IT SHOULDN’T HAPPEN TO A FILM JOURNALIST
Editor-at-Large Jamie graham lifts the lid on film journalism.
When stars break promises.
Acouple of weeks ago, I was in New York interviewing Ryan Reynolds for The Hitman’s Bodyguard. Talk inevitably turned to Deadpool 2, and from there to the possibility of an X-Force movie. Reynolds answered with a couple of generic lines, then winced apologetically as he closed off the topic with, “And that’s really all I can say at this point.” After the interview, he told me he’d enjoyed our chat and suggested we meet off the record for a beer sometime so he could talk freely.
I’m not holding my breath. Sure, we seemed to get on well, and yeah, he was certainly a lovely, level-headed bloke. But movie stars are in the business of selling tickets, not giving up their precious personal time to sink a few jars with journalists. They have enough mates already.
Maybe it’s just something that people – all people – do: say stuff in the moment. Maybe it comes from a genuine place and reflects, rather touchingly, the human need to connect. Or maybe they’re simply buttering journalists up to write nice things about them. Most times, my gut tells me, it’s not the latter. What I know for certain is that all such jabber should be taken with much salt.
Horseplay
I can, in fact, recall the precise moment I learned that famouses didn’t really desire me as a BFF. It was when I interviewed Patrick Swayze on the phone in the early noughties, a scheduled 20-minute chat that rambled on for two laugh-filled hours and concluded with Crazy Swayze, as he insisted I call him, because all his friends did, inviting me to his ranch to meet his Arabian horses. It sounded great. Two months later, I shot him a line and didn’t hear back. After three attempts, it dawned on me that I would not be meeting those magnificent stallions and their lustrous-maned owner after all. Shame, but I don’t hold it against him – he’d already been incredibly generous with his time and was, undoubtedly, one of the warmest people
I’d ever spoken with.
It happens to all journalists. Winona Ryder, famously nervy and reclusive, suggested to a colleague of mine that they meet up in London after connecting over cocktails at Hollywood’s Chateau Marmont Hotel. It never happened. Clive Barker promised to “stay friends” with another colleague but the phone isn’t ringing. T.J. Miller, in Cannes to promote The Emoji Movie, conducted an interview while wading in the sea (see page 18) – he pledged to send through the pics he’d snapped but hasn’t yet.
Junked mail
As for me, I’m still clutching those fistfuls of salt: Guillermo del Toro proposed I stay at his pad to watch movies and sample his wife’s mind-blowing chilli (though, to be fair, I’ve never tried to take him up on the offer); the entire cast of Everybody Wants Some!! urged me, at its debut showing at SXSW, to join them for the London premiere and party through the night; John Carpenter said he’d watch the 10 horror films I recommended to him and furnish me with feedback if I sent DVDs to his office…
Still, I can hardly talk. When I interviewed William Friedkin for the DVD release of The French Connection, he pressed me to re-watch Claude Lelouch’s A Man And A Woman, a film I’d not seen for years. I promised I would. “How do I know you will?” he asked. “Because you’re William Friedkin and you’ve asked me to and I’ve promised,” I replied. “Let me give you my email so you can let me know what you think,” he said, scribbling it down. Several years on, I still haven’t watched it, still haven’t replied, and long ago lost his email. Bloody film journalists with their empty promises…
‘ IT DAWNED ON ME THAT I WOULD NOT BE MEETING SWAYZE’S STALLIONS ’