It Shouldn’t Happen To A Film Journalist
Editor-at-Large JAMIE GRAHAM lifts the lid on film journalism.
It’s mid-March and I’m on set of a movie for the first time in a year. What used to be part and parcel of my job – getting in the way of a hardworking cast and crew and spoiling a take by sneezing or knocking over a prop or whatnot – of course came to a crashing halt when the pandemic struck. First there was no filming at all, then closed shoots as productions adapted to new restrictions (the last thing anyone needed was a journalist bumbling around), and now, finally, a return to the good old normal.
Well, not quite, as I quickly discover when I park my car after a two-hour drive, mask up, and rush inside to relieve my bursting bladder after downing a whole flask of coffee on the M25. “He hasn’t been tested!” shrieks a runner as I go to approach a roomful of people to say hello while doing my best not to hop from foot to foot like a small child. Eyes widen above masks and I’m quickly shepherded outside to stick a swab so far up my nose it almost touches my brain. “Can I use the loo?” I ask as I hand it over. “No, you need to wait in your car for 15 minutes, until we get the results,” comes the daunting reply. I shuffle off with my legs crossed.
SAFETY FIRST!
Once I’m given the all-clear, I return back inside to be greeted by well-practised elbow bumps. Everyone working on this production (which I can’t yet name) has been living in bubbles since two weeks before the shoot began. Many of them reside in the country mansion where we are stationed today, and where the majority of the three-week shoot is taking place, while others are shacked up in a farmhouse down the road. No-one has any contact with the outside world, with two runners appointed for supermarket runs.
Safety, it’s safe to say, is a prime concern, with 15 per cent added to the budget by having everyone tested two or three times a week, and masks worn inside at all times, other than to chomp down a breakfast roll or to let actors, y’know, act. I sit in a vast living room as the principal cast file in, one by one. These are the first face-to-face interviews I’ve conducted for a year. They’re also the first interviews I’ve done in a mask ever, so I’m trying to read the subjects’ pauses from just their eyes and their body language. It makes all of this seem new again, like it was in March 2020 when we first started communicating this way, with Amazon delivery drivers and cashiers at supermarkets. Oh, what I’d give for a friendly smile.
SCREEN TEST
Later that day, I jump in the back of the producer’s car to be driven around a reservoir to a scene being filmed on the far side. We’re both wearing masks, the windows are wide open and a plastic Covid barrier is Velcroed to the roof of the car, hanging down to separate the front seats from the back. It’s another sensible touch, but this is a low-budget British production, and the Velcro tabs don’t really work, so the barrier falls down every time we go over a slight bump in the road. Tom Cruise would lose his shit.
Still, I can’t help but admire how well everyone on this set has adapted and just how cleanly everyone jumps through the strict new set of hoops in order to obey the clarion call to make movies. “How are you finding the Covid restrictions?” I ask the lead actor that evening, back in the mansion. He looks surprised. “This is my fourth project since filming started again, so… You know what? I haven’t even thought about it,” he says.
This is the new normal, indeed. “Life, uh, finds a way,” said Jeff Goldblum’s Dr. Ian Malcolm in Jurassic Park, and clearly so, uh, do filmmakers.
Jamie will return next issue… For more misadventures, follow: @jamie_graham9 on Twitter.
‘THESE ARE THE FIRST FACETO-FACE INTERVIEWS I’VE CONDUCTED FOR A YEAR’