Motherhood: Big Screen Dreams, Small Screen Life

I dream of Hollywood press junkets.

Well, I did once.

Last night. Before bed, I watched Hollywood Inc on BBC Prime. It featured two segments about how movie producers curry favour with critics. For the premier of Pearl Harbor, for example, they flew 200 journalists to Hawaii. More interesting to me, though, was the trip Harry Knowles from Ain’t it Cool News got to take to see a movie he didn’t like.

Wouldn’t it be nice, I thought, if they had a press junket for blogging mothers? You know, they’d fly a bunch of us to that Mummy-Baby Spa in Belgium, where we’d leave our children with a confident group of Super Nannies and be plied with champagne, healthy food, facials and massages to say nice things about the newest mommy-oriented blockbuster film.

It would be a good investment for them. Give me a nice plate of virtuous chicken salad, half a bottle of champagne and a massage and I will love any film shown to me. In fact, I would love the entire planet and everyone on it. I could generate some buzz, with that kind of buzz on, let me tell you. Not that I’ve ever has a chance to generate Hollywood-level buzz. In my career as a technology journalist, all I’ve gotten is a few review copies of books and with books, your goal is to generate thoughtful discussion rather than buzz.

So, I was deeply into my blogging-mother-press-junket-fantasy when I remembered that Hollywood doesn’t make mother-oriented blockbuster movies. They make romantic comedies about women who want to get married and have children, like My Big Fat Greek Wedding. They make action films about single women like Lara Croft. They make films about females who are full of self-hatred, but in an extremely entertaining way, like Bridget Jones Diary.

No, motherhood is only on TV. Which is too bad because I wrote a novella about mother-heroines once that would make a great action film, but I digress. No, motherhood is domestic comedy and drama combined through a television culture that embraces both Roseanne and Desperate Housewives. Entertaining? Yes. The stuff of silver screen legends? No.

This was a rather disappointing fact to remember first thing in the morning. But, then the baby said the most beautiful little “coo” beside me.

I picked her up and held her aloft. “I don’t need glamour when I have you, do I my pretty little princess? No, I don’t need that do I?”

That was when she smiled her lovely smile and spit up all over me.