Ben's Grab Bag

wilwheaton:

This is pretty funny, and I think Richard is way too hard on himself. Gandolfini was an asshat, so was his director (who lied about what happened on his blog), and the publicist who put them in the same place completely failed to do his/her/its job by not making sure the coddle celebrity and his precious director were very clear about what they were getting into.

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).

[CUT BY WIL. CLICK THROUGH TO READ THE REST OF THE SETUP]

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

Armando Iannucci is one of the greatest political satirists of our time; you take that back!