An aerial photo shows Battleship Row next to Ford Island,
Arizona Memorial and USS Missouri, with a sub entering the harbor.
Stars meet press
on day that will
live in infamyWhen a movie costs $135 million to make, the promotional stakes are high. With that in mind, the Disney Co. has flown in 500 media people to mark the world premiere of "Pearl Harbor." The big party is tomorrow night, but the "junket" -- Hollywood talk for the promotional activities that precede the big event -- began several days ago. On Friday, the principals in the movie were made available to reporters in a mass interview situation. Star-Bulletin writer Scott Vogel went along for the ride, not so much to learn about the movie as to observe the art of junketing. >>'Pearl' prompts racism alert
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By Scott Vogel
Star-Bulletin
War is hell. That's what we're thinking on the bus to the naval base. As we watch the sky fill with planes on this gentle May morning, our moods growing ever darker as we consider our adversary's might, spirits are only occasionally buoyed by the importance of this mission, which we believe is nothing less than a fight for justice. Of course, the planes are from United and American, the adversary in question is the Disney publicity machine and our mission -- the danger of which you may not appreciate -- is to establish the truth about "Pearl Harbor," the $135 million film that invades 3,000 American movie screens Friday. And yet, the war analogy seems apt.All right, it isn't the greatest mission. When it comes to valor, fighting for quotes from Josh Hartnett is not exactly the kind of thing that turns boys into men. We know this. Still, here we are, journalists from towns like Boston, Phoenix, Montreal and Sioux City -- determined to prove ourselves in the theater of war, armed with little more than a Disney gift bag, the enclosed CD of Faith Hill's end-credit song (which "officially impacts radio on May 22") leading us into battle.
We are the few, the proud -- the junketeers.
Given the odds against us, a certain amount of pique and cattiness is perhaps inevitable. "What a bunch of cynics we have here," says a portly journalist who's decided to go native, festooning herself with a brightly colored muumuu and a sensible pair of Polo Sport deck shoes. (We had been warned that sandals and high-heels would not be combat-ready, and one of the day's memorable incongruities is the sight of out-of-shape, sunburned writers stuffed into state-of-the-art athletic footwear.)The woman is reacting to the suggestion, put forth by a male colleague, that the prosthetic make-up employed to turn Jon Voight into FDR in the film was not a happy choice. Indeed, he believes that the actor looks like Bette Midler in "For the Boys." There is much giggling at this, quickly brought to silence by an elderly woman in the back of the bus who throughout the day will periodically scream "he deserves a nomination!" often for no discernible reason.
There's also much talk of the 90 minutes that precede the bombing in "Pearl Harbor," and whether the kids who made "Titanic" a hit will be able to endure a set-up that long. And by the way, when Kate Beckinsale sits on a rocky beach reading love letters, are those the same rocks they used in "From Here to Eternity," and why don't they make movies like that anymore, and is it true that the buzz on "Scooby Doo" is not good although everyone seems to like the dog? (Does he deserve a nomination?)
Not a moment too soon, the bus pulls into Halawa Gate. In the background stands the mighty USS Stennis. (She's a great ship for a junket, we find ourselves enthusing.) Soon we embark on the longest walk of our lives, down the pier and up the plank to the carrier's hangar deck, where the stars of "Pearl Harbor" are lying in wait.
"I could care less about the interview, I came to see the ship," says one young journalist, an unconvincing liar. "It looks like plastic," says another, who evidently prefers the shipbuilding expertise of Industrial Light and Magic.
Everyone's hungry by this time, jokingly referring to "grub" (in deference to the surroundings), after which we are introduced to the press luncheon of grilled chicken and something called "Hawaiian rice," at which point the word grub is used rather more seriously.
Then the battle begins in earnest as more than a hundred journalists are divided into squadrons of 10, each of which is expected to pummel the stars and crew of "Pearl Harbor" with questions. First to visit our table is Kate Beckinsale, who wears a white tanktop under a set of dogtags decorated with pink glitter. She talks about being a young mother, and also about crying the first few times she read the script for "Pearl Harbor," a reaction she attributes not to post-partum hormonal response but to Randall Wallace's screenplay. She describes her British education and her love scene with Hartnett in a pile of parachutes (he was "solicitous," we are told). And then, in a flash of stardust, Kate's gone -- a handler having tapped her on the shoulder and whisked the actress to another table.
Next up is Josh Hartnett in baggy shorts and sandals, sitting squarely in stardom's first phase. His answers are not quite as polished as they one day will be. This comes off as charming -- the way he pauses thoughtfully before responding to a question, his description of history as "something everybody needs to know about," the way he says "take it easy, see ya around" before going to the next table, quite as if he expects to run into us later. His departure signals the arrival of Walt Disney Studios chairman Peter Schneider, that and a pair of bright red Nikes, which seem to perfectly fit this comet of frenetic energy. Otherwise loquacious, on the question of why there is very little evidence of Hawaiians in a film set largely in Hawaii, Schneider is curiously mute. "I have no answer to that question," he says.
Over the next hour we are visited briefly by actor Tom Sizemore, who tells us that a whole generation of kids thinks that the world started with the Internet, and an actress with the unusual name of James (King), who plays a nurse in the film. "You're too pretty to be a boy," gushes an elderly journalist to the striking blonde from Nebraska. We learn that she was named after Jamie Sommers, "The Bionic Woman," a TV show she is too young to remember.
Dan Aykroyd, meanwhile, is thrilled to be in this picture. Clad in dark sunglasses and a "House of Blues" T-shirt, he jokes that "they could have called me and said, 'You're the guy who cleans up dog poop on the moon,' " and he still would have participated.I ask Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa, who plays Japanese commander Minoru Genda, whether he is troubled by the lack of a Hawaiian presence in the film. "Yes," he answers. "I thought they were bombing California." Tagawa ticks off the short list of Pacific Island characters in "Pearl Harbor," namely a Samoan bouncer and four young women carrying a firehose.
By this time, the heat of the hangar has begun to take its toll on the weary journalists, but there is still one more battle to be fought. This is achieved by boarding a massive outdoor elevator which on other days is used to transport planes from the hangar to the flight deck. Today, it is taking us to see Ben Affleck, who has somehow managed to avoid the roundtable interviews of the past few hours. Unlike everyone else, therefore, he looks cool and rested, juggling questions with an aplomb that gives everyone in the press corps a second wind. In the span of 30 or so minutes, he manages to joke about his fear of flying, talk about his reality TV project with Matt Damon, do an imitation of Morgan Freeman and flirt with a pretty blonde journalist in the crowd while twirling a shoe on his foot. It is a captivating performance, and one that leads no less than 20 journalists to crowd around him afterward and beg for autographs.
At last it is time for the long walk back to the bus, the sun now descended, a light rain beginning to fall. But the casualties are beginning to mount. At least one writer, a middle-aged woman with a Southern accent, seems to have gone AWOL. "I can't walk down steps this steep," she shrieks, "not after a day like this. I simply can't do it." The sailors try not to smile. The rest of us walk as far ahead of this woman as we can. We shake our heads. War is hell.
Concerned that anti-Asian sentiment may be stirred by the movie "Pearl Harbor," the Honolulu chapter of the Japanese American Citizens League has joined national efforts to monitor events surrounding its premiere tomorrow. ‘Pearl’ prompts
racism alert
Star-Bulletin staff"For decades, Americans of Japanese ancestry could not escape the backlash associated with the 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor," said Clayton Ikei, Honolulu JACL vice president for public affairs. "This movie has the potential to rekindle the hatred that misguided individuals and organizations traditionally have directed against AJAs, especially because such hatred recently is on the rise."
National JACL director John Tateishi has ongoing discussions with the film's producer, with the intent to preserve historical accuracy and avoid stereotypical treatment of Japanese Americans in the film.