October 15th, 2018.
Just 45minutes earlier, I’d been at Embankment Cinema for the “Wild Rose” premiere, and I did that mainly because I’d been to Leicester Square earlier and noted a lack of hordes of autograph dealers I’d have expected if the likes of Oscar Isaac, Olivia Wilde, Antonio Banderas, Samuel L Jackson, and say Mandy Patinkin been expected to show up. They weren’t, and therefore there wasn’t.
Here’s how it went down.
“Dan Fogelman wrote WHAT??” - hard to believe, but it’s true. Even I was impressed.
“If they’re putting good cameras in mobile phones these days why the hell can’t I ever get skype to work on this Nikon??”
“I’m not even going to ask them any questions. I’m just going to let them stand there and testify. That’s my Art, and I thought of it first.” damnit… how do you even trademark that??
“What do you mean ‘The M&M Store doesn’t do Drive-Thru’ - it’s RIGHT THERE!!”
Dan Fogelman is the writer and director of this film… but he gets my immediate respect upon learning he wrote the screenplay for Disney’s TANGLED - by far and away my favourite Disney movie of the last 20 years. Zootopia was very good, but for the record, your five year old daughters (now in their teens or something) were wrong. Frozen was staggeringly overrated.
“Quick! While granddad over there talks about Disney animation, I might just slip by him”. not so likely - I photographed Olivia Cooke earlier this year at the premiere of Steven Spielberg’s “Ready Player One”, in which she played the female lead.
“Are you sure you’re holding that thing high enough?”
”Who… me? I’m taking a selfie with the Swiss Clock behind me. Why? who are you?”
“And so I said ‘it’s obvious : you call the sequel Ready Player 2!!!’ And he went silent and wouldn’t talk to me for a week”
“I think Tangled is me… so is Bolt…. and so is Cars2…. but what the hell is ‘The Quiet Ones’??”
”Oh… I… erm…” - that’s the first premiere I photographed Olivia Cooke at!
“It’s okay to be an adult guy and love “Tangled”” - I knew it!! (Phew!)
“Could you sign that pen with this pen? I’m going meta this year… and just wait til you see what I’m doing in 2019!”
“Pokemon Go is still totally a thing… right? Also, what am I looking at?”
“Oh, you!”
”Oh, You!!”
”Oh…..”
”…. You….?” - if the conversation was any more intellectually stimulating than that, tweet me and I’ll replace this with whatever it was.
Olivia Cooke and Dan Fogelman are being interviewed together and are diligently monofocusing solely on the interviewer without looking around…. so I’m focussing on anyone else who looks interesesting or isn’t entirely blocked by other members of the public. the Paparazzi pen hasn’t budged since Cooke and Fogelman arrived… most of them appear to be disinterested in goings-on.
“I started signing as Samuel L Jackson and not one of you even noticed….”
“And now I’m taking a picture of ME!! But how am I supposed to take a photo of everyone who’s NOT me??”
“Just so long as you all respect my arb… arby… arby terry ……orf…. orff… orfy… orforitee, we’ll all get along fine”. At this premiere I was told TWICE by security that I could NOT stand by the fence where the guests were walking past. When I finally left, i was thanked, and my space was immediately taken by a girl who was not asked to leave who stood there for the whole premiere.
“He was standing right there, asked to leave because nobody was allowed to stand there, and then somebody immediately took his place and was allowed to stay? How can THAT happen?”. Guy was a big dude and my spot was taken by a younger prettier girl. But there is almost no way that can have anything to do with that.
“I’m just glad I’m on the TALENT side of the barriers” With me and the cowboy-hatted woman and German tourists with no real idea what Steven Spielberg’s “Ready Player One” was..
So… that was that. Maybe not the biggest premiere, maybe not the fairest premiere…. in fact the only thing particularly unique about it was how late the screening was : 19:45 is almost two hours later than most. That was one good thing about being outside the pens : I felt less compelleted to stay, and left 15 minutes earlier and ran (literally ran) for the train. Never trust a train operator whose name starts with “G” and ends with “ovia”.
And that’s the halfway point of London Film Festival. Six days down… six to go.
Until next time … which is Tomorrow!
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