celebrity gossip, academic style

When people hear that I do celebrity studies, one of their favorite things to do is ask if so-and-so is a star. Is Jeremy Lin a star? Is Brad Pitt a star? Is Tom Cruise still a star? How do you know?

If you’ve been reading the blog for awhile, you’re familiar with the definition: a star is a performer whose fame is based on textual lives (for actors and actresses, the way they appear in films; for a basketball player, the way he performs on the court) and their extra-textual lives (everything they do, say, and represent off the court). We also think of stars as people who can “open” in some way — a baseball star brings bodies to seats in the same way that a movie star (used to) bring bodies to seats. (Now, our real “stars,” at least financially, are pre-sold properties, such as The Hunger Games).

So Brad Pitt, Angelina Jolie, George Clooney….Reese Witherspoon, Matt Damon, Ryan Reynolds, Denzel Washington — they’re still (arguably) stars. And can have an entirely different conversation about television stardom, and how it functions differently (and works to set a certain type for a performer even more effectively than a definitive star role. Jennifer Aniston, for example, will never escape Rachel, no matter how far Friends may seem in the rearview mirror). (For more on television stardom, and if such a thing actually exists, see earlier posts on Aniston and Katie Holmes).

But what of indie stardom? What of Michelle Williams and Laura Linney, of Paul Giametti and Mark Ruffalo, of Joseph Gordon-Levitt? What do we do with these stars who star in little pictures that do little business (but are generally critically acclaimed) and reveal strategic bits of their extra-textual lives to match their “indie” picture personalities. Their involvement oftentimes marks the difference between an independent film getting picked up for theatrical distribution or going straight to IFC or video-on-demand. They are powerful forces….just on a smaller scale. So how does an indie star “mean” differently than a mainstream star? And does it matter?

First things first: we need a little specificity of language. ”Indie” has come to mean many things over the last two decades — some people think “independent” means produced independently (i.e. outside of the major studios), some people think it means financed independently, others think that any film that makes it into an actual movie theater (that is not at a film festival) cannot be “indie.” Personally, I like Michael Newman‘s take, beautifully laid out in his book Indie, in which he approaches “indie” film not as a production culture, but as a confluence of meanings. Indie is thus a way of producing a film, but also a way of watching a film, and an expectation for how a film should look and address the viewer. In other words, lots of things make a film indie, including the actors that appear in them.

When you see the name Joseph Gordon-Levitt attached to a film, you bring a certain understanding of how that film was most likely financed, the type of film it will be, what it will demand from you as a viewer, and even what it will look like. To wit: it will not be a big-budget production, but it will still look professional (his name attached to a project helps garner a modicum of funding); the narrative with be nuanced, quirky, and/or not follow traditional plot rules, and it will make me feel double-capital-E Earned Emotions. I will watch it in a small, art-house theater or via Netflix, and my significant other will come watch it with me because even though there’s a romance, or it’s sad, and it’s indie, so it’s okay. The previews before will most likely be for other indie films starring Joseph Gordon-Levitt himself or Patricia Clarkston. They won’t have the cheesy voiceover preview guy, because Indie film consumers hate voiceover cheesy guy and the way his presence screams commercial film — instead, the previews might be in a foreign language, or the film might just have an elegant piano score and LOTS AND LOTS of those weird feathers in the shape of a horseshoe with lots of film festival names inside, some more esoteric than others. While we watch this film, we might have artisan popcorns or classic cocktails, depending on whether or not we’re in Austin and watching it at the Violet Crown, surrounded by other early 30-something intellectuals and elderly but engaged matinee-goers. In which case, we probably biked there.

You get the drift: indie films cater to a specific audience, and that audience values specific attributes in their stars. An indie star can’t look like Channing Tatum. It’s just not possible; he’s just too built, too Ken-faced. An indie star has to be schlubby and everyguy (Giamatti, Philip Seymour Hoffman), skinny and emo-looking (Gordon-Levitt), or, if the star’s a woman, untraditionally beautiful (Williams) or older-and-ravishing (Laura Linney, Clarkston). Beautiful women often break-out in indie film and then break-away, as seems to be the case for both Jennifer Lawrence and Elizabeth Olson.

So an indie star needs to appear in indie pictures, broadly conceived. But the indie star must regularly appear in indie pictures. Indie pictures are the main component of their star image — the thing that he/she seems to mean.

And, as a result, the core of the indie star’s image is prestige. The actor doesn’t act for the money or the glamour, but for the love of acting. And with discernment, at least in today’s culture, comes prestige. The less interested you are in making profits, the more interested you are in plot development and, by extension, the more serious you are as an actor.

So here’s where it gets interesting: because the indie star connotes prestige, his/her involvement in a non-indie production adds prestige. Thus Mark Ruffalo’s involvement in The Avengers makes the film seem less exploitative, and Patricia Clarkston’s role as the mom in Friends with Benefits ups its pedigree. Indie stars gain renown for their powers of discernment — Gordon-Levitt, for example, best known for his stint on Third Rock from the Sun, went back to Hollywood in his early 20s with the contingency that he would only make “good movies.” While all of the films that he’s made since returning have not, necessarily, been turned out as “good movies,” they’ve all at least tried to be good movies. Stop-Loss tried really, really hard to be a good movie, which is more than I can say for 90% of Hollywood blockbusters.

Which brings us to the question of blockbuster involvement. What happens when Gordon-Levitt appears in G.I. Joe? Nothing. Why? Because the vast majority of people who know his name — as an indie star — didn’t go see G.I. Joe. It’s simply not the target audience. Maybe a few die-harders did (I know that it made me look at it twice before deciding it, in all likelihood, would suck big time; reviews tell me I am not wrong). And to the majority of people who did go see the film, which, for all of its bad reviews, did make a bundle at the box office, he was just another handsome supporting guy.

Indie stars can also anchor prestige television. See Steve Buschemi in Boardwalk Empire, Toni Collette in United States of Tara, or Don Cheadle in House of Lies. They have the scent of big-screen stardom on them, but going to TV isn’t a sign of decline, as some have (mistakenly) viewed what’s become of the likes of Alec Baldwin. Rather, appearing on HBO or Showtime show built around them is an extension of their pre-existing prestige. Ironically, stars of small, relatively low-budget films usually land on expensive, high-production-value television.

Indie stars get it both ways: they get recognition, but without the paparazzi frenzy that accompanies wide-scale superstardom. They don’t make as much money, but then again, they don’t have to spend as much money employing and guarding themselves from the publicity apparatus. They are associated with class and prestige, despite the fact that the films they appear in cost a fraction of the truly lavish and expensive Hollywood pictures. When one of their films only makes a million dollars — but garners a ton of buzz — it’s a success. When a film doesn’t make it out of the gate — recent examples include Hesher or Patricia Clarkston’s Cairo Time — it doesn’t really matter, because the film didn’t cost much to make and will probably make back its budget in ancillaries, because people like me like to rent movies with indie stars and watch them on a Saturday night with a bottle of wine. (And by “rent” I mean “stream them on Netflix.”)

When an indie film does succeed, whether by making money or creating a lot of buzz, then the indie star can parlay that success into an appearance in a larger film (Gordon-Levitt’s role in Inception) and, potentially, bring more fans back with you to the small-scale productions you enjoy.

Not anyone can be an indie star. You need to be distinctive, but not too distinctive. You can be somewhat weird looking, but only if you’re really, really talented, and usually only if you’re male. You have to balance really off-the-wall passion projects with slightly more mainstream yet still-labeled-as-indie fare (500 Days of Summer, for example). You can’t do too many mainstream projects, lest you be labeled and hounded like a “real” star (see: Ryan Gosling) and you can’t do too many things in general, lest you be labeled as a publicity hound and a fraud (see: James Franco).

It might be easier to be an indie star: you’re not on the cover of the gossip mags every week, and you don’t need an entourage. You can probably lead a more normal life than, say, Brad Pitt. You don’t make as money, but you have more freedom. As a whole, your products probably suck less. But you also have to maintain a very specific career path, never deviating too far from a specific set of expectations, types of films, and behavior in your extra-textual life (running a website for independent filmmakers, starting a lady blog, dating other indie stars, getting behind environmental causes and blogging about them at Huff Post).

Independent stardom sure looks circumscribed.