Have you ever
wondered what it’s like reporting on the film industry in Hollywood? “It’s an
outright compelling job,” says Marietta Steinhart, an experienced film
journalist. “But make no mistake about it, the hustle is real. It’s a lot of
hard work. On the surface it’s all glitz and glamor, but like anything else it
takes true dedication and involves a lot of hours brooding over a computer and
sitting in dark movie theaters,” says the Austrian film critic with a smile.
We bumped into
Marietta Steinhart the other day - an open, engaging and keen lover of movies -
at Insomnia, a small café and favorite hangout for local scribes, not far from
the Hollywood strip. She’s the Austrian film journalist who covers all things
movies in LA for the Austria Press Agency, a national newswire; Zeit Online
which accompanies prestigious German newspaper Die Zeit; and ray Filmmagazin, a
super-smart, decidedly exclusive, independent film magazine, published in
Vienna. But what’s that like? “Like everyone else, we have a job to do. The
difference, of course, comes when you do something that you truly love. I think
that applies to anything you have a passion for – whatever it is you do, if you
have a real passion for it, your work never feels like ‘a job’.”
Indeed, if your
vision of being a freelance film journalist means dressing in designer duds,
sipping exotic cocktails at the Polo Lounge at the Beverly Hills Hotel and
talking to movie stars all day, Steinhart is the woman who will burst your
bubble. “Of course glamor is part and parcel of this world, especially in
Hollywood. That’s what you see when you read an article or watch a story on TV…
But writing those articles involves doing research, watching material, juggling
deadlines, managing different parties with their own agenda in a
marketing-focused culture – and a lot of alone time in front of your laptop”,
she says.
When Steinhart
hangs out at places like the Polo Lounge, there’s nothing casual about it. Much
like the celebrities who are there to promote their latest film or television
project - “that’s why they call it the movie business,” she says – Steinhart
has a job to do. Even if that job means interviewing the likes of Judd Apatow,
Anthony Hopkins, Amy Schumer, or any one of scores more film professionals that
have shared their stories with the journalist from Vienna. Teams of
professional publicists are pulling the strings behind the scenes. Not only are
journalists like her carefully vetted before ever putting a recorder or a
camera in front of an interview subject. They also place firm limits on the
amount of time allotted for most encounters.
When people talk
about film journalists, many times they forget an important part of that title:
journalist, and they don’t really address that word when they are conjuring up
glamorous images of what a person in that position really does for a living.
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