Film Festival Junkie

As an astute reporter of the film festival scene, Laszlo Kriston sheds light on the making and unmaking of Harvey Weinstein (he first heard rumors about him back in 2004); charts the rise of the festival goodie bags and the Oscar gift bags; looks back at the day during the Toronto Film Festival when the attack on the Twin Towers unfolded; chronicles the biggest scandals of Cannes when films were roundly booed; narrates the closure of the Cannes Film Festival during the 1968 student riots; looks back on the Mubarak years that served as a backdrop to the Cairo Film Festival; chronicles the biggest biddings wars—for distribution rights—that studios engaged in; examines the closing day blues (a common festival malady); muses about a pee stain on Nick Nolte’s pajamas (his garment for the interview); and reveals how Bill Murray traumatized a young Scarlett Johansson on the set of Lost in Translation.

Film festivals are vanity fairs and highly competitive, ego-driven showbiz events, and Laszlo Kriston chronicles them with a healthy dose of humor – it’s an often hilarious, tongue-in-cheek book.

Which job requires you to sit in the dark and allows you to doze off during work – and still get paid? Film criticism and film festival reporting. Laszlo Kriston combined both in his young life as a roaming film journalist.

Between age 21 and 36, he spent four full years at festivals, interviewing 650 celebrities. In this book, some stars are outed as crashing bores, but he also recalls his interviews with movieland’s glitterati when sparks were flying.