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Junket
All of the ugly people are being led into a room at the Four Seasons hotel. There are seats for about twelve people. Twelve ugly people. We are here to interview the very beautiful actress Kate Winslet. The woman from Entertainment Weekly Radio has a Hideous Kinky soundtrack CD. I want one! The movie sucked but the soundtrack was good. I take a sewing kit from the bathroom. Most of these hotels that hold junkets have sewing kits in the bathroom. Some people are more ugly than others. I can't believe how unsightly some of these people are. How can they let Kate Winslet in the same room with them? I'll protect her. I sit in a seat next to the one with the microphone. But I offer to move when an aging hippie woman from a radio network whines about her microphone not reaching Kate. She wants to clip the microphone on Kate. I move because I realize that there are people here who are desperate. The aging hippie woman doesn't ask Kate any questions. Most of the radio people never ask questions. A very well behaved 5 year-old could do their job. The radio people who do ask questions are worse. They dominate the discussion and some are also radio personalities so they have big voices that drown everyone else out. Kate walks in. She is beautiful. Her skin is perfect. She lights a cigarette. The hippie attaches a microphone to her beautiful shirt. Kate smokes. Across from the hippie is the pro. He is a well-dressed middle aged gay man who really knows what he is doing. He dominates the discussion. Actually, Kate dominates the discussion. She won't stop talking! It is hard to ask Kate Winslet questions because you never know when she is going to stop. I realize that I'm going to have to use the questions of others. This is the dirty little secret of these junkets. I can use other journalist's questions and they can use mine. But can you call some of these people journalists? There's a guy here who has his own website. It might get 50 hits a week if he's lucky. He walks in throwing his weight around and there's a lot of it to throw around. He is disappointed because the public relations firm handling the film has told him that there will be no pictures. He wants pictures of him and Kate for his website. He is pissed. There are ugly people here who know him and they bitch and moan about the PR firm, which handles smaller independent films. He hates them! Why is he even here? I get in one question, finally, and it's about Pierre Clementi, a strange French actor who is in the film. He played a thug in Belle De Jour; a happy urinating sailor in Sweet Movie. In this movie he plays a nice well-dressed old guy who takes in Winslet and her kids. The kids were afraid of him, Winslet says But she told them that he was ok. He was a famous old actor but he was a nice friendly man and they could talk to him. I don’t use this in the article because there winds up being no article. My boss is demoted and there is chaos in the office. Q: Can I ask you guys some boring questions so I can get some boring answers for my article? Thora Birch and Mena Suvari: No, don't! I see the same faces at other junkets. I can’t get away from them. One is wearing a jean jacket with The Mod Squad logo on the back. Another is carrying a Mystery Men knapsack. The movie companies usually put dotcom people in the same room with radio people, or college kids. The college kids are good because they hardly ever ask questions. This leaves me and maybe a woman from Seventeen or TV Guide online to dominate the discussion. Q: You make like one movie a year... Samuel L. Jackson: One movie a year? If I made only one movie a year I would run out of money real fast! The worst thing you can do at a junket is ask for an autograph. This is completely unprofessional, so it is done all the time. The stars are polite and appear happy to sign, but the real journalists from real publications are appalled. At the Being John Malkovich junket, a pretty Canadian girl - a college student - has her picture taken with John Cusack. He is only too happy to pose with her and anyone else. These are professionals. They will do anything to promote their film. They are polite to morons who ask stupid questions. Q: If you could invade somebody else's mind, who would it be? Vincent D'Onofrio: First of all...to be very frank with you and...and not to hurt your feelings in any way...it's a really dumb question. Okay, cause it's so stupid, so silly to even think about. I mean, you know, it's a fucking movie for crying out loud. And also wouldn't you want to be um...what's your name? Q: Gary... D'Onofrio: Gary, wouldn't you rather figure yourself out first? Like if you could get into somebody's head, wouldn't you want to get in your own head and kind of like sort out all of your issues and shit, and kind of like figure yourself out and be the good person you want to be? I mean that's what I would want to do. Gary: OK... D'Onofrio: And then maybe I'll take on like, you know, Raquel Welch or something. The people at Disney are very generous. When I arrive at the Essex House on a Sunday morning to interview the voices of Tarzan, they give me a bag of all of the Tarzan Happy Meal toys and a giant picture book (retail price: $50). The other journalists in the room are unfazed. Apparently Disney is known for its generosity and always give out a lot of stuff. Several journalists joke about selling the stuff on eBay. All of the middle-aged junket whores seem to be single and childless. There is a catch. We are stuck in this stuffy hotel conference room for the next six hours. We meet actors, illustrators, the director (yes, feature-length animated movies need one), producers, the screenwriters and Phil Collins. Glenn Close is preceded by a group of obnoxious British reporters, who grill her about her experiences in Africa as a child. Her father ran a clinic in the Belgian Congo for almost 20 years. Later, Close would perform with the evangelical youth singing group, Up with People, but that's another story. She is a nice lady. When she leaves, so do the Brits. No Happy Meal toys for them! The next day my editor asks me how it went. "I got Happy Meal toys," I said. "A whole bagful." "You can sell them on eBay, " she says.
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