By Fred Topel | Image property of Warner Bros. Pictures.
Virginia Madsen in The Astronaut Farmer
February 23 is a conflicting weekend for Virginia Madsen. The Number 23 has her as a double character in a thriller and The Astronaut Farmer is the quintessential Americana dream story. For the actress, it's just too much. "I'm sick of myself now," she joked.
Virginia Madsen Talks The Astronaut Farmer
Being on tour for both films, she was able to keep everything straight. "It was all very well organized. The films have two very different target audiences. It's easy for me to keep my stories straight. I mean its Jim Carrey descending into madness and Billy Bob ascending into space."
The marketing approaches were completely different too. "All the stuff for 23 was done first in a four day long, long, long press junket. For Farmer, the whole group of us has been touring all over the United States. It's such a great way to do it because like in Kansas for instance, as an example, we'd flown from one city, land in Kansas, we're just there two hours, long enough to introduce the film, then back on the plane to another city."
Two hours was enough time to enjoy some creative PR. "In those two hours that we were there, they had set up a red carpet and there were bales of hay and a guy drove his John dear tractor and we had to meet him. He's like, 'Oh I drove the tractor,' and the red carpet was lined with all these local people and their little cameras and stuff and I said, 'That's the best paparazzi I've ever seen.' They were so glad to see us and they had all local press including one five-year-old boy that was interviewing us and then we got to go in and see people and meet them."
Hitting the road to meet the people has been a rare experience for the Hollywood veteran. "When you make movies, you don't get this because you're not facing an audience. But, when we go to the Science Center in San Francisco, there were all these kids so we were meeting them after they saw the movie and so it's been very rewarding and very different from all the of 23 press."
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