Page 58 of Hollywood, Ending

The anchors laugh together.

“Okay, you’re clearly Real-Life Besties. Congratulations on the film. We haven’t gotten to see it yet, but The New York Times preview called it one of the most anticipated pictures of the year so far, and we can’t wait to see it in theaters October fourth. Juniper and Kai, thanks, besties.”

“Thank you so much,” I say.

“And we’re out,” Ellen says. “Great job. We’ve got two minutes until Duluth. Three more of these and we move on to the roundtables. Y’all are doing great.”

I turn to Juniper. “Nice work on rhinoceros,” I say.

“There actually was a rhino that escaped the Prague Zoo,” she says. “I didn’t even make that up. Now that will be my favorite animal forever.”

“Got it. And I guess my toothbrush is now blue,” I say.

“What color is it actually?”

“No idea. Are you actually married to the sea?”

“Quite.”

2

One thing I learn quickly about junkets: The reporters want to ask questions different from the standard ones, but they also can’t, because then they’ll lose the opportunity to interview the next set of Hollywood stars. The studio will blacklist them. This is why most interviewers don’t ask me about it even though it’s been all over the Internet. Ellen has encouraged them not to ask. The only places that ask are places that think it’s worth the trouble (like my hometown morning news show) or outlets too naive to understand the game.

One such outlet is seated at a roundtable in the hotel meeting room where we go next, once we’re done with the live hits of morning shows. The young woman from “Teen Pop Craze” has barely introduced herself when she says, “It must be hard, promoting this movie while also processing the public response to your childhood molestation.”

I nod. Ellen told me to nod and say nothing when I have not actually been asked a question. “Let me rephrase that,” the woman says. “Has it been hard?”

“Sure,” I say. “But lots of things are hard. I mean, all things considered, I’ve got a pretty great life, so maybe I should shut up and enjoy my good fortune.” This is too harsh an answer. It sounds defensive. Ellen will gently criticize it later, I’m sure.

“Matthew really transformed himself,” says another reporter, this one from BuzzFeed, “for the role…” and then we’re back on track.

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Yesterday: Matthew takes us out for dinner. The restaurant is dim; he has to put on his glasses to read the menu. It’s strange to think of Matthew Malone’s eyes failing. He tells us that on a press junket he did for a World-War-II-Jump-Out-of-Airplanes movie (his description), he answered a question about the atomic bomb by saying, “Maybe dropping the bomb on Hiroshima ultimately saved lives.”

“And even today,” he tells us, “twenty years later, people give me shit about it. Perhaps those who say it revealed my anti-Asian bias are right. Maybe the people who still comment that I love war are right. I’ve certainly made a lot of money pretending to be in wars. I don’t know. But they only say that because I wasn’t careful, because I offered an opinion. If I’ve had success since then, it’s because I don’t answer questions like that. I don’t offer opinions. I say, ‘That’s a question for the director,’ or ‘Hmm, I can’t say that I know.’ Or I answer a different question.”

_____

As I talk to the roundtable, each with their small rectangular recording devices arrayed before me, I answer the questions and feel somehow like I’m not inside my body at all, like I don’t belong to me, like my self is disappearing into those recording devices. At the table behind me, Juniper is talking as she always does, in full sentences and with great enthusiasm, but I can feel myself slowing down and it’s not even noon yet. I say, Kathryn made a great film, and someone says, How do you get yourself into the headspace to play such an intense character? The truth is, I get there through memory, by accessing the hardest and best moments of my life and pretending that they are happening again, which is not a good or healthy way to act, but the only way I know how to do it with any verisimilitude. But I don’t say that. I say that Anthony Hopkins would read a script two hundred and fifty times and then give himself over to the imagined circumstances, and that’s what I try to do, too.

_____

We’re given thirty minutes for lunch, but Ellen has some notes for me, so we go up to my room and I look out at Central Park while she talks. “Kai, when you talk about it, you need to sound confident, not hesitant or defensive. I know it’s hard, but you need to sound like who you are—a hero who put a bad man in jail and saved other kids in the process.”

“That’s not who I am.”

“Well, that’s who you need to be right now, okay? It’s like Juniper with her mom. She acts like she’s happy to talk about it. It’s acting. You’re an actor. Just…pretend, or whatever you guys do.”

“Got it,” I say. I place my forehead against the glass and look down at the busy streets below. A year ago, I would’ve given anything to have this hotel room, this life, this role.

“Also, if I can feel your disinterest, they can, too. Look, nobody enjoys a press junket, including the press. They didn’t dream of being journalists to sit at one-eighth of a roundtable discussion about a movie they may or may not have enjoyed, right? But if they don’t feed the content monster with enthusiasm, they will die, and if you don’t feed the content monster with enthusiasm, you will also die.”

“You make it sound so fun,” I say.

“I’m just trying to be realistic with you. I know these days are long. But if you need a Diet Coke, I will fetch you a Diet Coke. Need an Ativan, I will get you an Ativan. You have a suite at a nice hotel that you aren’t paying for, but it ain’t free, and the cost is doing interviews with pluck and enthusiasm.”

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