IT SHOULDN’T HAPPEN TO A FILM JOURNALIST

I’ve been writing this column for several years now and yet have never mentioned my biggest foe in the world of movie journalism – word counts, whereby a commissioning editor supplies the writer with the required length for any given article. I’ve never mentioned it because this column runs to 660 words and I’d need at least twice that to get into it properly.

And therein lies and he spoke in monosyllables. Partly, I think, it’s because he was in a bad mood, and partly for fear of spoilers. Anyway, if I’d asked him what he had for breakfast that morning he would have declined to answer, which is problematic when you have a full-page Q&A to fill.