This past weekend, feeling particularly cheated that I wasn’t born in uber-chic, Fellini-era Italy, I decided to watch “La Dolce Vita,” and I found myself fixed to the sub-plot involving Sylvia, the buxom Swedish-American actress in Rome on a press junket for her current film. Of course the ushering in of the blinding paparazzi-culture is an obvious subject of commentary (the character Paparazzo lends his name to the movement), but more fascinating to me was the scene when Sylvia fielded questions about her movie and status as an icon. The scene was strangely similar to what I had seen the previous week.
While the “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy” press junket was comparatively less glamorous, I couldn’t help but be astounded by the culture of promoting a movie. The junket was held in the Ritz-Carlton in New York, and after I checked in to receive my press materials, there was a lunch buffet set up for reporters. I was the first to arrive, so I had a personal waiter hovering over my shoulder, prepared for when I needed more ice for my Diet Coke.
Hollywood specializes in making dreams come true for the audience, and it does an equally convincing job of doing the same for journalists. The junket makes people who seemingly have no business in such a glamorous industry feel a part of the glossy process. After all, I’d venture to say the majority of entertainment writers are just people who have sadly relinquished dreams of cinematic grandeur, so they’ve chosen instead to document it, and thus revel in it (guilty as charged). The press junket is like stepping behind the curtain and observing the mythology of the film industry. What I grew up obsessing over in magazines and movies I was now bearing witness to. In “La Dolce Vita” Sylvia is applauded for her appreciation for the three most important things in her life (“Love, love and love”), and last weekend the press was charmed by Sam Rockwell’s reenactment of a dance from “Hitchhiker’s Guide.” All the press junket amounts to is yet another Hollywood performance, a continuation of the spectacle that tries to eclipse real life.
But despite any hints of cynicism, I was rather amused by the great lengths everyone went to in order to keep us content (popcorn and soda at the movie screening! Red Bull in the lounge!). And while “La Dolce Vita” obviously lambastes this superficial culture, there’s an underlying affection for it as well; we all know the tricks, but we eat it up anyway.
The entire weekend, I was like a wide-eyed child at the circus, taking in every trick, knowing it was just a show, but relishing it all the same. Hollywood has been playing this game for years, both on and off the screen, and it knows how to exude eye-catching antics. After press interviews were done, I stood patiently alongside Rockwell, Martin Freeman and Zooey Deschanel, waiting for an elevator, continually reminding myself of how utterly surreal the situation was.
Communication junior Lindsay Sakraida is the PLAY editor. She can be reached at [email protected].
