Severed head alive and looking for body: The case for fake interviews

When I was little, there was a magazine called 'It's A Mad Mad World': a Danish version of the National Enquirer, only weirder. I can almost recite one of the articles by heart, called 'Severed Head Alive and Looking for a Body'. 

Apparently, a man trimming his hedge had lost control over his chainsaw and cut off his own head. Later, the head turned up on a plate, connected to a million wires and sleeping 22 hours a day, but otherwise alive and well. Scientists would not say what had happened; instead there was a photo, effectively destroying any doubts readers might have about this unlikely beheading-cum-body search. 

I'm not saying me and my childhood innocence believed it; I knew it was bullshit, but in those days my disbelief was suspended so high that it didn't matter. It's the same with celebrities in magazines. Everyone who buys the latest Esquire as soon as it comes out in order to devote their afternoon to the latest Javier Bardem feature has his or her disbelief walking a tight rope between Mount Everest and Kilimanjaro.

That's because the point of celebrities is that they offer something you want, but can never ever get. Not because you don't have the money or the connections, but because it doesn't exist anywhere but on paper. Ask anyone who's had the pleasure of being interviewed by ladies and gentlemen of the press: as soon as their words are printed, the image takes on a life of its own, completely divorced from reality. Even if famous people were never misquoted or misunderstood, the articles would still not be about them, but about us. 

What does it matter to anyone if George Clooney or Megan Fox are single or not? None of us reading about them will ever get near them, let alone stand a chance of dating them. Why do we care what Robert Pattinson does in his spare time, we're not buying him a birthday present, at least not if we're over 12 and mentally stable. It serves no purpose, and famous people know this. Therefore, they claim that we are not entitled to anything other than what we get: the film, the song, the interview, the odd gay rumour. They didn't ask for the paparazzi, the exposure and the intrusion, hence the fence of their ubiquitous entourage. 

Luckily, we can always make things up. Invent stuff, for example a fake interview. It's not like they're real people to us, which is why most people when meeting their idol just stand there, awestruck, audibly twisting their brains to transform a million pictures into an actual 3D person.

    Technically, of course, the Esquire interview is not made up; someone actually talked to Javier Bardem, recorded his words and put together an article. There is in all likelihood an mp3 file out there on someone's laptop containing the man's voice as it describes the ups and downs of its owner's career. But what if there wasn't? 

I mean, it's not Shakespeare. Read a few interviews with a celebrity, and you'll soon get the gist of what they're trying to say. What transpires in an interview with a person from the entertainment business is in 9 out of 10 cases something that could simply have been conjured up by the journalist anyway. 

From thereon, most writers would be perfectly capable of creating an actual conversation, creating a genre between wish fulfillment and fan fiction that has hitherto only been dreamt of in an Italian journalist's desperate career philosophy. Yet most reporters content themselves with adding to the cacaphony of gossipy soundbites about things that supposedly happened. Who cares if they happened? 

All you need to create a fake interview is a properly famous Übermensch and a slightly deranged imagination, and you could be a journalist prophet, writing the gospel about our lords of the Oscar nights and Grammy Awards. At least for those who like reading about severed heads.