Ticket writers' worst interviews ever
"SHE FINDS ME A ROOM, TAKES MY SHOES OFF AND THROWS ME ON TO THE BED" BRIAN BOYD MEETS GWEN STEFANI
Flight from Dublin to London with four-hour delay. Wait five hours for connecting flight to Los Angeles. Seated beside a lunatic who sings Old McDonald Had A Farm into my ear for the whole 13-hour flight time. Further interminable delay at LAX immigration.
When I pitch up at the hotel to do a series of interviews with rock stars, I have been awake for 48 hours and am almost vomiting with tiredness. I am yanked from the taxi, pushed into a lift and shoved into a room, where Gwen Stefani is waiting for her promotional close-up.
Fifteen minutes in she goes on to the balcony to take a phone call. When she comes back, I am asleep on the couch, muttering something, which, she tells me the next day, sounds like “Ee i ee i o”. She finds me a nearby room, takes my shoes off and throws me on to the bed. She blows me a kiss and puts the “Do not disturb” sign on the door.
I still have a picture of her on my fridge.
For a very bleak period in my life, the only interviews I ever seemed to do were with long-haired and short-brained nu-metal bands. Dragged out of bed at 4.30am to catch a four-hour flight to a banal European city, on arrival I am presented with the 18-year-old drummer from the band and given the boardroom for an hour.
After four minutes, the drummer and I have established that he recorded his drum parts in a local studio far away from the rest of the band; he hadn’t a clue what any of the songs were about; he didn’t like the lead singer, or the guitarist or the bass player for that matter and barely even knew their surnames.
At four minutes and one second into the interview we begin talking about the different ages you have to be in different US states to be legally able to buy alcohol. To this day I know the best place in LA to get a fake ID card. Which I intend to use one day – just so the interview wasn't totally wasted. BB
“SHE STORMED OUT WHEN I DARED TO MENTION HER DIVORCE” DONALD CLARKE MEETS HOLLY HUNTER
Sadly, the movie interview process is so tightly controlled that major catastrophes rarely happen. If Hunter S Thompson were reborn in his boozy glory he wouldn’t get past the lobby at a typical junket. Still, some movie stars and directors manage to be sufficiently eccentric to make life interesting.
When I asked Mickey Rourke what he thought of the film he was then promoting (not The Wrestler), he said that he hadn’t seen it because “it didn’t sound very good”.
Holly Hunter, someone I had hitherto admired, scowled and grunted throughout the interview then stormed out theatrically when I dared to mention her divorce. More recently, Terrence Howard talked such twaddle – creationism, conspiracy theories and so forth – that I could barely stop myself from snorting.
But the most bizarre interview I have conducted remains that with Jim Caviezel. Two years before he became Jesus in The Passion of the Christ, he sat down to talk with me about his role in The Count of Monte Cristo. Or that was the idea. Over an exasperating half-hour, Caviezel hammered home his religious mania by answering every question with a meandering rant about mystics, holy relics, miracles and favoured preachers.
In a subsequent film he gets whipped, kicked in the face and generally treated rather badly. I enjoyed every second. DC
“IF ONLY I’D SECRETLY TAPED OUR PRE-INTERVIEW CHAT” KEVIN COURTNEY MEETS BRYAN ADAMS
You can never predict when an interview will go pear-shaped. It could happen the moment you mention the balcony incident, or call a band’s latest masterpiece “not your best”.
I’ve been lucky – no one has walked out on me in the middle of an interview, or battered me about the head with my tape-recorder. I’ve probably erased the most embarrassing interviews from memory, but I do recall making numerous gaffes that have elicited withering looks from stars.
It’s always advisable to do your research so you don’t mistake Groove Armada for Basement Jaxx, or get the title of Snow Patrol’s debut album completely wrong. Oh, and don’t chat up the Wannadies’ drummer’s girlfriend before the interview – it makes things a tad uncomfortable.
It’s also a good idea to check your recording levels – I once did a full interview with Oasis, and got nothing but tape hiss for my troubles. Interviewing another band, I had the levels set too high, and got what sounded like a gaggle of geese on the attack.
But the worst sound on tape is the stony silence of the star. After a day-long trek to Karlsruhe in Germany to interview Bryan Adams, I was greeted warmly by the man himself, who chatted amiably about everything from football to Robin Hood to living in London.
As soon as the tape machine went on, however, Adams clammed up, and a painfully awkward half-hour ensued. If only I’d secretly taped our pre-interview chat. KC
“WHY TRAVEL SO FAR FOR BRITNEY TO HEAR MY QUESTION AND LOOK AS IF I HAD ASKED HER TO SPANK ME?” TONY CLAYTON-LEA MEETS MS SPEARS
Britney and I go back a long way. I remember a date we had in Rome several years ago – just me, her and about a dozen other journalists sitting around the table – flanked by her minders and record-company people, taking it in turns to ask the then hottest female pop star on the planet a question.
There were stringent time restrictions, and every journalist had to present themselves in rigorous rotation. I reckoned I’d probably be able to ask her two questions at most.
I knew I had to ask a good question because we had flown to Rome from Dublin the previous day, and been dined, wined and accommodated in a nice hotel the previous night, and what was the point of travelling so far for Britney to hear my question and look at me as if I had asked her to spank me?
My turn. I’m not sure what happened, but I made the rare error of asking a leading question, to which, if she was so inclined, she could have answered a simple “yes” or “no”. But I figured, well, she knows we have travelled a long way, so why should she do that? I forget what I asked her, but she took all of two seconds to respond with her one-word answer.
I never got to ask her a second one. We haven't seen each other since. I miss her still. TCL
“MONOSYLLABIC ANSWERS. SNEERY LOOKS. SIGHS AND TUTS. THEY DIDN’T EVEN LIKE MY TAPE-RECORDER”
JIM CARROLL MEETS THE CHEMICAL BROTHERS
It was a Monday. Worse, it was a bank-holiday Monday. The previous day, I had watched Tipperary throw away a big lead against Clare in the Munster hurling championship in Cork. The last place on earth I wanted to be after that was in an office in London to talk to the Chemical Brothers about their new album.
It turns out the Chemical Brothers were not interested in talking about their new album either. I don’t think they had been at the match, though.
I lasted 10 minutes before I gave up. Monosyllabic answers to questions. Sneery looks at questions. Sighs and tuts about questions. They probably didn’t even like my tape-recorder. That day, the Brothers did not want to work it out. Usually bad interviews are a real case of “it isn’t you, it’s me”. That day, though, the tables were turned.
Naturally, the piece never appeared. JC
“I WALKED OUT HALFWAY THROUGH” MICHAEL DWYER MEETS OLIVER STONE
The interview that was the biggest waste of time was one scheduled with Quentin Tarantino in London. I arrived there to be told that he was ill and had cancelled his interviews. It transpired that Tarantino was in Dublin on the same day with his then partner Mira Sorvino. She was working there on Lulu on the Bridge, which, sadly, was never released at Irish cinemas.
The most intense interview I ever had was with Sean Penn in Cannes, when he was promoting his directing debut, The Indian Runner. He was visibly uncomfortable throughout the interview, which he clearly had no interest in doing. He claimed he had retired from acting, adding that “acting was like walking through flames” for him. He has acted in more than 20 films since.
The tetchiest interviewees I have met were two distinguished directors who have died since: David Lean and Robert Altman. Both took the strongest exception to even the mildest criticisms of their variable outputs.
The worst-case scenario for an interview is when the questions are longer than the answers. That was the case with Tobey Maguire, a man of few words when I met him, and with Oliver Stone, who was so unresponsive when I interviewed him for my early 1990s TV series Freeze Frame that I walked out halfway through. We have met many times since and got on much better.
There was another time when Harrison Ford was in monosyllabic mood. His most interesting answer came when I asked if the stud in his ear was for a new movie. "No, it's for my ear," he replied. MD
