Entertainment Weakly

After more than three years of learning to play the Naperville networking game, suddenly I'm flavour of the month. In the past week I've landed two new contracts and am now treading the tricky line of covering the same events in different ways for different publications. I'm now specializing in entertainment as well as women, humour and general reporting, which means I'm finally back doing what I did in England when I started my journalism career, only now I seem to be a photographer too.
Which explains why this evening I found myself hanging around outside a house near Naperville station watching a movie being made. Shakey is the first 3D comedy about a dog who gets into trouble when his owners move into an apartment.
I've already interviewed the producers, but tonight was my only chance to talk to the actors. The one I was really after was Steve Guttenberg of Police Academy fame. When I got to the house it was still sunny so I happily sat outside to wait for a break in filming. The crew were hard at work in the back yard while I waited..and waited.
After two and a half hours I had interviewed the child star, her young co-star, the owner of the house and the dog. As it got dark I crept into the back yard where the film crew were setting up. No sign of Steve anywhere.
It got colder. Mosquitoes started munching on my feet. Not only was this irritating, but at
8.30 p.m. they'd had more to eat than I had.
But I was in a dilemma. When I did this job as a 20-year-0ld I was so shy and star struck I would have happily run off and lied to my editor that I couldn't get the interview. To be fair, I hadn't even seen Steve, and started to wonder if he was there at all.
Eventually I gave up and was heading towards my car when one of the crew asked me if I'd seen him yet. When I said I hadn't, she said that was because while I was at the back of the house, he was at the front! She thought he might be in his trailer....He wasn't.
Finally he was pointed out to me in the hospitality tent. It was so dark I had to ask him to stand by a citronella candle so I could see to write. Not quite Jay Leno.
In the end I got what I needed. He was very sweet, but you can never tell what these people will decide to talk about. He talked in depth about the recession, wondering if I thought it would ever end, followed by a poem about dog owners meeting their dead dogs when they reach heaven.
Still, I felt my 53-year-old self had finally exonerated her 20-year-old self and the only star I was struck by was by the one glittering away in the clear night sky.