Junket Whore - NAJP

50 Junket Whore 51

THE MIDWAY REBORN BY ERIC FREDERICKSEN

ALAN HESS

JUNKET WHORE Hills or Midtown Manhattan, for a weekend. The studio pays for the flight and 53
hotel, reimburses cab fare from the airport, and covers room service and pay-
T per-view movies and shoeshining with a $100 to $125 per diem. Major city
he bathtub is large, almost big enough newspapers and well-funded magazines with scruples refuse them or insist on
52 to swim in, but that’s not what’s making me pause in the doorway to the bath- paying for their writers to attend, while the rest of us court favor with publi-
room of my room at the Regent Beverly Wilshire. It’s the glass-walled shower, cists in return for fancy weekend trips.
which in real estate terms would be described as “overlooking” the bath. I
don’t spend much time in strip bars, but I recognize the trope. This is the show- Novelists fly around the continent to read from their works, butter up
er stage, and the soundtrack is Sir Mix-a-Lot’s “Put ’Em on the Glass.” It doesn’t booksellers and give interviews; musicians go on tour; but movie stars are
occur to me then that “Pretty Woman,” a movie I’ve seen only in un-sound- harder to crate up and ship to various domestic ports. Also, the importance of
tracked glimpses on a coast-to-coast flight, is largely set in this hotel. Nor does high first-weekend revenues makes it crucial for studios to generate a glut of
it occur to me that when hotel rooms like this appear in movies, they are coverage just before a film’s opening. So instead of working through the major
almost always the setting for expensively bought sex or high-end drug deals. media markets one by one, a movie’s stars, director and sometimes its pro-
(Cheaply bought sex and low-end drug deals happen in motels.) But those ducer or writer are assembled in one city, then trooped through a series of
thoughts would have been apt; the only reason I’m staying on the corner of hotel meeting rooms to conduct what is euphemistically referred to as a
Rodeo and Wilshire is because I’ve agreed to see and write about a couple of “roundtable interview,” which works somewhat like the absurd airport press
movies. In short, I’m a whore. conference with a famous French film director attended by Jean Seberg in
If you’re not familiar with the institution of the movie junket, it’s because “Breathless,” except it’s not at an airport, and none of the journalists remote-
film writers aren’t anxious to discuss it. A junket brings print, radio and TV ly resembles Ms. Seberg.
film reporters together in one place, typically an expensive hotel in Beverly
For 15 or 20 minutes, between eight and 15 journalists lob questions at
JUNKET WHORE the visiting star. These typically include probing inquiries into, say, how moth-
erhood has changed Julianne Moore (if memory serves, it had grounded her),
or if Woody Allen allowed himself any expensive luxuries when he became
rich (a car and driver). In return for these face-to-face moments with a celebri-
ty, the print journalist has agreed, in writing, to generate both a feature and a
review of the movie in question. (I don’t know what kinds of deals radio peo-
ple sign, but I imagine they’re similar.) Your paper will not just publish a
simple review, full of your opinions and ideas about the movie; it will also
quote, in a separate article, the film’s participants talking about their own
opinions and ideas. Based on the questions posed at these encounters, you
quickly realize that dozens of small-time publications are running scads of fea-
tures that read like People magazine without the investigative reporting.

ERIC FREDERICKSEN

If you think this is corrupt, it is. Nobody would find it ethical for a maga- 55
zine to explicitly barter feature space in return for a paid ad, but film writers
trade features for trips. Money buys editorial space either way.

I was the arts editor of The Stranger, a free Seattle weekly, throughout
most of my movie-junket career. Our film staff lacked both travel money and
strong principles, but it did share favors, which is why I managed to go on
three movie junkets despite rarely writing about film. I should point out that
for all my hand-wringing in this article, I managed to avoid the most perni-
cious aspects of my devil’s bargain. The features I published after my three
junkets, which were generally short so as to maximize the dollar-per-column-
inch rate for betraying my readers, avoided any mention of “Road Trip” star
Rachel Blanchard’s amateur hockey playing or Samuel L. Jackson’s deep love
for Kangol hats (he sported one through most of “Jackie Brown”). I tried to
stay topical and sharp, if gossipy. One of my pieces reported on director
Penelope Spheeris’s raging near-breakdown when asked to defend her use of
gay stereotypes in a silly comedy called “Senseless.” Another skewered “Jackie
Brown” director Quentin Tarantino’s absurd assertion that were it not for his
success in the movies, he might have turned to a life of crime. (A life of video-
store clerking, more likely.)

Such articles, though far from incisive film writing, rarely turn up in other
junket-taking papers, largely because most film writers live in chronic fear of
having their junket privileges taken away from them. In practice, you have to
try very hard to get kicked off the gravy train, as this article will shortly prove.
But in practice, many film writers spend their weekends imagining themselves
in a minefield instead of a luxury hotel.

Losing junket privileges was the main concern of the brave fellow from
Buffalo who’d nudged Penelope Spheeris into her fit of apoplexy. The question
was perfectly fair, and respectfully worded. Mentioning with approbation her
documentaries on Los Angeles music, “The Decline of Western Civilization,”
parts one through three, he’d remarked on her deep empathy with the bizarre
denizens of L.A.’s punk and metal scenes. He contrasted that attitude with her

ERIC FREDERICKSEN

treatment of some minor characters in “Senseless,” a low-budget Marlon hungover and had sweated heavily while being interviewed at an earlier jun- 57
Wayans comedy she was there to promote, which finds the star working in ket, compulsively rubbing his forehead with one of his thumbs as he pondered
food service with a gay couple who exchange sly looks when Wayans his responses, to the point where the temple became raw and reddened. Given
announces that he can’t find any butter in the kitchen. my own thoroughly hungover state at this early-morning session, I sympa-
thized. I should have stayed home, too. People who actually show up for their
Spheeris dodged the question, suggesting that anyone as visibly empa- movie’s junket hardly receive better treatment—during a roundtable for “Small
thetic as she shouldn’t be confused with a homophobe. Time Crooks,” Hugh Grant wasn’t asked about his famous blowjob, but the
topic featured heavily in the discussions just before his arrival in the room.
That doesn’t answer my question, parried the man from Buffalo.
“You want an answer? Well, ‘fuck you.’ That’s my answer,” she blurted. I never knew what role to play in these sessions, so I generally played the
She paused, dropped her head a bit, built up steam, and then launched into a Chief from “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.” I felt morally and intellectually
long, confused rant, then made an unscripted exit, crying and still yelling. superior to the other journalists, whom I judged without much evidence, but
When I met up with that writer later, I found him both exhilarated and pan- I felt icky about the bad-faith dealing that had gotten me onto the junket. I
icked. He’d momentarily broken through the sugary coating of the junket, and wanted to be indistinguishable from the others, to escape detection as an inter-
he’d stood up for himself as a writer (and, as I would find out, as a gay man loper, but I didn’t want to be seen as one of them, the salivating army of
himself)—but now he’d been marked as an asshole. The junket staff had dipshits crudely yet accurately satirized in “America’s Sweethearts.” I wanted
removed him from the roundtable to interrogate him, and he had left that meet- to silently take the favors and preserve my notional innocence. I could easily
56 ing without learning what final censure might come. His fear of losing junket avoid the most egregious displays of entitlement bred into regular junketeers,
privileges aside, he was a sympathetic figure in the middle of a hospitality suite exemplified by the reviewer from a local New York TV station who sat down
full of free snacks, free promotional posters and T-shirts, and a passel of glad- in a roped-off area for the “Small Time Crooks” advance screening. Plenty of
handers and sycophants in their studio-provided wardrobes. That room looked seats were available throughout the rest of the theater, but he apparently was
like a marketing guy’s cross-platform promotional dream: journalists passively so used to having a reserved place at preview screenings that he forgot that
wearing ads on their heads, chests, backs and bags for a variety of recent jun- everyone there was a journalist: the roped-off area was for local cast and crew
ket-blessed films. Either these people never shop for clothes, or they are who hadn’t seen the final cut yet. Watching this buffoon argue with an usher,
actually dressing to impress, advertising their junket A-list status. I saw everything I disliked about junkets and, more broadly, the whole culture
The sycophancy only goes so far. In between roundtables, junketeers com- of journalists feeding at publicists’ troughs.
pete with one another in informal contests—who got invited to what, who got
a coveted “one-on-one” with whom (these are generally reserved for TV In each case, I’d taken the junket, the free airfare, the hotel stay, the per
reporters). They knowingly compare the merits of hotels they could never diem, because I’d had other reasons to be in town. I went to L.A. for “Jackie
afford to stay in on media salaries. (“Did you think this was a five-star hotel? Brown” and “Senseless,” but my real mission had been to check out the Getty
Think again.”) And, most notably, they practice competitive junket gossipry. On Center. Then I took a junket to New York for “The Big Lebowski” and “Dark
the “Big Lebowski” weekend, John Goodman, one of that film’s stars who wasn’t City,” but my motivation really had been to meet some New York editors.
present for the junket, came in for some discussion. Apparently he’d looked (Notice here a strategy of studios’ junket programming: matching a must-see

JUNKET WHORE ERIC FREDERICKSEN

movie with a trifling piece of crap. Few writers would turn down a chance to Crooks” junket, I considered bringing up the pernicious nature of junkets at 59
talk to Quentin Tarantino or the Coen brothers, but they might prefer to not the next editorial meeting, but that would have compromised the film editor,
devote multiple stories to a low-budget exploitation comedy or a science fic- who after all had been kind enough to pass me these treats I now wanted the
tion movie with no real stars. Junkets give the studios leverage to get bad paper to spurn. My bad faith had trapped me again. How to defeat the lure of
movies more column inches than they warrant.) The trips were useful to me, the junket, and return The Stranger to the smart, sassy, often oppositional crit-
and useful to the studios. The losers were the readers of my paper, who were icism that had once made its film section great? I did not know.
offered goofy features and full-length reviews of movies that should have been
buried in capsules, literally and figuratively. That editor left the paper shortly after my last junket. A friend of mine, a
former executive director of a nonprofit film organization and a real nutjob,
In the fall of 1999 I took my last junket, returning to New York so I could took over. He needed to get to L.A. to meet some studio types (he’s also pro-
write about the Whitney Biennial. As far as Dreamworks was concerned, I was duced a few independent films), so he took a Sony Pictures junket for the Mel
there to write about the teen sex comedy “Road Trip” and the elderly money Gibson movie “The Patriot.”
comedy “Small Time Crooks.” Because my competing agendas included a late
night of per-diem squandering with friends at the Regency Hotel’s bar, I Jamie has more friends in L.A. than I do, and he’s a lot more fun. On his
arrived for the next day’s double-session of roundtables in a parlous state. Not first junket night, he invited 30 or so people (including a large chunk of the
that this was atypical of my junket life, but I hadn’t had enough practice bal- editorial staff at Hustler) over to his room for a party and then a skinny-dip in
58 ancing my already-poor interviewing skills with my hangover. the hotel pool. Awakening the next morning with two naked Finnish tourists
and a vicious headache, he hit upon the fine idea of sending both of the young
Anyway, what do you ask Woody Allen? Surely, this is not the environ- women down to the roundtables with instructions to pretend to be him.
ment for drawing him out on the subjects of cinematography or Swedish films. (Though Jamie passes fine as a girl’s name, the junket staff got suspicious of
My wife had helped me draw up some gems: “Jamie” and “her visiting cousin from Finland” asking Mel Gibson penetrating
questions such as “Is this the greatest movie you have ever made in your entire
Question 1: You used to write such sweet, kind, smart female characters, life?”) It didn’t help that Jamie himself showed up for the free lunch in the hos-
like Annie Hall and Hannah from “Hannah and Her Sisters.” Now, all your pitality suite with seven friends. A few nasty phone calls later, The Stranger
female characters are whores, dummies, or shrews. Discuss. finally succeeded in getting kicked off the junket circuit. (Sony Pictures also
canceled its advertising with the paper for a few weeks.) Jamie’s whorishness
Question 2: Why do you insist on casting women half your age or less to had succeeded in defeating mine. And that Sir Mix-a-Lot soundtrack I’d heard
portray your characters’ love interests? Is Olympia Dukakis too busy these days? during my first visit to L.A. finally had pictures to match.

Question 3: Have you ever paid for sex, like several of your characters, not And a couple of years later, when I was working as an editor at Architecture
to mention Hugh Grant, your co-star in this movie? magazine in New York, another editor approached with a letter from the
Swedish consulate. Would I be interested in taking a free week-long tour of
Actual questions asked by Eric Fredericksen (The Stranger, Seattle) of modern Swedish architecture? Did ABBA have hits? Any pimp will tell you, it’s
Woody Allen: zero. hard for a whore to leave the game.

After each junket, I’d returned home, feeling dirty and ashamed, wishing ERIC FREDERICKSEN
I didn’t have to write about “Senseless,” “Dark City” or “Small Time Crooks.”
After each junket, I wrote about these films anyway. After the “Small Time

JUNKET WHORE