The Rawness

Radar Magazine asks “Who Killed The Movie Star?“. It’s an article that ties in pretty well to one I wrote about the newest and most important type of celebrity of the modern era, The Tabloid Star. Radar Magazine points out:

For most of the century…having the right name on the marquee?be it Chaplin, Garbo, Grant, McQueen, Schwarzenegger, or Hanks?has been the most cruc predictor of a film’s success.

No longer. The past year has seen more falling stars than the skies above Roswell. Since 2007, with the notable exception of Will Smith, whose upcoming tent-pole flick Hancock is enjoying some of the best prerelease buzz of any summer film, virtually every star of note has tanked at the box office, sending a collective shiver down the industry’s spine. Tom Cruise, Adam Sandler, Jim Carrey, Reese Witherspoon, Brad Pitt, George Clooney, Ben Stiller, and Will Ferrell have all starred in movies that made less than $40 million domestically, far from the magic number?$100 million?that’s become the standard measure of a successful release. Outside of their tried-and-true franchises, Leonardo DiCaprio, Matt Damon, Cameron Diaz, and Johnny Depp have fared little better, topping out, in some cases, at less than $70 million. Same thing for the presumably unbeatable duo of Tom Hanks and Julia Roberts, whose widely praised political romp, Charlie Wilson’s War, took in a scant $66 million.

In 1995, Jim Carrey was paid $20 million for The Cable Guy. For his next comedy, Yes Man, he’s receiving nothing up-front and shares in the profits only if there are any (Photo: Getty Images)

“We’re in a cycle where stars aren’t as important to a film’s success as they used to be,” says Variety editor in chief Peter Bart, echoing a May cover story in the Hollywood Reporter. Between 1990 and 2000, roughly two-thirds of the top 10 grossing films each year could chalk up their success to star power; since 2001, that number has declined by more than half. “There was a period of time when studio marketing departments could count on just hiring a movie star to open a movie,” says producer Lynda Obst?casting, for example, Arnold Schwarzenegger in the absurd Kindergarten Cop, and Julia Roberts in the aggressively mediocre Runaway Bride. “It’s not so easy anymore,” she adds.

Accordingly, movie star paychecks aren’t what they used to be. In 1995, the rubber-faced Jim Carrey was the first actor to be awarded a $20 million contract?for the ill-fated Cable Guy. (Soon after, Sandler, Smith, Cruise, Schwarzenegger, Willis, and others were commanding the same price.) At the time that Columbia Pictures made him the offer, the funnyman had never had a flop. Since then, he’s had plenty. As a result, Warner Bros. just financed his next comedy, Yes Man, with a very different sort of deal: Carrey will receive zippo up front, but is entitled to 36.2 percent of the movie’s profits … should any materialize.

Face it: The movie star as we’ve come to know him?an actor who can reliably put butts in seats on opening weekend?is dead.

Then the article goes into reasons why this may be the case. Culprit #1? The tabloids:

THEY’RE JUST LIKE US! So why would we pay $11.50 to watch them?

Call it death by a thousand crotch shots. The incredible success of the weekly tabs, an innovation credited to Bonnie Fuller, the former Us Weekly editrix (who went on to bring her dark magic to Star before stepping down in May), has reduced the movie star to someone who’s “just like us!” And if they are mere mortals?as we’re forever being reminded, one Starbucks run at a time?who needs them? By chronicling an actor’s every bad hair day, sartorial screwup, and debased love life, the tabs?joined by TMZ with its nightly curbside ambushes and Perez with his doodled penises?have ripped the veneer of glamour from one matinee idol after another, exposing the sad, unbalanced, attention-starved creatures underneath. As a result, we’ve adopted what Hollywood historian David Thomson calls “a bitter, acidic, vengeful attitude toward the stars.”

To see the carnage Fuller has wrought, look no further than former box-office golden boy?now perpetual superfreak?Tom Cruise. Or recall the horrifying fate of the original Bennifer, Jennifer Lopez and Ben Affleck, who were poised to become Hollywood royalty and instead watched helplessly as their careers were shredded by the tabloids (granted, the couple all but invited the harpies into their bedroom, but still). In 2001, the year before they began dating, Lopez was the first star ever to have the country’s No. 1 album (J.Lo) and top-grossing film (The Wedding Planner) simultaneously. That same year, Affleck starred in the blockbuster Pearl Harbor, which grossed a gargantuan $198 million. In 2002, the duo hooked up and proceeded to hijack the media, flaunting their relationship in music videos, magazines, and a prime-time television special. After their breakup in 2004, blamed on “media scrutiny,” both went into virtual hiding for years. Now he’s bleeping Jimmy Kimmel, and she’s bleeping Marc Anthony. Ouch.

Like I said in my blog post, using tabloids to gain exposure seems to increase your fame and buzz, but actually destroys your primary career. It makes you too relatable to the masses thereby taking away much of your mystique. We all know how flawed many of our past matinee idols were, but we usually found out long after it mattered posthumously. At the time we didn’t know Marilyn Monroe’s demons, were unaware of Rock Hudson’s sexuality, were clueless about Joan Crawford’s child raising techniques, were oblivious to JFK’s affairs and Elvis’s drug habits, and Jayne Kennedy’s sex tape wasn’t readily available for purchase by the masses. Their handlers guarded their secrets religiously.

And this level of insight into celebrity lives leads into the other reason tabloid exposure hurts the stars: the lurid details of their real lives form narratives become more compelling than the fake narratives they create onscreen. The details of Lindsey Lohan’s train wreck of a life, along with the cast of outrageous characters that come along with it like her parents and sister and lovers, are much more interesting and fascinating than any of the characters or storylines I’ve seen described for her recent movies. When the truth becomes more fascinating than fiction, people will choose the truth. Compare this to old newsreels of past matinee idols where they strove to create the illusion of a glamorous but relatively bland drama-free personal life that paled in comparison to the roles they played on the screen. Why pay $11.50 to see a celebrity act out a fake story when you can keep track of their real life stories that are a lot more salacious, fast-paced and outrageous for a fraction of the price? The movie roles almost seem to be a distraction to audiences from the more compelling drama that is the actor’s real life shenanigans.
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Remember when I linked to this video of Madonna emasculating her husband?

Now it turns out they may be getting divorced. No surprise there.
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I also declared that the Pete Wentz/Ashlee Simpson pregnancy may be the highest concentration of douche genes ever seen in a single human being, a long-awaited (dreaded?) messiah of douchedom even. This latest public statement by Pete Wentz just confirms my worst fears:

Dad-to-be Pete Wentz has a confession: He’s made out with dudes.

He tells Out magazine he first smooched a guy when he was 16 or 17, probably on a dare.

He experimented again around 18 and 19, he says.

His last same-sex make out?

“A long time ago,” Wentz, 29, says. “Probably when I was 22?”

The Fall Out Boy bassist ? who wed Ashlee Simpson in May ? puts all his experimenting in perspective.

“When I said that I make out with dudes, there was a slight sense of sexual rebellion in that,” he tells Out. “And I probably even made it a bigger deal than it was.”

Lordy, has edginess ever come off as more forced and contrived? Do people really still get impressed with stuff like this at this point?

What’s he doing in this picture? Is that supposed to be a sneer or something? I remember when punks and alt-rockers actually used to be fuck ups. I mean, real-deal fuck ups. Not normal, suburban whitebread clean cut kids trying hard to seem fucked up and edgy in order to emulate their punk heroes from decades past. The traditional symbols of rebellion from bisexuality to tattoos to piercings have been so co-opted and resold that no one even takes them seriously as symbols of rebellion anymore. Even asexual hipster geeks now have more sleeve tattoos than heroin and meth-addicted z-list metal road bands, but instead of the tattoo making them look edgy they just end up sucking the cool out of the tattoo. With every new tattooed and pierced Pete Wentz and Joel Madden that hits the big time, the more douchey that old punk aesthetic becomes. No amount of tattoos and piercings and spikey hair will ever erase this level of lame geekiness:

Remember that old Sesame Street sketch “One of these things is not like the other?” Read I Need More, the autobiography of Iggy Pop or the book Please Kill Me: The Uncensored Oral History of Punk (An Evergreen book) by Legs McNeil and then watch that clip again and tell me which one it is.

I’ve become convinced that the most edgy, daring and rebellious show of the past decade was actually 7th Heaven, because it was probably the only one that was willing to go against the mainstream grain and didn’t care how much criticism and backlash it got from the masses. People think it was mainstream because it was uncynical and focused on family values and religion and morality. But mainstream simply means what the majority finds socially acceptable, and nowadays with the widespread pornification of pop culture, the majority of entertainment celebrating piercings, the pornstar aesthetic, debauchery, binge drinking, promiscuous women and tattoos the idea of a repressive society is now a myth, if anything our current problem is that our society is too permissive. It’s probably the most daring thing that will ever grace Jessica Biel’s acting resume.

If being punk rock is about going against the grain and doing stuff that actually shocks and outrages people, I think Charlton Heston with his unabashedly pro-gun and outspoken conservative views as a member of the ultraliberal entertainment community and the scorn it won him probably made him one of the most punk rock celebrity in recent years. I’m sure he’s garnered more scorn, shock and outrage from the mainstream than Good Charlotte, Green Day and Fall Out Boy combined. Madonna doing another statement against Christianity and sexual prudes? *Yawn* Brigitte Bardot bashing Muslims and multiculturalism? That’s “punk.” Kirk Cameron suddenly becoming a born-again christian at the height of his fame is way more “punk” than Wentz and his homo makeout sessions.

Now my problem isn’t that I think that clean-cut goody-goody geeks don’t have a right to make rock music. I’m all for it. But don’t go around trying to portray yourself as this gritty, edgy bad boy because you aren’t fooling anyone worth fooling. Be yourself. Live what you know. It’s one of those things I always liked about Will Smith, even when his music wasn’t my cup of tea. The guy was ridiculously comfortable in his own skin and never tried to be anything he wasn’t. He did wholesome rap ditties about high school, the suburbs, his parents and trying to meet girls. And this is during the height of West Coast gangster rap and East Coast afrocentric rap when everyone thought you had to be either a stone cold gangster or a black revolutionary to have any validity in hip-hop. And people embraced him for being true to himself and he spun that sincerity off into one of the most illustrious Hollywood careers ever. It’s probably why he’s one of the few A-list actors left that can make a move huge just by attaching his name to it. It’s a beautiful thing to behold.

Recommended Reading:

Forgot to mention, winner of the commenter contest was Johnny Five. The criterion for choosing the winner was whichever non-spam came closest to being comment #1050 without going over. Johnny got comment #1049 and comment #1051. An added bonus was the fact that they were damn insightful comments too.

Some interesting stuff from the web by the way. What are your thoughts on this?

Also, talk about having the cards stacked against you. After consulting evolutionary theories, gene charts, probability tables, astrologists, graphs and all manner of scientific testing and equations, I’ve conclusively determined that this child has only a .000037% chance of not turning out to be the biggest douchebag on earth. This simply must be the biggest concentration of douche genes in a pregnancy ever. We may be witnessing the birth of the messiah of douchedom if you will, something I’m fairly sure was mentioned in the book of Revelations as one of the signs that end times are nigh upon us.

I had a post recently called The Power of Vagueness, which you can find here. In the first post, I focused mostly on vagueness when it came to the political arena and only touched on it slightly in the dating arena. This time around I’m going to go more into the topic of vagueness in dating.

In the mail, I got my issue of the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Special. (I have an SI subscription.) Most of the girls in it bore me because they seem interchangeable, but this one exotic-looking black girl in it named Quiana Grant caught my eye, and I actually read her interview. One part of it really jumped out at me:

I feel a secret connection with …

Chris Webber because he is mysterious to me. I love the fact that you never hear anything about him anywhere. Even when he was dating Tyra Banks, you didn’t hear anything about him. It’s the unknown. I remember living in D.C., and the Kings came to play the Wizards, and all the ladies were in the hairdresser getting their hair done and I’m like, “What’s going on?” and they told me, “Chris Webber’s coming to town, girl!” That was kind of funny, but he’s actually, um, yeah, he’s pretty great. I was supposed to go to a game when he was playing for Philly, but then he got traded and I thought, nevermind I just wanted to see him.

I love that quote, because it perfectly illustrates what I described in the last vagueness quote. Chris Webber is a good-looking, charismatic, athletic and talented athlete, but he’s intensely private. When he does make a major statement to the public, it carries that much more weight and becomes an event because he so rarely does it. In fact, for a while it even intensified scrutiny of him because the scarcity of information about him make information about him become even more valuable.

But what I really love is how you can tell Quiana Grant has used the half-blank canvas Webber has created and filled in all the blanks herself. She’s taken every dream guy trait she has and has probably assigned them to Webber.

Of course the blank canvas alone isn’t enough. You have to have something on the canvas to attract attention in the first place. If you’re too vague or nondescript you’ll just be ignored. But Webber has the fame, athleticism and good looks that get him in the door. After that, he just has to keep his mouth shut and not fuck it up.

It amazes me how often guys don’t get this. They just talk and talk and campaign with women until they just tell too much about themselves and talk themselves right into the doghouse. Several reasons why this is bad:

1. Unless you are particularly gifted in smooth conversation, you are just increasing the chances you are going to fuck up a good first impression with each sentence you say.
2. It puts the girl on a pedestal if you are trying too hard to impress her, thereby lowering your own value in comparison. When you are talking about how smart you are, how much money you make, how cool you are, all the things that make you great, all you are doing is subconsciously convincing the girl of how great she is because you just met her and are trying to hard to gain her approval. Think about it, you don’t try to convince an ugly person of how good you look, you don’t try to convince a dumb person of how smart you are, and you don’t try to convince an uncool person of how cool you are. You expect them to get it automatically. So if you are trying too hard to convince someone you are cool, the implication is that you consider them to be even cooler. If you are trying too hard to convince someone you are good-looking, you are implying that you already consider them better-looking than you. If you are trying too hard to impress someone with how smart you are, you are implying that you consider them smart enough to judge your intelligence. Good masters don’t openly try to impress students, students openly try to impress masters. When you are too blatant in seeking approval, you broadcast to the people you’re seeking approval from that you consider them your masters. You are now in a “one-down” position from them. They may like you, but they won’t respect you as much as you want.
3. You deprive the woman of her fantasy. If for some reason you conveyed a positive first impression and got her intrigued, it’s because something about you reminded her of one of her fantasies. And each time you open your mouth to talk yourself up or impress her, you just kept painting a picture different from the one she wanted to paint. You promised her the fulfillment of a fantasy with your first impression and now you’re taking it away from her. And of course she’ll resent that, even if it’s on a subconscious level.

See, most guys have women they have no interest in that are incredibly fixated on them. They consider them pests. They make no effort to impress them, yet they stick around. Then they meet women that impress them terribly and they start campaigning hard. They call and text them too much. They watch their phones in hopes they’ll ring. They meet the girl and find her to be interested at first and get confused at why they seem to lose interest with each following interaction. What guys don’t realize is that the aloof, slightly disinterested attitude they affected with the former type of woman is the one they need to affect with the women they really like. If more men could treat the women they really like the same as they treat the ones they want to get rid of, they’d have a much better dating life. (And probably, if they pestered and tried to impress the ones they wanted to get rid of the way they do the ones they obsess over, they’d do a better job of getting rid of them.)

There’s a saying in the pimp community that touches on this concept: “The player with the right clothes can get chose with his mouth closed.” Basically, if you work on your image, whether it’s your clothing, your muscles, your body language and posture, and/or your grooming, all you have to do is work on not saying anything stupid (harder for some guys than you’d think) and being enticingly vague (but not boring) and the woman’s imagination will do all the impressing for you. As long as you don’t do anything blatantly contrary to this image, you’ll be fine.

Addendum: Something else that Chris Webber understands about vagueness: not just being vague about himself but vague about his conquests also. You never see Chris Webber brag about women he’s banging. Never. Sexual bragging is an amateurish thing the average slob does and betrays not only short term thinking but also very poor social intelligence (poor social intelligence is a huge turn-off to women).

Reputation management since time immemorial has always been of paramount importance to a woman. The sluttier a woman’s reputation is, the more her social stock drops. This is why real players rarely brag about conquests for the sake of bragging. They only bring up conquests to prove a larger point. If you get the rep of being that guy who can’t keep his mouth about conquests, women know their reputations won’t be safe with you, and no matter how much they may want you they’ll feel the risk to their reputation isn’t worth it.

Compare this to Wilmer Valderrama, who pulled a truly unmackish move in bragging on the Howard Stern show about sexual conquests. He claimed to have taken Mandy Moore’s virginity, and also:

The 26-year-old claimed Lindsay Lohan was one of the best girls he’s ever slept with, Ashlee Simpson was loud in bed and he rated Jennifer Love Hewitt an “eight” out of ten when it came to sex.

He probably thought it was cool at the time, but he must have realized his mistake because he quickly backpedaled in the press afterwards. Now what are the chances that future up and coming or established starlets are going to risk their reputations for a chance to sleep with Wilmer Valderrama. He’s proven himself to be lacking discretion and social intelligence. He should have learned the lesson of vagueness from Chris Webber.