I’ve been a BBC movie critic for 40 years – these are the rudest celebs | Films | Entertainment | EUROtoday

It’s occurred to one of the best of us. That heartstopping second you come face-to-face with somebody you understand whose title has vanished into skinny air. So think about the horror of veteran BBC movie reporter Tom Brook who discovered himself on this state of affairs on the crimson carpet on the 2011 Oscars reverse one of many world’s most well-known actors, Colin Firth.

Bridget Jones’ very personal Mr Darcy was driving excessive, nominated for Best Actor as King George VI in The King’s Speech (which he would win later that evening), and contemporary from popularity of his position in 2009 movie, A Single Man. But as Tom gazed on the tall, darkish and good-looking man standing earlier than him, he couldn’t fathom who on earth he was.

“It was awful, my mind just went blank,” reveals the presenter of BBC’s Talking Movies with a smile, nonetheless cringing on the reminiscence. “For some reason I just didn’t recognise him at all. He had just been in The King’s Speech and looked really different from that and my mind just went completely blank and couldn’t think who on earth he was.

“So instead, I had to just ask all these really generic, boring questions like, ‘How do you feel to be on the red carpet tonight?’ hoping it would come back to me who he was. It was so embarrassing but he was polite of course and pretended he hadn’t noticed.”

Thankfully, it was a uncommon lapse for the journalist who has interviewed most of the world’s greatest movie stars – from Bette Davis and Jimmy Cagney to Meryl Streep and Lady Gaga – plus the odd British prime minister too.

A particular version of Talking Movies will have fun Tom’s unimaginable 50 years on the BBC. The 72-year-old joined the Corporation as a trainee reporter in 1976 and has no plans to face down after reaching the wonderful milestone.

“I never want to stop doing what I do,” he smiles, talking from the basement of the Groucho Club in London’s West End. “I won’t retire until the BBC sack me. I have never lost the quest for a good story. Put a microphone in my hand and it is almost an animalistic urge to get a good quote.”

Tom, who sports activities a bushy moustache and an urbane method, lives in New York in a “tiny apartment” on Central Park West along with his husband, pathologist Sam Wahl. He arrived on the BBC in April 1976, aged 22, as a information trainee working in Belfast, Birmingham, and Manchester earlier than turning into a producer on Radio 4’s Today programme two years later.

In January 1980, he was posted to the BBC’s workplace in New York as a information and present affairs producer, the place he reported on the dying of John Lennon. Tom raced to the scene on New York’s Upper West Side on the evening of December 8, 1980, as information broke of the previous Beatles’ homicide by the hands of Mark Chapman.

“The US staff correspondent was away on a rather insignificant job miles away so I was sent to the Dakota Building,” he recollects. “I was a huge John Lennon fan and not used to keeping my emotions in check on camera. Weeping fans were gathering and playing his songs on boom boxes. It was absolutely tragic and a surreal scene. I remember speaking to one fan who said she felt like she had been punched in the stomach and I felt that too.”

He provides: “I felt cold for about two weeks afterwards, just like I had when my father died.”

Since 1985, Tom has reported on the US movie trade, engaged on the top-rated Film… collection introduced by Barry Norman till his dying, and masking the world’s high movie festivals, together with Cannes, Sundance, Toronto and London. He has attended almost all of the Oscar ceremonies for the previous 30 years, reporting dwell from the crimson carpet for main BBC information programmes. For essentially the most half, he finds stars persist with their scripts and “rarely go off-message”.

But when he has challenged an enormous shot within the movie trade to say greater than they wish to it has sometimes backfired.
“I was interviewing the director Paul Verhoeven about his film Basic Instinct once and it went badly wrong,” he reveals. “He was trying to make out it was an art film and I said to him that surely it was a commercial film and he got up and walked out.”

The 1992 erotic thriller starring Michael Douglas and Sharon Stone famously included a scene of the actress crossing and uncrossing her legs in a really revealing method throughout a police interrogation. A serious field workplace success regardless of, or maybe due to, the scene, the movie grossed $117million {dollars} within the US alone.

Tom additionally discovered Men in Black star Tommy Lee Jones “very difficult”. “He always seems to be in a foul mood at press junkets and he can be intimidating to younger journalists which I think is pretty mean,” he explains. Likewise Joker star Joaquin Phoenix, whose work Tom admires enormously, proved to be one thing of a disappointment in actual life too and “difficult to engage with”.

Not so Tom Hanks although who our Tom reckons is “the ideal interviewee, always ready with an articulate quote”. Then there are the humorous encounters like when he obtained the giggles interviewing Emma Thompson.

“We were in this hotel room for the interview and whoever was in the room next door kept flushing the toilet,” he laughs.“I do love a bit of toilet humour but I’m not sure Emma knew what was going on.”

Tom adores the old-fashioned stars of Hollywood, specifically Bette Davies though he discovered her fairly scary in particular person. “She looked at me as if I were vermin but I have a lot of respect for her. She made it in the 1930s in what was a very male-dominated world.”

Lauren Bacall who, in later life, he says, may very well be counted on to say precisely what she thought, and Marlene Dietrich, is one other favorite. More stunning is his admiration for The Sound of Music. “I recently went on a Sound of Music open top bus tour in Salzburg and everyone was singing along,” he smiles.

Tom was born in London and studied Economics at Cambridge University. Starting out as a information reporter, considered one of his first interviews was with Harold Wilson who in 1976 had shocked the nation by resigning as Prime Minister shortly after turning 60.
“When I walked in he was sitting in this room alone, sort of staring into space,” recollects Tom.

“It was quite surreal and I couldn’t believe I was going to interview a former Prime Minister. But as he started talking I realised I didn’t understand a word he was saying and wasn’t aware he had early stage dementia. There were moments of clarity but most of it didn’t seem to make any sense. Then to make matters worse, my tape recorder started spilling tape all over the floor!”

It was recognized on the time that sturdy magnetic fields from Underground trains on the Bakerloo and Northern used to erase analogue magnetic tape recordings, and Tom was tempted to make use of this excuse along with his BBC bosses after the disastrous interview.

Instead, he known as on the assistance of a sympathetic editor who helped him painstakingly razor minimize and stick the tape again collectively.
“By some miracle, she made both me and the former Prime Minister sound coherent which was no mean feat and I was even congratulated by a boss for a great interview,” he laughs. “That’s what I love about the BBC. There is usually someone who will help you out.”

Tom can also be stuffed with reward for the British movie trade and its low-budget movies typically backed by the BBC. But he’s much less enamoured with modern-day Hollywood. “The big studio films have for the most part lost any spark of originality,” he says. “I think we’ve had enough superhero movies now. It does feel creatively bankrupt. There is a production slump in LA right now and cinema attendance is still below pre-Covid levels.”

But he nonetheless has hope for the way forward for cinema. “The other day I went to see [sci-fi action film] Project Hail Mary at this little cinema in New York,” he says. “It was really good and the place was full of kids enjoying that communal experience of cinema.”And, in fact, popcorn was a part of the expertise. “I was enjoying myself,” he smiles. “Which is what it’s all about, really.”

• Talking Movies: Tom Brook’s 50 Years with the BBC, will air on the BBC News channel at 1.30pm & 8.30pm on Saturday, April 25 and 1.30am on Sunday, April 26; additionally accessible to stream on BBC iPlayer