By Karl Quinn
Margaret Pomeranz and David Stratton, the presenters of ABC’s At The Movies, are famous for agreeing to disagree, but at the launch of the exhibition in honour of their 25 years on TV they appeared briefly to have found common ground as they traded stories about one of their filmmaking heroes.
Pomeranz began with a tale about how she managed to finagle an interview with Robert Altman in Cannes despite the fact he’d agreed to only one for Australia, and not with her.
David Stratton and Margaret Pomeranz, in the early days.
First she scored an invite to an exclusive soiree in Altman’s honour, then she fortified herself with a whisky before tailing the American director to the buffet, where she stated her case. Amazingly, he agreed. ‘‘So I had another whisky after that,’’ Pomeranz said with that trademark throaty laugh.
Then it was Stratton’s turn. ‘‘Can I tell you a quick Robert Altman story of my own,’’ he asked, and it would have been churlish to say no.
It was 1972 and Stratton, who was then director of the Sydney Film Festival, had managed to swing a meeting with Altman in his office in Los Angeles. ‘‘We got on really well,’’ Stratton recalled. ‘‘And then he said, ‘What are you doing tonight? Do you want to come to my new movie. I’m screening a rough cut of The Long Goodbye.’’
So it was that Stratton found himself in a shabby MGM screening room, taking his seat alongside Altman and his leading man Elliott Gould, for the rare privilege of watching an auteur’s work in progress. ‘‘But the most exciting thing was that one of the people sitting there was Groucho Marx,’’ Stratton finished. ‘‘Wow.’’
Trumped but not beaten, Pomeranz edged back to the microphone. ‘‘I hate it when he tells that story.’’
The odd dynamic between this pair — they play like a bickering but co-dependent old couple out of Pinter — was evident from their first meetings in the early days of SBS.
Stratton had been brought to the new station in 1980 to program its film offerings, and soon after found himself introducing them to camera in his Movie of the Week and Movie Classics segments.
Pomeranz was there too, a writer and producer fresh returned from overseas to be part of this bold new adventure in broadcasting. To Stratton, she was a face in the hallway, and something of an annoyance.
‘‘I didn’t know her,’’ he recalled. ‘‘She made a few desultory attempts to talk to me and I brushed her off because ... well ...’’
But eventually she got his attention when she was appointed to produce his introductions. ‘‘And suddenly she wants to rewrite them, she wants to do it this way ...’’
‘‘I wanted to rip his tie off,’’ jumped in Pomeranz. ‘‘To get him to grow his hair and wear a ponytail.’’
‘‘So what do you think I felt?’’ asked Stratton.
Twenty-five years on, the pair insist there’s nothing staged or exaggerated about their on-screen dynamic; it is what it is. He is incredibly organised, ‘‘perhaps even anal’’, she says; he says she’s ‘‘incredibly disorganised’’.
Stratton confessed that he felt anguish about lending out his collection of memorabilia to ACMI, but it was nothing like the grief he would have felt had he lent a single magazine to Pomeranz.
‘‘He won’t even let me borrow a DVD,’’ said Pomeranz, and for once they were in furious agreement.
Margaret and David: 25 Years Talking Movies is at ACMI in Melbourne from until December 4. Details: acmi.net.au. The 25-year anniversary episode of At the Movies screens on ABC1 on October 26.
Follow Karl Quinn on Twitter: @karlkwin