Hollywood’s Other Walk of Fame

The movie star is expected any minute. A thicket of bright lights, boom mikes and TV cameras are sprouting in front of the theater in Beverly Hills. Autograph seekers are poised to strike. A city police officer in a wide-brimmed hat paces the sidewalk, his mustache twitching as he surveys the scene. “Three, two, one,” a TV reporter counts down to her cameraman. “Thanks, Debbie! I’m here on the red carpet .... “

Suddenly, several men in suits rush an arriving limousine as if there’s a life-threatening emergency. Chatty reporters hush and crane toward the action. A limo door opens, the storm of shouts and flashbulbs erupts. “To your right! Tom! To your right!” Tom Hanks has arrived.

It’s Hollywood’s ubiquitous red carpet, the carefully executed promenade that precedes every awards show, gala affair and movie premiere, in this case, “The Road to Perdition.” Studios can spend millions of dollars for this one-night-only fanfare, an event that some consider an expensive exercise in celebrity worship that ultimately does little to boost box-office revenues. But others in the industry say the red carpet is as vital as the movie itself. It’s Hollywood’s security blanket, they say, a reassuring tradition for an industry consumed by anxiety.

For celebrities, though, the red carpet can be surreal. “It’s like being on acid,” says Hanks, as microphones are thrust into his face. “The first time ... you feel as though the attention is somehow warranted and everyone has a true, genuine fascination with what you have to say.”

And now?

“It’s something to be survived. It’s just a goofy, more fun way of getting into the theater. None of it matters.”

With that, he is off to the next reporter, who drills him on what he got for his birthday.

Photo Ops

Celebrities attend premieres primarily to get their pictures taken. Those images, according to their publicists, communicate an actor’s relevancy to the world. “You want to be in people’s mind-set,” said Stan Rosenfield, publicist to Robert De Niro, Will Smith and George Clooney. “You want people to know you are part of the dynamics of the evening.” Those who refuse to pose for photographers, such as Britney Spears at the recent opening of her New York restaurant, are roundly booed.

Photographers on the red carpet can be a rowdy bunch. “They yell

These attempts at joviality are motivated by money. One photo can earn thousands of dollars and sell for many years, like the one of Tom Cruise and Frank Sinatra taken at the Beverly Hilton in the mid-1980s or another of Madonna posing in her “Evita” garb at the film’s 1996 premiere in Los Angeles, Granitz said. “The life of a photograph is a lot longer than a sound bite,” he said.

Reporters are granted positions according to their relationship with the studio and they lord over these tiny squares of space. “Entertainment Tonight” is always first, followed by “Access Hollywood” and E! Entertainment Television. All three are often elevated above the rest of the crowd on special platforms while scores of local and foreign television crews fight below them over camera positions. “There’s a pecking order,” Rosenfield said. “The further down on the red carpet, the less dominant.”

Reporters pass the time waiting for celebrities by exchanging gossip and catty remarks, sometimes within earshot of the actors. At the June premiere of “Dangerous Lives of Altar Boys,” two female reporters scrutinized 17-year-old actress Jena Malone on the carpet. She wore a skimpy dress held together with safety pins. “She’s so young!” one said. “That’s why she’s wearing that dress,” said the other. At the premiere of “The Mexican,” two reporters made bets on whether one young male star was stoned.

For the behind-the-scenes film folks, winning the media’s attention is often a cruel sport on the carpet. At the premiere of the skateboarding documentary “Dogtown and Z-Boys,” a reporter for ESPN’s youth-oriented “extreme” sports show passed on speaking with one middle-aged woman involved with the film. “We’d talk to her, but she doesn’t fit our demo.”

Waste of Time, Money?

The red carpet tradition is a vulgar waste of time and money, say some publicity executives from several major studios. (None of those execs was be willing to be named for this story.) Studios devote entire departments to the planning of movie premieres, yet the events contribute virtually nothing to the overall revenues of a picture, they claim. The invited media outlets rarely have the same demographic that a film is targeting. “If you never had another movie premiere again, you wouldn’t see the grosses on a single movie affected,” one executive said.

The stories from a movie premiere that get the widest distribution often have little or nothing to do with the film. At the premiere of “Windtalkers,” for instance, the story beamed around the world was that Lisa Marie Presley and Nicolas Cage had reunited. Reporters at “The Others” waited breathlessly to see the newly divorced Tom Cruise (the movie’s co-producer) and Nicole Kidman (its star) in the same room together.

Ultimately, say some studio publicity executives, who are resigned to the tradition, the studio has premieres to demonstrate its support to the filmmaker. “It’s stroking the ego ...” one said. “It’s a political thing.”

Other studio execs, however, defend the premiere as an integral part of Hollywood culture. “That’s where the tapestry of life in the entertainment industry gets woven,” a studio executive said. “It’s necessary for there to be that kind of cross-pollination of people to see each other and acknowledge each other’s accomplishments.”

No Expense Spared

All the fanfare doesn’t come cheap. The bill starts at $250,000, and the sky’s the limit for the premiere of a major studio film.

Last year, Touchstone Pictures, a division of Walt Disney Studios, spent about $5 million for the “Pearl Harbor” premiere aboard a nuclear-powered aircraft carrier docked at Pearl Harbor in Honolulu. Disney footed air fare and hotel accommodations for scores of reporters, who ended up lining a 1,740-foot red carpet that Disney claimed was one of the longest in movie history.

In June, Columbia Pictures spent around $1 million for the “Men in Black II” premiere. The studio commandeered the amusement park on the Santa Monica Pier and gave hundreds of guests tokens for games and rides.

For event engineer John Chuck, “red carpets” generate about $3.5 million a year for his North Hollywood company Entertainment Lighting Services. Chuck is the man who lays the carpet, hires security, negotiates street and sidewalk closures, redirects bus routes, compensates merchants for lost business and pays the city for occupied parking meters. He also provides bleachers and metal barriers for media and fans, and positions photographers and TV crews to capture the film title with every shutter. The roots of his business stretch back 85 years, to a company founded in 1917 by Otto K. Olesen, among the first to use searchlights at premieres.

“The premiere business today is like night and day from where it started,” Chuck said. During the 1960s, Chuck lugged the same short piece of red wool carpeting to every event. A truck equipped with a generator and a few lights was parked in front of the theater along with a couple of anti-aircraft searchlights. By the late 1960s, the proliferation of synthetics made red carpet more available. “Now we use miles of it,” Chuck said.

It’s unclear how red carpets were introduced to the movie premiere. Some say studio chiefs wanted to treat their stars to the same honor bestowed upon bona fide royalty. Movie house developer Sid Grauman is said to have introduced the concept of a movie premiere in 1916 in San Francisco when he informally invited local business owners near his theater to stand outside and watch stars arrive for the film opening. During the 1920s and 1930s, he earned fame with elaborate lighting and outrageous publicity stunts at his spectacular theaters in Hollywood. For the 1930 premiere of the Jean Harlow picture “Hell’s Angels,” an aerial dog fight was staged over the Hollywood Boulevard theater.

During the 1950s and 1960s, movie premieres were infrequent, relatively unsophisticated affairs. A studio announcer interviewed the stars while the media looked on. “In the old days, the celebrities would wait in line to be on the mike,” former announcer Johnny Grant said. “It was a more collegial group. If I was interviewing William Holden, and Humphrey Bogart came up, he would wait .... “

Back on Wilshire Boulevard, limousines now line the curb. Actress and inveterate premiere attendee Thora Birch is smiling brightly through a barrage of commands from photographers. She tries a few poses, then turns to go. Her smile vanishes when she notices the press line. “Oh,” she says to herself. Then to the 50 or so reporters staring her way: “I’ll catch you some other time.” “Which means, ‘Bye-bye!’ ” mutters one reporter. Birch heads into the theater.

Soon, everyone’s attention turns to a young man in an expensive suit. He stands with adolescent awkwardness. The boy is Hanks’ 14-year-old co-star, Tyler Hoechlin, but a publicist identifies him to inquiring reporters only as “the kid in the film.” “Bring him down here!” shouts a TV reporter who wears a little black dress and body glitter. “He’s cute!” Moments later, Tyler stands before the reporter’s microphone. This is his second premiere in as many days. He says he’s getting the hang of it. “This one is starting to feel more comfy,” he says, adjusting his shoulders, sounding almost convinced.