Dish (39 page)

Junkets were one of the studios’ favorite ways of promoting a film. For a weekend that cost about $100,000 to $200,000, they received literally millions of dollars worth of publicity. Studios would pay for the reporters to be flown—often first class—to top hotels in New York or Los Angeles or even overseas, where they were fed fine food and wine, given bags full of freebies, reimbursed
for expenses like taxis, and sometimes even given $100 or so pocket money. Reporters were told what they could and couldn’t ask the stars: don’t quiz Bruce Willis about his family; Sean Young was a forbidden topic when interviewing James Woods; don’t interrogate Arnold Schwarzenegger about reports that his father was a Nazi; and don’t ask Tom Cruise
anything
personal. The resulting articles were almost invariably puff pieces. Journalists who wrote or broadcast anything negative would be blackballed on the junket circuit, losing precious access to top movie stars, as well as the cushy, all-expense-paid weekends that had become a cherished perk for some Hollywood reporters. Reporters who covered junkets—regulars are sometimes called “junketeers”—were bought and paid for, and they knew it. “There should be an editorial note at the top of the articles, like health warnings on cigarettes,” said one writer. “Danger: this is a puff piece that has been totally negotiated with the subject’s publicist and is worthless.” Nevertheless, most newspapers and TV stations loved junkets. While some insisted on reimbursing studios when they sent reporters on junkets, the interviews were a godsend for smaller newspapers and local TV stations that normally wouldn’t have the budget or the clout to get face time with a star like Tom Cruise.

Celebrities, for the most part, hated junkets. Some called them “gang bangs.” They were better than the multicity promotional tours that studios used to force celebrities to make, but junkets were grueling, two-or three-day performances for celebrities who had to appear enthusiastic, friendly, and spontaneous as ten or twenty gangs of reporters peppered them with inane questions like “How does it feel being so famous?” “What toothpaste do you use?” and “Is your mother proud of you?” Some stars, like Arnold Schwarzenegger, were so professional and cooperative during junkets that studio publicists held them in awe. The action hero has been known to give more than sixty interviews in one day—and make each seem like his first. “Arnold deserves the ironman endurance award in junkets,” according to one publicist, who said the actor surprised and flattered reporters by remembering their names and details from conversations he had had with them years earlier. “The only way you can tell that Arnold is getting tired is when his accent starts to get a little stronger,” said
one reporter, or when his hostility toward journalists began to show through, like the time one asked him for an autograph—an unwritten taboo at junkets—for his mother. “Sure,” Schwarzenegger said genially. “We wouldn’t want you to disappoint your mother.” Then he added with a loud laugh, “I’m sure you’ve already disappointed her enough.”

Some stars were notoriously terrible at junkets. Once, when asked what she thought of the assembly-line interviews, Carrie Fisher threw herself on the ground and started pounding the floor. Meryl Streep practically refused to do them; she was just no good at censoring herself. At the
Postcards from the Edge
junket, Streep blurted out that she was upset that Madonna would edge her out from
Evita,
declaring “I can sing better than she can!” Once, when promoting
Navy Seals,
Charlie Sheen showed up slurring his words and looking like a gangster with a yellow fedora and a pin-striped suit. When a reporter asked Sheen to describe his character, the actor got belligerent. “You saw the movie,” Sheen snapped, “so why should I describe the character?” Then he started “buying” drinks for reporters—even though it was an open bar. None of the junketeers reported on Sheen’s peculiar behavior.

Perhaps no major star is as bad on junkets as Julia Roberts. When promoting
Hook,
the actress was asked how she had prepared for the role of Tinkerbell. “I don’t know,” Roberts said, then with some irritation added, “she’s just sort of this thing that happens. Who wants to know how Tinkerbell comes about?”

Asked if recent press reports about her erratic behavior had upset her, Roberts replied: “I just wish the public at large would concern themselves with their own lives, with their own personal business and affairs and then probably divorce rates would be lower, there wouldn’t be so many fractured families and troubled people and things would be a lot easier for everybody.”

After a long, awkward silence a reporter finally said, “You’re not happy being here, are you?”

“I’ve learned the hard way to be more frugal with words around people like you,” Roberts shot back. When a reporter phoned in a story that some people were disappointed with
Hook
and Roberts, she was asked to leave the junket early.

Kingsley had a problem with junkets. They were grueling work for her stars. They also created the sort of media blitz that made her clients seem more accessible than she liked. Reporters who went on junkets would stockpile quotes or footage and trot them out whenever that star was in the news. Even worse, as far as Kingsley was concerned, junketeers would sometimes repackage the interviews and sell them to other publications—including the dreaded supermarket tabloids. The studios didn’t care, but Kingsley certainly did. She did not want it to look like her hard-to-get celebrities were chatting it up with enemies like the
National Enquirer.
What’s more, appearing to give interviews to tabloids cheapened the value of the star’s words and put Kingsley in a weaker position when she negotiated exclusive interviews with upscale magazines. Kingsley was determined to tighten up the market for the precious Cruise interviews, so she teamed up with Kidman’s publicist, Nancy Seltzer, and demanded that reporters who wanted to interview Cruise or Kidman at the
Far and Away
junket had to sign a “consent agreement.” The contract stipulated, among other things, that quotes from Cruise and Kidman could be used “only during or in connection with the initial theatrical release” of
Far and Away.
All hell broke loose.

“Outrageous!” said an editor of the
Dallas Morning News.

“Blackmail!” charged one broadcast reporter.

“Manipulation!”

“A threat to freedom of the press!”

“This is the final insult,” said New York
Newsday
movie critic Jack Matthews. “Publicity has taken over. It’s really offensive. This is entertainment extortion.”

“Since when is it a bad thing to make tough demands on behalf of your client?” Kingsley said. “The person who has the goods has a much stronger position. Why not exercise that position? In which business do you not do that?”

“Marlin Fitzwater wouldn’t have Sam Donaldson sign this,” HBO’s assignment editor Glen Meehan complained. “I had to sign it and I didn’t like it because it put me in a situation that makes us non-news.”

“I don’t see what all the fuss is about,” Kingsley said. “If they don’t like it, they don’t have to participate.” Kingsley had
some very sound reasons for wanting the journalists to sign the agreements. For one thing, freelance reporters would sometimes sell articles in countries where Kingsley had negotiated exclusive interviews. “It makes us look like we’ve reneged on an agreement,” she said. Kingsley knew she’d lose a few journalists, but not many. Despite their noisy protests, Kingsley knew that the media needed Tom Cruise; they wanted a piece of his star power. It translated into TV ratings and newsstand sales that they needed to survive. And indeed, as she anticipated, the Four Seasons was packed that Saturday.

The junketeers were shepherded into rooms where reproduction Queen Anne chairs were arranged in semicircles around a coffee table and an overstuffed couch. Publicists escorted in the interview subjects, and the reporters politely sat through question-and-answer sessions with Nicole Kidman, Ron Howard, and producer Brian Grazer. When Cruise walked into a room, however, the excitement was palpable. Cruise flashed his movie star smile and appeared genuinely happy to be there. He wore pointy-toed buckskin boots with heels at least an inch high, black jeans, and a white tee-shirt under an embroidered black shirt. He looked quite relaxed and fit, though a few journalists thought he looked a tad shorter than the five feet nine inches listed on his official biography.
*
“He reached over and gave you a handshake with such a firm grip,” recalled one reporter. “He looked you right in the eye. He connected. He had real personal power.” One journalist made the terrible faux pas of asking for Cruise’s autograph. Several of her colleagues gasped—many of them were starstruck, but they weren’t supposed to be so
obvious
about it. There was an embarrassed silence for a moment, then Cruise grinned and gave the reporter his autograph.

Some reporters who had interviewed Cruise before recognized the charm that he could turn on and off like a light switch. “His smile was a little too quick,” according to one writer. “And
his laugh was a little too loud.” His grammar wasn’t great either: “alls I’m saying” seemed to be a favorite phrase. Still, they lapped it up—including comments like, “Comedically, dramatically, physically, this movie opens up new avenues for me.” In a typical revelation, Cruise confided: “The story was enchanting. My character had a lot of dimensions I had never before explored.” He discussed the joys of being married to Kidman. “It’s just gotten better,” he gushed. “You just get to share everything. It’s really incredible.”

It all seemed so heartfelt, so spontaneous, so genuine. But when some reporters compared notes afterward, they realized that Cruise said nearly the same thing to each of the groups. Regarding the Irish brogue he learned for the film, for example, Cruise told one group: “This isn’t your old Lucky Charms accent.” To another, he said: “We didn’t just do the old Lucky Charms sort of accent.” To another he spoke of his “all-out Irish accent. Not the Lucky Charms type of stuff.” As with most junkets, the star’s answers were most likely scripted in advance.

That didn’t matter. The reporters weren’t there to expose the publicity ruse they were perpetrating. To the contrary. The junket-produced stories were usually worded to make it sound as though the writer had sat down for an exclusive interview with the star. “When a confident, smiling Cruise arrives at the Four Seasons hotel for a recent interview, he considers what drew him to
Far and Away
…” read one article. “Cruise passes on coffee for a bottle of Canadian Glacier spring water, then, settling into an overstuffed couch, he says
Far and Away
demanded he master horseback riding and bare-knuckled boxing …” read another. The headlines were fawning: “Tom and Nicole: Far and Away a Dynamic Duo on Screen” declared one headline. “Romantic Leads On Screen and Off,” went another. There were a few unpleasant incidents at the junket—a reporter who had refused to sign the consent agreement was forcibly escorted out of a Cruise interview—but overall, it was a resounding success.

Far and Away
needed all the good press it could get. When the film premiered in Cannes, it was met with outright ridicule. The audience hooted and howled with contempt. Viewers threw things at the screen. Though
Far and Away
fell short of Cruise’s
biggest hits—
Top Gun
earned $171.6 million, and
Rainman
grossed $173 million domestically—if the studio’s accounting is to be believed, the movie actually made money. It cost about $62 million to make and, according to one estimate, grossed about $100 million worldwide.
Far and Away
was a critical flop, but Cruise’s star power—and the glowing articles from the junketeering reporters—saved what might have otherwise been a box office bomb. Pat Kingsley had created a relationship between the stars and press that had not existed since the studios spoon-fed stories to Louella Parsons and Hedda Hopper: she had turned the mainstream media into a public relations machine for the stars.

Back in her cluttered office in a nondescript building near West Hollywood, Pat Kingsley put in long hours, negotiating with journalists who were willing to cut deals, screaming at those who weren’t, and comforting distraught stars who thought reporters didn’t keep their end of the agreement. Kingsley’s desk was a former blackjack table, covered with green felt and surrounded by newspaper and magazine clippings, videocassettes, unopened mail, and still-wrapped gifts from grateful stars and hopeful journalists. On her desk was a group photo of Sally Field, Jane Fonda, Jessica Lange, Goldie Hawn, and Barbra Streisand, autographed by each of them.

Considering her power and her influence, Pat Kingsley was not particularly well-paid by Hollywood standards. The $3,000 to $7,000 monthly retainer most clients paid was a pittance compared to what producers and agents made. PMK, which Kingsley owned with Lois Smith and Leslee Dart in New York, had a staff of 45—about half of them in Los Angeles. It had 135 clients in 1992 and an annual billing of about $4 million.