The Great Premiere
I + 1 got invited to the NY Premiere of The Great Raid last Wednbesday. My eyes were on Joseph Fiennes, Mark Consuelos, Paolo Montalban, etc. My hands were with my friends. But my mind was on the actual red carpet. The celebrities were on it, the diplomats were behind it, and the veterans were beside it. I thought there should have been five red carpets at the Intrepid Museum that night. Or the hell, the whole space should have been red-carpetted from wall to wall. The celebrities just acted in the movie - that’s their job. We project them on the screen, and as a result we look up to them and they appear larger than life. But we should never put them on pedestals. I think event organizers, producers, diplomats, writers, engineers, doctors, soldiers, and the"ordinary " people should also get the red-carpet treatment - in premieres and always.
Postscript: Miramax finally invited Mr. Diaz and Mr. Genito to the red carpet where they posed with Joseph for the paparazzi for the NY Times, The Post, People, Vanity Fair, etc. After sixty years, they were in the frontline for camera flashes, and not in the line of fire.
