From: Publicity Intern LA (Focus Features)
To: Me. Gil.
Subject: contact info
Hello,
I came across your blog while researching Broadway blogs for the new Focus Features film--and musical--"Hamlet 2."
Could you please send me your contact information (full name, mailing/email address and phone number)? I am compiling a list of Broadway blogs and it would help to have this information if we were to contact you.
Thanks,
Stephanie WITHHELD
Online Publicity Intern
Focus Features

Hi there,

I'm happy to give you my name, it is Gil Varod, and as you've figured out my e-mail address is [gil{at}broadwayabridged{dot}com]. However, even though you've sufficiently convinced me that you do in fact work for Focus Features (your "from" e-mail address did the trick!) I'm not convinced that I should be giving you my personal phone number and postal mailing address all willy-nilly.

What are you planning on contacting me for or to do? Am I going to get phonecalls in the middle of the night, day after day, asking me if I've seen Hamlet 2 yet and why not? Am I going to get on your postal mailing list for various sorts of junkmail for the next five years? Or one day, am I going to go home and find out that you've sent me a package containing a kit for me to take ten thousand friends to a screening of Hamlet 2?

That would be fantastic. I'm pretty popular and I do have a lot of friends, so I'm glad you offered at such a high number. Ten thousand tickets would probably suffice. Although... I don't know of a movie theater that holds ten thousand friends in a single showing. I'd have to split the ten thousand friends into twelve and a half showings at 800 people each. And that would be really inconvenient for me, because what if two people wanted to sit together, and I ended up separating them into two different showings?

Geez, this would be more difficult than planning seating at a wedding. You've put me into a very precarious position, you know. Maybe you should have thought this out better.

Sincerely,
Gil