Continuing our series of writers rewatching old favourites, we revisit a conspiracy thriller featuring peril, pizza – and a prescient Sandra Bullock
When interviewing an actor or director I admire, I’ve made it a personal mission to avoid sycophancy: I’m there for something resembling a business meeting, not a fan convention. I’m not cold, far from it, but I’m also not about to invite Noah Baumbach for cocktails so I can ramble on at him about how The Squid and the Whale spoke to my inner child of divorce. I know my place and I know theirs. But there was one time, back in 2013, when I simply couldn’t help myself.
I was at the Gravity junket interviewing Sandra Bullock, stuck with a thankless conveyor-belt slot, shuffled in for less than 10 minutes after waiting for more than three hours. She was as charming as I’d expected, based both on rumblings from within the industry and from the fondness I’d had for her as a child, when I had VHS copies of Speed and The Net on rotation for a solid year.