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SO YOU THINK IT WOULD BE LOTS OF FUN? |
 The 60th Annual Prime Time Emmy Awards Telecast is scheduled for Sunday night, Sept. 21, 2008, from 8-11 P.M. on the ABC network. Check your local TV guide for the exact time and stations in your local area. |
 DAVID LETTERMAN ...You won't believe what one reporter asked him. |
Tuxedos, famous people,
free food...and misery
of TheColumnists.com
For my money, being a newspaper reporter assigned to cover TV's annual Emmy awards backstage is like being sent to Iraq without any weapons or body armor. Oh, sure, I'm exaggerating. So far, nobody has shot at any reporters at the Emmys.
Not, of course, that it would be a bad idea for the TV Academy to post a few snipers around the joint.
I'm a survivor of many, many backstage Emmy assignments. When I was a TV columnist for The San Jose Mercury News and the Knight-Ridder News Syndicate--that would be from 1977-99--I often was sent to Southern California to cover the awards in person so my report would be uniquely our own while the competition either ran the AP wire story or had their TV critic just watch the show on the air.
Then, when I was sent to live in L.A. to be a "Hollywood correspondent" from 1983-86, being there at the Emmys was mandatory. I mean, why post a guy there if he wasn't going to do all the live events in person?
The first time I went, I arranged a pass to everything. I spent two days there, attending the camera rehearsals, the red carpet arrivals and the whole deal. In those days, the Emmys were telecast from the Civic Auditorium in Pasadena, Calif. That was a long drive in heavy traffic from either my hotel or, later, from my home in Sherman Oaks.
Was it exciting? Well, that would depend on how used to seeing celebrities you were. If you're on the show biz beat for any length of time, you can get pretty jaded with famous stars. Not the really, really big ones, of course, but the ones you see routinely on tabloid covers. In my day on the beat, a typical tabloid star was Heather Locklear. She was everywhere. I never spent any rich personal time with Heather, but she always seemed nice enough on those regular occasions when you just say hello to each other and maybe exchange a few amenities.
But excited about Heather Locklear? Sorry, not me. So, if her limo pulled up and she hit the red carpet, I'd be stifling a yawn. It wasn't just starlets that made you yawn, though. I remember how cool I thought it was when I first met William Shatner. I mean, he was already a TV icon. But being around Shatner a lot over years is an eye-opener. If you see him today as the pompous ass lawyer on "Boston Legal," believe me he's playing himself. Bill Shatner? Yawn, yawn, yawn.
So my point is: If you're covering Hollywood, getting to see stars up close is no thrill because you're doing it all the time. And the free buffet food backstage? No big deal. Everywhere you go on the show biz beat, there's a free buffet. And backstage at the Emmys, you hardly have time to eat anything.
Here's another cold shower for you: If you're a reporter covering the Emmys, you have to stay backstage. That means you actually watch the show like everybody else at home--on a TV set. In my day, that meant sitting at your station among the rows of tables where you set up your computers and try to see what's happening on TV monitors spaced around the room. They weren't big screen TV's either.
They also started the show at 5 p.m. so it would be live on the East Coast at 8 p.m. Eastern time. It was tape-delayed everywhere else. At first I thought that was a great break for a West Coast newspaper guy because I had hours and hours to get my story done because our press deadlines would be the latest. Then I realized I was syndicated to lots of papers back East and they wanted your report before their deadlines.
So, I was always writing on deadline, building my story from the bottom up because that's the way they do the show--starting with the minor awards and building up, usually 3-4 hours later, to the ones that have to be at the top of your story. If you're trying to do something that touches on the highlights of the evening, you constantly have to scramble your story, pulling some items up from the bottom and making room for them at the top. Fortunately, the Academy staff keeps a running tally for you on which networks are winning the most Emmys and they have all the pertinent facts at hand, such as how many Emmys tonight's winners have won in the past or how many times they were nominated before.
So, you may be thinking, how can you find time to talk with the winners? It's not easy if you work for a newspaper. The way the Academy set things up, the radio and TV crews got to interview the winners first. After half an hour or so, the winners then would come back to the print room and stand in a little roped off circle while maybe 30 reporters circled them. If you're the shy, hang-back type of reporter, you're chopped liver. Yo;u have to be loud and obnoxious to get your question in. Fortunately, I'm capable of being loud and obnoxious, so I was always aggressive, getting right up front, leaning into their faces.
The bad deal about that is you may ask the very best questions, but everybody else gets to write the answers down. You have nothing for yourself exclusively--and you have no opportunity to get the winner alone. You also can't hog the floor too much or you may discover one of your rivals has "accidentally" unplugged your laptop and caused you to lose all parts of your story you haven't yet saved to the hard drive.
My goal in those crowd scenes always was to figure out in advance a question that will give you a bright, newsy quote for your story, but won't lead into a long dissertation by the star. And, if the star seems a bit up tight, I also like to come up with a goofy question that will make him or her laugh and unfreeze a little.
That special technique of mine once led to a very great moment for me.
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not dressed like a nun. I figure she owes me big for my discretion. |
Joan Collins, who was then starring in "Dynasty," came into the little roped circle. She was there as a presenter and not a winner, so she wasn't all excited about anything. In fact, she was wary because the one thing everyone wanted to know was if she was going to come back to "Dynasty" the following season.
You see, the season-ending cliffhanger had involved a terrorist attack in a small nation called Moldavia. Her character was among those who might have been gunned down during that attack, so everybody was asking her if she survived. I didn't bother asking because I knew the tabloids were offering big money to anyone who would tell which characters survived, so it was unlikely Collins would be spoiling the cliffhanger backstage at the Emmys.
What I wanted to do was get her to open up and be more lively with her quotes. I remembered Joan had once played a nun in a movie called "Sea Wife" early in her career. But by the time she got to "Dynasty" she had this huge reputation as a sexpot, I thought it might loosen her up to ask, "Do you ever think you'll play a nun again?"
Well, a stricken look came over Joan's face the moment I asked that question. Everybody else was scratching their heads, wondering what screw had come loose in my brain.
"How did you find out?" she stammered.
Then it dawned on me. In the upcoming season premiere of "Dynasty," she must escape execution by the terrorists by disguising herself as a nun! She must have thought I'd asked her about playing a nun because I knew the secret. Well, I made a snap decision NOT to spoil the surprise for millions of "Dynasty" fans and just gave her a wink. I guess I betrayed my profession by not moving in for the kill, but I worried it might get her into trouble if I bluffed her into spilling the beans. The other reporters never caught on--and let her off the hook.
One Emmy night I thought I heard another reporter ask a goofy question of David Letterman, who had just won another Emmy, along wtih about a dozen others, for the writing on his late-night talk show, then on NBC. I didn't think it was a bad idea to try that approach to Letterman, who was always very grumbly in those pack interviews and seldom ever said anything funny. Then I thought more carefully about what she'd asked.
The lady reporter had asked him, "You're a rich guy, Dave, so why don't you spend the money to have that stupid gap in your front teeth fixed?"
Everybody groaned, me among them. Letterman
never looked more sour in his lfie. No wonder. That was like
asking Quasimodo why he didn't do something about that big hump
on his back. Or maybe like asking Barbra Streisand why she didn't
get a nose job.
As I recall, he didn't say anything at all, even though she kept
repeating the question until the rest of us finally booed her
into submission.
While it's true you often do see the "real person" behind the celebrity image if you pay close attention to them at an event like the Emmys, I seldom found a way to use a lot of that sort of material when your principal purpose in being there was to tell who won and what they thought about it, usually in a very finite amount of space.
I do remember one night waiting to ask a couple of questions to Sherman Hemsley and Isabel Sanford, who played husband and wife on "The Jeffersons." By standing out of their line of sight, I accidentally overheard them making rather caustic remarks to each other. Apparently, they were pretending to be a lot friendlier than they were--and I'd had a peek at their real relationship. Hey, now I've finally used that bit on information I put in my notebook about 20 years ago. I guess it wasn't a waste of time after all.
Another big negative of covering the Emmys
in person was the dress code. On my second visit to the backstage
beat, they passed a new rule requiring formal dress for all
reporters--tux for men, gowns for women. That considerably jacked
up the cost of sending a reporter to cover the event since few
reporters own their own tuxedos.
I had never worn one in my life--and I was in my 40s when I started covering the Emmys. I was raised in California and there a guy could get away without a tuxedo even at his own wedding. So I had to rent one. That first time, I was offered a line of standard black tuxedos, but I spotted one in a sort of purple color with an interesting cutaway design that made it look sporty rather than stiff and funereal. I rented it and, if I may say, looked smashing in it, especially when I chose the ruffled shirt to go with it.
I remember the look I got from our two Welsh corgi dogs when they saw me decked out in my rented suit and highly-polished shoes. They lolled their tongues out and, after sniffing it up a bit, stood back and lollygagged.
"They look like they're laughing at
me," I told my wife.
"Don't be silly," she replied. "You look great
and they're just proud of you. They must know you're going to
something special."
Well, that night I received quite a few compliments from the other guys, especially the out-of-town press guys, who probably were new to the tux world, too. One of them begged me to tell him where I'd found such a cool tux. Then other people started coming up to me and ordering drinks. I laughed at first, but after turning down my third or fourth drink order I asked one dude why he wanted me to get him drinks.
"I thought you were a waiter," he said.
As it turned out, a lot of people thought I was a waiter. Then I noticed the waiters were wearing tuxes with that same cutaway design to the coats. I finally asked one of them if I was wearing a waiter's tux and he said, "Yeah, but I've never seen one in purple before."
Naturally, I was a bit peeved when I returned the tux the following morning. I asked why they didn't tell me that was a waiter's tux and the answer was simple: They thought I was "working" the Emmys, like being a waiter there. I guess they didn't take me for a super-cool syndicated columnist who actually could have broken the "Dynasty" cliffhanger secret to the world if I hadn't been so high-minded.
To kind of sum things up, I am happy to
tell you that I don't for a minute miss covering the Emmys in
person. It was always lots of hard work under pressure, most
of it done while feeling like I was trussed up in a penguin suit,
posing as somebody other than me.
I do remember quite a few "nice moments," but when
you add them all up, they don't much make up for the sweat and
frustration.
But I certainly did gain from the experience. For instance, if I ever feel like the family dog is laughing at me, I'm not going to let anybody talk me out of it before I find out why.
©2008 by Ron Miller. The Emmy image is courtesy of the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences. All rights reserved. This column first posted Sept. 15, 2008.
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