LOOKING FOR LOVE (IN ALL THE WRONG PLACES)
A celebrity interview is often like a blind date where only one of the parties wants to make out. The other was persuaded to go along by their pushy friend, and they'd rather be anywhere else than an insipid restaurant with a lecherous stranger who is prodding and poking and probing them, trying to slip under their guard and ingratiate themselves with them, who asks question after intrusive question until they're worn down and weary of them - and, when they finally leave, goes off bragging to their friends that they talked them into getting naked.
When I interview an actor such as Philip Seymour Hoffman, a musician such as Nick Cave or an author such as Jeffrey Archer, it's an uneven exchange, since only one of us gets to meet a clever, famous, widely loved artist at the top of his field. But it's not all one way - often, I get something out of it, too.
I've been writing for Good Weekend on and off for 12 years, and in that time I've met MPs and authors, reality TV stars and billionaires, professional Australians such as Rolf Harris, and professional unpleasant people such as Gordon Ramsay. When people ask, "What're they like?" I'm usually stumped for an answer (unless they're talking about Ramsay, in which case I say "disagreeable", or words to that effect). I usually haven't known them for long - a few days at best, an hour at worst - and it's hard to make a judgement.
The times I remember most clearly are when something went wrong, an event invariably connected mysteriously to the interviewee's pushy friend - or "publicist". In October 2006, I flew to Geneva to profile the small but perfectly formed Origliasso twins, Lisa and Jessica, during their band the Veronicas' tour of Switzerland and Belgium. I arrived at the Renaissance Hotel to find the evening's concert had been cancelled, and the only engagements the Veronicas had all day were interviews with the local radio stations. I asked if I could tag along, but was told only the artists were allowed in the studios.
I wasn't worried, because I knew there was another gig scheduled for the next night, but then I was told that was off, too. And I couldn't follow the Origliassos to Brussels because those dates had been nixed as well. In fact, to my increasing horror, it became clear that the entire tour had been cancelled and the publicist hadn't told me. The idea now seemed to be that I would trail the band around radio stations, waiting outside by the drinks machine while they went on air.
Luckily, all the Veronicas - the Origliassos and their guitarists, Rob Guariglia and George Bezerra - were very nice people, and they agreed to introduce me as their drummer. Not only did I sit in on their interviews, I even answered a question
(I complained about the anonymity of drummers; it didn't make it to air). I never saw them play, but I watched them handle European radio hosts with surreal, jetlagged wit. (When asked if she believed in "God or something", Jess said she thought crocodiles were Jesus.)
I interviewed one of the twins - Lisa, I think - in bed (she was in bed, I sat at her bedside) and one night in the increasingly familiar hotel bar they both invited me to join them for a sauna. To my shame as both a journalist and a man - in a decision that made me wonder if I was much of either - I politely declined because I was having a fat day, and carried on drinking with the guitarists instead.
The cancellation of the tour was the first in a series of disasters that hit me every time the editor sent me overseas. In January 2008, the E! pay-TV channel flew me to Los Angeles for a week of promotions around the Golden Globe awards night, but the day after I landed in the US the rumours firmed that there wasn't going to be an awards night because the actor's guild was boycotting the ceremony in solidarity with striking screenwriters. Rather like the Veronicas' record label, E! decided to carry on with the promotions as if nothing had gone wrong. The strangest form this took was a group interview with the two E! journalists who would've hosted the red carpet coverage about the questions they would've asked on the night had there been a red carpet.
I was accompanied on the E! junket by about two dozen entertainment writers from around the world, many of whom practised a different style of interviewing from Good Weekend's full-immersion, embedded-with-the-troops approach. They were more used to representing their title at press conferences, asking one or two masthead-appropriate questions, listening in on the star's replies to everyone else, then writing up the occasion as if they were the only journalist present. This is a much harder trick to carry off if more than one person from each country is in the room, as was the case with the rapper Snoop Dogg. There were four Australian writers, and Snoop Dogg held only two conferences, so a Hollywood-based Australian reporter was furious to be forced into the same meeting as at least one of us. Her tantrum was rendered futile when E! provided us all with DVDs of both conferences anyway. There wasn't much difference between Snoop Dogg's quotes, except in the second session he was asked if he took any exercise: "Yeah," he said, and mimed pushing a head repeatedly into his crotch. I doubt if this made it into the Hollywood reporter's story.
Publicists often let it be known that artists will refuse to speak about certain topics, and before our interviews with Snoop Dogg we were told he wouldn't reply to any questions about being refused entry to the UK or Australia (although nobody took any notice of this, and Snoop Dogg was asked and gave an answer). Another of the E! press conferences featured the Kardashian family, and we were warned that Kim Kardashian wouldn't tolerate mention of her sex tape. Several of the journalists had never heard of Kim Kardashian before the press call, and the fact that she had made the sex tape then became the only fact they knew about her. This put them on a level with even the most knowledgeable Kardashian experts in the audience, because the only thing Kim had ever done was make a sex tape.
For me, the most calamitous example of a publicist's list of off-limits questions came when somebody forgot to furnish me with one. Nearly four months after I didn't see the Golden Globes, I was flown to London where I didn't interview Gordon Ramsay.
Ramsay had spotted an otherwise overlooked TV niche for a British culinary identity who swore a lot, often took off his shirt, and pretended to have played first-team soccer for Glasgow Rangers, and leaped to fill it before the role was nabbed by, for example, Matt Preston. After many reschedulings and misunderstandings, Ramsay - through various publicists and assistants - said he'd meet me for an hour at his home in Wandsworth.
In those days, Ramsay told all his interviewers he would walk out if they brought up one of six topics: his father; his brother, Ronnie; other celebrity chefs; vegetarians; the death of his protégé David Dempsey; and the issue of drugs within the restaurant industry. I didn't get the message, and brought up topics number one and two three times before I was ever-so-politely escorted out of the house by a courteous, solicitous Ramsay, who was unrecognisable from the excitable vulgarian he plays on TV. Ramsay looked for a fight only when I was safely on the other side, when he threatened that if Good Weekend didn't kill the story and destroy my (wholly innocuous) recording of the 15-minute "interview", he would withdraw from the Sydney Good Food & Wine Show. At no point did Ramsay seem to understand there was no connection between Good Weekend and the Good Food & Wine Show, perhaps due to the large number of shared letters in the two titles.
This all happened before serial mistress Sarah Symonds claimed she'd had an affair with Ramsay; before Ramsay's bafflingly motivated attack on Tracy Grimshaw; before he'd claimed he'd been ordered to apologise to Grimshaw by his mother and his mother said she hadn't spoken to him about it at all; and before it was revealed that, despite what he says in his autobiography, he never played first-team soccer for Glasgow Rangers. Presumably, his publicists furnish journalists with a much longer list of off-limits topics these days.
On another trip to London in 2006, I turned up to interview thriller writer Frederick Forsyth at the wrong hotel. He was waiting in his suite in the Montcalm in London W1, while I spent 10 minutes pacing the lobby of the larger and more prominent Mayfair pub beginning with "M" up the road.
I was confused by the, er, large number of shared letters in the two titles.
I was told we only had an hour, and Forsyth had to leave at 11am "sharpish". My dash between the two hotels was worthy of the opening credits of a movie (albeit a strange movie about a useless journalist who runs like a duck). I was particularly concerned because I'd been told Forsyth was a curmudgeonly character who suffered fools badly (which is always bad news for fools like me). When I finally arrived, however - after failing to find his floor even once I'd reached the Montcalm - he was genial and courteous and carried on talking past the hour. People with reputations for being rude often turn out to be the most polite, but perhaps Forsyth was simply wary of the panting, sweating, wild-eyed apparition who burst into his room and immediately asked, "So what were you like at school?"
There are the people I never got to interview at all. In that same London trip, I failed to meet the singer James Blunt, just as I later didn't meet him in France, Belgium (a bit of a black hole for me and musicians), Holland and even China. In fact, I have travelled the world not interviewing James Blunt. I have never managed to catch up with Gabriella Cilmi in London or Dawn French in Oxford, either.
I did, however, rendezvous with Rolf Harris in a pretty hotel near Maidenhead in 2006. From meeting Harris, I learnt that if you wear glasses and a goatee and are lucky enough to keep your hair, you will look the same age your entire life. For some reason, the editor had dared me to ask Harris if he ever had sex in bondage. I asked, and he said that he hadn't. Normally, I'd be sceptical of such a blanket denial, but Harris is an unguarded naif who says anything to anyone, which is why he is always getting into trouble over Tie Me Kangaroo Down, Sport and other equally
dubious comments on Australian race relations.
I asked him about his toughest crowd, thinking he might describe playing in front of thousands of indie kids at the Glastonbury Festival.
Harris thought briefly, then replied, "Ah, I entertained at a Jewish wedding once, and they were really hard because they have been brought up to believe they're the greatest thing since sliced bread. From the time of their birth, their mother has told them how wonderful they are, and they don't want to be second fiddle to anybody. They feel that because they are paying you to perform, they've bought you. 'Harris! Do this! Harris! Come here!' 'Harris': it's never Rolf ... I only did a couple of those, and I thought, 'Never again.'
"Glastonbury was wonderful," he added.
I didn't tell him I was Jewish. If Harris had been a politician or a businessman, I would have made a fight about it, and built the story around that. But he was just a clever fool with a long-running novelty act, trying to honestly answer a journalist's question, so I let it pass.
In one way at least, interviewing celebrities works in the opposite fashion to dating. If somebody asks you out on a date - even if it's only through their pushy friend - there's a strong chance they are interested in at least talking to you. When a celebrity is offered to the media by their publicist, it's often against the client's will, or at least against their better judgement.
They do not like being interviewed. They get asked the same questions over and over again, which bores and irritates them and forces them to give the same answers. They continually regurgitate what Nick Cave called "the same collection of not particularly true incidents that are supposed to make up my rather ridiculous life". "You hate yourself by the end of it," he said.
Many artists only make themselves available when they are contractually obliged to do so, which is usually when they have a new book, CD or movie to promote, and they would much rather be working on their next book, CD or movie. But if they have to talk, they want to discuss their latest work, not their home life, love life or family life - and certainly not their sex tape.
So when the interviewer tries to point the conversation in another direction, they turn frigid and formal. They stop flirting, drop eye contact and suddenly notice that it's late and remember they have to be home. (Philip Seymour Hoffman was particularly unwilling to talk about anything but acting, and acting - the opposite of being yourself - just isn't interesting to read about.)
If, however, you approach a celebrity at a point in their publicity cycle when they have nothing to promote, and they still agree to meet you, it means they're a sure thing, a done deal, a dead cert to go the whole way, and these are always the best interviews.
Unfortunately, what goes around really does come around. Anybody can be a minor celebrity these days, even me. When I started to write books, other reporters began interviewing me. The "collection of not particularly true incidents that are supposed to make up my rather ridiculous life" was established in my first book, Sex & Money, and I have been asked about them at length on every subsequent publicity tour.
These days, journalists are often a little nervous of me, and at least respectful to my face. When Sex & Money, a memoir about working for men's magazines, came out in 2004, I was less well known. Novel interviewing strategies included the Adelaide Advertiser's opening gambit, "You're a bit of an arsehole, aren't you?" (Answer: no, I'm not.) I've been asked what it's like to have your brother live with your ex-wife (answer: not ideal) and I've fielded questions on talkback radio from listeners with IQs smaller than their shoe sizes.
In many sad instances, it is the artist's debut that still excites the public imagination. Although Paris Hilton appeared in three movies in 2008 - The Hottie & the Nottie, Repo! The Genetic Opera and An American Carol - the only DVD anyone wants to hear her discuss (or anyone wants to watch, really) was made in 2003 and is unlikely to be available at your local Blockbuster store.
Sex & Money became my sex tape. My latest book, King of the Cross, is a crime novel, but I'm still plagued by questions about working for men's magazines. But I don't complain. I know journalists are bad boys (and girls). I know they try to make everyone think they love them, and I know they kiss and tell. All I can do is take their hands and let them lead me down the garden path, and hope I wake up in the morning with no regrets, and my reputation intact.