Daniela
0
So, is it fine to fawn?
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
www.timesonline.co.uk/art...91,00.html
February 14, 2003
By Alison Roberts
To his face, Martin Bashir praised Michael Jackson. Then on television, he attacked him. Should interviewers avoid fake relationships with the stars?
NEXT WEEK, in an American TV special subtitled The Interview They Wouldn’t Show You, Michael Jackson offers his reply to Martin Bashir. In the ultimate attempt at self-vindication, the star will show footage of the journalist telling his new showbiz friend: “Your relationship with your kids is so spectacular. In fact it almost makes me weep when I see you with them because your interaction is so natural, so loving and so caring.”
Little wonder, perhaps, that Jackson feels “utterly betrayed” by a man who was once so keen to dish out the praise.
The relationship between interviewer and interviewee is pretty delicate at the best of times. All press and TV interviews necessarily involve an element of trust gained or withheld, honoured or betrayed. And if one party is perceived to have overstepped the mark in some way, both sides can end up feeling very bruised .
“It’s a transaction,” says the veteran interviewer Lynn Barber, “in which both of you are trying to get slightly more out of the other than either is prepared to give. They are trying to plug their new film or book without giving too much of themselves away, and you’re after whatever’s under the surface. The journalist’s power, of course, lies in the filtering process.”
In order to avoid later allegations of distortion, Barber is more than happy to allow interviewees to tape proceedings for themselves (Tony Benn and Michael Winner are well-known co-tapers), and admires common practice in the US, whereby an editor or sub-editor listens to the tape before publication to check quotes. “Interviewees should write letters of complaint much more than they do,” she adds. “Although an editor won’t act on just one, if there are a lot, the bad interviewer will get found out.”
But how close do you get in order to get the story? The showbiz pundit Matthew Wright formed an unlikely and, in the end, unworkable friendship several years ago with Michael Barrymore in the wake of an inaccurate story printed in his former Daily Mirror column, about which Barrymore was initially furious. “Michael phoned me from New Zealand and we had a long conversation about it, then 13 hours later I was sitting on a plane flying out to interview him. We did then establish a friendship.
“But journalistically, as soon as I heard about the body-in-the-swimming-pool story, I knew it would be very hard for us to sustain that friendship. Every time we spoke, he would know that I was looking for more.”
Unusually, the documentary-maker Jon Ronson often makes friends with his interviewees — but inserts that relationship into the film so that the viewer understands how it colours his feelings towards the subject. “I think it’s really important that if I’m getting it wrong or being manipulative, then that goes in,” he says.
“I’m a semi-unreliable narrator in a sense. Documentary-making can be like mugging people, and I don’t want them to feel like they’ve been mugged. Having said that, I never go into a situation where I’ve made promises to people. I let my agenda evolve during the process of filming, and it’s just a fantastic relief when our final agendas match.”
He and the former pop mogul Jonathan King became friends during filming of The Double Life of Jonathan King for Channel 4, but when Ronson couldn’t find the media and police conspiracy that King alleged had put him behind bars — when their “agendas” didn’t match — the relationship deteriorated.
But it’s not only journalists who manipulate in order to tip the balance of power in their favour. The interview’s strange atmosphere of false intimacy and contractual obligation sours quickly when the star subject simply refuses to acknowledge his or her side of the bargain. Stories abound. The uppity comedian (my own brief experience with Steve Coogan does not bear repetition), the ice-maiden actress (“Gwyneth Paltrow’s initial look of froideur was rather dispiriting,” says the arts interviewer Jasper Rees), the disappointingly dull Hollywood superstar (Lynn Barber cites Robert Redford) and, worst of all, the discourteous and uncommunicative. The Observer interviewer Harriet Lane’s recent encounter with a condescending and utterly unhelpful Richard Gere, written up delightfully to reflect the experience, left her feeling “sick with myself and my job”.
“I did feel quite scared by him because he was being so rude. It’s pretty rare in everyday life to come across someone who is just so bloody rude to you. I think I was probably boring him, and he hadn’t worked out how to take a question in another direction so that you answer what you want to answer. My initial instinct was that the interview was just too grim to write up.”
Most interviews, of course, go off well enough and leave both sides relatively happy. “Ian Paisley said the nicest thing any interviewee can ever say to a documentary-maker, which was that the film I made was a fair reflection of our time together,” says Ronson.
Tricks of the trade
Leave the microphone on, but switch off the TV lights. Will Carling’s “boring old farts” comment was thus recorded for posterity.
Oil a subject with alcohol.
Ask the difficult question two thirds of the way through. If you are kicked out then, you still have an interview.
Don’t always obey PR orders to the letter — often the minders are paranoically overprotective of their star.
Flirt, but not excessively. Nicole Kidman is not going to go out with you.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
www.timesonline.co.uk/art...91,00.html
February 14, 2003
By Alison Roberts
To his face, Martin Bashir praised Michael Jackson. Then on television, he attacked him. Should interviewers avoid fake relationships with the stars?
NEXT WEEK, in an American TV special subtitled The Interview They Wouldn’t Show You, Michael Jackson offers his reply to Martin Bashir. In the ultimate attempt at self-vindication, the star will show footage of the journalist telling his new showbiz friend: “Your relationship with your kids is so spectacular. In fact it almost makes me weep when I see you with them because your interaction is so natural, so loving and so caring.”
Little wonder, perhaps, that Jackson feels “utterly betrayed” by a man who was once so keen to dish out the praise.
The relationship between interviewer and interviewee is pretty delicate at the best of times. All press and TV interviews necessarily involve an element of trust gained or withheld, honoured or betrayed. And if one party is perceived to have overstepped the mark in some way, both sides can end up feeling very bruised .
“It’s a transaction,” says the veteran interviewer Lynn Barber, “in which both of you are trying to get slightly more out of the other than either is prepared to give. They are trying to plug their new film or book without giving too much of themselves away, and you’re after whatever’s under the surface. The journalist’s power, of course, lies in the filtering process.”
In order to avoid later allegations of distortion, Barber is more than happy to allow interviewees to tape proceedings for themselves (Tony Benn and Michael Winner are well-known co-tapers), and admires common practice in the US, whereby an editor or sub-editor listens to the tape before publication to check quotes. “Interviewees should write letters of complaint much more than they do,” she adds. “Although an editor won’t act on just one, if there are a lot, the bad interviewer will get found out.”
But how close do you get in order to get the story? The showbiz pundit Matthew Wright formed an unlikely and, in the end, unworkable friendship several years ago with Michael Barrymore in the wake of an inaccurate story printed in his former Daily Mirror column, about which Barrymore was initially furious. “Michael phoned me from New Zealand and we had a long conversation about it, then 13 hours later I was sitting on a plane flying out to interview him. We did then establish a friendship.
“But journalistically, as soon as I heard about the body-in-the-swimming-pool story, I knew it would be very hard for us to sustain that friendship. Every time we spoke, he would know that I was looking for more.”
Unusually, the documentary-maker Jon Ronson often makes friends with his interviewees — but inserts that relationship into the film so that the viewer understands how it colours his feelings towards the subject. “I think it’s really important that if I’m getting it wrong or being manipulative, then that goes in,” he says.
“I’m a semi-unreliable narrator in a sense. Documentary-making can be like mugging people, and I don’t want them to feel like they’ve been mugged. Having said that, I never go into a situation where I’ve made promises to people. I let my agenda evolve during the process of filming, and it’s just a fantastic relief when our final agendas match.”
He and the former pop mogul Jonathan King became friends during filming of The Double Life of Jonathan King for Channel 4, but when Ronson couldn’t find the media and police conspiracy that King alleged had put him behind bars — when their “agendas” didn’t match — the relationship deteriorated.
But it’s not only journalists who manipulate in order to tip the balance of power in their favour. The interview’s strange atmosphere of false intimacy and contractual obligation sours quickly when the star subject simply refuses to acknowledge his or her side of the bargain. Stories abound. The uppity comedian (my own brief experience with Steve Coogan does not bear repetition), the ice-maiden actress (“Gwyneth Paltrow’s initial look of froideur was rather dispiriting,” says the arts interviewer Jasper Rees), the disappointingly dull Hollywood superstar (Lynn Barber cites Robert Redford) and, worst of all, the discourteous and uncommunicative. The Observer interviewer Harriet Lane’s recent encounter with a condescending and utterly unhelpful Richard Gere, written up delightfully to reflect the experience, left her feeling “sick with myself and my job”.
“I did feel quite scared by him because he was being so rude. It’s pretty rare in everyday life to come across someone who is just so bloody rude to you. I think I was probably boring him, and he hadn’t worked out how to take a question in another direction so that you answer what you want to answer. My initial instinct was that the interview was just too grim to write up.”
Most interviews, of course, go off well enough and leave both sides relatively happy. “Ian Paisley said the nicest thing any interviewee can ever say to a documentary-maker, which was that the film I made was a fair reflection of our time together,” says Ronson.
Tricks of the trade
Leave the microphone on, but switch off the TV lights. Will Carling’s “boring old farts” comment was thus recorded for posterity.
Oil a subject with alcohol.
Ask the difficult question two thirds of the way through. If you are kicked out then, you still have an interview.
Don’t always obey PR orders to the letter — often the minders are paranoically overprotective of their star.
Flirt, but not excessively. Nicole Kidman is not going to go out with you.
Gracias A Caro del kop