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richardrushfield:

Getting Yelled at By Celebrities at Sundance Stardust Memories: 
Part 3. James Gandolfini

Previously: David Boreanaz and Pierce Brosnan

This one is a story that has no heroes.  Certainly not me.  I might have yelled at me too if I had been on the other side of this, because certainly I am an idiot in this story.
 

But there is the other side to it that you’re up at Sundance, the most ridiculous celeb clutching mosh pit cloaked in self-importance on Earth, you’re surrounded by gifting suites and walking red carpets and the aroma of Paris Hilton is never far away.  So if you put yourself through that and you can’t have a little bit of a sense of humor about yourself and a few silly questions, well then, some might say you deserve to be badgered with inane questionnaires until your asking price falls down to the five digits.

On the year in question here, I was shooting videos for the LA Times website. Since we had no budget for video production but we on the web team were trying to make the paper see the possibilities of this crazy thing called multi-media, we were making due with what we could capture on flip cams.  Mostly that was brief talking heads videos.   

In prepping for Sundance, we tried to come up with a little questionnaire we could put to anyone we met that they could answer in 90 seconds or less.  Since every star there does a zillion interviews and there are a zillion people asking “Tell us about your film.  Tell us about your character.  Tell us about working with such a talented young director as - ” we wanted to do something that was not that.  So we thought up five dumb questions that might provoke people to have some non-pr digested thoughts about the insanity of the whole Sundance experience.  We called it Five Silly Questions and by and large it worked okay.  We put it to everyone from young actors to foreign documentarians, warned them in advance that they were silly questions, but those who played along actually produced some fun and thoughtful answers to the dumb questions, answers that did illuminate the insanity of Sundance.  (Here is one we did with someone who did have a sense of humor about it, Amy Poehler).

We spent the day at the MySpace cafe waiting for people to interview.  The Cafe was next to the giant EW press tent, an area that film people came to for the purpose of being interviewed, and believe me most of these interviews were for more inane then mine, without the grace of any awareness of their innanity. After the interviews the movie folk would duck into this little velvet roped coffee shop for some free of charge chili fries from the menu with no prices on it.  When movie people came in, we would ask them or their publicists or their assistants whether they would mind doing our video questionnaire, explaining that it was some silly questions about the sillyness of Sundance.  Most said, yes, soon as I’m finished eating and then we’d set up our mini-tripod and shoot.  A handful said, that’s not my thing or, I can’t take any more interviews today, and that was fine and we went our merry ways, never to meet again.

At one point James Gandolfini came in with his director and co-star from In The Loop which was being screened up there. I asked the publicist who was with them if he’d mind doing our silly questions.  She said she’d check with him and came back and asked, would you mind waiting until he was done eating?  I said, that was fine. Some minutes later she came back and asked, what will you be asking him about? I said, it’s just some silly questions about the sillyness of the Sundance experience.  It was not, I explained, an interview about the film, which I hadn’t seen. She ran back and came back and said that would be fine, if I could just keep waiting.  I said I could. 

The group finished eating and got up and walked out without doing our interview. I assumed I had been blown off, which was just fine.  It was my last day there and I wanted to get packed up anyway.  Just as I was preparing to leave, the publicist came back and said, they still wanted to do it but would I mind shooting it in the EW press tent.  I said that would be fine but we needed to do it right away, because I had to get going.  She ran back and came back again and said, it would be just 15 minutes, but they really wanted to do it so could I please wait.  She also said, Gandolfini had asked if I could also interview his director and co-star along with him.  I was sensing by this point that the publicist was extremely flustered about this and said, “You know, this seems like it’s going to be too much hassle. I’ve gotten enough stuff today, so let’s just do it another time.”  ”No no no,” I was assured, they really want to do it.  Just hold on for a few minutes.

Over the next hour I was pushed back three more times. At every interval, I tried to insist, let’s just forget it, but was urged to stay on.  Although I needed to go, I thought a video with Gandolfini was probably worth waiting for, and despite my sense that something was not great here, I was being reassured that they wanted to do this, so wait I did.

Finally, I was ushered into the tent into the presence of Mr. Gandolfini, his director Armando Iannucci and their co-star whose name I forget. 

As soon as I took my flipcam out of my pocket, Gandolfini became visibly annoyed. The conversation went very close to this:

James Gandolfini: What the fuck is that?
Me: It’s a video camera.
James Gandolfini: That fucking thing is a video camera?
Me: It is…they didn’t tell you this was going to be a video interview?
James Gandolfini:Noooo. They didn’t tell us.
Me: Oh, well that’s what we’re doing. Is that alright?
James Gandolfini: Wait, I thought this was for the LA Times?
Me: It is.
James Gandolfini :Isn’t that a newspaper?
Me: Yes….
James Gandolfini: So how the fuck are you going to put a video in a newspaper?
Me: Well actually…the newspaper is just one product. We’re a media company and we have a website also, which is where this video is going.
James Gandolfini: (Looks at me like I’ve just said the dumbest thing he ever heard.
Me: Look, we don’t have to do this.  Why don’t we forget it?
James Gandolfini: No no…if you think you can put a video in a newspaper, let’s go right ahead. (Actual quote, engraved in my brain until the day I die.)

As they sat down, I told them we would be asking silly questions about the sillyness of Sundance. Gandolfini glared at me. His two colleagues shuffled uncomfortably.

The filming started off as a disaster and went downhill from there.  When I hit them with the first question, “What do you like about Sundance?” Gandolfini looked like he wanted to put his fist through my skull.  Question two, what do you dislike about Sundance, I believe he refused to answer. When I hit him with question three, “What bodypart would you sacrifice to frostbite” he looked at me like he had never hated someone so much in his life and I actually thought, wow, this is going to literally turn violent; a daunting thought when two feet away from Tony Soprano.  I believe I skipped questions 4 and 5 and wrapped it up as fast as I could.

A week later, director Armando Iannucci told the story on his blog about how some idiot from the Los Angeles Times had ambushed him and the great thespian with questions about what part of their body would they most like to give up.  Somewhere on the web there is a blog entry in which he says, somewhere on the web there is a video of James Gandolfini and I looking at each other and wondering what ever happened to a great newspaper.  

That video is right here.  The pleasure was mine.

Next up: Paris Hilton

This is a great series. My only interaction with James Gandolfini has been positive (he even wished me a happy Thanksgiving once!) but it’s interesting to see the disconnect between the talent and the press, and how PR can both smooth out and exacerbate those tensions.