March 29-30, 2016:
Tom Hiddleston undertook a grassroots promotional campaign for I Saw the Light which included a multi-city screening tour. One of those cities just happened to be Washington DC - and if you didn't already know, I'm from the DC area! After more than a decade in showbiz it was nice of Tom to finally come to my city.
March 29, 2016:
Tom's first stop was the E Street Cinema for a Q&A along with director Marc Abraham. Marc is somewhat of a local star since he's from the DMV (DC, Maryland, Virginia) area and graduated from the University of Virginia. It is a very small cinema with only 100 seats. The men weren't inside the theater while the movie was playing thankfully. I went to an earlier screening of I Saw the Light and was sat directly in front of Marc. When the opening scene of Tom singing Cold, Cold Heart started my whole face just dropped and I turned around to see Marc grinning at me. I had to spend the rest of the movie trying to control my face!
As you can see we went all out with the decorations.
Later they signed that standee. I have no idea what they did with it afterwards because it's not on display at the Cinema.
The Q&A was about 20 minutes. I have several videos on my Youtube channel. Here are Tom talks about playing the trumpet in the school band, learning the guitar to impress ladies, and the one piece he can play on the violin.
"As a child I played the trumpet until I was about 12. Which I really enjoyed, I was in the brass band at school. We got to play the Indiana Jones theme tune in a school concert. It was a high point. And I noodled around on the piano. My mom and my sisters were very musical, and had more discipline than I did. And then I picked up a guitar, like everybody else, when I was about 14 just to impress girls. It didn't really work..."
Here's another short clip where Tom talks about "obligation to be precise" and finally finding Hank Williams' true accent in Luke the Drifter.
Tom closed out the screening with a little song! I don't remember exactly how the singing started. The moderator mentioned that must be tired because he was in NYC on the Colbert Show the previous night and then suddenly he was singing. (This is not my video) You can tell how smell the venue was because for most of the song Tom isn't even singing into the microphone but his voice is still echoing.
Post screening they visited the Lincoln Memorial with publicist Lauren Jones. I can totally imagine Tom standing there reciting The Gettysburg Address.