The Apatow Machine

I've had the pleasure of encountering the Apatow bunch a couple of times in a couple of different permutations, including the phoner with Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg. I got to meet the whole bunch together, including the mastermind man himself, at the junket for Knocked Up way back when--in 2007.

Interestingly, what was most notable about this junket was not so much the Apatow bunch as the fact that Britney Spears chose to drive in at the very same time that I was leaving. And this was exciting because this was during the height of her crazy period and the paparazzi were going insane. She had her (tinted) window rolled down, so obviously she wanted them to get a picture of her. But they chased in this crazy mob, which was actually really scary. And then when she went inside, they actually came to blows with the hotel's staff. As I was walking in a minute later, I could hear the hotel workers talking, clearly quite shaken up by the whole event. I felt really bad for them, and now can tell you first hand that paparazzi are frigging terrifying.

As for the junket itself, there were two press conferences. Leslie Mann and Paul Rudd in one, which was pretty exciting because I have had a crush on Paul Rudd since Clueless. I controlled my desire to tell him this. Also, he is short. But still cute and funny. Leslie Mann, on the other hand, is insanely gorgeous. As gorgeous as she looks on screen, multiply that times 4 zillion in person. She is like an amazing porcelain doll, that likes to say 'fuck'. I actually had a phoner with her later, I think when Knocked Up came out on DVD, and she was fairly reserved on the phone. Obviously she has to do this stuff all the time; actress, Judd Apatow's wife, etc. It was pretty de rigeur, but goddamn in person - wow.

The second press conference was Judd and Seth, so they were both quite funny. This was at the time that Judd Apatow was just about to take over the universe - people didn't QUITE know his name the way they do now. Knocked Up is what tipped him over the edge. But he's a cool guy. And Seth Rogen is like the most humble dude in the universe. This was also before he lost all the weight. But anyhow, you get why they like each other. They both do good work, and are doing well, but their heads are on as straight as possible given the circumstances, which is impressive.

Then I left and got caught in the Britney madness. Madness.

Sweet Jesus

One of my first ever TV spots was to cover Nativity Story, which was not surprisingly a take on the nativity by director Catherine Hardwicke - now of Twilight fame. The movie itself was okay -- coming from the POV of someone without a lot of nativity comparisons.

The TV spot, I thought, went okay. I was informed by my editor I was mistaken. First, I incorrectly assumed it was going to be a one-camera set up. It was a very small movie, so I thought the publicity would only have the budget to do just the camera on the talent and not also have a camera set on me. Second, most of my compatriots on the web world were not the types to dress up. So I didn't either. My lovely editor informed me this made me look like shit.

In case you can't tell, my lovely editor was an asshole. This is not just my opinion; this is actual fact. Okay, this might be an exaggeration, but let's just say no one who has worked with him ever wants to work with him again. So I call that fact.

Asshole or not, I will say he was right - you should get gussied up for on-camera (presuming they are going to cut back to you and not just use clips of the talent only), and since you never can tell if they are going to spring for the two-camera set up, well, you have to be on the safe side and load up on the gussy before you get there. Still, Fuckwit Editor did also manage to make me even more neurotic about my appearance, which I sure as shit did not need.

In case you care, I interviewed Oscar Isaac and Shohreh Aghdashloo in addition to Catherine Hardwicke that day. Everyone was very nice. Hardwicke was pretty low key; she was definitely perkier when I had the Twilight phoner with her. I get the picture she's a pretty unique bird. Isaac was a young guy who hadn't done much of anything, so predictably he was very happy and nice and gracious and mostly just thrilled to be there, I'm assuming. I informed him he made a very hot Joseph, which he clearly found amusing. Shohreh was absolutely the sweetest thing ever. She was lovely and beautiful and so sweet and warm to me, and did not make me feel bad at all that I was not properly gussied. I will take her home with me.

Some Kind of Wonderful

The other excitement of my recent Cake Eaters junket was interviewing Mary Stuart Masterson, who directed the movie. Like many people of my age, Some Kind of Wonderful was a seminal movie during my upbringing. I resisted the urge, however, to ask her how enjoyable it was on a scale of 1-10 to make out with Eric Stoltz.

Mary Stuart Masterson was, in person, a little more feminine than I think you'd expect--if by feminine you mean she was wearing a flowy flowery bohemian type shirt and some dangly jewelry, which I do. She basically looked exactly like she used to (hair a little longer than, you know, when she was a tomboy drummer), but slightly older. Mostly she's aging very very well. Also, unlike people who put their middle name or whatever into their stage name for SAG purposes (this means you, Philip Seymour Hoffman), MSM officially goes by Mary Stuart. Fascinating.

The most exciting part of the interview for me was when someone brought up the fact that the movie dealt with an older 20-something guy dating a high school age girl. I informed the table that my husband had referred to it as 'The best movie about statutory rape he'd ever seen," and was rewarded with a huge laugh. The writer (who was on the phone for the interview) suggested they put that on the poster. Ah, Mary Stuart Masterson thinks I am hilarious.

Natasha Richardson

According to the news, poor Natasha Richardson was laid to rest yesterday in upstate New York. I never interviewed her, so I can't add my two cents of--yes, she was lovely--like I'm sure most people who met her can. I interviewed her sister, Joely Richardson, who looked at me very compassionately as she sat next to an ornery Timothy Hutton for a TV spot at The Last Mimzy junket. And I sat next to her mother, Vanessa Redgrave, during the roundtable for Evening, and remember thinking to myself how classy she was and more importantly, Jesus she looks good.

Josh and I were on our semi-annual family ski trip in Colorado, skiing ourselves the day that Natasha Richardson took her fall in Montreal. Having skied my whole life, I was initially very confused as to how on earth she should have hurt herself so badly on a beginner's slope. But I can only guess she must have gotten up a hell of a lot of speed for quite a dramatic fall, considering that the ski patrol had to come for her and then sled her down, and then, of course, the ultimate result. 

All I know is that for our anniversary this year, Josh got ski helmets for both of us--adamant that we were both going to break out heads and die. Being from, as another friend put it, the last generation of people who didn't use helmets for anything, I was only persuaded to wear mine by the fact that Josh got ones with ipod hookups. I will say that mine was very comfortable, warm, made wearing goggles comfortable for the first time in my 30 years of skiing, and of course I loved the ipod hookup.

In light of what happened to Natasha Richardson, it seems like an extra smart move on Josh's part and now I shall recommend doing the same to all skiers out there. You can get cheap helmets with ipod hookups. I recommend you do it. 

The Twilight of my life

Last week I did a junket for a little indie called The Cake Eaters, which featured a relatively unknown actress at the time it shot--Kristen Stewart, now of Twilight superstardom. 

The illustrious Ms. Stewart (better known to psychotic Twihards as Bella Swan) had never particularly impressed me. I'd seen her in a couple of things and she'd seemed to have a rather harsh quality to her. Plus, she's gotten a shit-ton of negative press over a less than grateful/gushing attitude about Twilight and its ravenous fans.

So, in short, I fully expected her to be a bitch. I am pleased (for her) to announce that she was not. She wasn't bursting with Disney goodness and offering to bake us cookies or anything--far from it. She was smart, intense, and a little nervous--saying that she'd heard us all laughing before she came in when we were doing the previous round of interviews and was worrying that they'd be a tough act to follow (and she seemed to actually mean it). She was clearly physically tense--kind of caved in on herself, and shaking her leg the whole time.

BUT, and this is a big but, she actually laughed once or twice and when we asked a couple of obligatory Twilight questions she didn't tell us into which orifice we could shove them. That is what surprised me. She was actually, weirdly, almost better able to answer those questions than the ones about the movie she just did because she's obviously a little humble about her work and doesn't like to sit there and be like, 'Oh I am so amazing, yes I am very talented,' which is also nice.

Her costar, btw, Aaron Stanford, whom I hadn't really seen before (evidently he was Pyro in X-Men, amongst other things) was a really easy going and funny, nice guy. She obviously was very comfortable with him, and I think he went a bit of a way to chill her out.

I guess the bottom line is this: Kristen Stewart is a bit of a serious, intense, Daria type.She can come across as a little prickly or defensive, but I got the impression that there was the hope that that covered a thoughtful person instead of a self-important bitch. After all, she is just a 19-year-old dealing with insane fan and press attention, and that is enough to scare the bajeesus out of anyone. But in person, at least when I met her, she may not have been a teddy bear, but it wasn't the diva-tude I expected. Two points for Missy K.

Sandra Bullcock

People love to ask who the craziest/meanest/bitchiest person you've interviewed was. My go-to answer, as is not surprising these days, and as I have mentioned before is Christian Bale. But in addition, another colorful character I encountered was the interesting Ms. Sandra Bullock.

This was a couple of years ago, at the junket for her winter thriller flop Premonition (I actually didn't think it was that bad, but that is surely due to low expectations). First, the junket consisted of roundtables--for writer Bill Kelly and co-star Julian McMahon. Kelly has faded from my memory such that if he walked into my house and sat on my face, I'd be like, 'Who are you?' And perhaps, also, 'What are you doing in my house? And, for that matter, on my face?'

Julian McMahon was a little more memorable--likely especially to the other junket journos moreso than I. McMahon is one of the dishy docs (or whatever) from Nip/Tuck, which I personally have never watched. However, the room was filled with a batch of menopausal women journos who were absolutely faint with their last good estrogen high of their lives at his presence. He arrived a few minutes late, promptly apologized (like a nice, polite person) for the traffic or whatever bullshit that made him late, and then promptly enraptured the sewing circle with his Australian accent, blue eyes and humble yet flirty demeanor (this guy is, I think, from the George Clooney school of, What? Who? Me? Hot? Nah. ... Want to take your pants off?). The women tittered and giggled and everyone was happy.

Then they shuffled us to the big rooms for a press conference, because evidently Ms. Bullock is too amazing to sit with us plebes in a roundtable like everyone else on her film. Let me put it to you this way--sometimes there are press conferences, sometimes there are roundtables. Generally, the smaller the movie or smaller-name the talent, the more likely you are to get a roundtable or a 1:1 interview. However, it's not a hard and fast rule. And sometimes you get roundtables for movies like Hairspray and interview John Travolta from 1 foot away. But this is absolutely the only time that I have ever experienced a combination of both, which is obviously indicative that the rest of the talent was cool enough to do roundtables but Ms. B was like, 'Me? At a roundtable? HELL NO. They will all perish from my greatness if they get this close.'

So, rather than slumming it, we were broken out into two large press conference rooms, which also meant that since she was the only talent for the press conferences, that one room would have to wait the half hour or whatever and go second. Which sucks, and was made worse by the fact that she was also late. And didn't apologize. And then acted like a attitudinal maniac when she got there.

Okay, maybe that is slightly harsh. But let's just say, she did not give me the warm fuzzies. Someone asked her a question about children/being a mother/blah blah, which, as you will know from previous posts, makes sense because in this movie she is a mother and the convention is you can get away with asking these questions in this circumstance. She was not having it. She yelled at us for being inappropriately interested in her reproductive organs (perhaps true, but as I have also said before you can dispense with that politely). Then she went onto some insane tangent about how her step children are her children (ok), she is a mother (all right), doesn't need children to come out of her womb to make her their mother (true, I guess), the world should adopt more (well, yes...), and they should do better interviews of people who are parents to make them better parents and if we all just started paying attention to our neighbors and taking care of them the world would finally be a good place (um...). Or something. It was a tirade, it was off point, and it got, how do you say, ranty and bitchy and, well, crazy.

In short, America's Sweetheart had an edge to her, and not a soft peachy one, either. Which makes sense, all told, since the day before when I was doing my research on her discovered that someone had enjoyed themselves on her Wikipedia page, peppering the entry with references to her as Sandra 'Bullcock' and slipping in that in high school she was voted 'most likely to bang your dog.' IMO, she kind of deserved it.

The Old Boss, hanging out a shingle

Today's post is not going to be about marvelous famous people, but more the business of the business. So you true star-effers out there who read only to find out if Jennifer Aniston has man hands can just hit the snooze button until next time. Sorry, but that's just the way it is.

As I believe I have mentioned before, my old company is heading quickly for that good night. Like many of its former employees, I have a lot of unflattering things to say about how they ran their business (I, like many, also had these things to say while I was there). I cannot be and am not entirely sour on them because they did give me my foot in and two years of glorious, easy fun. A job that literally made my jaw hang open the first few days in the office, terrific friends, travel, and for the first time in my life a career I actually cared about. It is a luxury I will seek to repeat for the rest of my life. Like I always said, 'Terrible company, wonderful job.'

But now said company is reaping the benefits of what it sowed. And by that I mean last week their second major round of layoffs finally came to fruition. You see, in case you weren't sure that their heads were up their asses, they laid off about 60 people a couple of months ago. However, not being a California-based company, they were evidently unaware that if you lay off that many people (I can't recall if it is a solid number or a percentage of your workforce) in California, you have to give a thing called, 'mourning pay', i.e. you can tell everyone they are being fired, but you still have to keep them around for about 60 days, thereby totally screwing your desperate money-saving measure to begin with. So, that happened two months ago, wiping out my surviving former web coworkers and a lot of other good people with it. But the poor fuckers had to sit around like lame ducks in limbo for 2 whole months doing their job so they didn't get fired outright and then lose their severance and unemployment, all the while knowing their days were numbered. Pretty glum.

A month ago said company made another delightful announcement: they were picking up roots and relocating the entire operation to New Mexico. Obviously. Because that is definitely where you should go when you are a network based on the movie industry. This move is basically characteristic of the foolish decisions that were made all along. The Powers That Be were evidently acting on some major tax incentives to bring entertainment-related industry to NM, which is delightful in the short-run, but to anyone with an IQ higher than Forrest Gump's it is obviously a terrible idea if you have any desire for the company itself to succeed in the long run. Perhaps that is not their plan, in which case it makes total sense.

Regardless of the why, it was decisions like this that made those of us in the trenches absolutely insane from day to day. But unfortunately, with the economy as it is, the Powers That Be are now able to blame their failing enterprise on the current financial climate instead of the terrible choices they have made all along--thereby depriving the (literally) hundreds of solid workers they'd hired in LA of the satisfaction of at least knowing that somewhere in their hearts they had to, as Michael Jackson put it, face the man in the mirror and realize they fucked up.

Meanwhile, this desperate Hail Mary of theirs effectively pink-slipped the entire rest of the workforce. I'm not certain how many, if any, of them were given the opportunity to stay on with the company and relocate. Actually, I believe they were were told they could look on the corporate website and see what positions they were hiring for in New Mexico and then apply. Oh yes. You read me right: they were allowed to APPLY FOR THEIR OWN JOBS. Now if that isn't respect for you, I don't know what is.

This move is so terrible that even the nearly retirement-aged cronies that have been riding the corporate coattails of said company for decades have opted to abandon ship and go their own in this horrible economy. It is truly staggering.

As for me, I'm experiencing the delights of freelancing in this climate. Considering that the media is actively hemorrhaging employees on a daily basis, it's not as easy as it once was. But stuff floats around here and there, unemployment is a blessing, and I am working on things in my lovely basement. In the meantime, I look forward to the time in the future when we can look back on the Great Recession of the New Millennium and say, 'Oh, remember that winter in 2009 when I ate nothing but shoelaces for an entire month? Good times.'

Confessions of a Shopaholic

Let's start with honesty: this is not a good movie. It wasn't as terrible as I expected; in fact, it could have been far worse. But let's just say you will be missing nothing if you decide to stay home and watch Supernanny reruns that night instead. Frankly, the book wasn't that exciting either, which is surprising considering that it was a mass seller that has spawned several sequels. But it wasn't until after I saw the movie and then got a copy of the book that I realized I'd actually read it before and had evidently forgotten it entirely. Yup.

The junket for this one was another press conference in two parts. Part 1 - a bunch of people that don't matter much along with Isla Fisher, whom you will know as A. the movie's lead, B. the crazy chick from Wedding Crashers, and C. Sasha Baron Coen (Borat)'s wife. She is very nice and very grateful to have work and very tiny and cute, and when you ask her questions that even border on personal life, she is capable of dismissing them politely (unlike some others I can think of) and without making the journalist feel like a giant turd. In short, she is lovely.

Second press conference featured the likes of Hugh Dancy (a bunch of stuff, but you probably don't know who he is unless you are a huge movie geek a la moi) and Kristen Scott Thomas, which was pretty exciting, what with her being Fiona in Four Weddings and A Funeral and Katharine from The English Patient and all. They were both normal, nice, whatever.

The most exciting part for me was that I had a 1:1 with producer Jerry Bruckheimer after the press conference was over. In fact, it was the very second the press conference was over; they actually called out my name to see if I was there to be brought up to his interview room.

Jerry Bruckheimer is like mega huge producer man. He produced Pirates of the Caribbean, Beverly Hills Cop, The Rock, and just about anything with an explosion and Nicholas Cage in it and grossed a zillion dollars. My friend whom I was doing the interview for was very excited about it and very nervous, which unfortunately got me nervous when usually I'm comfortable with 1:1s. But Jerry B is a big fish, so there you go.

I thought with a name like Bruckheimer he was a member of the tribe, but after meeting him I have concluded that he is actually just a tiny, intense German-ancestry type. I had a full 15 minutes with him and he enjoyed very much giving me 1 word answers and making me work for every second of it. Not that he was mean; he wasn't. And he was happy to talk about other projects, etc. But seriously, not a verbose man. Weirdly, he noticed my crazy socks and at some point broke off and complimented me on them and said they would be perfect for the character of Suze in Shopaholic. Suze, mind you, is the one who wears weird shit. I don't know if that was a compliment. 

He's Just Not That Into You

I decided to take a little freelance action while friends were off at Sundance (oh Sundance, one day I shall get to you), so I covered a couple of junkets. Amongst them were He's Just Not That Into You, the ensemble romantic comedy born of the book born of the Sex & the City episode of the same name. The movie was surprisingly better than I expected. Not, you know, tell-everyone-you-ever-met amazing or anything, but cute enough. 

It felt good to be back in the saddle, marching to the check-in table at the theater, getting my pass and my popcorn voucher. I think it made Josh happy, too--even if it was just knowing that getting to do stuff like that makes me happy. But it felt like the LA I know--old and comfortable. That, and there was a small earthquake during the screening that we could feel. No one moved or panicked. Oh, LA.

The junket was the next day, at a hotel where I have not junketed before, so I did have to manage to get my bearings. But after a brief incident in which the Latino housekeepers/repairmen had to direct me around, I made it to where I was headed. 

The junket was press conference style. The first press conference was Justin Long (Ed), Ginnifer Goodwin (Margene from Big Love), Bradley Cooper (Wedding Crashers), Drew Barrymore, Scarlett Johansson, and Kevin Connolly (E from Entourage), and it was an interesting one mostly because there was foreign press there and foreign press + a romantic comedy movie = the opportunity for nearly every question for the talent to be a personal one. 

You see, if you are going to ask more spunky personal questions of the talent other than the 'why did you decide to do this project' variety, the go-to channel is ones that roughly relate to the movie. So, in the instance of Bride Wars, say, someone will ask Anne Hathaway & Kate Hudson questions about marriage, wanting to get married, what makes a good wedding, etc. If you play a mother in the movie, press will ask how you feel about motherhood. Questions that would normally make the publicists freak out and the talent squirm in these instances become legit game.

So, He's Just Not That Into You is all about romantic foibles, cheating, breaking up, falling in love, etc., which means that the press now essentially has carte blanche to ask questions about how the talent has broken up with people, etc.--the things gossip rags die for and the things that the talent, like all normal people, would likely prefer play closer to the vest. And since the foreign press is notorious for just asking totally inappropriate personal questions, this was an interesting set up.

Interestingly, of everyone on that panel, I would say the ones with the biggest reason to be uncomfortable/nervous would easily be Justin Long & Drew Barrymore--being that they dated and have since broken up (all in the press). But the saltiest was easily Scarlett Johansson who had a puss on her like we'd all just rolled in elephant turd. Obviously she is amazing and all of us should realize how fortunate we even are to be in the same room with her.

The first personal question, I believe, came from one of my American counterparts, but he did a lovely job asking it with a bit of self-deprecating humor. A soft touch that conveyed the, 'oh yes, I am being a bit cheeky here, but I have to ask,' which resulted in at least one or two of the talent and ponying up a story or two of being dumped.

As the press conference went on, however, the creeps kept piping up. It never ceases to amaze me how inappropriate the journalists who cover this beat can be. Some of them seem super weird, and are able to ask things sweetly, appropriately despite the fact that they are wearing pants that look like they have them left over from a part-time job as a Footlocker sales associate and displaying several inches of gut hanging out from beneath their shirt. Others look normal, dull even, and then essentially wind up in a wrestling match with the publicists so they can ask their pushy, rude questions.

This particular press conference featured some of my favorite characters: The crazy nutjob radio woman with obvious plastic surgery who usually butts in when someone else is talking to ask a question "I know my listeners are dying to know," the rude abrupt guy who got into an argument with Sean Penn last year at the Into the Wild junket, and the crazy Italian woman who looks like Ozzy Osbourne. All of them of course asked questions. 

However, they were not outdone by a French woman who cobbled together an obnoxious question for Scarlett Johansson, which she tried to veil with her beautiful accent. The question was along the lines of this: "I loved one of the other couples in the movie--not the one you played. They were discussing marriage. Now tell me about your marriage." To which Scarlett basically deigned to speak for the first time, spitting snottily, "Ask me in 25 years." Given, I wouldn't necessarily want to answer, either, but you can be nice about shooting that question down. Honestly. It is possible.

She was outdone, however, by a guy I've never seen before who asked a completely unrelated two part question. The first part was requesting a comment on the more male-oriented Judd Apatow movies. Fine. Whatever. The second part, actually baffles the mind. He was clearly trying to ask a very very personal question, but constructed it in such a way as it actually made zero sense. The question came out to mean something like this, "Considering the public knows about your personal lives, how does the public's knowledge of your personal lives impact your performance in this movie." It took him a lot longer to spit this out, but in short, it was just a physically and theologically impossible question. A sentence constructed of words that fit together but made zero sense. Drew Barrymore appropriately responded, "HUH?"

He rephrased, "Julia Roberts famously does not like answering questions about her personal life. If you want to get her to get up and walk out of an interview, you ask her about that, So blah blah blah now I am asking the same ontological impossibility again." Justin Long fielded it this time with a "Well, too bad she's not here," which was amusing. At this point Ginnifer Goodwin tried to be game and come up with some sort of answer, the panicking publicist literally wrestled the microphone out of the journalist's hand, and then Scarlett Johansson was moved enough to basically say, "How dare you ask me about what I draw from for my work. If I were giving a class at the Actor's Studio, maybe I would explain that, but you couldn't possibly understand." Those weren't exactly her words, mind you, but that was essentially the tone. Obviously only the very very elite and special can understand the concepts behind acting. I didn't know.

In short: this is why I usually stay quiet and don't ask questions at press conferences, preferring to save them for 1:1s.

Please note, my impressions of the rest of the talent are this:

Justin Long - affable, humble, funny. Bradley Cooper - pretty much the same. I hadn't realized he's also hosted Globe Trekker although I've watched the episodes he did. That blew my mind. He is also quite hot, if piercing blue eyes are your thing. Kevin Connolly was rather petite, but also extremely good natured--basically just what I expected. Ginnifer Goodwin was lovely, and much more done up, sexier in person than she usually gets to play on screen. She also is evidently Southern, if the periodic "y'all"s are anything to go by. And Drew Barrymore was goddamn lovely, nice, chatty, open, fun, not snobby, generous, shared stories about herself, and basically I would probably be friends with her. You know, if she wanted to.

There was a second round of writers and directors and whatnot, but honestly, are you really interested in them? I didn't think so.

I've been a bad, bad girl

Okay, so it was December. It was Christmas. It was New Year's. We had friends visiting. I had a cold. I went AWOL. I am now un-AWOL. And I have returned bearing apologies for my absence. I'm sure you were inconsolable.

This weekend I dragged my sinus-laden self out to catch up on some of the Oscar contenders I have yet to see. I wanted to see Revolutionary Road. Josh wanted to see Slumdog Millionaire. We compromised on Frost/Nixon.

As anticipated: it was vg, and predictably I left the theater asking Josh to explain details of Watergate to me and have since loaded up my Netflix queue with other Nixon-themed movies (Nixon, All the President's Men) to complete my movie-education of history (is there any other way?). 

Obviously Frank Langella was vg as Nixon (although I still think no one deserves this year's Best Actor Oscar more than Sean Penn for Milk and you are not going to change my mind, no way, no how). I was delighted with myself that I had actually interviewed several of the main players in Frost/Nixon for other movies, including Langella himself.

I had a 1:1 with him last year for Starting Out in the Evening, yet another littttttle indie, in which, he was, among other things, briefly naked, which I did not at all enjoy as he is not exactly a spring chicken. He even referred to his nudity in the film during our interview, saying it was harmless since it was just 'a bit of a little old man in a bathtub.' I felt otherwise, but I opted against sharing that with him.

The two most interesting things about interviewing Frank Langella were: 

1. My mother oddly creamed over the fact that I interviewed him, informing me how he was 'hot' back in his day. This did not help with the bathtub bit.

2. He informed me, out of the blue, that I should have children. I am not sure exactly what we were talking about (Starting Out in the Evening, duh) and in context he asked me how old I was, and I told him, and he asked me if I was married/had children and I answered (yes/no). And then he basically was like, 'Well, you should have children,' and followed it up with, 'You would be a good mother.' To which I responded (affably, if I do say so myself), 'Um, okay, well, I'll get right on that.' 

I'm not exactly certain what quality I exuded that made him so certain of my obvious maternal qualities. My buxom bosom? My gorgeousness of which the next generation should not be deprived? My ability to ask probing questions while not saying things like, 'I still have nightmares of seeing you naked'? I have no idea. But whatever the reason, he certainly felt it with conviction--when I left and was saying goodbye, he called after me, just in case I forgot, that I should indeed have children.

Obviously I went home and told Josh that Frank Langella commanded us to procreate. I'm sorry to tell you, Mr. Langella, that the jury is still out on whether I am going down that path. But should we choose it, we will clearly have to name all our children after you.