IT SHOULDN’T HAPPEN TO A FILM JOURNALIST
Editor-at-Large JAMIE GRAHAM lifts the lid on film journalism.
Jamie talks sarnies.
The first press screening I ever attended, waaay back in 1996, was Total Eclipse, starring Leonardo DiCaprio and David Thewlis as poet Arthur Rimbaud and his mentor Paul Verlaine. I couldn’t believe I was sitting in a private screening room – the legendary Mr. Young’s, now renamed The Soho Screening Rooms – with Barry Norman seated two rows back in what I later came to know was his favourite seat. Even more incredible to me was the free bar, so I necked six glasses of Pimm’s (it was Wimbledon season) in the 30-minute mingle before the film started, and sat down hammered.
Two things happened: one,
I fell asleep, and was awakened, none too gently, by the furrowfaced man sitting next to me for snoring loudly; and two, I had to exit halfway through the film to drain all that Pimm’s. Well, Mr. Young’s is a small, intimate space, so the moment I stood up, my shadow smothered the screen. I whispered my apologies but they were the whispers of a pissed bloke and rang around the room. And then, after flailing along my row and falling in one lady’s lap, I reached the aisle and promptly fell down a step to land flat on my face in front of all of the critics whose work I’d pored over for so many years.
FEED ME!
Back in the ’90s, and deep into the noughties until the recession hit, it was standard practice to be fed and watered at screenings. Even the distributors of smaller films put on platters of sarnies and a choice of beer or wine (I’d learnt my lesson and limited myself to one glass… well, maybe two), and to attend some of the bigger movies was to first indulge in a veritable feast. In fact, so expected was the lavish hospitality, I knew of one journalist (no names) who took a star off his film rating if he wasn’t adequately fed (yes, he was a douche).
Nowadays, such provisions are rare, which at least means that another journalist I know (again, no names) can no longer flit between screening rooms eating like a king/pig so he need never buy his own tea.
The downside is that evening screenings, which start at 6.30pm, are soundtracked by rumbling, grumbling stomachs.
But every now and then, the humble film journo arrives at a screening to the welcome surprise of a good spread. At the IMAX showing of Hobbs & Shaw, everyone got a pizza. At Gringo there was tequila and nachos. And Ready Or Not dished out wedding-themed snacks and champagne, with the film PRs dressed up as bride and groom.
BUFF BODS
Just writing this column is making me hungry as my memory serves up some of my favourite treats. There was fried chicken before Killer Joe, an informative whiskey tasting after The Angels’ Share (they clearly didn’t want a roomful of journos doing what I did in Total Eclipse), and kegs of beer for Ma.
A couple of Steven Soderbergh movies, meanwhile, provided a feast for the eyes, as ripped waiters dressed only in bow ties and micro satin shorts circulated before Behind The Candelabra, and hunks in pinnies served canapés and champers to set the mood for Magic Mike. They then ‘treated’ the small crowd of film journalists to a strip show, during which Total Film’s editor-in-chief Jane emitted a whoop – to end the awkward silence, or so she says.
But my most treasured memory is the cream eclairs all of us wolfed down before Van Wilder: Party Liaison. There was much smacking of lips and tonguing of pearls of cream from the corners of mouths… and the groans were audible when we then discovered the scene in the movie in which eclairs are filled with bulldog semen. You might say we should have seen it coming.
‘MY APOLOGIES WERE THE WHISPERS OF A PISSED BLOKE AND RANG AROUND THE ROOM’