"The Whammy" - We've All Felt it Before

In Something Happened, Joseph Heller described "the whammy," a condition that any one of us has felt when we've met someone famous who we admire. When someone gives you the whammy, you can't utter a coherent sentence in front of that person, and begin to sweat and babble. It doesn't have to do with that person's status or personality—the person could be as shy or accommodating as anyone else. But the awe of meeting someone you have worshipped so profusely causes your brain to stop functioning properly.

Last night, my friend Claire felt the whammy head on. Visiting New York for only the second time in her life, I took this Kentucky girl to the IFC Center in New York to see 4 Months, 3 Weeks, and 2 Days (more on that film later). As we were waiting on line for, out walks the attendees of the New York premiere of 21—including Jim Sturgess and Kate Bosworth. Claire, who was a big fan of Across the Universe, didn't know what to do. She first took out her camera and dropped her battery, then stared at him with enormous eyes. Sturgess, who's presumably new to having adoring fangirls, initiated the conversation, shaking her hand and she introduced herself. Despite watching a deeply affecting, depressing Romanian movie about abortion, all Claire could talk about afterwards was that she had not been in New York for 12 hours and she was already meeting movie stars.

If I am going to make it as a journalist, I have to get over the whammy, at least to some extent. I always have good questions going into an interview, and I'm usually very knowledgeable about the subject. Too often when I go into an interview, I have a good question hidden beneath mumbling, stuttering, and incoherency. This may not be an issue as much with up-and-coming music acts, but it has been with the likes of Ellen Page, Richard Linklater, and Martin McDonagh. I don't know how I'm going to quite be able to overcome the whammy, but it will certainly take at least a few years and lots more experience to accomplish. Though part of me doubts I'll ever be able to overcome it.