CIFA_EP34
AUDIO	VIDEO	
STEFFI D: Hi, everyone. I'm Steffi D. 	Lisa and Steffi appear in different chat windows on screen	
LISA H: And I'm Lisa H, 		
STEFFI D: And welcome to Check in From Away. 		
LISA H: This week we are checking in with journalist and celebrity pop culture columnist Shinan Govani. 		
STEFFI D: Thanks for joining us. 		
[MUSIC PLAYING] 	CREDITS SEQUENCE
TEXT: Check In From Away with Steffi D. and Lisa H.
Steffi and Lisa’s windows slide together and they mime clinking their mugs together.	
		
STEFFI D: Hey Lisa, guess what? 		
LISA H: What? 		
STEFFI D: I hope you like gossip because today we are speaking to celebrity journalists and columnists Shinan Govani, who knows like, basically every celebrity you can possibly think of. 		
LISA H: Exactly. I mean, we're going to hear about how he's chatted with Robin Williams, Joan Rivers, Madonna, and now we shot it with us so pretty sure we're reaching celebrity status. One degree of separation, right? 		
STEFFI D: Yes, and also pretty sure that like we better watch out what we say today on the interview because like we might end up in one of his columns because we're basically celebrities now pandemic's celebrities. 		
LISA H: That's right. I mean, he did say also that his favorite celebrities to talk to are not the A-list stars so you know the C, D, E, F, Z, listers. Hello. 		
STEFFI D: That's us right here come and get it. 		
SHINAN GOVANI: Hi, I'm Shinan Govani I'm a columnist and author. I like to think of myself as a people watcher, as a pop culture decoder. I wrote a column for over a decade with the National Post. These days I have a column at the Toronto Star. I also am a contributing editor to Hello Canada magazine, and I've written for a slew of other publications like Vanity Fair, Town and Country, Tatler, and The Daily Beast. 	TEXT ON SCREEN: Shinan Govani	
There has been a bit of a shift, but I would say I became most known for almost a daily column I used to write, which involved going to parties, tracking celebrities, unearthing gossip. And really mixing it up in a kind of blender in terms of the local scene and local socialites, and visiting celebrities who were shooting in Toronto. And then as the column got bigger and my I guess profile got larger I started covering events and celebrities at different functions around the world, and started going to things like the Vanity Fair Oscar party and going to fashion weeks in Milan and Paris. Yes, and looking back I went to events and interviewed people in places as far as Dubai and Shanghai and Morocco and LA and New York more times than I can imagine. 		
These days I do do some of that especially during the Film Festival. I still go to like 40 parties a week during the non-pandemic times of course, but also the other hat I wear is being more of a pop culture analyst of sorts like doing more commentary because I have seen like the spectrum of celebrity culture really change. When I started writing about celebrities it was like the Palm Pilot world not even blackberry. 		
It was that moment when Paris Hilton started saying that's hot, and the whole celebrity sphere tilted. The whole temperature tilted to Paris Hilton, and of course, there was no social media. And now I would say the vast majority of celebrity culture is about social media, it follows the currents of social media. So it's interesting I do have a long lens on this stuff. 		
I've always been interested in celebrities, whether it's reality or the way people respond to celebrities. I think it's an incredible prism to talk about the stuff that's important in our lives. When you there people even today still talk about Brangelina you are hearing them talk about their relationships, about their views on fidelity, about their views on feminism, so yes, that's how I always approach celebrity. And my pet theory and I need to develop this a little bit more of, is that the people who are not interested in celebrities are actually usually narcissists because if they're not talking about other people they're usually talking about themselves like in most cases, unless you're a nuclear physicist, and you really think talking about ideas. 		
But if you eavesdrop on people in restaurants and stuff everyone's talking about other people, and in the case of celebrities it's just a heightened version of what was happening during the age of the cavemen. People in one cave we're talking about the cave men two caves over. Don't get it twisted celebrity gossip and celebrity didn't just start it's part of human nature to talk about Joe down the street. Or in another time the way people talked about royalty yes, because those were other celebrities like they spun stories out of them. This is what Shakespeare did, this is all part of it so. 		
STEFFI D: So basically you're making a perfect link between gossip, celebrities, and then performing arts and theater and all the things because if we didn't talk about-- 		
SHINAN GOVANI: It's all a story. We are all moved by story, like we are fascinated by the things, the ways people wanted to be seen, what they hunger for, what they envy, how so much of the early rhythms in their life, whether it's their relationship with their mom or their sister gets played out over and over again in their lives, with relationships with other people. I mean, this is stuff that's so basic that I think some people don't even think about it. 		
But if you sit around a dining room table during Thanksgiving or Christmas or Diwali or whatever you celebrate, and the way people talk builds stories out of things that happened in the past in their lives. That is performing arts, and the stories sometimes have change or been a bridge over time because there are many different memories of one event often, right? And that's what's so fascinating about it, and I think that's what we're drawn to in terms of movies and theater as well to see our lives reflected back to us, to see interactions of people ultimately. 		
STEFFI D: I'm just really surprised you weren't getting so many phone calls for me and Lisa's people when we were doing come from way at the Royal Alexandra theater. 		
SHINAN GOVANI: I was at the-- I was at the opening. I was at the opening. Yes, I will never forget the opening the one in Toronto, right? 		
STEFFI D: Yes. 		
SHINAN GOVANI: Yes, I will never forget because there is an energy at the curtain-- when the curtain has fallen that you cannot replicate with any other experience. I mean, I love movies, I love boxing. But theater on opening night the rousing thunder of applause, and people jumping to their feet I knew in that moment that this was different and that this was huge, you could feel it. 		
STEFFI D: Oh yes. 		
SHINAN GOVANI: The early on and I do think about this a lot because I was such a baby columnist, but it really helped me to get like attention even in the US. I was covering the story of Tory Spelling's affair she was working in Canada with Dean who now she has five children with, and they were both married at the time. And they both left their spouses, and got together it was a huge story in the early 2000s. Now I was friendly with Dean's soon to be ex-wife Mary Jo Eustace who was known in Canada particularly in the 90s because she had a food show for seven years. She was a food personality. 		
So long story short Dean and Tory were invited to present at the Much Music Video Awards remember that Much Music Video Awards they were massive. It was this huge incubator of celebrity especially I think going from the early 2000s in to mid 2000s. So they were invited they flew into Toronto Dean of course, is from here so has all this family and stuff, so I was going to the Music Video Awards, and I thought it would be fun and this was me being a little naughty I didn't think it was going to be major drama. But I thought it would be interesting to bringing Mary Jo as my date to the Much Music Video Awards because I had it in my mind that I would just cover the whole awards through her voice. I would just literally transcribe everything she said I certainly wasn't egging her on to have an actual confrontation or something. 		
But when we got there, and they're like 2000 people at the Much Music Video Awards if you recall it was not a particularly small thing, although there was like a VIP area. And I guess Tori or Tori's people got wind of the fact that Mary Jo was in the room. And at that time like Tory spelling was on the cover of People us like star, and her father was dying at the time Aaron Spelling the mega producer of Charlie's Angels and 90210 and Melrose Place and Love Boat and everything. He was dying at the time, and she was fighting with her mother and it was this whole story of how much money was she going to be left. And then she'd left her husband for this other man, and yes, I mean, it was a whole-- it was a whole soap opera onto itself. 		
They saw that Mary Jo was there they asked for Mary Jo and me by virtue of the fact that I had brought her as my date to be quarantined. So this is quarantine before quarantine, and we were put in a room with a TV, and we watch the whole Much Music Video Awards. They brought us snacks and stuff, but they were like so serious about this because they wanted to make sure that all eyes were on Mary Jo and that there would be no interaction. And we were not allowed to leave the room until Tori had left the premises. 		
But I've watched all 10 plus franchises of Housewives often twice in their entirety like I've watched Atlanta for the last 12 years and it's fascinating looking back at it because you're going with new information that you know now. You know that this is two husbands before sometimes in the case of Orange County it's three faces before because they've changed their looks like. So I love all of those shows more recently I've been enjoying Shahs of Sunset, which is another bravo show. Which was so radical of its time, it doesn't even get its due, but it was a whole-- it's on its ninth season now, but it was a whole show on television of brown people, which is now all of this talk about diversity and stuff is in Vogue. 		
But we were watching these people who were all Persians on this reality show, and all of them-- not all of them are likeable in fact, most of them are toxic. But I think in terms of diversity you need to see that you don't want to see them all just be good because that's not presenting them in a holistic way. But this was a whole show of brown people half of whom are Muslim, half of whom are Jewish the main star of it Reza is half Muslim half Jewish brown and gay. So tell me what films were doing that. Tell me in the case of Atlanta, Real Housewife Atlanta it's a whole cast of Black women, middle age. 		
First of all, we always talk about how there's no place for women after a certain age in Hollywood. These were all black divas, strong black women, and shading each other with a kind of athleticism even the word shade became popular in the pop culture because of The Real Housewives of Atlanta. People don't really know that because the word is now entered into the ecosystem, and now we live in a world where I always say everybody is their own broadcaster and everyone is their own broadsheet because of YouTube and IG Live and TikTok. 		
There are lots and lots of eyes in a very deep way on one thing, but not lots and lots of eyes on a lot of things in a very broad way. So I think [AUDIO OUT] has shifted. I think there are more invested, more bigger fandoms in niche industries than there are in terms of-- than there is in terms of a broad audience. I think that's gone. 		
I do think about a time I went party hopping in Toronto it was during the Christmas season, so it was going to a bunch of Christmas parties with Robin Williams who is another example of someone who's gone. He used to go to this particular bar in Toronto, and I think it was one of his moments where he was maybe doing as well as he was especially in retrospect because he'd struggled with addiction, and which brought on some of his own mental health troubles. But he was behind a bar, and I went to the bar and it was like why is Robin Williams behind this bar and he was mixing drinks and kibitzing with people just like right there. And apparently he'd done this before because he was shooting in Toronto, and on a lark my friend and I said well we're going to the Christmas party you want to come with us. 		
And he hopped into the taxi with us, and I'll never forget it because it was like one of those beautiful, colorful leading up to December 25th night where it's crisp, but not particularly cold. And in the taxi there were Christmas carols playing, and Robin said turn them up and then the driver turned up the carols and then we just sang Christmas carols. My one friend Robin Williams and I going to this party, and this party was far on the East end and we were coming to the West end. 		
And then we went to this party and everyone was like, oh my God Robin Williams, so he did the rounds there and there was a live band going on and he got up on the-- he got up on my back and then like 20 minutes later next party. So we went into a taxi and went into the Windsor arms where there was this other sushi party, and then Robin realized he'd left his coat at the other party. So we were on the phone trying to get his coat, and so we had to go back. I mean, it was just the whole-- it was a whole thing. 		
My take is that the pendulum always swings, so we will see it swinging big time much how the Gatsby era came out of the Great Depression. People are more acutely aware of the power of human connection, and people will want to be out and connecting in a huge way. I do think that people do say this, but I also on the other hand, do think that that is overstated as well because I think that one thing I do know as someone who reads a lot of social history. And is just aware of different shifts in and pop culture is that human beings are infinitely capable of mass amnesia. And I can see how a year from now after they've tuckered themselves out from socializing and connecting that we'll all be back to complaining about oh I have to dress up and go out again. 		
I mean, human beings are a bundle of contradictions, and I don't think that the pandemic is going to make us more virtuous in the long run no way. I mean, I think if you know anything all you have to do is go back as recently as 9/11 people think everything would change after 9/11. They said that irony was dead, they said that celebrity culture didn't matter, and then it was only a few years later where the masked celebrity culture of TMZ and Perez Hilton was born. So I think everything is a moment in time, but of course, I do think that we have been reminded collectively of if we took it for granted before we're going to probably take it less for granted now. 		
I think a lot of people, as we've all exhaled during this time I think most of us hopefully have taken this time to really think about the span of our lives, and what makes us who we are. And for me I've been thinking a lot about stuff I pushed away for a while in that I actually started my life as a refugee. I came to Canada with a family of refugees. I was born into a world where I had no country. 		
I had no citizenship, and my parents had to come to Canada with literally nothing and have handouts and try to build a life in a country where they didn't know the language or the weather. So when I think about what my father and mother had to endure, and I'm being asked to sit on a couch even if I catch myself complaining about not being able to go to a restaurant, which I do love. One of my favorite things is going to a restaurant by myself, and just feeling the white noise. 		
I got into those rooms, but I got into it on my own terms, right? And so it doesn't matter how famous, how powerful, how rich someone else is I feel comfortable just talking to them because we're all people at the end of the day, we all have stories. And even those people who seemed they had everything who have no problems you don't know what-- you don't know what dark stuff they're dealing with, right? 		
STEFFI D: Thanks for joining us on this week's episode of Check In from Away. 	TEXT ON SCREEN: @steffid5 @lisahumber
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LISA H: Happy summer holiday. 		
STEFFI D: Cheers. We've got some hot gossip that's fresh off the presses. 		
LISA H: That's right. Steffi and I are taking a summer vacation we're talking about a month off, but then we will be back with some more hot Check In From Away content. 		
STEFFI D: Thank you so much for watching up until this point we love you, we'll see you soon. Enjoy the sun. 		
LISA H: Cheers. 		
STEFFI D: Cheers. 		
	FINAL SLIDE
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