More Kafka than Capra

In a sunlit hotel room in Studio City you settle onto the couch and put your tape recorder on the glass table, as one of the pretty, young publicity agents touches you softly on the shoulder and asks if you’d like a drink. The star makes her entrance a few minutes late, and her supplicants settle around the bar (as in Washington, important people in Hollywood enter rooms surrounded by minions who are young, solicitous, and fungible). The studio allows 45 minutes for the interview, so you launch into the ingratiating flattery that is the basis of every movie journalist’s interviewing style:

“You were so brilliant in this film, and so beautiful. How was it working with a director as visionary as Mr. Schmaltz?”

DB

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David Brooks

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In a sunlit hotel room in Studio City you settle onto the couch and put your tape recorder on the glass table, as one of the pretty, young publicity agents touches you softly on the shoulder and asks if you’d like a drink. The star makes her entrance a few minutes late, and her supplicants settle around the bar (as in Washington, important people in Hollywood enter rooms surrounded by minions who are young, solicitous, and fungible). The studio allows 45 minutes for the interview, so you launch into the ingratiating flattery that is the basis of every movie journalist’s interviewing style:

“You were so brilliant in this film, and so beautiful. How was it working with a director as visionary as Mr. Schmaltz?”