That sounds a lot cooler than the reality.
I did drink a beer and talk to Eric Bana while he was also drinking a beer, but it wasn’t cause I’m such a cool guy that he wanted to hang. The poor guy was forced into talking to press during an event for his upcoming film Hanna after their NYCC panel. The event was located on the top level of a fancy little restaurant near 5th Ave and 57th here in NYC, where many of the major film websites came to meet the the people behind Hanna. Director Joe Wright (Atonement, The Soloist) and stars Eric Bana and Saoirse Ronan (The Lovely Bones) were in attendance.
Events like these are fun but bizarre. Picture this- the talent standing around in front of press who leer like sharks who haven’t eaten in a while. On the sidelines, the publicists, whose job it is to grab each press person and shove them towards the talent and make sure they each get a chance to talk The publicists stand on the side hoping to steer the conversation the right way and sidle the press away when their time is up, pulling another person in for some time.
It’s a bit bizarre to interview folks like this so I didn’t jump right into questions about the film (although we did talk about that- see my main page article appearing soon!), so I bullshitted with Bana about how strange Comic Cons are, since this was his first. I talked to Wright about the age of his killer, 3D films, and The Avengers. Ronan destroyed all stereotypes of a teenage girl and came across as incredibly well-spoken and intelligent, obviously in love with the fact that she gets to do this for a living.
It was a fun night with a nice open bar and food and plenty of gossipy talk between movie sites (no one knows what Devin’s up to, for the record), but man, are these surreal.