8:05—Transfer to Media Center on 3rd Floor.
8:15–8:45—Print Media Round Table #1 (approx 16 outlets. List available)
8:50–9:20—Print Media Round Table #2 (approx 16 outlets. List available)
9:25–9:55—Print Media Round Table #3 (approx 16 outlets. List available)
10:00–10:30—Print Media Round Table #4 (approx 16 outlets. List available)
10:35–11:05—Print Media Round Table #5 (approx 16 outlets. List available)
11:10–11:40—Print Media Round Table #6 (approx 16 outlets. List available)
11:45–11:50—Reddit A.M. Session (for U.S.)
BREAK
12:00–13:00—Social Influencers Mini-Interviews (3 to 5 minutes each). The Social Influencers have at least 1.5 million followers. Each will have a specific request for their postings. Some will be very quick; others will be limited to 5 minutes.
13:05–14:00—Photo Shoot on Hotel Roof (Note: Eleanor Flintstone will join you for last 10 minutes.)
14:05–14:45—Lunch/Interview with PARIS MATCH. (Note: A photographer will be present.)
14:50–15:00—Radio interview with TSR-1
15:05–15:15—Radio interview with RTF-3
15:20–15:30—Radio interview with FRT-2
15:40–16:00—Informal Coffee with approved Social Media Outlets (approx 20) with minimum of 3.5 million followers. (List on request)
16:05–16:10—Touch-Ups
16:15–16:45—Live TV remote from Balcony for Belgian TV “PM TODAY.” (Note: Eleanor Flintstone will be joining you at 16:30.)
17:00—Proceed by car to Studio du Roi for Air France promotional shoot. This will play on all Air France International flights to support CR3:DAH opening. Shoot will take approx 3 hours.
20:00 (approx)—Proceed by car to Restaurant Le Chat. Dinner hosted by UPIC. (Note: A photographer will be present.)
After dinner you are free to stay or return to hotel.
Rory Thorpe thanked his lucky stars for Irene Burton; those stars had been mighty benevolent over the last two years. He’d been in a movie with none other than Willa Sax—Cassandra Rampart herself! He had money in the bank for the first time in his life! And he was getting a free trip to Europe out of the deal! All he had to do was give some interviews over there! His enthusiasm had Irene Burton mutely laughing her ass off.
Irene was sixty-six years old, had worked in marketing for every one of the six major film studios, and now lived in semiretirement in a beach house in Oxnard—far enough away from Hollywood to avoid the daily stresses of showbiz yet close enough to pop in when she was needed to clean up the occasional PR flameout. Eleven years ago, she escorted a young, talented, and beautiful actress through the press tour for a horrible movie called Dementia 40, which did lousy business but is now legendary for introducing audiences to the young, talented, and beautiful Willa Sax. The press called her Willa Sex for a few years—a fitting moniker—but now Willa was Cassandra Rampart, a one-woman industry who had her own line of exercise clothes, a home for orphaned pets, and a foundation that promoted literacy in third world nations. The first two Cassandra Rampart movies had grossed $1.75 billion worldwide. Willa Sax didn’t just command $21 million a movie plus profits, she commanded respect.
“Irene,” Willa told her on the phone. “You gotta help me.”
“S’up, punkin’?” Irene called all her young actors punkin’.
“Rory Thorpe is as dumb as a box of hair.”
“Who is Rory Thorpe?”
“The guy in my latest thing. I just saw his EPK.” The electronic press kit is a house-controlled interview given to the press as background for a movie. “Most of his answers start with ‘Well, um. It’s like, you know…’ We have the junket coming up and I can’t go around the world with Doofus McGillicuddy as my costar. He needs to be told what the fuck not to do.”
“I can do that.”
So Irene did. She took Rory shopping at Fred Segal and Tom Ford for the clothes he’d need—casual-look outfits for interviews and black-tie tuxes for premiere galas. No charge. She took him luggage shopping at T. Anthony for the right trunks and suitcases—at a steep discount the studio covered—so those outfits would be ready to don at a moment’s notice. He’d be photographed in two-shots with one of the most beautiful women in the world and needed to look like he rated the position. He’d be answering the same questions a thousand times over, so she drilled into him the talking point memos the studio had provided: CR3—DAH brings the C. Rampart universe its most compelling & sophisticated film, for she is not just a heroine for our times but a woman for the ages. Please use “woman for the ages” whenever describing Cassandra.
Irene had perfected her ability to keep her laughter to herself when one of her clients said something really stupid or naïve—in Rory’s case, his thinking his first ever trip to Europe was going to be free.
“Oh, punkin’,” she told him. “You’ll be working your ass off.”
The junket began in Los Angeles: three days jammed with interviews, photo shoots, video conferences, Q and A sessions, forums with fan bases, and as many talk show appearances as possible, each needing an hour of preinterviews with the segment producers. Irene saw to it that Rory was well dressed, well groomed, and well versed in what the fuck not to do. And there was the trip to the Comic-Con convention in San Diego. Willa Sax needed a team of bodyguards to keep the fans at bay; many of them were costumed as Cassandra, the former Secret Service agent with computer chips implanted in her brain, formula-enhanced, superstrong sinews, able to communicate subconsciously with the Seven, the extraterrestrials who live among us, aliens who may be good guys, may be bad guys, and who et cetera et cetera et cetera you get the idea. Many Comic-Coners were costumed as the Seven. No one was dressed as Caleb Jackson, pro surfer/software whiz, because no one had seen the movie yet. The fans seemed thrilled at the screening of a twenty-minute teaser of the movie, making it a trending topic for most of the day on both Twitter and Poppit!
Two days later in Chicago, the teaser was screened on the campus of Northwestern University, the alma mater of Willa Sax herself. Her old dorm was renamed in her honor. Irene steered Rory through two days of interviews, a parade, a charity volleyball match, the dropping of the puck at a Blackhawks hockey game, and a screening of the movie to benefit literacy in Africa that was held at the same theater where the gangster John Dillinger had been gunned down.
Four days of junket were held in New York City, starting with a press conference staged in the ballroom of the Waldorf Astoria, attended by 152 media outlets. Rory did not get a question until Willa had talked for thirty minutes, mostly of the challenges of shooting with the new FLIT-cam digital process and the new SPFX system called DIGI-MAX. She was a producer on the film, after all, having optioned the rights to the Cassandra Rampart graphic novel in 2007 for a mere ten thousand dollars.
She laughed off questions about her husband’s investment genius and his supposed bedroom prowess. “Guys!” Willa protested. “Bobby is a banker!” Bobby was her husband, and he was worth $1.2 billion. Willa told the press that he really was a regular dude who had to be told to take out the trash.