It’s easy to be suspicious of entertainment journalists who spring rather too readily to the defence of celebrities ambushed by other journalists – if anyone has got the moxie to break the convention and ask awkward questions, like Krishnan Guru-Murthy has managed on a couple of occasions, then I say good luck to them. (Truth is, the vetting that film companies put in place for anyone seeking access to their “talent” means he’s not likely to get another chance.) All the same, it’s hard not to feel a bit sorry for Cara Delevingne after she was basically told she wasn’t being peppy enough in a short TV spot by the presenters of a local TV show in the US.
Perhaps they didn’t get her brand of sarcasm, or maybe she genuinely couldn’t be bothered; either way, the likely circumstances of the actual interview are worth pointing out. The anodyne backdrop, decorated only with the poster of her new film on an easel, is evidence Delevingne was involved at a press junket 3000 miles away in New York. Having been on the other side of the camera at a bunch of these things over the last few years, I can tell you they are pretty grim, for everyone involved.
It’s basically a question of time management. If they work fast, someone like Delevingne will get through 20 outlets per hour on camera, as opposed to 1 or 2 for more labour-intensive print interviews. Hence the special weirdness of a TV junket. Unlike the leisurely, almost donnish atmosphere of the print-interview schedule, where one sits in splendid isolation sipping mineral water until being called to your high-level chat with the great man or woman, the TV junket is a Black Hole of Calcutta of holding rooms, trip hazards, furiously gesticulating PR handlers and queues for queues. For a big-money effort, the film company will rent out a whole floor of a flash hotel, and turn each bedroom into a makeshift studio; each member of the principal cast will sit in one, with a camera and lights trained on them, and journalists are led in, ask their questions, and are led out. The conveyor-belt nature of what’s happening is entirely unmistakeable. And, crucially, it’s the film company that supplies the crew and hands over the footage as the journalist leaves: this is their ultimate protection of their investment against pranking, libel, or star misbehaviour. (Guru-Murthy, presumably, was in the unusual position of being able to bring a Channel 4 news crew to his interviews with Downey and Quentin Tarantino – that’s no doubt how the footage was able to get out.)
That said, I have nothing but admiration for the people who organise the damn things: their manoeuvring of scores of distracted reporters in and out at prescribed intervals never fails to remind me of a military operation. In interview terms, there’s never much to junkets – five minutes is not long enough to get anywhere past the most basic questions – so their main function journalistically seems to be so that everyone can have a swift gawk at Angelina/Brad/Russell in living colour; something for all its literary flourishes, a print interview can’t. For those on the receiving end, it seems a pretty awful way to spend your time, even if you’re being paid for it: having to be relentlessly on, for person after person, however many times you’ve heard the same questions.
That’s not to say they’re not worth doing; I don’t think I’d have ever realised, say, the basic charisma that Russell Crowe can exert when he puts his mind to it; or what it’s like to experience the laser-beam intensity of Angelina Jolie. (William Hague, clearly, never stood a chance.) Sometimes, of course, the film companies are happy to let less-than-ideal footage get out; Mila Kunis’ BBC radio interview during the junket for Oz the Great and Powerful – “now we’re being British again” – has gone down in legend, partly, no doubt, for her expert satire on the answers to generic interview questions she will have repeated ad nauseam.
The same goes for Samuel L Jackson’s surreal hectoring of a hapless interviewer during a junket for Django Unchained: the reporter’s discomfort will have only been increased by consciousness of the rapidly-approaching cut-off point. No doubt the main thought in his mind will have been: if he doesn’t shut up I can’t ask questions 3 and 4 before I get chucked out. The realisation he had got junket gold will only have sunk in later.
Personally, I’ve never had a really bad experience in a junket; I tend to specialise in saying stupid things shortly before the cameras are turned on, or just after they’ve been turned off. The trickiest thing has been being asked a couple of times, just as the countdown begins, how I got the rather noticeable scar on my neck (long story, medical incident, emergency operation, many years ago). You don’t want to be rude, but it would take longer than you’ve got to explain the whole thing.
Probably the most excruciating few minutes I had to face was shortly after I levered myself into a chair opposite an esteemed British actor for a standard five minute chat about his directorial debut: the camera operator announced the camera had failed, and the room promptly emptied as the entire team went in search of a new one. I suddenly found myself making small talk with someone who was as baffled by the situation as I was, and found it just as awkward. I’m still scarred – mentally that is. These people, it turns out, are human beings, just like everyone else. I’m not suggesting much actual sympathy should be felt, either for them, or us – we’re not saving whales or researching killer diseases – but cutting them a little slack is only fair.
