Eyeball to eyeball with Jon Voight - FUNFARE by Ricardo F. Lo

This I swear is true (cross my heart!): I nearly had a head-on collision with Jon Voight – yes, the Jon Voight of Midnight Cowboy, Deliverance and The Champ fame – and it happened at exactly 2:50 Friday afternoon, June 1, at the 14th-floor corridor of the posh Four Seasons Hotel on Doheney Drive in Beverly Hills, L.A. As we all know, Jon Voight is very tall, more than six feet I guess, and I’m a mere 5’3". So how, you may be wondering, could there be any "head-on" collision between a giant (literally and figuratively) and a midget (actually!)?

Okay, to be precise about it, I nearly had a head (mine) to chest (Voight’s) collision with the lanky guy whom I’ve just seen yesterday playing FDR with a flourish (delivering such memorable lines as "This is a day that will live in infamy") in Pearl Harbor whose highlight is not the supposedly poignant love story between a US Navy man (Ben Affleck) and a nurse (Kate Beckinsale) but the 40-minute dogfight (worth more than the P50 orchestra admission price) that shows how the Japs pulverized Pearl Harbor (well, almost!).

The Four Seasons Hotel is aptly described as "the favorite hangout of stars" because that’s where Hollywood companies regularly hold their press junkets. At any time, two or three such interviews (for print and TV journalists from all corners of the globe) go on simultaneously, so you run the risk of checking in at the wrong venue.

If you have time to spare, you can bump into a famous actor or actress along the corridor or at the lobby or at the coffee shop or at the driveway. But even if you get star-struck (who wouldn’t be!?!) you’re not supposed to act like a starry-eyed movie fan. You just pretend to be casual about the whole encounter.

You know, it happens all the time, much too often that it has been, supposed to be, reduced into a ho-hum affair. The starry encounter, I mean. You are supposed to be blasé about it (even if deep inside you the avid movie fan is struggling to be felt – and recognized).

That afternoon, I was rushing to the TV room for my seven-minute one-on-one with Angelina Jolie, topbiller of Lara Croft: Tomb Raider (the video game converted into a movie) and daughter of Voight who, although a member of the Tomb Raider cast (as Angelina’s long-lost father, a relationship that rings with disquieting realism because Angelina was very small when Voight and Angelina’s mom divorced), wasn’t participating in the round of interviews.

He just emerged from one corner while I was stepping out of the elevator, not looking where I was going because I was busy checking the batteries of my video-camera-shaped mini tape-recorder and wondering if Angelina would be nice (she was!) and friendly (she was!) and accommodating (she was!) like the other Hollywood bigwigs I have had the chance to interview.

Oops! The head-to-chest collision! Excuse me, I mumbled. When I looked up, my mouth was agape. Smiling in front of me was him, Jon Voight, saying "Sorry!" I learned later that he was there to fetch Angelina and was headed for the row of chairs outside Room 1418 (where the TV interviews were going on). I sat between the journalists from Mexico and Spain and I saw Voight take the seat opposite me, with a companion beside him.

No matter how eager you are to ask a question, any question, you’re not supposed to (protocol, you know, which also includes "no photographs with stars; no autograph-signing"). The temptation to take out my instamatic and click away was very strong but you’re also supposed to not take any souvenir pictures (or else, you could be reprimanded or, heaven forbid, barred from future such junkets).

So I sat there, taking surreptitious glances at Voight who had aged considerably, all right, but had retained his boyish, Midnight Cowboy looks. And then, he glanced at me, too, and we were now looking at each other, uh, "eyeball to eyeball" although not in the same belligerent manner now-Vice-President Tito Guingona and outgoing Sen. Johnny Ponce-Enrile did during the aborted Erap Impeachment Trial.

It was he who broke the ice.

"Where are you from?" Voight was smiling, showing a perfect set of teeth the way he did in that scene with Dustin Hoffman in Midnight Cowboy when they were on the bus to Miami.

"From the Philippines," I answered formally.

"Makati?"

"No. Quezon City."

And then, in an effort to flatter him, I told Voight that I was a fan of his (true!) and that I have a VHS copy of, among others, his 1970 Oscar Best Picture starrer Midnight Cowboy and he blushed a bit.

"I’ve watched it a dozen times," I said, "and I plan to watch it as soon as I got back to the Philippines."

"Oh, yeah?" he said.

Just when our little chat was progressing, his cell phone rang, prompting the lady in-charge of the interviews to hush Voight up by putting her finger over her sealed lips. Voight stood up and walked several steps away before proceeding with his phone chat.

When he came back, he sat right back where he did. I was about to resume our rudely-interrupted little chat when the lady-in-charge signalled to me that it was my turn with Angelina. Goodbye, Midnight Cowboy!

It turned out that I was the last to interview Angelina who went out of the room after me.

"Hi, Sir!" she greeted her father before giving him a hug. "How are you?" She sounded as if she was just making chica-chica with a barkada.

I watched them disappear around the corner where I nearly had a chest-to-head collision with Voight, his arm around her waist in a touching and loving fatherly gesture.

I thought that would be the last I was seeing Voight. The next day, I bumped into him again at the corridor and there was no more near-collision. I said "Hi!" and he smiled and said "Hi!" in return.

He wasn’t there for any interview but, again, only to fetch his Dear Angelina.

(Note: Watch for my comprehensive Conversation with Angelina very soon.)