IT SHOULDN’T HAPPEN TO A FILM JOURNALIST
Editor-at-Large JAMIE GRAHAM lifts the lid on film journalism.
Jamie’s dreams come true.
Tell five people you’re a film journalist and three of them will respond, “That must be great, getting paid to watch movies all day.” In truth, 90% of the viewing is done in your own time – evening screenings, watching discs at the weekend – and the job of putting together a magazine is much like any other office job: meetings, schedules, deadlines, politics, emails, researching, planning, action points.
But while I point out the above to contend that being a film journo is perhaps not quite the dream/doddle many take it for, I’d equally like to make it clear that it’s a privilege to make a living from your passion. Most of those meetings, emails, etc. are about not maths or insurance or the weather but movies, after all, and when you’re working all night to hit a deadline, you’re at least writing up a Hollywood set visit or a chat with an A-list actor or a review of the latest blockbuster. It sure beats putting together a thesis on macroeconomics.
We’re lucky buggers, no doubt, so please do go ahead and shoot me if I ever become so jaded or cynical as to moan about having to interview Kristen Stewart on a beach in Cannes. Yep, this is what I once overheard, the journalist bleating, “I’ve done her four times before” like he was just so over it. Poor lamb.
FANTASY ISLAND
The moment I feel myself beginning to get blasé, I think of the times this job has literally made my dreams come true. The most obvious examples are the countless occasions that it has allowed me to not just meet my heroes, but to talk to them, in depth, about their work. If you’d told the teenage Jamie who was hoovering movies when he should have been doing his homework that he’d one day sit down with the likes of Tom Cruise, Robert De Niro, Meryl Streep, Drew Barrymore, Martin Scorsese, David Lynch, Arnold Schwarzenegger and Sylvester Stallone… well, shit would have been lost.
And if you’d informed him that he’d also go for a Japanese supper with Dario Argento, visit John Carpenter’s house (replete with a ‘Beware the occupant’ sign on the gate) and be invited to Patrick Swayze’s ranch to ride his horses… well, he might have exploded. Or perhaps pointed out that he didn’t like Japanese food.
But my biggest-ever dream come true was the time I got to visit the offices of Castle Rock Entertainment in LA to watch my favourite movie, Stand By Me, with its director Rob Reiner. Together we analysed it frameby-frame, and as the credits rolled he jested that I knew the film better than he did.
DIRTY TALES
I know that my colleagues are just as grateful for the times their dreams have come true. Editor-inChief Jane, who loves Dirty Dancing as much as I love Stand By Me, got to go to Kellerman’s Resort (real name: Mountain Lake Hotel) in the Catskill Mountains; she not only carried a watermelon, sat in ‘the corner’ and was lifted out of the lake by a muscly man, but actually got to sleep the night in Baby’s cabin. And the ticking of bucketlist items doesn’t end there, for Jane has also been granted access to the Bond archive, with the golden gun, Jaws’ metal teeth and Dr. No’s script up for close inspection… once she’d put on a pair of pristine white gloves.
I have colleagues who have visited Jack Nicholson’s house, sat in the Batmobile, and stroked a full xenomorph suit with an animatronic head. But my favourite story is that of the film journo – the biggest Star Wars nut I know – who got to visit the Skywalker Ranch and made the most of the facilities while he was there. It was, as he puts it, a dream come poo.
Jamie will return next issue… For more misadventures, follow: @jamie_graham9 on Twitter.
‘I WATCHED MY FAVOURITE MOVIE, STAND BY ME, WITH ITS DIRECTOR ROB REINER’