Prince William and Princess Kate attended Tuesday night's world premiere of Tom Cruise's satirical black comedy Digger at the Odeon Luxe in Leicester Square, a Royal Film Performance held in aid of the Film and TV Charity, where Cruise guided the Princess down the steps into the cinema, per Daily Mail.
Every red carpet is a press release you can walk across. This one is a press release with a crown on it. The Royal Film Performance is the 73rd in a 100-year-old line, and the mechanism is simple enough to fit on a napkin: the King is patron of the Film and TV Charity, the charity "benefits from royal premieres," and the movie gets the one endorsement that can't be rebutted, which is the royal presence itself. Warner Bros did not book a premiere. It commissioned an anointing.
The film itself is a satire about a wealthy oil tycoon who unleashes an environmental disaster and then sets out to prove he is the only man capable of saving the world, which means the fictional plot and the actual event run on the same business model. A man with a very big machine breaks something. The cameras show up. Everybody agrees the man with the very big machine is the right person to fix it. Alejandro G Iñárritu made a movie about that model, and the model made it opening night. The satire got a patron.
The photos do the rest of the work. Cruise holding Kate's hand on the stairs, the perfect gentleman, chatting with the cast for several minutes longer than planned, "laughing and joking uproariously." The Beckhams waiting backstage like ushers. A seven-year-old presenting the Princess with a posy. None of that is in the trailer. All of it sells tickets, because a movie with a royal seal on it is not a movie you get to be hard on. You can only be grateful.
YOUR TURN: is a Royal Film Performance a premiere, or a diploma?
Comments (0)
No comments yet. Be the first to add your two cents. They are worth exactly that.