Ed, this is the way of the world… this is the way these junkets have worked for years, even decades, and that’s the way it’s always going to be. If you can’t get the coverage or interviews you want, for God’s sake, just stop doing them and go work at an office job and see how much worse THAT is. Seriously, man… all this griping and kvetching does little to add any credibility to you or your blog.

I know you consider yourself a serious journalist — I see you more as the Perez Hilton of the lit world. You were so good as a blogger because of your lone wolf tendencies. And you’ve done well with lit people with your Segundo interviews.

But as has been mentioned before in this comments area in relation to other posts, it can be hard to take your word for the way things go down. My favorite example is during one of your tension filled confrontations with Sam Tanenhaus you described him as “bellowing into the microphone.” Galleycat, describing the same action wrote “sighed Tanenhaus.” While your version of the event was much more entertaining, the conflicting details caused this reader to question your powers of observation while you were in the midst of a personally stressful situation.

So in “Junkets” when you describe the two pr people talking to each other as you view the scene from across the room — telling your readers that one was berating the other due to your presence — I had to wonder if they were just talking about sending someone down to Starbucks to get coffee for everyone while you turned the commonplace scene into an ominous threat.

(I never had the opportunity to interview actors, but a collaborator and I interviewed the likes of directors Robert Wise, Gene Fowler, etc. for some of the first literate articles — post Forest Ackerman’s Famous Monsters Of Filmland shenanigans — about horror and SFF films. They appeared in popular film magazines and not specialist publications like Cahiers du Cinema, etc. You can find references to some of our work in books like Cheap Tricks and Class Acts — Special Effects, Makeup and Stunts from the Films of the Fantastic Fifties (McFarland) and others, as we got the directors to open up for the first time about particular tricks they used in their films. And the directors we interviewed were never less than forthcoming, helpful and honest. The old saw that everyone in Hollywood is a liar or worse is a myth fostered and carried on mostly by the envious and disenfranchised.)

But sure, it’s your blog and you can do and say whatever you want. Still, I fear that posts like “Junkets” are going to lose you the readers you want: those who care about a truly balanced and journalistically solid accounting of events and not just some gossipy Hiltonesque circus version. And I think you were on the right track at the beginning of the post, presenting a picture of the cynical journo going for the truth, though the piece quickly went off the rails, in my humble estimation. In short, I’m saying I think you can do a lot better and you should just write this off as the one that got away and move on.

The Colin Firth thing is because they are hosting the PDFs of an e-mail interview I did with Ehle (or rather facilitated- fans sent in questions). The blog doesn’t have a file server, it’s just run off Blogspot, so we piggybacked off the CF site. I’m an Australian student, ex-fansite admin. Believe what you will.

But all this ad hominem about my identity is beside the point. Play the ball and not the player, man. Surely you don’t think the only person who would disagree with you is some conspirator? If you can argue against the points I made, do so.

But I should point out that the only reference to the name Tina Doan comes from colinfirth24-7.com — a website likewise attributed at an MSN page to Caitlin Cargill (a former Speed perhaps?):

http://groups.msn.com/FirthSisters/members.msnw

Most mysteriously, the WHOIS for colinfirth24-7.com remains private.

Sounds to me like you’re trying to spin this. So why not just come clean. What agency are you with? Or are you perhaps Ehle herself?

Fine. Tina Doan, student, former blogger for Ehle fanblog. Not paid, no personal connection to Ehle, and no longer posting at that blog. I too am interested in Serious Inquiry. I’ve read too many interviews where journalists ask the same hackneyed questions and we get the same repetitive answers eg. “how is it working with Santosh? isn’t India pretty?” (snooze). But the inquiry has to be relevant to the interviewees, or else that’s equally bad journalism. Also, if you could explain why pomade and eyebrows were in pursuit of Noble Truths, inquiring minds want to know.

I haven’t seen the film yet, though the bedroom scene mentioned is in the trailer I believe. Does that make what I say invalid? Ehle’s response to your question is that “whatever we were doing, we were doing because it felt right and made sense; I don’t think anybody told us to do anything”. And time and again the actors say how it’s not their job to think about the colour of carpets or how the shot looks – how in fact it’s detrimental to their performance, takes them out of the moment. Interview redux.
Q: “how does [technical detail x] affect performance?”
A:”it doesn’t.”
Q:”ok, how about [technical detail y]?”
A: “still no.”
Q: “really? I’m sure [technical detail Z] must have SOME influence”.
Who’s not getting the point? You could have asked about characters’ emotions, morality, culture, power relationships…all plausible lines of non-kiss-assy inquiry. You could’ve made them think and stray from boilerplate, deepened your readers’ understanding of the film, and managed to keep everyone onside for long enough to pose your technical questions to Sivan, who I’m sure would’ve waxed lyrical about colour and landscape. Opportunity wasted.

Rapport is not about being omgbestfriendsforeverlol!!!! It’s making the other person comfortable and trusting enough to talk to you. Part of human conversation. Except in law or government, conversation isn’t battle, it’s collaboration.

I re-read your article and take exception to the personal versus intellectual dichotomy. They’re not mutually exclusive if relevant. In this interview I don’t care if they’re all raging alcoholics, but it is relevant that Ehle’s mother, actress Rosemary Harris, grew up in India during the Raj period, or that Roache has done other films there and feels a spiritual connection with the country. Why must film talk be about colour, lenses, blocking? Passions, experiences, stories, these things matter as well.

But I will say, Ed, it was rude of you to ask questions that required thought from the thoughtless.

Also, I.H., have you seen the film? Can you reference the specific shot I’m talking about (which does indeed involve blocking limitations)? Do you even KNOW what I’m talking about?

Furthermore, while I think Jon Hilderman for leaving his name and offering a fair-minded rebuttal, are either of the first two commenters willing to provide their full names here? For all I know, you could be Linus Roache’s publicists. And if you wish to be forthright and disagree with me, you’re going to have to be forthright about who you are. Your IP addresses don’t quite match up with the domain names in your emails. I’m happy to address your points, but only if you provide your names and provide reasonable provenance that you are not PR lackeys.

You can hardly expect your average actor to be as intelligent as your average author… and like I.H said — try building a rapport before you start in on the personal jibes.

And the Hollywood system rests on a foundation of bullshit… if you wanna play the game, I imagine you have to bite that bullet. I never would. Glad you’ll be keeping away from this crap in the future…

You said the roundtable should be a conversation. That’s what a good interview should be, an exchange between people who are listening as well as talking, a flow. Instead, from the sounds of it you came in with the rigid idea that you would control the topic of discussion, not taking into account what your interlocutors were saying. Like your question about the bedroom scene – it question presupposes that the position of figures was deliberate limitation, while it’s quite possible that they had a few goes filming it and that angle was what Sivan found best suited the mood, and wasn’t presented to the actors as “you must sit here diagnolly and don’t move” at all. This is indeed what Ehle says in her answer. You nevertheless ask Roache the same question in the same “performance in relation to landscape” terms. Attempting unusual questions is admirable; sticking to them when they’re patently miss-the-point is just bad interviewing.

And it’s not a giant leap to take the “goofy” questions about eyebrows and hair as predatory or condescending, given that you didn’t build rapport before you talked about this. First you ignore Roache, then you hit him with a curly question without any warmup, then mock his hair. Who wouldn’t be put off? There is a happy medium between kiss-assy softball and esoteric intellectualism. You missed it.

While an awkward interview is forgivable, the bitterness and pique that this post reeks of – not to mention the bitchy personal attacks on Roache – are frankly unprofessional. You’re peeved that you didn’t get Sivan…so you stomp away from film journalism forever cos you’re so misunderstood and all actors are loser assholes? Without considering whether any of your actions caused this state of affairs? Sophomoric. If that’s your attitude then, well, good riddance.