Good Morning San Francisco

Harvard students, unlike other anthropoid primates but like certain arboreal rodents and members of the ursine order, undergo peculiar physiological shifts as the nights lengthen and the weather turns cold. A pallor sets in around the cheeks and jaw, the hair becomes dishevelled, and exhaustion and bad breath replace the generally sunny, if somewhat offstandish, demeanor. As the progress continues, cause feeds on effect, creating a downward spiral of personal appearance and emotional well-being.

These changes occur in synchrony with the environment, primed, as it were, by the unrelentingly constant rhythms of the natural and academic calenders. The shortest day of the year, December 21, for example, marks not only a collapse in the skin's production of life-sustaining vitamin D, but also the second day of Winter Break, when, as tradition holds, Reading Period guilt first manifests itself.

My vital forces had been decaying in this manner for several weeks when a phone rang in my dark, airless, and bitterly cold cubicle one day in the first week of January. Overwhelmed as it was by the whistle of the arctic gale forcing its way through fist-size holes in the plastic wrap covering my window, the sound of the ringer at first hardly reached me through the pile of soiled rags into which I had burrowed for warmth.

Finally, however, I discerned the ringing and paused from chewing on stale walnut shells to answer the phone.

It was The Crimson. "Jeff," came a voice from Cambridge's only breakfast table daily. "Do you want to go to San Francisco on a movie junket?"

The origins of the Hollywood junket are shrouded in the dim mysteries of the past, but in its most recent incarnations it has become a fusion of two distinct traditions. The first of these traditions is the expense account, by which the wealth of the nation is funneled out of the hands of the worker via the conduit of large corporations and is then frittered away by hedonistically juvenile executives. The second tradition is that of the star schmooze, in which second string critics from minor newspapers in unimportant cities have lunch with celebrities while asking questions like, "So, what was it like working with Eddie?" as though Mr. Murphy were a mutual friend.

But while the average movie junket generally carries less global import then, say, a world war, or even--surprise--a baby vomiting in Buffalo, there are several salient features of the junket experience that may redeem it for some people. For example, the booze, which is free, or the deluxe hotel room, which similarly is gratis. Or the chance to run amok in a strange city where no one knows you--and not be one penny poorer for the opportunity.

But when the call came in for the San Francisco junket, one thought in particular swayed my mind: that there was no way, no possible way, that San Francisco could be as cold as Boston.

So all things put in the balance--a sense of guilt for leaving a morass of schoolwork unfinished, on the one hand; a single-minded psychotic unwillingness to remain one more second in Cambridge on the other--I welcomed the opportunity to rise before dawn on Friday, the 8th of January, to begin the long journey to San Francisco. Because one is flying west against the predominant winds and counter to the rotation of the earth, departure must be delayed, the inflight food is half-charred-half-frozen, and you gain three hours on landing. Probably an astrophsyicist could figure this out.

When I got off the plane I resisted the temptation to make a joke about blood transfusions and headed straight for the hotel--the lovely Four Seasons, conveniently located between the business district and the adult entertainment zone. At the reception desk I was greeted, registered, and given my press materials, which I perused at my leisure in my well-appointed single.

Opening the brown envelope which contained the press kits for the two films we would be covering in the junket, I read the titles: "Shoot to Kill," and "Good Morning, Vietnam." Then I went to the hospitality suite down the hall and dug into the free and well-stocked bar. Several hours more than several cost-free beverages later, I found myself sitting in a bar wondering why the five gentlemen to my left had stripped naked and were dancing around, waving to the other patrons in the bar and passers-by who were gawking through the open door of the saloon.

But this, unfortunately, was about as strange as it got. The time the waitress in the topless bar ran screaming after a man with a thick Greek accent threatening to kill him was unaccountable, but not really strange. Most of the time was spent as an accountant at Touchstone Pictures might have planned, attending brunches, talking with celebrities, attending luncheons, watching movies, attending dinners. We members of the press accumulated our meticulous notes and tape-recordings, got tipsy, ate too much, and sat around being friendly with strangers.

The Touchstone people--media reps would probably be the technical term for the dedicated individuals obliged to look after our needs--were exquisitely attentive, behaving as though they expected our opinions to have the slightest effect on the final box office gross their pictures would pull in. Deluded, no doubt, but so much the better for us.

One young reporter confessed to me a certain unease with the ethics of the situation. Was there not a conflict of interest here? he wondered, free drink in hand.

I told him that movie critics need to worry about ethics like a Bedouin needs to worry about drowning.

Saturday night we were placed on board buses and driven down to a nearby cinema for the screening of "Good Morning, Vietnam." Apparently, some of the locals hoped to catch the show as well: the line in front of the box office snaked halfway around the block. As we were ushered into our reserved seating, some of the hoi-polloi greeted us with hisses, jealous no doubt of our preferred status.

"This section for national press only," said the Vietnamese usher. At this the second-stringer from Washington leaned over to me and whispered, "Did you hear that? The national press is here."

"Individually, we're the local press," explained another. "But collectively, we're the national press."

"Oh," said the first.

Coming back to Boston Sunday night, I had that awful morning-after feeling that comes from a combination of guilt and alcohol poisoning. True, I had escaped the city that spawned Michael Dukakis for three precious days. True, in that time the thermometer had risen back into the positive numbers. But somewhere in the back of my mind I wondered if I had lived up to my obligations. Might I have tried just a little bit harder to wring a few more drops of alcohol from the mini-bar? Might I have pressed a little bit harder for an expense account receipt from the topless bar? Mightn't I have had just a little bit more fun?

That, in the long run, is the ethical dilemma of the Hollywood junket. Our intrepid reporter face down in the gutter: He left his heart and GPA in San Francisco and his dinner on the floor of his hotel room.