I was sent to a downtown Toronto hotel to interview Ewan McGregor. He was in town during the 2010 TIFF (Toronto International Film Festival) promoting his new film Salmon Fishing In Yeman, yet to be released. I don't normally do junkets but this was a special request from the on-line magazine for whom I write. We at SNAM believe ourselves to be the conservationist of the long form interview whereas a junket is journalism what speed dating is to love.
I was standing in a hallway among a mingling scrum of press people, publicists and publicity assistants when a representative from the film approached me and asked if I might be interested in talking to the director presumably with the notion to put my idle time into good use. I declined, thinking McGregor is interview enough, even if it was only for the 5 minute allotted time. But then - perhaps I overheard someone mention his name, or I saw it written on a poster - it occurred to me that the director is Lasse Hallstrom.
SNAM has been trying to get Lasse to sit in front of our cameras for years. It's not always easy to secure the attention of a prolific, high profile director, and yet, here he was all but pushed aside due the star appeal of McGregor. I revoked my disinterest and pushed for the interview.
I got it. Thing is, it would happen immediately. Then and there. Here and now.
No matter how much of a professional you might be it still takes time to work up towards talking to an accomplished actor, director, screenwriter etc... But in the space of two minutes I went from waiting in line to speak to Ewan McGregor to sitting in a chair in front of a camera talking to Lasse Hallstrom. I had not seen his film, I had no questions prepared, I wasn't even psychologically geared for this. And yet...my mouth started moving and words started shooting out.
You will see the results of that interview in this weekend's show, cleverly dubbed by our editor as, Lasse Come Home. ( I mentioned that to Lasse and he thought it was terribly funny).
The films this weekend are The Shipping News and The Cider House Rules, both directed by Hallstrom.
These films fit perfectly in Hallstrom's canon of stories about small town people with unaffected and almost pure thought. Both films are taken from best selling novels: The Shipping News by Annie Proulx and The Cider House Rules by John Irving, who also wrote the Oscar winning script. Irving too joins us during The Interviews.
I tried my best with the eight minutes allowed to get as much out of Hallstrom that I could; his imaginations of small time life, his gentleness of characters, his admiration of simplicity and his keen view of North America, though he himself is European.
Hallstrom, from what I could gather during our brief interaction, seemed calm almost to the point of being zen. I believed he was amused at my last minute pitch to get in to see him, unarmed with the confidence and security that comes from a ready set list of questions. But what happened was a conversation about his movies, his characters, his actors and his views. We had fun, I think. So much so that later when I came across his sound technician I was told that I was Lasse's second favourite interviewee - first prize went to an intelligent, charming and inarguably beautiful anchorwoman. I allowed him that preference.
So, for the first time in SNAM history, that I know of, a junket interview will be aired. We've done a few tricks to the visuals so that, had I not told you here, you might have never known it was a junket interview.
