Lust Life
In response to LexG’s comment in another entry…
Why doesn’t DAVID POLAND just break down some day in this blog and say he’s chronically depressed because he covers the industry from a remove? He does good work and all, but wouldn’t ANYONE rather be an actor, all getting paid MILLIONS to make out with EvanJohansstewortman instead of working some lame job? ADMIT YOUR DEPRESSION, blogger and film reviewers of the world. I own up to it… I’d kill to be Brad Pitt or even Adam Brody for three days. Doesn’t it tear your soul apart that they get to be a part of film history, AND bang hot models and actress, just for sheer force of their fame, looks and money? How can any man or woman, but especially man, go to his NON-FAMOUS, NON-ACTOR, NON-MODEL-BANGING JOB every day of their life and not want to kill themselves? If you can;t admit you wouldn’t be happier palling around on movie sets as the STAR instead of a doughy journalist, that’s pure disingenuousness.
Everyone on here– EVERYONE– just try justifying how you believe you wouldn’t be happier as Mark Wahlberg. Do you realize and ACCEPT that you’re never going to have sex with famous women?
I don’t see that as a personal attack at all, but…
Who says that journalists don’t sleep with famous model/actresses?
And while I hear LexG’s idea, what he doesn’t seem to think much about is that 99.9% of actors don’t get rich or sleep with famous hotties either. Acting is a very tough profession and I don’t envy even the well-known occasionally working actors out there.
Someone like Jean Louisa Kelly… beautiful girl.. now 35… had 6 years as a co-star of a successful sitcom, but is not a syndication player… she’s had a 12 year career in which we met her in Mr. Holland’s Opus and after which she went 5 years without a studio movie job or a series guest run of more than 3 shows… she’s had a 1 episode spot on Grey’s Anatomy since her show went away…
Now, she made very good money on the series. She got married. She has two kids. I imagine (and hope) she is very happy. She has gotten further towards her dream than all but a very few actors. There are maybe 200 of those jobs on television at any given time.
But she is dependent on someone to give her a job so she can do the thing she loves to do. I guess she could tour the country doing regional theater, starring in Beauty & The Beast or Wicked or something. That is not a negative reflection of her talent. In fact, it speaks to the significant talent she does have and needs to have those jobs. Celebrity is simply a different thing. Don’t diminish the people who have those gigs… they are fortunate too. But the wet dream of Hollywood is not always what you fanticize. And if you want to see how beautiful and ugly it can be at one time, watch that shite Sons of Hollywood on A&E… one of the ugliest exhibitions of how those with the most can have the least that I have ever seen.
On the other hand, would most e-journos like to have a seven figure salary and live in Bel Air and hang out with the most talented people in town and be attractive to (which is more the thrill then the penetration for most) hotties (of either sex) even though the attraction is often not about anything but status? Probably.
And there is this…
When you are in a social circle, the standards are different. Breaking in is different than being in. Intimacy is intimacy on any level. And as the great man once said,
Hmmmm, Poland’s response is right on. But if I was this LexG guy I wouldn’t have been thinking Mark Wahlberg…I would have been thinking David Fincher, Paul Thomas Anderson…Steven Soderbergh…hard job?….you bet…but to be an artist? Priceless. That’ what journalists probably envy. It’s their work they write about all day long.
Jacob Weisberg reports on The Death Styles of the Rich and Famous (from Slate via LewRockwell.com):
John F. Kennedy Jr., his wife, and wife’s sister died when the single-engine plane Kennedy was piloting plunged into waters off Martha’s Vineyard. Though the crash was apparently caused by spatial disorientation on the part of an inexperienced pilot, there was speculation that Kennedy might also have been impaired by a foot injury from an earlier paragliding accident. If true, that would make the tragedy doubly wealth-and-fame-related. Of course, the Kennedy family is in a risk category all its own. One wonders if the surviving members are insurable at all, given the family history of driving off bridges (Teddy), smashing into trees while playing football on skis (Michael), death by drugs (David, Christina Onassis), plane crashes (Joseph Jr., Kathleen, Alexander Onassis, and, very nearly, Teddy), and assassination (JFK and RFK). These are terrible fates, but ones that members of the struggling middle class do not have to worry much about.
If you survive paycheck-to-paycheck, you can also rest easy about dying while fleeing paparazzi (Princess Diana); at the hand of a servant jealous of your other servants (Edmund Safra); at the hand of the president of your fan club (Selena); at the hand of a lunatic stalker (John Lennon); at the hand of an impatient heir (the royal family of Nepal); from a face lift (Olivia Goldsmith); in your Porsche, while drag racing (basketball player Bobby Phills); in pursuit of a speed-boat record (Stefano Casiraghi, husband of Princess Caroline of Monaco); while diving off your yacht (Dennis Wilson of the Beach Boys); after fighting with Christopher Walken (Natalie Wood); while trying to buzz Ozzy Osbourne’s tour bus (Randy Rhoads); from injuries sustained in a cross-country riding event* (Christopher Reeve); in staged violence on a film set (Brandon Lee); as a former vice president, atop your mistress (Nelson Rockefeller); or of a disease that subsequently gets named after you (Lou Gehrig).
What happens if our culture’s greatest reward of money and fame turn out to be not quite so rewarding?
Also of interest are the results of the standard Narcissistic Personality Inventory test that radio psychiatrist Dr. Drew Pinsky gave to scores of minor celebrities that came on the “Loveline” radio show he hosted with Adam Carolla.
Not exactly the type of people one would really want as friends or lovers.
I’m surprised, DP, that you thought this merited a response in the first place, misguided and juvenile as it was.
Although I thought that DP did have an almost 7-figure e-journalist income based on saying that he made $100k in a good month off of this site.
I can’t think of anything less fun, more soul-robbing and unfulfilling than being the type of person who aches to “rub up against them.”
“You know… high school. Everyone’s high school. Just more expensive fish sticks.”
Which brings to mind this great lyric from the XTC song “Playground”: “You may leave school / but it never leaves you.”
I would also say that clinical depression is more acutely diagnosed in Hollywood “stars” rather than the journalists who cover the scene.
However, LexG does bring up an interesting point of discussion and I applaud David Poland for highlighting this perspective at his own expense.
I was really confused as to where LexG’s original comment came from. it didn’t seem to fit into the thread at all. Or maybe I missed something.
But everything Dave said is true. Good thing he didn’t saying something off the cuff about Wahlberg getting a $200mil hit sooner or later. Teehee.
I know some old money types. Think they want fawning star adulation? No sir. They get to fuck supermodels without scumbags looking through their trash.
I love how DP slips this in at the start though ..
“Who says that journalists don’t sleep with famous model/actresses? ”
A unsubtle nod to DP’s alleged star-banging past. True or not true Dave?
Wish I could find that old link….
Blackcloud quoted an XTC song.
Best. Band. Ever.
Jean Louisa Kelly? Wasn’t she in Uncle Buck? I love that movie! ‘Here’s a quarter – go and find a rat to chew that growth off your face. Good day to you , Madam.’
“Do you realize and ACCEPT that you’re never going to have sex with famous women?”
What do you call Lunch With Richard Dreyfuss?…
Thanks, D-PO, for not only addressing my initial post, but for devoting an entire entry (!) to it.
For the record, you’re correct in assuming it wasn’t a personal attack. For the others who commented on it being woefully out o’ place in a box-office thread– Seemed as good a time as any. It’s merely an umpteenth variation on a stock rant with which I delight the occasional unwitting message board or open mike audience… and yeah, it usually goes over like a lead balloon.
On the .000001% chance anyone’s interested in the backstory, I’m a failed actor/comic who’s managed to live in the City O’ Angels for over a decade without even landing a SAG membership. Part of this may very well be lack of talent, or lack of a distinctive “look” (I’m bland white-guy all the way, holmes)… but probably most of it has been from lack of willing to take risk. Unlike most wannabe actors, who apartment up with 12 other male model types on skid row and pound the pavement day and night, I was prickly enough to demand having my own upscale one-bedroom, white collar existence, rockin’ the full-time day job and putting that English degree to zero good instead of hitting the gym and Blind Date circuit. So for all practical purposes, it’s over. Looking at 50 more Al Bundyesque years as a domestic douche, as I’d imagine are 99.99 percent of Americans. While I understand that most people choose to ignore the injustice, I’d think you’d at least get an OCCASIONAL taker to opine that, yeah, he’d rather be taxing Scarlett Johansson and shooting with Ridley Scott than sitting behind a computer screen all day.
Follow-up question for the fellas: Worse: Receding hairline, or that patchy-but-keep-the-hairline bullshit? I’m going Robert Zemeckis bald at 34. The kind where head-on I look normal, but under flourescent lights or with the head down you can see through all the hairs.
Kind of hard not to be rageful at the world when there’s Vinny Chases out there taxing model ass, and I’m stuck with the hair of fucking James Cromwell.
Jean Louisa Kelly was also The Girl in the little-seen film version of THE FANTASTICKS. Not only charming, but she can sing, too.
Good rule of thumb: the hotter the woman is, the more of a pain-in-the-ass she will be. I’m going through that right now, and I’m enduring it for now because I know that the odds of another one coming along my way are astronomical.
Are you dealing with a smart, funny, lovable, soulmate woman who’s below-average looking, or the other kind?
Choose wisely.
No, the “other kind.” :-\