"So you're the movie critic for The Times” says Kirsten Dunst, sounding a tad too surprised for comfort. “Er, yes,” I chortle. “Cool” she breezes. “Your job is sooo hard.”There is an awkward pause while we digest this touching moment of A-list pity. “I can't imagine what it must be like sitting in a room full of critics,” shudders the 26-year-old star. “I'm not into that kind of negative energy whatsoever.”
The sensible question to ask Miss Dunst at this painful juncture is “So what on earth are you doing here?” We are in a caravan on the film set of How to Lose Friends & Alienate People - a romantic comedy about an aspiring British critic who falls hopelessly in love with Dunst in New York. But there's a thundering knock on the door and Simon Pegg noisily enters and plonks himself on the banquette next to her.
Pegg is the blundering star, and geeky alter ego of Toby Young, the maverick journalist who wrote the bestselling true story on which the film is based. Young's brilliant account of his short and inglorious career working for the world's most glamorous fashion bible, Vanity Fair, is a sublime exercise in public humiliation.
The temptation to prick the glossy reputation of an institution such as Vanity Fair must feel almost subversive to stars in the league of Dunst. “Have you ever been photographed by Vanity Fair?” I innocently ask her. Pegg cannot believe his ears.
“The magazine?” checks Kirsten. “Yeaarh. I've been on the cover.” Obviously a lot of covers, if Simon's face is anything to go by. One forgets that Dunst is Spiderman's official squeeze, and the star of such esoteric wonders as Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and the rom-com Wimbledon. “I'm usually roped in for the young Hollywood ingénue covers they do ... you know ... ‘Here's the bratpack”.
Peter Staughan's new script treatment, says Woolley, has given Young's comedy a romantic spine, an American heroine (Dunst), and infinitely more movie logic.
“Our inspiration has always been Billy Wilder's 1960 movie The Apartment, with Jack Lemmon forever trying to climb up the greasy corporate pole,” Woolley admits. “That's what happens to Toby's character. The higher he gets, the lower he gets. Toby went to Vanity Fair thinking ‘That's it. I've made it.' Only to discover that he hadn't been hired for who he was, but for his novelty value.”Young's set visits have apparently been legendary. “In true Toby fashion he did not enamour himself to us all,” says Woolley with wonderful tact. “I love Toby. He's a good guy. He's a genuine larger-than-life character, and he's got honesty and balls. But he's also got some form of Tourette's syndrome where he says the wrong thing at the wrong time. If the phrase, ‘He is his own worst enemy' was coined for anyone, it is Toby.”
How to Lose Friends and Alienate People is released on Oct 3.
Source: entertainment.timesonline.co.uk
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