This is the story that got me into the most trouble
This is the story that got me into the most trouble
Hello, lawyers...
Hello! I’ve had a few people tell me they enjoy the behind-the-scenes-of-journalism series of stories I’ve been doing. So I guess I’m going to be doing more of those! Here’s one about the time I went to Wellington to meet a major star. It was strange. Happy reading :)
It was weird right from the start.
We were shoved into jet black minivans, driven along Wellington’s waterfront towards Miramar and warned not to ask questions that might upset the almighty deity that we were about to interview, her royal highness and excellency, Queen Scarlett Johansson.
In particular, we were explicitly and repeatedly told we could in no way broach the topic of whitewashing that had engulfed her new movie, Ghost in the Shell.
"It's not for Scarlett to address. We're guests. We don't want to offend her," said one of the many, many publicists that hovered around us that day, which I documented in a 2016 story on www.nzherald.co.nz.
This wasn’t a typical studio visit. Normally, reporters are invited onto film and TV sets during the last week of filming. Things are winding up and everyone’s on deadline. You sit in a small room while various members of the cast and crew are rushed through for brief chats then returned to do their jobs. Basically, we’re a nuisance.
I haven’t done many of them, because I don’t really enjoy them. Everyone’s stressed out. PR people are stressed. Actors and crew are stressed. Overseas journalists are stressed because no one understands them. Then you all ask the same questions, get the same answers and come away with exactly the same kind of story.
Often, you’re plonked at a table with eight other reporters and have to shout your questions out over everyone else. If you’re shy, it’s a nightmare. If you’re lucky, you’ll get a single question answered. The time is usually eaten up by someone who asks a multi-part question about a little-seen film from the start of the star’s career. Someone always asks something suggestively sexual and inappropriate.
Once, sitting at a table during a day of these kinds of interviews for an HBO showcase in Los Angeles, I remember an extremely tense argument breaking out between French and Australian journalists over which country made the best-tasting Coca Cola just as Sarah Jessica Parker sat down in front of us. Awks.
Anyway, out of perhaps two dozen of these types of events, Ghost in the Shell was easily the most chaotic set visit I attended. We all sat around a boardroom for the better part of a day with very few snacks waiting for her to arrive. Several times we were put on high alert and told it was imminent, only for it to be cancelled at the last minute.
We talked to all kinds of other people: stunt stars with English as their second language, set designers who no one wanted to interview, and various actors with minor bit parts that no one could be bothered with. We got tired and bored. There was nothing to eat except coffee and chips. Then the chips ran out. I was so hungry.
It got late. I had to cancel my flight back to Auckland, and book a hotel. At 9pm, with no sign of Johansson, the publicists took us all out for dinner. Finally, food! Halfway through our meal, we were interrupted by a phone call. She was finally ready. Her excellency awaited us. We put down our forks and rushed back to set in those minivans.
That’s when it got really strange. As we sat back down in the boardroom, a publicist threw a packet of chewing gum down on the table in front of us. "It's the biggest female action movie star in Hollywood,” he said. “(The gum's) for those in the front rows." Writing that sentence out four years later still make me go, WTF?
She arrived. She looked tired. We got 11 minutes. I asked her one question.
Normally, I wouldn’t write about any of this. Getting future access to film sets means writing semi-nice things about the movies being made on them. But I didn’t want to write about that. I wanted to write about the insane inanity of set visits, and how pointless they all were. A few days after getting back to Auckland, I filed this piece: “This is what happens when you wait 10 hours to interview Scarlett Johansson.”
Shit got wild. Ratings went off. It was on the front page of nzherald.co.nz. The Daily Mail did a rewrite. So did many others. A reporter working for a competing website who was also on the junket was made to write nearly the exact same story with nearly the exact same headline. And then the legal threats came.
I’ve had legal issues before. Of course I have. Every journalist has. Tom Cruise’s representatives got in touch once. So did David Hasselhoff’s. They normally just want a headline tweaked or a paragraph changed, usually over a wire service story that got some minor detail wrong.
Those threats never resulted in a story being taken down. I can’t remember ever taking a story offline. It didn’t happen.
This time, it did. Stern phone calls were made. The movie studio expressed outrage. Advertising deals were threatened. An American law team started sending emails full of legalise. I can’t remember the exact details, but due to one minor clause in the non-disclosure agreement we’d signed, it was determined we had made a breach, and had to take the story down.
It didn’t matter. By that stage, it had been online for two days, rated extremely well and was covered by several other outlets. A few months later, once the NDA restrictions lifted, we reposted it, along with this story, and got another barrage of complaints.
Perhaps the funniest thing out of all this was a phone call I got a few days later from a Wellington reporter. She explained that she loved my story, but politely requested I remove the bit where I claimed she’d eaten multiple packets of chips while waiting for Johansson. She’d eaten just one packet, she corrected, and didn’t want her workmates thinking she was a glutton.
She was lovely. She didn’t threaten me with lawyers. She didn’t make me wait 10 hours on the phone, and didn’t ask me to chew gum to freshen my breath before we talked.
So I corrected it. It was a mistake. It was the least I could do.
As for Ghost in the Shell, I still haven’t seen it, but I heard bad things. And I never did get invited to another movie from that particular film studio. Oh well.
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