One of my most surreal moments as a movie journalist came when I interviewed Carmen Electra – a doe-eyed hank of Americana pop-culture – during a flying visit to Sydney. I was about 18 years old.

The publicist who had been herding me through the hotel corridor to Electra’s suite nicked off to take a phone call and shooed me in. It’s not normal protocol – but I entered Electra’s suite alone.

She was instantly in view – on the other side of the room, perched in a two-tone seater against a dark curtain. Busty, spray-tanned, bleached tendrils of hair – just what I’d imagined. Normally when you walk into a room there’s a bit of an acknowledgement. But she didn’t so much as stir. It was as though I didn’t exist. I advanced a little closer, gingerly, and still there was not even the faintest sign of movement from her. I was a little stung. As I walked closer still I could see that she was truly engrossed… she was reading. Not just reading, but studying. Scrutinising. Her eyes raced across the page. Her lips were pursed, her brow gently rutted. Now I was just a metre away from her, and still no acknowledgement of my presence.

“Hey Carmen, what are you reading?” I finally ventured, breaking the silence which I took as an insult.

Now she looked up.

“The FHM guys just dropped this in,” she explained. I looked at what she held in her hands – it was a bulging sleaze rag with the title ‘We Choose The World’s 100 Sexiest Women’ in garish red type. Electra seemed like a kid showing off the best-and-fairest soccer trophy to her parents when she gushed – “and they put me in the top ten!”

Electra then proceeded to extend the magazine toward me, the perfect-bound spine yielding to the page she’d bookmarked with her thumb. I didn’t know what to do with the magazine – should I take it from her hands? She kept extending it, until it was less than five inches from my nose. My eyes re-adjusted to the extreme close-up view.

“What do you think?” she purred.

I was looking at a double page spread – Electra splayed across the cheery-coloured hood of a car which was lubricated with suds, bubbles and soap. She was washing it with a big, sopping sponge. In the image her topless torso was obscured only by well-placed locks of hair. The unmistakable centre-piece of the tableau was her derrière – which had swallowed a g-banger whole – leaving only a single diamond stud at her coccyx as the last visible remnant.

It’s not often that I’m speechless, but my mouth was dry like I’d been chewing cotton wool. She’ll never know what I thought, because out of the vivid silence the only response I could muster was: “I’m guessing that’s a rhetorical question?”

- It’s Not About The Camera

3 Comments   |   Posted in Blog June 13, 2010

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