Red Carpet

Several years ago, while attending a major media event here in Sydney, I walked the red carpet with a colleague from work and my then-partner. The cameras were flashing with an intensity I’d never experienced before, as they snapped the likes of Jana, Ray and Jim. And then when it was our turn, you could see the slightly blank look on the faces of the photographers as they saw us, and paused briefly before turning away to re-load the film in their cameras.

In another famous red carpet moment, when the same then-partner at I were at a function at the Sydney Opera House, we were photographed by one of the local newspapers and even had our names and suburbs taken down. Within minutes, the same photographer had snapped Bryan Brown, Rachel Ward, Ruth Cracknell and Gary McDonald, and thus we very quickly realised we wouldn’t be appearing in that week’s edition of the Wentworth Courier.

There was, however, an occasion at Tropfest last year when I received a text message from a friend in Western Australia who had seen us walk along the red carpet. As we walked the red carpet at the State Theatre, tonight, however there was absolutely no thought in my mind we would be stopped and interviewed for something on Foxtel, even if I do work on a daily basis with one of the red-carpet reporters.

Amidst the likes of Catherine Zeta-Jones and Guy Pearce, there was a sprinkling of Australian celebrities including Claudia Carvan, Annalise Braakensiek (pictured), Mike Goldman and Daniel Johns (who, with platinum blonde hair, bore a remarkable resemblance to Mr Humphries from “Are You Being Served?”) There were others too, although their names don’t readily spring to mind.

We were there, of course, for the new film, “Death Defying Acts” about the life of Harry Houdini, which featured Zeta-Jones and Pearce, and which was directed by Gillian Armstrong.

We all agreed the film was okay, though not entirely spectacular. Afterwards,. as s a few of us dissected the film, which concerned a would-be love affair between Houdini and a woman who made money as a confidence-trickster of sorts, we all wondered loudly about the purpose of the film. The cinematography is good, the actors are quite good, the story is quite interesting, but we all wondered “why”. In stark contrast to most films, these days, however, it was just about the right length.