Acting the fool: why have Hollywood press tours become so gimmicky? | Film

This summer, we’ve been blessed with new movies from the legendary director Steven Spielberg and one of his biggest and most beloved successors, Christopher Nolan. In both cases, the movies have been heavily sold on the directors’ names, and, befitting two of the most famous film-makers to ever do it, Spielberg and Nolan have been making the press rounds. This has meant a wealth of interviews and insights – a bonus feature unfolding alongside the selling of the actual movies that will delight movie nerds the world over.

So at first, when I saw a 60-second video of Christopher Nolan answering a barrage of yes-or-no questions come across my social-media feed, of course I stopped and watched as a famously buttoned-up (if obviously still passionate) film-maker attempted some spontaneity with no danger of follow-up questions (or obligation to follow-up answers). From this, there is admittedly plenty of information to be gleaned: he has no designs on retiring, Tarantino-style. He will not make another superhero movie or a TV show. He’s fine with people watching movies on their phones or laptops. He will neither confirm nor deny that Interstellar is his favorite of his films. He will also neither confirm nor deny that he would like to make a Star Wars movie. (Perhaps the most intriguing, given that you’d rather expect that to be a firm “no”.)

But after the rush of information subsided came a feeling of profound emptiness. One of the world’s most beloved film-makers is talking to some kid on some channel called Back2FilmSchool? And come to think of it, hasn’t he answered all of these questions before, in greater detail? He seems like a perfectly good sport in the video, but then, plenty of brave hostages probably come across with similar composure, to say nothing of those who can keep cool in the face of a nuisance. A great interview might have some friction, but it will probably not have you wondering if the subject was genuinely annoyed for the entire thing, or simply half-smiling politely. Why do so many press-tour stops these days suddenly feel like the halfway point between TikTok and a cult’s humiliation ritual?

Now, not every Nolan or Spielberg interview has such punishing time limits or gimmicky hooks. In fact, if you don’t want to watch Nolan interviewed in 60 seconds, he had a segment on 60 Minutes (technically only 13 minutes, and lamentably the version of the show run by the eminently unqualified Bari Weiss, but, you know, still a marquee attraction). Throughout the history of film promotion, stars and film-makers have participated in a range of interviews, for a range of outlets, with a range of detail or seriousness.

But this year in particular, it’s not even the TikTok-iness of many interviews that feels so uniform – as mentioned, you can find the extra-long counterparts to balance out the minute-long nothing-bites. What’s become even more prevalent is what an older person might call the Fallon-ification of journalism, where a high-profile cast sits not for an interview but a series of games. If you look at the website LADBible, for example, you might assume that it’s probably not scoring interviews with Matt Damon or Anne Hathaway. (As someone who has occasionally arranged interviews for less famous people than Damon or Hathaway, for websites not even called LADBible, I can assure you this assumption would be entirely reasonable.) And it’s not – not really. It is, however, hosting a YouTube-distributed round of Would You Rather featuring some of the biggest stars in the world, under the guise of promoting their excellent film. Pursue their channel for stars doing impromptu ratings and talking about snacks. Anne Hathaway in particular will play a countless number of these games in a year when she’s appearing in five films; she’s already logged time with the LADs for The Devil Wears Prada 2 earlier this summer.

It makes sense that people enjoy this stuff in its native formats: TikTok, YouTube, The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon, and so on. Fallon may be frequently insufferable, but his refresh of Jay Leno’s Tonight Show did dispense with a lot of canned interview anecdotes and accompanying shtick, all as tired as Celebrity Twister Trivia or whatever might seem now. What, is Fallon suddenly going to become an incisive and unpredictable interviewer at his age? That would be great, but it’s not happening.

But as Fallon-ification and broader social-video trends feed into each other, they threaten to create less enjoyable, more inexplicable hybrid franchises, free-floating from the comforting bounds of an actual TV show. Somehow, The Tonight Show is able to do this, too, making content not actually involving Fallon himself (although maybe that makes sense; why create even a moment of suggestion that Jimmy Fallon might turn up in your adaptation of classic literature?). One recurring bit is a rhythmic, quasi-hooky, all-star plot recap, where celebs do a Fallon-approved cutesy semi-rap based on short phrases and fast cuts, assembled to form some rudimentary yet forced rhymes about the project at hand. This erases even the novelty of seeing Matt Damon, Anne Hathaway, Zendaya, Charlize Theron, Robert Pattinson, Tom Holland and Lupita Nyong’o interact, however superficially, or even watching them at any length on their own. It’s a minute-long segment by design, so you get microdoses of famous faces, reciting fragments. Has it really convinced a single person to see The Odyssey? Publicists will doubtless claim that it’s the awareness of the movie, not the specific desire to see it, that these videos aid. Attentive viewers, meanwhile, might study the screen to figure out who looks genuinely fine with it and who looks like they’re considering poisoning themselves or their agents.

And look, forcible irritation of celebrities and diminishment of artists will probably always have a place in the promotional cycle. But the sheer volume of it, at a time when name publications staffed with people who genuinely enjoy and are good at conducting interviews are bought, sold and gutted on the regular, can feel particularly smug – a bonus victory pivot following yet another pivot to video putting writers out of work in favor of off-screen prompts.

Of course, viewers can’t be expected to think about journalists when they’re enjoying celebrities goofing around. I am a journalist, and I don’t think about journalists when I watch literally any video featuring any combination of Saturday Night Live cast members doing anything together. What viewers might think about, however, is why, exactly, they’re watching Jon Bernthal and Charlize Theron grimace through a Fallon-sponsored assemblage of stupid rhymes. We’ve all had moments of why-did-I-click-that remorse involving online videos; I would humbly suggest that genuine interviews, while not always as revealing as you would hope, rarely produce those sinking feelings. Studios, in the meantime, are moving toward making some of the most famous faces and revered creative minds in the entertainment world the unlikely mascots for endless-scroll regret.