The Confessions of a Former Hack
My editor and I hovered near the office phone at our headquarters off Bayaud. Any moment now, Scarlett Johansson’s publicist would connect me to the Paramount rep—who would put me through to Scarlett—who in that fateful fall of 2016 was sojourning in Paris—which was the site of the novelty popcorn shop she was opening with her husband—who would not be her husband much longer.
Back then I had a terrible fever, an illness pervasive here in Denver and deeply obnoxious to all who encounter it. I was in the throes, Dear Reader, of mid-twenties careerism. And if you’ve ever been afflicted, you know it’s a kind of adolescence.
In a few months, I would have my editor’s job. He was incompetent—even by our hack standards—but it didn’t help that I was such a striver. Every morning, I awoke by my former wife’s side with the hot piss of get-up-and-go a modern young professional needs in order to afford an apartment with A/C.
Scarlett Johansson, Scarlett Johansson, Scarlett Johansson, I would chant during my commute, every morning, for a month, before that day my ill-fated editor and I floated by our office phone. There in that puny Denver magazine office. Voices of L.A. + Paris power incoming from on high. It was The Culture. “Hi Scarlett. Hi Paul.”
Getting a celebrity interview was important to me back then. It isn’t anymore, thank Christ, but only because I’ve done a whole bunch. And I was able to learn something from those things—something you probably already know but that you don’t really know-know. Yes, I can confirm that they are, for the most part, extraordinarily stupid.
But stupid didn’t matter. Attention mattered, and celebrities got attention. If you were a young, wannabe “journalist,” it wasn’t in your best interest to get real brainy about anything. At first, this went against your instincts as a writer. But then you either got fired or your instincts changed. I was an MFA grad. I’d had my little poems published in places like Harpur Palate and Word Riot (RIP). But I got with the program real fast.
Self-deprecating as this confession is, I will give myself a pat on the back here. I figured out how to get celebrities on the phone all by myself. And I was interviewing A-listers for a magazine that nobody had ever heard of. That cheeky title above isn’t clickbait. Here’s how I did it (young hacks, take heed):
The Key: Do not go after the celebrity. Go after their masters.
Step 1: Find a tie-in between your outlet and an upcoming property. Ideally, this property will be released at least six months in the future. You need to start this process very early. The tie-in is usually thematic. In Scarlett’s case, I was working at a tech magazine, and she was set to star in the widely panned live-action Ghost in the Shell (which was about robots and stuff).
Step 2: Reach out to the studio/company behind the property and pitch them on an interview as a way to promote the release. You will need to go to the tippy-top, usually the CMO or whatever title the major marketing executive has. Don’t be intimidated. Don’t think about how big their house in Beverly is. Speak to them as an equal, and remember that they’re buying what you’re selling. Be unctuous. Think Jimmy Fallon. There are ways for digging up contact information, and if you’re not good at that, you can always fork it over for a service like RocketReach, which will supply you with their email and, often, cell phone number.
Step 3: Now that you’ve reached out to the studio, find out who the celebrity’s publicist is. Get their contact info and email/call. Tell them that you are in communication (or some such ambiguous phrase) with the studio about a potential interview to promote the upcoming release. Ingratiate yourselves with them. Again, be unctuous. Be a worm. You are a worm. I sent Scarlett’s publicist a goddamn edible arrangement. If you have a decent rapport, try to check on the celebrity’s availability. Would such-and-such be available in the next few weeks for a quick chat? If you don’t get a hold of them right away, that’s okay too.
Step 4: Persist in follow-up emails/calls to the contacts from Steps 3 and 4. You will probably be at this for weeks, even months. In total, in took me two months to schedule the SJ interview. However, it will just take one of them to agree to the idea. Usually, it’s the studio. You’re offering free press, after all. Once one party agrees, you’ve got it.
Step 5: When you get confirmation from one party, you can then connect them to the other party and start the process of formally arranging the interview. The publicist, and thus the celebrity, will feel pressure from the studio. Novelty popcorn shops in Paris don’t pay for themselves. If the publicist is the one who likes the idea, the studio will jump at the chance for free press. Then, just pray. Stand by your little office phone and pray, you hack! Remember, when this is over, you’ll be up a rung. Your precious little career. You can take your wife—who will not be your wife much longer—out to celebrate with a fancy dinner at Beast & Bottle (RIP).
I repeated this process numerous times. And, like a good editor, I eventually tutored our staff on how to pull this whole thing off themselves once I’d moved up in rank. As a professional sidenote, this is something a lot of hacks in the access media fail at. They’re stingy with their methods, instead of teaching others—afraid that they’ll be expendable if someone else has the secret formula. Or they just want to hoard the glamor.
I got sick to death of it myself, but that’s a story for another time. This story is really just a listicle after all, and I’m at 1,029 words now—plenty to satisfy SEO best practices. I could have done a better job with my keywords and H2 headings, but I’m confident this content will rank highly if we do some cross-promotion on social. I’ll keep refreshing the browser until I see my name.
by Paul M. French
Paul M. French is the founder and editor of Denverse Magazine.
