There are no more secrets in the film business. They make the Movie and then they make the Making-of-the-Movie, which shows you how all the special effects were done. Then the stars of the Movie on on every possible talk show and detail the behind-the-scenes production screwups, and they may even show outtakes. An hour or two later, when the DVD-of-the-Movie comes out, they restore all the deleted scenes, plus the director does an audio commentary telling you that during the close-up you’re watching, the assistant boom operator was eating a salmon-salad sandwich with lettuce and tomatoes.

So is anything supposed to be secret? Apparently, yes.

Ask a publicist what color panties Gwyneth Paltrow was wearing under her frock in Scene 37-A, and he’ll get you the color, style, and maybe even a chance to try them on. But ask about the film’s press junket, and suddenly you’re a KGB agent, mock innocently inquiring about nuclear silos and whether you can go in and snap a few Polaroids.

Press junkets are the clandestine rituals by which the makers, stars, and publicists of major motion pictures shmooze those who write for your local newspaper. Reporters from around the globe converge for an orgy of screenings, partying, perks, and rigidly controlled interviews. What transpires at these kaffee klatches—and even that they exist—is one of those bamboo-shoots-beneath-the-fingernails secrets that no one wants to give up.

The publicists won’t tell you because their job is to generate press coverage without anyone inquiring if maybe, just maybe, those rave reviews had more to do with the perks that were dispensed than with what will be onscreen at the Cineplex.

No one thinks that a couple of gifts, catered buffets, and moments (almost) alone with the stars will induce a film critic to bestow four stars on a stinker. Still, with whole careers and zillions of bucks riding on the opening-weekend grosses, no one wants to risk not hosting a junket, on the off chance that it might have a teensy impact. And the critics will rarely, if ever, clue you in about junkets. They know that being wined and dined does not buy their votes, but they aren’t sure you’ll buy that.

Besides, sometimes even their editors don’t fully understand what goes on at these things. The boss thinks his writer landed an exclusive, all-day, one-on-one interview with Charlize Theron. No, point in calling attention to the fact that dozens were done that day, assembly-line style, and that his representative was ushered in and out in 20 minutes—10 of them spent getting Charlize to sign a one-sheet from The Cider House Rules.

I didn't set out to write about junkets per se. I set out to write about Mark Burger, a likeable guy who is the film, theater, and video critic for the Winston-Salem Journal, published in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. A member, as it were, of the media non-elite, who also happens to be a fairly accomplished junketeer.

He gets lots of free stuff: T-shirts, sweashirts, hats, bags, and even soap—most recently, pink soap, courtesy of the makers of Fight Club. (The first rule of Fight Club is: You don't talk about Fight Club—unless they send you pink soap.)

More importantly, he gets to be up close and personal with many famous people, some of whom he has admired for years. He also gets to see a whole bunch of movies, and—as he tells me several times—“movies are my life.” Wanting to see precisely what that life consisted of, I made arrangements to meet him in New York and tag along for a particularly big junket weekend. It was pretty surprising to learn that movie studios both major and minor, which normally engage each otherin pit bull-like competition, actually cooperate in the scheduling of their junkets, co-ordinating things so that all the journalists they gather from far and wide can cover more than one movie on their trip to fabulous Gotham or Los Angeles or wherever. Kind of restores your faith in the brotherhood of man and all that stuff.

It is cold in Manhattan, but my new friend Mark is attempting to warm me up—to the idea that John Frankenheimer is a “saint”. Mark has brought along posters for him to sign, including one for Black Sunday. “Seen it 20 times,” he tells me enthusiastically. It is a Burger tradition to watch this movie, which is about a plot to blow up the Super Bowl, every Super Bowl Sunday.

That's funny, I think: It's a female tradition to plot to blow up the Super Bowl, every Super Bowl Sunday. For real.

Just in case I need any convincing of his devotion to Saint Frankenheimer, Mark lists every single Frankenheimer movie, along with a little info on each—who starred in it, what it meant to him, stuff like that. (The whole thing started when young Mark caught a television broadcast of The French Connection II, which he was “blown away” by. Turned him into a Gene Hackman fanatic overnight. Interest in, and and fanatacism for, the film's director followed shortly thereafter.) And all the while, he's wearing a T-shirt displaying one word—Ronin. Frankenheimer's previous film. Even the worst of the man's films—and here we must recall that he is talking about the auteur responsible not only for Seconds and the Manchrian Candidate but also for 99 44/100 % Dead and, God spare you, Prophecy (Talia Shire meets mutated forest creatures)—even these, Mark says, have “first-class moments.”

Suddenly, a pressing issue arises, one to which Mark has obviously given a great amount of thought: How is he going to approach John Frankenheimer for his autograph?

Mark tells me that at every junket, he likes to get a few things signed. A few of his movie-critic brethren have frowned on his autograph-seeking, decrying the practice as “unprofessional, immature, and juvenile.”

“...And maybe it is,” Mark grins, but he just doesn't care. It seems even film critics don't listen to film critics when they get bad reviews.

At the Regency Hotel, Mark checks in at Universal Studios' hospitality suite, where we're invited to partake of a sumptuous buffet–the first of many we shall see this weekend. We meet up with one of Mark's fellow critics, Louie from The Calgary Sun, and they launch into immediate evaluations of the “goody bag” that has been provided. Well, what did you expect? They're critics.

This one gets Two Thumbs-up, mainly for the high-quality Gear sweatchirt with matching hat, both displaying the Erin Brockovich logo.

Mark wants to introduce me to Greg, who is head honcho of this junket. Mark doesn't expect any objections but feels he should inform Greg that I'm writing an article about him. He gets about halfway through the word article when Greg's personal smoke alarm starts beeping.

He refuses to introduce himself and says he fears “seeing his name in print.” This strikes me as odd, given that he's surrounded by professional reporters, all of them loaded down with notepads and digital recorders, and it is Greg's current mission to see that they all go home and generate numerous articles. But maybe he's just afraid that mentions of him will detract from the product he's pushing. ‘We're here to be of help,” Greg explains, “and not to be seen and heard from.”

Mark reassures him that nothing negative will be written and asks if I could attend some of the round tables and “one-on-ones” with the filmmakers. That is to, you know, “see what a critic does at a junket.” Greg responds by turning the color of Ben & Jerry's Vanilla Heath Bar Crunch ice cream. And he's almost as warm. ‘We didn't know anything about it,” he stammers.

“This is a sensitive issue,” he goes on, all the time insisting he is not being paranoid. He finally decides that since I'm not here doing something on Erin Brockovich alone, he “can't really let me get in on the round tables.”

Huh? The suite is steadily filling with reporters and film critics, all of whom are here to cover many films and subjects, not just this one film. They're all welcome at the round tables.

Back and forth Greg paces, all the while averring that “the whole point of this is to promote the movie, not to promote junkets.”

I mingle with the other writers, who are busily denuding the buffet. one female critic complains that though she is junketing Madonna's latest screen opus, The Next Best Thing, she isn't going to get to interview Madonna. Greg hovers around me, trying to decide if I can help or hurt. Finally, when he finds out I'm from PREMIERE, he adopts his happiest face and says, “Oh, I'm sorry I tried to dispose of you.” He even demonstrates good faith by telling me his name—more than my last boyfriend did—though he reminds me several times that the idea here is “to promote the movie and not the junket.” Later, he decides it's okay for me to attend the screening. As for the round tables tomorrow? Uh, well, gee...You never saw a subject changed so rapidly in your life.

“I would have kicked you out, too”, a former studio publicist tells me after my wild weekend. It's not the very fact that such a thing as a junket is taking place that makes studio functionaries so paranoid, my source insists; it's just that the junket situatin is fraught with so many individual opportunities for paranoia. You have the various personal publicists for the various talents who deign to appear, and these busybodies often have very little to do—so they like to create problems. One such problem they create is to pitch a hissy fit when they discover the presence of somebody they haven't ‘cleared.” Then there are circumstances related to the film itself. If a studio is junketing a movie it's nervous about, the far-flung correspondents assembled there are, more often than not, seeing the movie before the major media outlets do. And then it's up to the field publicists—the flacks who specialize in handling journalists from what the biz so charmingly refers to as “flyover country”—to gather their quotes. Cash bonuses are sometimes thrown in. “First person to get three quotes gets ten dollars!” my source chortles, and I wonder it that's a joke. Sure sounds like one. Then there are nervous producers milling about, desperate for feedback. My source insists that the junket is not in fact a well-oiled machine designed to draw hyperbolic blurbs out of no-name newspapers. “Grunt workis more like it—all you want to do is make sure it goes smoothly and get out of there. It's nerd time. everyone feels like a boring nerd at a junket.”

Mark and I have a few hours to kill before the movie, so we go back to his room. He sprawls on the bed and, apparently not feeling like a boring nerd, begins musing again about the best way to approach Him. “Mr. Frankenheimer, I'm a huge fan,” he rehearses.

“Mr. Frankenheimer, I'm a huge fan...”

“Mr. Frankenheimer, I'm a huge fan...”

He has a day to perfect his reading. That's when he's having his “one-on-one” with the director of Reindeer Games, as part of its junket. It's the latest, hopefully greatest John Frankenheimer flick and the whole reason Mark is here.

“You know, you don't get into journalism for the money,” he says—and cites his yearly salary as proof. It peaks at somewhere in the lower-middle five figures, but there's the occasional non-monetary bonus. He tells me he's about to realize a long-held dream. Letting out a big sigh, he waves his hand over his precious stills and posters and whispers, “To have them all signed...by my all-time favorite director.”

After the Erin Brockovich screening, Mark decrees that the movie “will do big business” and that “Julia and Albert have great chemistry together.” We join a dinner table with several other critics. The topic is—surprise, surprise—movies. Between ordering and dessert, it feels like every movie ever made is analyzed, critiqued, and ritually dissected.

There's a sudden outbreak of Melanie Griffith stories. Ms. Griffith is, I gather, famed for giving answers that cause interviewers' jaws to carom off the linoleum. At past junkets, she has displayed a certain paucity of I.q. points, evidenced by her comments—if one anecdote is to be believed—during a round table for “Shining Through”. She was asked, the story goes, what she'd learned during its making, and she expressed amazement that so many Jews had been killed during World War II.

Almost every critic has a tale of Holly Hunter screaming, ‘It's none of your goddamn business,” when asked a question she didn't want to answer. They agree, though, that she's still better than certain actors who are, sans script, unable to utter a coherent sentence.

At the Regency the next day, no one says I can't sit in on a round table with Erin Brockovich costar Aaron Eckhart. Unfortunately, Aaron isn't there, so our group sits around discussing an incident at the previous morning's junket for Snow Day (“Godawful” is the general consensus on the movie, by the way). One critic, they say, asked Chevy Chase, “What happened to your career?” Chevy's response was a deadpan expression conveying terrible insult, followed by an attempt at humor.

“Actually,” one critic insists, “that's a good question. What did happen to his career?”

Just then Eckhart walks in, followed by a publicist. He sits at the head of the conferene table where, facing him, are eight tape recorders, poised to record his every word. The publicist takes her position in the corner.

Eckhart stares, transfixed, at the eight red lights on the eight tape recorders, indicating they're on. He smiles and mutters boyishly, “Ihope you guys will be kind to me.” Well, since he's not in Snow Day, they probably will.

For 20 minutes, we hear how great Julia Roberts was to work with, how great she was to kiss, how great the director was, how great Erin Brockovich is. He really gets enthusiastic when he talks about his recently acquired Harley-Davidson, which is really great.

As the publicist excorts him out, Albert Finney strolls in, without a publicist. He's a stage-trained actor; he doesn't miss entrances.

Finney introduces himself to everyone in the room—like we don't all know who he is, but it is polite. And charming. He holds the room spellbound, speaking of Erin Brockovich, sharing little personal bits about himself and others—how he felt meeting Julia, meeting Steven Soderbergh, and so on. He uses words like superb and marvelous—all lovingly enunciated. If there were an Oscar category for Best Performance at a Junket, he'd be a shoo-in.

As it becomes time for him to be elsewhere, the critics are on their feet, begging for the seventh or eighth “one last question.” And those who frowned on Mark's getting Aaron Eckhart's autograph have all pulled Albert Finney's photo from their press kits to have it signed.

Witnessing this leads me to formulate the first of several junket truisms, to wit:

1. Being in movies these days means that artists have to intermittently stop being artists and go out and be salespeople. You see a little of this when they go on Jay Leno to plug the new movie. At a junket you see a lot of it.
2. It doesn't appear that many of them enjoy this role. Albert Finney seems to, but I suspect he's just a better actor than the rest of them.

Mr. Finney makes a mad dash for the door, and we have 20 minutes until the next subject. That means 20 minutes of actor-bashing. The topic is “small and old.”

• Victim #1: Gene Kelly. One critic is still amazed at hom much Kelly had ages when seen at the junket for one of the That's Entertainment! movies. (Never mind the fact that the man was over 80 at the time. Movie stars aren't supposed to age.)
• Victim #2: Paul Newman. “Short, and much older than he appears onscreen,” someone proclaims. (Never mind that he's almost 80.)
• Victim #3: Robert Redford. “In person, old, old, old,” someone says.

the topic moves to Harrison Ford's last performance, not in Random Hearts but at its junket: “It bugs me the way he comes across. It's obvius he hates junkets. I think he shouldn't do 'em, and do us all a favor.” (Yeah, and if he didn't, that critic would be sitting here moaning, “Harrison Ford thinks he's too good to talk to us.”) Tom Hanks doesn't fare much better: “He's gotten so nasty now that he's won two Oscars in a row.” Yet another journalist argues, “I'll take Hanks over Helen Hunt any day.”

Which brings me to my next observation—Junkets are a big drag for the stars, and a lot of them don't mind letting you know just how big a drag they are....

3. Still, if someone's getting a few million per picture, it doesn't seem unreasonable that they pitch in and help sell it.
4. Given the fact that many stars don't mind letting one know how distasteful they find junkets, or can't help letting on what pea brains they are, the junket process is an invaluable way for the film writer to collect tons of juicy, derogatory stories and impressions of Hollywood's beautiful people. Of course, they can't share them with their readers so they share them with each other—at every unoccupied moment.
5. Why can't they share them with their readers? They want to be invited to more junkets.

Enter Steven Soderbergh. All bashing stops, and the critics scurry back to their seats, but not before shoving tape recorders in front of the director of Erin Brockovich. We get the usual 20 minutes before a publicist interrupts. Mark barely hastime to get a photo signed. The morning's round tables are done, but there's no rest for the weary. Everyone's sprinting for the lobby, where Julia Roberts will shortly be holding forth.

The critics are excited, since Ms. Roberts is a genuine, bona fide Movie Star. On the other hand, they don't much like that she's doing a press conference instead of round tables and one-on-ones. With this format, it's harder to craft an article that suggests Julia cleared the day to grant you a personal chat.

Still, we all file into the room, lusting for the front rows.

Well, almost all of us.

“I don't find you on my list,” the publicist insists with a note of horror in her voice. ‘We can't let anyone into the press conference who wasn't approved already by Julia Roberts's publicist.” (Gee, is she discussing national security issues in there?) Another publicist joins her. There are more discussions, involving still more publicity personnel. I wait while all the other reporters file in, along with other publicists. I try to catch the eye of Greg, who didn't see a problem, but Greg now doesn't see me.

Suddenly, a man and a woman storm up to me and demand to know if I have “round-tabled the Talent” this morning. I admit I was there, and suddenly I feel like I've just admitted to being on the grassy knoll with a howitzer, standing right behind Mr. Zapruder.

The woman says the Talent wasn't given the opportunity to approve me and therefore, whatever I write must not include the names of the Talent, their films, or the studios involved. The woman adds, “And I can't let you into the press conference, unfortunately.” She starts to walk away but stops to add, “There's soup in the ballroom. Have lunch on us.” I resist asking her if I can mention what kind of soup it is, since the croutons haven't had the chance to approve me.

Mark comes by, fretting that I will somehow cost him his scheduled one-on-one with Albert Finney. After all, he has more pictures to get signed, plus he bought Finney a cigar.

Later, when we meet up, he is the happiest person on the planet.

“He hugged me,” Mark grins. “I gave him the cigar and Albert Finney hugged me!” Not only hugged him but signed everythingelse he'd brought, and posed for a photo, to boot. But Mark's mood suddenly dims: There's a rumor circulating that a journalist is infiltrating the junkets to write some “underground” story about them. Heaven forbid.

As we walk to the Essex House Hotel—site of the upcoming sessions for Reindeer Games and Drowning Mona—Mark is apologizing but explaining that henceforth, he must ignore me. He says he doesn't want to “get screwed out of anything.” He especially soesn't want to jeopardize his personal audience with John (the Saint) Frankenheimer.

In the Reindeer Games hospitality suite, things are...well, hospitable. A nice gent named Gary has the title “Manager, Regional Publicity and Promotions,” and I tell him flat out I'm doing a story for PREMIERE on Mark and on junkets. He does not flinch and tells me I am more than welcome to attend today's screening of Reindeer Games. As for the round tables, “I'm sure we're gonna make it happen,” but he needs to check. Then he turns to Mark and confirms his one-on-one with John Frankenheimer.

Mark is, once again, the happiest person on the planet.

We go up to the suite for the Drowning Mona junket. For what seems to be the 750th time, I hear, “I don't see it being a problem.” The publicist there also has to check about the one-on-ones and the round tables, but for now, she tells me, “take a water cooler.”

A what?

She hands me a two-foot-tall, miniature water cooler—that works. on the bottle is a cast photo, and below on the base is printed DROWNING MONA. I am also given a lovely press kit and made to feel very welcome indeed. Just like in the Reindeer Games suite.

At my hotel, there's a message from Gary, the publicist for Reindeer Games. It says, “Will not be able to accomodate your request,” and it's time-stamped less than 15 minutes after he told me he didn't see a problem.

Mark has now decided that henceforth he will have to “fly solo” and that at tonight's screening, we'd better sit at opposite ends of the theater. I ask him if it would make him feel better if I didn't attend the screening at all. Apparently, it will, so I don't.

The next day, Mark takes the courageous step of walking with me—in public!—to the Essex House, where I have so far not been uninvited to the Drowning Mona round tables. To my surprise, I am checked off, approved for entry, and even handed a travel-expense sheet, with which i can get reimbursed for any cab fare I'd incurred to get to the previous evening's screening. I start to feel very guilty for not having gone to it, especially when they tell us that hot coffee and muffins await us within.

This turns out to be half-true: We have coffee but no muffins. Some of the reporters are pissed.

As we wait for things to start, Mark reveals to me that at Julia's press conference, he was pulled aside and told how they “felt compromised” by my presence. Then, at one of the screenings, another publicist “jokingly suggested” to him that in the future, there might just be a problem with him and junkets.

Uh-oh. Things are getting nasty. Am I the reason we don't have muffins?

Finally, nick Gomez, director of Drowning Mona, enters. A publicist asks him if he needs anything and all the critics answer in unison: “Yes! He needs muffins! Lots of muffins!”

One reporter asks Nick why he wanted Casey Affleck for this picture. Nick replies, “I don't know.” They all pounce on him.

“You don't know?”

“What do you mean, you don't know?” Apparently, directors are always supposed to know. And arrive with muffins.

Another reporter complains about some anachronisms in what is supposed to be a period picture. “You know the scene where she's putting on the nail polish,” the reporter asks.

Gomez, who has suddenly found himself on “The Chris Farley Show,” admits that he remembers the scene where she's putting on the nail polish.

“Well,” the reporter triumphantly reveals, “that particular brand of polish has been out for only about two years.”

The director suppresses the urge to recall all prints of the film for significant reshoots, and mutters, “I didn't know.” Soon the publicist mercifully announces that time is up.

Nick Gomez springs to his feet and, giving a line-reading that wouldn't survive the first edit of an Ed Wood movie, says “That was fun.” As he hurries from the room, someone asks where the hell those muffins are.

Next up is coproducer-costar Danny DeVito. Onec again, a publicist asks if he needs anything, and once again, the assemblage announces a critical need for muffins. I, however, am asked to step oput of the room. “We seem to have a problem,” the publicist says quietly. Danny DeVito's publicist has not approved of my being in the room, and neither has Casey Affleck's. “Destination Films does not have a problem with you being here,” she explains, but the publicists hired by the Talent do. She impresses on me that “it has nothing to do with the Talent.” In other words, it's not that Danny DeVito doesn't want me in the round table. It's that mean ol' publicist of his.

Junkets are a “sensitive issue,” she explains, asking that I not print any “behind the scenes” information, as it may make things look “manipulative.” That's her word, not mine. She then tells me to sit tight as she polls the other publicists. She takes each aside and explains the situation in a whisper. Neve Campbell's publicist, Jill, comes over to me, introduces herself, and says, “Neve's in.”

Amazing: a publicist who believes in publicity.

So did I mention that Neve is sweet, charming, and talented? She tells the assembled that she has been acting since she was 15, which makes 11 years now. Her first career choice was to be a classical ballerina. The group, however, doesn't care about that stuff. They want to know if she's in a “relationship.”

Neve gives a little sigh and, with exquisite poise, answers, “Relationship-wise, I'm trying to keep it out of the press, not to talk about it.”

A reporter says, “You realize I'm not asking about your sex life. I'm asking about how you keep it personal.”

Neve is beginning to look uncomfortable. “By trying not to talk about it....”

The group won't let go. “Do you warn that person that this might happen?” Neve nods, looking more pained. “Do you approach this on the second or third date?” “Do they sign a waiver?” Three more junkets, and she'll be yelling, “It's none of your goddamn business,” just like Holly Hunter.

6. As you can see, junkets really are a sensitiveissue. Also, no one wants to admit it but there's at least a little quid pro quo at work here. If I were a film writer for the Picayune Post-Dispatch, I'd be afraid of not being invited to the junkets. Never mind the perks; how else am I ever going to get to interview Julia Roberts?
7. And I think what unnerved some of the publicists I encountered was not that I hadn't been signed up in advance and cleared through channels. It was that they had no “hold” on me. I wasn't someone they knew wanted to be invited to the next one. I was liable to go off and write an article like...well, like this one.

By the time another Mona cast member, Marcus Thomas, arrives, the reporters have pretty much lost interest, as his entrance unfortunately coincides with that of the muffins.

And now Mark must make haste. He has to pack his signable souvenirs for the Reindeer Games junket, which will include his long-awaited one-on-one with John Frankenheimer.

Later that night, I find Mark admiring all his stuff. Frankenheimer has moved past Saint status for Mark and is verging on Godhood. “My esteem for him is unparalleled at this point,” Mark says. His first words were not what he'd rehearsed for days; he went with the moment and found himself saying, “I dig you, man! I dig you, I dig your work, and I dig it a lot. I dig it the most!” Frankenheimer had no problem with signing the whole pile of posters, lobby cards, and photos. “He was flattered even, and he told me, ‘You know more about my career than I do,’ and I went nuts!”

Tomorrow, Mark will be on the plane back to Winston-Salem and weeks of watching movies in dark rooms and banging out pieces for the Journal... and dreaming of the next junket. Maybe, just maybe, Gene Hackman will have a movie to promote.