I nevertheless wish had ended at the line “Man, I was born for it.”
This ran in L.A. at the New Beverly a few weeks ago on a Stuart Gordon-programmed double bill with THE SWIMMER so I was able to get it in just under the wire in order to appreciate the reference.