by John P. Meyer

In which two Denzels, a Nate and a Jurnee visit the campus of Wiley College in Marshall, Texas.

It was my first official press junket as a PegNews staffer and 10 minutes into the road trip, our media bus broke down. We hadn't even made it out of Irving.

So the driver of our really quite spacious, comfortable and nice in every way (except mechanically) executive transport vehicle stood out on the lawn of an industrial facility making a harried phone call to his base of operations and lined up another bus for us. It arrived about 40 minutes later; since it was less spacious and somewhat truncated one of our onboard media wags dubbed it "the shortbus." But at least we were back on the road.

Trouble was, we'd been late getting away in the first place from our Four Seasons departure point, and the press conference in the chapel at little Wiley College in Marshall, Texas (about 160 miles east) was scheduled to begin in only an hour and 40 minutes. No way we were going to make that deadline: hell, we hadn't even made it through downtown Dallas traffic yet.

We were on our way to see and hear from Denzel Washington and three other members of the cast of his new movie, The Great Debaters: Nate Parker, Jurnee Smollett and Denzel Whitaker - who oddly enough has the same first name as one of his fellow cast members (Mr. Washington) and the same last name as another one (Forest), though he is related to neither.

Wiley College was chosen as the site of the conference because it's the center of the action of Mr. Washington's latest directorial and starring effort. The story revolves around an inspired and inspiring group of young African American college students who - in 1935 - became the first black debate team to challenge Anglo debate squads, and also the first to win a national debating championship.

(While the movie has them whipping the verbal tar out of the Harvard debate squad, the Wiley team actually defeated a USC team to win the national title. But - as Denzel Washington puts it - Harvard had a pretty good group of debaters, too, and it just didn't seem as dramatic to have his fictional kids piling onto a train for Los Angeles.)

As our driver Leroy (pronounced not LEE-roy, but le-ROY) risked the wrath of state troopers by zipping down I-20 at speeds averaging 85, a few attempted to prepare their interview notes while others (such as moi) made a stab writing up film reviews. But "the shortbus" was sprung pretty stiff, making typing quite a challenge and leading to some comical cursor misplacements (followed by text-destructive keystrokes). So I gave up on that little endeavor and just kicked back to enjoy the ride.

Arriving at Wiley, we piled out (some with heavy-duty broadcast camera equipment) and proceeded to the press table for credentialing. By the time we entered the chapel, media folks from Houston, Tyler and other locales were already firing questions at the three young film stars. Those of our group who had spent hours preparing carefully-researched questions had but a few minutes to attempt getting one in edgewise.

In a surprise appearance, Denzel Washington stepped onto the stage - he was not expected to show up until later, during the red carpet arrivals at nearby Marshall Cinema, where the film was to screen that evening. During his brief time at the podium, he dropped a hint that he would be assisting Wiley College in re-invigorating their debate team, though he declined to mention any specifics.

Hopping back onto the bus, Leroy ferried us over to the theater where we took our places off the red carpet and awaited the arrival of the talent. Several hundred Marshall-ites did the same, though stationed a bit farther back through the agency of sawhorse barricades. These for some reason were removed just prior to the approach of the Lincoln Navigators carrying the stars, which proved to be our (the media's) undoing.

No sooner had Denzel, Nate, Jurnee and Denzel reached the halfway point of their march down the carpet than all of a sudden there seemed to be a lot more jostling at our backs. It was the people of Marshall, hungry for Denzel, hungry for the idea of celebrity itself, it seemed.

Those metal stanchions with velvet ropes on them? Knocked to the ground and trampled. The talent pressed on into the theater, followed by a bunch of people without tickets of any kind, except maybe those issued for traffic violations.

We stopped at a Whataburger on the way out of town; the ride back to Las Colinas was uneventful.

The Great Debaters opens locally (and nationwide) on Christmas Day, December 25.

UPDATE: photo gallery now added, including more snaps of the stars, the crowd and the media. (Who, admittedly, are part of the crowd themselves, but somehow they stand apart. Must be all that posturing with electronic devices.)

photos by JM