Sep. 10, 2008 - Issue #673: Sex in the City 2008

Enter Sandor - It’s a dirty job

Over the years I’ve been a journalist, I have done a lot of the dirtiest work we have to do in our business. I have done my share of chasing ambulances and fire trucks, spending many hours hunched over a police scanner, trying to pick up codes to see if anything interesting was happening in the area. And, by interesting, I mean bloody. 
 

I have done “pick-ups,” the journalist’s term for going to the family of someone who has just died tragically and trying to get quotes about the victim—and a photo.
 

These things, while necessary to our business, make a reporter feel about as big as a pea. These are the times you feel like the lowlife reporter in the trench coat that’s the cliché from so many cop movies.
 

But, this past week, while I wasn’t doing anything as sordid as chasing the dead, I got a return of that slimy-reporter feel. And that came from working a red carpet.
 

The event? The after party for the Davis Guggenheim documentary It Might Get Loud. The film places three legendary guitarists, Led Zeppelin’s Jimmy Page, U2’s the Edge and Jack White of the White Stripes together on a stage to talk about their instrument of choice, their influences and about the rock world in general.
 

Media covering the Toronto International Film Festival who also got invites to the party at the SoHo Metropolitan Hotel—a party which all three rock superstars were guaranteed to attend—had to wait just outside the red-carpet ropes in hopes to get quotes and  pictures. Deals are made with photographers and other journalists: “If Page stops here, can I get this one question in?” “Please make sure the TV journalist asks the first question.”
 

So, you sit in the rain and wait. Soon, a black Mercedes drives up to the ropes. Photographers run towards it. The windows roll down, and there are three young adults in the car, laughing uncontrollably. Fooled you all. Great stunt. 
 

Then the stars do arrive. White skips the red carpet and makes a beeline right for the VIP area, where he can hang with the other beautiful people, including Michael J Fox, producer Bob Rock, NBA star Steve Nash, Blue Jays outfielder Vernon Wells and Canadian pop star Bryan Adams. 
 

So far, the media are standing out in the rain and getting nothing. Word comes that Page will arrive soon.

 

In the meantime, someone no one in the media recognizes is brought on the carpet, pumping flesh like a politician. This is some up-and-comer looking for media, his publicist trying to get us to stop the Page watch in order to get this guy into the press.
 

Then, Page arrives, grey mullet just perfect, and he walks the carpet, waving at the autograph seekers. But he doesn’t stop. No quotes. 

The only member of the film entourage who stops to address the carpet media is Guggenheim.
 

“We want to show a kid playing guitar in his basement that he can be the next Jimmy Page.”
 

And he leaves. Over an hour outside the ropes, and I have 19 words in my notebook.
 

I walk back towards the party entranceway, looking to lick my wounds with a tequila or Jack Daniel’s. The party is set up like this: the hangers-on can all get in and suck back free liquor, while the VIPs have a special room roped off in the centre. All the partygoers can peer in and see White, Page and company chatting away, but we are all kept safely outside.
 

But I can’t get back in right away. No one is being readmitted to the party until the red carpet is cleared. Then, word comes that the Edge is already in the hotel; he came through the kitchen, just like the gangsters in Goodfellas. V

 

Steven Sandor is a former editor-in-chief of Vue Weekly, now an editor and author living in Toronto. 

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