Hollywood encounters in 2010

How do you cover three Hollywood junkets in three days without missing an interview with any of the six stars involved? (You flew 12 hours from the Philippines for them, didn’t you?)

Leave it to Doris Torres of Columbia Pictures (Manila).

In January, Doris asked me to do the junket for Book of Eli (with Denzel Washington and Gary Oldman), Legion (with Paul Bettany and Dennis Quaid) and Extraordinary Measure (with Harrison Ford and Brendan Fraser) in Beverly Hills and up to now, I don’t know how she managed to arrange a schedule that was so tight, all right, with no overlapping at all. Briefly now: Preview Book of Eli Friday evening (while I was nursing a bad case of jetlag) and interview (both for print and TV) Washington and Oldman Saturday morning. Then, preview Legion Saturday evening and interview Bettany and Quaid Sunday morning. Finally, preview Extraordinary Measure Sunday evening and interview Ford and Fraser Monday morning. Piece of cake, right? You sleep one whole day before flying 12 hours back home.

When I gave Washington a copy of The STAR carrying an interview I did with him for Fallen more than a decade earlier, he broke into a wide smile, showing a perfect set of teeth (fit for a Close-Up commercial), flaunted it to those around, exclaiming, “Look, don’t I look handsome in this picture 10 years ago?”

During the one-on-one, Oldman was as serious as Bettany (remember him as Silas in The Da Vinci Code?) and so was, as usual in all the previous encounters I had with him, Ford who flew his own plane to Hawaii from California during our first 1997 interview (for Six Days and Seven Nights). With me was Kris Aquino who was, like me, starstruck (who wouldn’t be?).

Quaid arrived at Four Seasons several minutes late, saying that he had to wait for the Filipina nanny of his kid before he could leave home. He panted through the interview that hardly covered anything.

Fraser recalled that he first dreamed of doing a movie with Ford a few years ago when he was in Manila to promote his starrer George of the Jungle. “I saw Harrison’s movie being advertised in billboards all over the city and I told myself, ‘Someday, I’ll do a movie with him.’ My dream has come true.”

In March, I was back in Beverly Hills for Jennifer Lopez and Australian hunk Alex O’Loughlin for The Back-Up Plan, the romance-comedy that marked their first team-up. I remembered J.Lo’s musical voice from our previous two interviews and she was as engaging as ever, talking about her twins and how she was coping with motherhood, much to the amusement of O’Loughlin who, when asked about their love scene, said that it was “Awful!” kissing J.Lo and then broke into uncontrollable laughter, making J.Lo laugh along with him — and the rest of us “international journalists.”

Only eight months later, I would meet O’Loughlin again, this time in Honolulu for Hawaii Five-O, the ‘60s Jack Lord hit TV series which is being revived by AXN (Sunday nights), with Scott Caan (son of James Caan…father and son have bridged the years-long gap between them), Korean actor Daniel Dae Kim and Grace Park (that’s her name, no kidding, like that of a district in Caloocan). Scott, a bachelor, was accompanied by his dog; while O’Loughlin left his family in Australia. He was wearing a “power bracelet” (in vogue these days). “It works,” said O’Loughlin. Watch the new Hawaii Five-O and it does capture the magic of the old one, with new twists and turns here and there.

It was London in May (election time both there and the Philippines) for Prince of Persia with Jake Gyllenhaal and Ben Kingsley who were an interesting study in contrast. Kingsley was nice and easy to talk to, you couldn’t dissociate him from Gandhi whom he plays in perhaps his landmark movie. Born and raised in England, he said he wouldn’t do a Bollywood movie. On the other hand, Gyllenhaal was funny and free-wheeling, “game” in answering any question. If he was already going steady with Taylor Swift at that time, Gyllenhaal would, I’m sure, willingly talk about it with glee. Definitely one of the most interesting Hollywood guys I’ve ever interviewed, very affectionate in an un-“PR” kind of way, saying “Hi!” by raising his hand at you and gently tapping your shoulder to drive home a point.

In June, I did a return interview with not just the big three stars — Rob Pattinson, Taylor Lautner and Kristen Stewart — of the Twilight series but a dozen other members of the cast who play vampires and werewolves. The first was for New Moon, the second installment, and this time for Eclipse. Pattinson was shy, as if uncomfortable with stardom; Lautner was outgoing, beefed up for his role as Werewolf Jacob; and Stewart was, as in our first interview, distant and wary, sending signals with her eyes for me not to ask anything about her private life. Latest report: Pattinson and Stewart are going steady. Breaking Dawn, the series’ fourth but not the last installment (the book was broken down into two movies), is now in post-production stage and, keeping my fingers crossed, I hope to meet them again, still at the Four Seasons in Beverly Hills. Good news: According to Wilson Yuloque of Pioneer Films (distributor of the Twilight movies in the Philippines), there’s a possibility that Pattinson might come to promote the movie. Pray that he does, you Twilight-lovers!

Did you know that Milla Jovovich, the model who gained fame by playing the title role in Joan of Arc, is beautiful inside-out? I found this out when I interviewed her and Wentworth Miller in August also in L.A. for Resident Evil (the popular PSP game). She was very articulate, laughing in gay abandon when answering even the most innocuous question — what a warm and positive person, so charming! Miller (of Prison Break fame) was formal, generous with his smile and very reserved (was he “guarding” something?), cautious about touching anything about his private life. Trivia: Kris Aquino is a Wentworth Miller fan(atic!) and she gave me DVD copies (good for one season) of Prison Break as aid in my story.

And, of course, as I’ve always been saying big men usually have soft hearts. There’s Dwayne Johnson (The Rock), Vin Diesel (whose twin brother is married to a Filipina), the formidable Tommy Lee Jones and Liam Neeson, and then there’s Bruce Willis who has a way of making you feel at home (relax, boy!) with his “commanding” presence. After a one-on-one with him in Tokyo three years ago for a Die Hard movie, I came face-to-face with him again in October in New York for RED (Retired Extremely Dangerous), the plot of which runs parallel to that of The Expendables (about “retirable” action stars proving that they shouldn’t be counted out just yet). Although visibly exhausted from doing rounds of interviews and TV promos, Willis and co-star Morgan Freeman were famously pleasant during our encounter, Willis with his sense of humor intact. Asked how he felt doing rugged action scenes now, almost three decades after he was discovered for the hit US TV series Moonlighting, Willis smiled, “Older!”

That’s all for now, folks!

Looking forward to more Hollywood encounters this year --- and beyond.

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