PREMIERE R.I.P.

The last ever issue of PREMIERE magazine is now on sale. With Will Ferrell on the cover.

Its demise has been upsetting and disappointing, not least because lots of people I knew lost their jobs but because Premiere was always the bible of film journalism to my generation. In the days before the internet, before Empire, before Total Film, before every newspaper, magazine, and TV programme decided to cover film, Premiere was the must-read for anyone who wanted to be in the know about movies. Back then, its access was unparalleled — it wasn't unusual for a Premiere reporter to spend a week on a film set — with writers such as Nancy Griffin, John H Richardson, Fred Schruers, et al producing in-depth, lengthy production stories — the likes of which don't really have a home nowadays.

I'd been writing for Premiere since 1997 — for the last six years or so as its London Correspondent — although I'd been a loyal reader ever since the first test issue back in 1987 that had Dragnet's Tom Hanks and Dan Aykroyd on the cover. In my time with the magazine, I got to visit film sets all over the world and cover both Cannes and Venice on several occasions. I wrote about Tony Scott's baseball cap cameos, watched Neo battle Agent Smith at the climax of The Matrix trilogy a full 18 months before the film came out, and last year interviewed everyone connected with Trainspotting for an oral history to coincide with the film's tenth anniversary. Among the many movies I covered were Sleepy Hollow, The Matrix Reloaded, Planet Of The Apes, The Beach, Snatch, Tomb Raider, From Hell, A Knight's Tale, Amelie, the Harry Potter series, and XXX.

In an email to a staffer the day after the magazine had been axed, I wrote that it felt as if a family member or close friend had died. It still feels like that.

Premiere — you will be missed.