In my post 22 Things I’ve Done. For Real. I mentioned going to the Hollywood Premiere of the movie Eclipse, the third movie in the Twilight Saga. This was really a pretty fun story, so I wanted to elaborate on it further. Actually Mama Kat gave the prompt, so I’m just going with it…
Being an aspiring writer is what I do in the evenings and on the weekends, it’s where my heart is and what keeps me sane. But I have a pretty killer day job too
, doing Interactive Marketing in the National Advertising department at Volvo Cars of North America. That happens to also be the company that moved me to paradise, and then made me move back to Jersey… Anyway, to get back on point, I have this super fun day job that allows me to work with things like the Twilight movies. We have a partnership with their production company because when Stephenie Meyer wrote the books that these movies are based on, she put the lead vampire, Edward, into a Volvo S60. This was actually thanks to her car buff brothers who she went to for advice on what cars all of her characters should drive, and Volvo personified Edward best in their minds.
Because of this partnership, we have created online gaming contests to go along with the launches of the last couple of Twilight movies, as well as the one that is about to come out, Breaking Dawn, Part 1. Attending the Hollywood Premiere of Eclipse was one of the prizes we gave away last year, and I was asked to host the winners on their black carpet adventure. Yes, black carpet, not red, guess it was a vampire thing… We had full access to the carpet, and everything inside of the velvet ropes. It was one of the most surreal experiences of my entire life. All of the lights and paparazzi, and celebrities EVERYWHERE, it was a flavor of chaos I had never known, and what you see on TV just does not do it justice.
I had convinced my friend James from our Public Affairs department 
to co-host the winners with me, which made it significantly more fun than it would have been otherwise. James really didn’t get what all the hype was about with the vampire stuff, since he’s a guy and well past his teenage years, but he was such a good sport to endure the madness with me. We were amazed at the thousands upon thousands of Twi-hards, both young and old, there on the other side of the barracades, many who had been camped out for days, just hoping to get a glimpse of their favorite vampire or werewolf.
We stood there in the center of it all, looking around and really trying to take it all in. As it turned out, this was one of the biggest premiere events in Hollywood history, so there was really a lot to take in.Thankfully we had a terrific “handler” who made sure that our winner and her guest got photos with every celebrity they wanted to meet, which was a tremendous help, as I think it would have been too overwhelming otherwise. By the time we were to go into the theater to see the movie, James and I had both become a bit starstruck, I think it was impossible not to be. After he met a Laker (basketball?) that he LOVED, and I saw the great Kevin Smith, we were completely swept up in all of it.
The movie was shown in the largest theater I had ever been in, and sitting there watching it with all of the people who had made it, created an air of magic that was almost tangible, and not just what was unfolding before us on the movie screen. When it was over, we
were guided to an enormous tent outside of the theater, where the after party was being held. In the center of the tent there was a giant glowing moon, hanging above a mountain scene made of stone and waterfalls, straight out of the movie. The mountain was surrounded by buffets of all sorts, I mean everything you could possibly imagine, and there were full service bars set up everywhere. There were lounge areas with couches inside, and picnic tables and fire pits outside of the tent. One of the more interesting things that they had were large shallow boxes which held grass and purple flowers (just like the field in the movie), which were large enough for several people to lie in together, which created a terrific photo op for the party goers to take advantage of. We may or may not have had our turn in one of those flower field boxes…
As I mentioned, the fourth Twilight movie is about to be released, and we are deep in Vampire mode now in my office. The latest game is called Journey to the Wedding, and the prize this time is bigger and better than anything we’ve done before. We’re giving away the Volvo S60 Edward drives in Breaking Dawn, Part 1, as well as a trip to Rio, to stay in the house where Edward and Bella spend their Honeymoon. The games are fun, and the prize is ridiculously cool, so it is most definitely worth checking out, even if you are not a Twi-hard, here’s the link www.journeytothewedding.com.
So that’s my Eclipse Premiere story, and what I do for my day job, which I obviously can get pretty excited about, at least when we’ve got fun stuff like this going on! And don’t worry, I promise, I won’t try to sell you a Volvo. Well, unless you’re interested of course…
This post was inspired by Mama Kat’s Pretty Much World Famous Writer’s Workshop. Check it out!
