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Sarah Jessica Parker - Source: Reuters -
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I would love to be able to relate to you the fantastical and riveting plot of Sex And The City 2, the, well, second instalment of a late-'90s telly phenomenon that has become a late-nought movie franchise.
The movie really is something. Samantha, the volcanically-libido-ed character who has had more sexual partners than a Roman has had cappuccinos, takes holy orders, and rises swiftly through the church. Writer Carrie, played by Sarah Jessica Parker, takes up the clarinet, gives her life to charity, and leads an orchestra of lepers in a tour of the Indian subcontinent. Mr Big has a gay romance with a Pekingese. "Finally," he murmurs, "I've found someone who understands me." New York also makes a cameo: Sleek, spangly, and neutered. It's the city most of the world recognises at once, with the exception of those 5 million people who actually live here.
As I say, I would love to tell you the plot, had I not signed a piece of paper before walking into the preview that threatened the legal equivalent of waterboarding on disclosure of said details. I can, however, reveal that the movie is so much the quintessential chick flick that as the bright images flashed past, and feminine dilemmas were perturbed and resolved, I felt in my torso, a strange and invigorating change.
Subsequent medical examination revealed that I had grown a pair of ovaries. Had my troubles ended, or were they just beginning?
A bit of both, if the movie's anything to go by. But duly re-equipped, I appeared at the Mandarin Orient, one of New York's most expensive hotels, to interview the actresses and director the next day, along with a hundred million other international entertainment journalists. These en masse movie interviews are called junkets, though why I don't know, as there's nothing sweet about them.
The other definition of a junket is a free and extravagant trip taken by a public official. The event is free, but then who in their right mind would pay to spend between three to five minutes humiliating themselves before the famous, desperate for something quotable, with a functionary counting down the minutes?
Before you know it, you're ejected back into the hallway to crouch with the other hacks in semi-darkness, and lie about how well it went, and how "nice" the said pompous self-aggrandising stars are.
Actually, the Sex And The City 2 stars were nice, except for one - who will remain nameless. But then it may have been my fault. A German crew had been in with her before I entered.
"New Zealand," she said (she had been told this by a publicist). "We like New Zealand."
"Hooray," I said, getting excitable, "thank #$%@ the Germans have gone!"
Her face soured. "I like Germans. They're my friends."
My ovaries twitched. As I say, she was extraordinarily nice.
The high-spiritedness was due to having discovered, moments earlier that I shared similar intimate dimensions with Chris Noth, the chap who plays Mr Big. He's called Mr Big because... well, if you've a schoolboyish mind you can work it out.
We'd been negotiating the star-journalist two-step, Big and I, when I raised my booted foot, and said something along the lines of, "Okay, you play this guy called Mr Big, let's do a little comparison."
He regarded me as if I were mad, but obligingly raised his shoe. We went sole to sole.
He, well, he had a couple of inches on me.
"Wait," he said, and kicked my heel up. Without handicapping, our shoe size was almost the same.
"Thirteen inches!" Big cackled, as my ovaries shriveled.
The point is this. Noth's day job happens to be playing a scandal soaked politician in the series The Good Wife. It's a show from the point of view of those dazed wives you see periodically, blinking beside their prostitute-admitting/affair-confessing/rent-boy-denying husbands. Kim Cattrall, who plays Samantha Jones, also appeared this year in Roman Polanski's The Ghostwriter, another piece that examined how private ethical failings play in the public arena.
But both will attract the most attention for being Big, and Samantha. The last Sex And The City made almost $600 million worldwide. Enlightenment? That's a side-gig; entertainment pays for the groceries.
Read more of Tim Wilson's articles.
