Seeing Stars

There was another empty seat at the opposite end of the front row, but I didn’t take it. Naturally, when the movie’s stars, Reese Witherspoon and Laura Dern, and the Portland author whose book the movie was based on, Cheryl Strayed, came to talk to the audience before the movie, they stood directly in front of that seat, under a bright spotlight.

It was merely a continuation of my run of poor luck at seeing and chatting with the stars. I was one of several gorge media graciously invited to the premiere by Janet Wainwright, a gorge commissioner and movie promoter.

Wainwright had been given Strayed’s book “Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail” as a gift when she first joined the Gorge Commission in 2012 and “absolutely loved” it. She was thrilled to hear that Fox Searchlight, a company she’d represented for 18 years, was distributing the film. She lined up the Portland screening at Cinema 21, a longtime friend’s theater.

“The Dec. 8 premiere was a convergence of my career, many meaningful friendships and my gratitude at being appointed to the Columbia River Gorge Commission,” Wainwright said.

“Wild” depicts Strayed’s epic 1,100-mile hike along the Pacific Crest Trail in an effort to turn to the wild to find herself again after running wild for four years following the cancer death of her beloved mother.

When I took my assigned spot behind a red velvet rope along the red carpet, I quickly peeled off my jacket. It was sweltering in our clear-plastic-sided tent on the sidewalk, where we hung out for close to 90 minutes.

But then Wainwright came over and said, “Wow, it’s nice and cool over here. It’s really hot over there.” She pointed to the array of TV cameras with their bright lights at the beginning of the red carpet.

We’d been told we’d have time for maybe one or two questions for each person: the director, two stars, author and producer. I’d read the book and the 53-page press release, which was more like a position paper and so fully went into everybody’s thoughts about the movie that it was hard to even think of additional questions.

But I nonetheless spent days wracking my brain for meaningful questions. Then we got surprised on the red carpet with additional cast members. I didn’t even know who they were, much less what questions to ask them.

The prize, and last to arrive, was Witherspoon, but it eventually became clear that all of the action was happening way over at the TV cameras, and a fair amount of media at the end of the carpet wouldn’t be interviewing her. As she was escorted past us into the theater I never even got a clear shot of the petite star, engulfed as she was by handlers.

Laura Dern I did get to talk to, and was utterly charmed. But, literally 35 seconds into my interview, the crowd outside began to chant, “Laura! Laura!” She waved in acknowledgement and this seemed to be the cue for the gorge print reporter next to me to ask to get his photo with her. She obliged, he bypassed the velvet rope, and they stood there smilingly and waited a long beat while the camera, wielded by another gorge media type, got good and ready to take a photo.

Impromptu photo op over, she turned back to me and thanked me for my patience – even patted my arm! – and we continued talking a bit longer. But, for some reason, I’d turned off my borrowed digital microphone during this infuriating hiatus, and her remaining comments are forever lost. I can’t even recall what she said, other than thanking me for my totally fake patience.

Just before Dern, I’d interviewed the book’s author, Strayed. It was awkward.

I frankly couldn’t bring myself to like the book. (But I very much liked the movie – what I saw of it. I’m gonna see it again, this time from my normal spot, the back of the damn theater.) Strayed’s three-month hike, which she was totally unprepared for, was an unbelievable act of will, but I just couldn’t reconcile myself to her seeming scant remorse for her catalogue of wrongdoing during her four years of living wild after her mother’s death when she was 22.

I toyed with whether I should ask her about this, when I spotted the exact topic addressed in book club questions at the end of her book. It validated my thinking, and I cowardly used that book club question as my hook for asking her about it.

Rodger Nichols, with Haystack Broadcasting, got a photo of me talking to Strayed. It’s funny because it looks like she’s ready to karate-chop me. But to my question about remorse, she said she had none. Her mistakes were what made her what she is today.

I asked her if she wrote those book club questions. She hadn’t, but didn’t mind them. “I actually think that’s a great talking point,” she said. Then she thanked me and said it was nice to meet me.

Her book is hugely popular and she’s widely beloved, so I know I’m an outlier.

I’m a jerk for not being able to fully see past her failings to how great her achievement was, not just physically but in restoring herself.

I’m going to reread the book too, and maybe I can come around.