I am Romina Puga

For the record, I am firmly with Jesse Eisenberg with respect this ridicu­lous dus­tup, and I don’t think what he did to the fluffy little Romina Puga falls under the cat­egory of “berat­ing” at all. I also think Puga’s response to it was repel­lently oppor­tun­ist­ic. My advice to any self-described enter­tain­ment journ­al­ist who does “schtick” is, when in the cattle call situ­ation of the movie-promoting video jun­ket, to give a little heads-up to the pub­li­cist or the tal­ent before you start rolling, so the tal­ent at least has the bene­fit of some know­ledge and hence the oppor­tun­ity to play along if he or she wishes. Eisenberg is clearly caught off-guard by Puga’s argu­ably osten­ta­tiously breezy style right off the bat, and registers more trying-to-regain-balance bemuse­ment than actu­al hos­til­ity for the rest of the encounter. For Puga to try and turn this around and act as if Eisenberg mali­ciously ripped her a new one is utter bullshit.

And yet. I under­stand, in a sense, her pain. In spring of last year, I was assigned by my MSN edit­ors to do a round of video jun­ket inter­views for 21 Jump Street. I don’t con­sider myself par­tic­u­larly tele­gen­ic, and the video jun­ket format isn’t my favor­ite way to con­duct inter­views. But as Hyman Roth says in The Godfather Part 2, this is the busi­ness we’ve chosen, and as an aging white male ostens­ible film crit­ic in the twi­light of print and all that my feel­ing is that maybe I ought to take every avail­able oppor­tun­ity to diver­si­fy my skill set and earn income. Although, like I said, in my gut I pretty much know I’ll nev­er be an entirely accept­able on-camera pres­ence until I at least get my hor­ribly dingy teeth replaced. And maybe grow some fuck­ing hair.

I enjoyed the movie ver­sion of 21 Jump Street, and I was par­tic­u­larly amused by the way it toggled between coarse homo­erot­ic male bond­ing jokes and rel­at­ively soph­ist­ic­ated meta humor. This sug­ges­ted, in my mind, a ques­tion, that I men­tally filed away pri­or to the day of the jun­ket. The actu­al day of said jun­ket was not an aus­pi­cious one, gen­er­ally speak­ing. It was a gray and chilly and rainy day in early March, a Saturday at that, and my call to show up at the swanky hotel where the inter­views were being staged was nine in the morn­ing. To top all that off, I was start­ing to get a cold.

Arguably, 21 Jump Street cost­ars Jonah Hill and Channing Tatum might have had it a little worse. For their inter­views, they dressed in cos­tumes they wear to com­ic effect in the film, that is, the black shorts worn by police officers who patrol on bicycles. The joke in the movie being, they go through all this train­ing and think they’re gonna be totally badass and their first gig out of the academy is bike patrol in a loc­al park. Ar ar ar. So here these two guys are at nine in the morn­ing on a Saturday in silly out­fits. Maybe it was their idea. I don’t know. I choose, for some reas­on, to believe that it was not.

Perhaps that reas­on is their demean­or as I was brought in to begin my inter­view. In addi­tion to the shorts and clingy shirts, Hill and Tatum wore dark wrap­around sunglasses. We exchanged greet­ings that struck me as extra-perfunctory before I sat down.

As it hap­pens, I’m friendly with both a dir­ect­or and an act­or who’ve worked with Hill in kind of not­able con­texts, and I’m also on terms with a dir­ect­or with whom Tatum has prof­it­ably col­lab­or­ated. My rela­tions with these oth­er people are argu­ably not intim­ate, but they’re also on a level high­er than that of cor­di­al acquaint­ance. So I thought about drop­ping a name or two, if it could get things off on the right foot. And then I thought bet­ter of it. Because I did­n’t want to be that guy. (Even now, I worry that I’m being that guy just by men­tion­ing it. God, no won­der I drank.)

Would that I had. Maybe it would have been worse. Anyway, as we began rolling I asked Hill, “As both a star and pro­du­cer on this movie, did you keep tabs on the ratio of homo­erot­ic male-bonding jokes to self-reflexive ones?” Or some­thing along those lines. Delivered in what I hoped was my best hail-fellow-well-met joc­u­lar tones. And even from behind the shades, I could see Hill’s genu­inely with­er­ing con­tempt as he answered, “I assume that was some kind of attempt at humor, and I’m going to ignore it and just say I had a great time mak­ing the movie.”

Now what the view­er is not privy to while watch­ing these man­u­fac­tured snip­pets is that each journ­al­ist doing these inter­views is allot­ted a very spe­cif­ic time lim­it, and that time lim­it does­n’t allow for reshoots. And when I say spe­cif­ic, I mean very—two minutes to the second, in some instances. So when my admitedly silly—but then again I mean what the hell, THEY were the guys sit­ting down in bik­ing shorts—ques­tion got that response, my strong burn­ing sense of humi­li­ation mingled with a kind of pan­ic. I had unwit­tingly wasted maybe thirty seconds of time, which means I had to scramble to get any­thing usable in my remain­ing minute and a half with the fel­lows. Even in the best of situ­ations with these things, in which the tal­ent is genu­inely enjoy­ing the exchange and you’re actu­ally able to get good stuff, there’s a pub­li­cist off to the side giv­ing you the throat-cutting sign. And yes, the tal­ent has to sit there for the bet­ter part of an entire work­ing day doing the same thing in two-to-five minute patches. How badly do you want to be fam­ous? Badly enough to be cool with doing that? Because maybe you should try it some time.

I could­n’t call to restart the ses­sion so I just switched to auto­mat­ic inane innoc­u­ous pilot, and salvaged the encounter, but as any­one who looks at the foot­age will note, nobody involved in the exchange is par­tic­u­larly inter­ested in sim­u­lat­ing even a sim­u­la­tion of chumminess. 

Was I angry? Fuck yeah. I was furi­ous. I got up and showered and shaved and dressed and schlepped to Manhattan on a rainy miser­able Saturday morn­ing when I could have been sleep­ing in with My Lovely Wife so I could be insul­ted by Jonah Hill? Seriously? When the video pos­ted, I put up a blog post here and I alluded to the shutting-down and I remem­ber feel­ing as if I was being incred­ibly restrained while so doing. One of the pro­fes­sion­al asso­ci­ates of Hill with whom I am friendly sent me an e‑mail which in effect said, that’s too bad. Which it was. And the point is: that’s all it was. Too bad. It was­n’t the end of the world, it was­n’t cause for me to nurse a grudge against Jonah Hill (for all the good that would do). It’s just a minor anec­dote con­cern­ing an inter­ac­tion that took place in a con­text that in most respects has very little to do with what con­sti­tutes the real world for either Hill and myself. Puga’s reac­tion to the Eisenberg incid­ent only has valid­ity if one accepts the idea that she and Eisenberg have some sort of gnu­ine rela­tion­ship to each oth­er. They do not. Similarly, my day-to-day life has noth­ing to do with Jonah Hill’s. All any of this means is that if one wants respect with­in the con­text of one’s pro­fes­sion, one ought to con­duct one­self pro­fes­sion­ally. That’s not a guar­an­tee that respect will be giv­en, but at least it gives you a leg to stand on. Be an enter­tainmnent journ­al­ist, or be Rupert Pupkin. You can­’t have it both ways. 

And finally, as “Freeman” put it in Bonfire of the Vanities, “be decent to each oth­er.” And Romina Puga, buy a god­damn paper note­book or something.