Five Crotchedy-Ass Questions about X-Men: First Class
First, a caveat. I was totally prepared to love this movie. Every year one blockbuster surprises me — Star Trek, the first Iron Man, the first Pirates, etc. — and I was ready for this to be this year’s pleasure. I’m not a die-hard X-Men fan, and I haven’t seen X-Men 3 or Wolverine. But I do love the central premise, and watched the shit out of some X-Men cartoons on Saturday mornings circa 1990. Which I guess means that I’m a pretty perfect peripheral target for this film: a woman who likes movies, goes to blockbusters when they’re reviewed well (as this one was), and has a moderate investment in the genre. If this movie got a bunch of people like me in the seats, it’d could become a veritable phenomenon, doing even better than its predecessors. But I won’t equivocate: I was pretty sad about how bad this movie was. I’m sure there are answers to some of the crotchedly-ass question in the original text of the comic book, and I don’t begrudge a movie for attempting to follow its source material. But you’ve got to make it work, and work it did not not. And so: are there answers to these questions?
5.) IS THIS MOVIE FROM 1962 OR 2011?
There’s a tremendous amount of period confusion going on this film — hairstyles, body types, clothing choices, and art design. Some outfits (especially the ones for the women) take advantage of the ’60s go-go aesthetic in order to highlight the legs/breasts of January Jones, Jennifer Lawrence, and Zoe Kravitz, but apart from Darwin’s leisure suit and Beast’s glasses, there’s little to place the men in the decade. And the hair? Havoc and Banshee both look like they just got styled for an Abercrombie shoot. A movie doesn’t need to be perfectly historically accurate to be good, but this is just shoddy work.
See what I'm talking about?
4.) ROSE BYRNE WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU DOING IN THIS MOVIE?
No seriously, how would a twenty-something woman get a high placed job in the CIA in 1962? How is this even *slightly* plausible? And then once she’s there, could her role be more vacant? Am I supposed to buy that there’s chemistry between her and Professor X? When she shows up on the mission I seriously said to myself HOW THE F DID SHE GET THERE? This should not happen with a major character.
3.) IS THIS MOVIE CAMP OR STRAIGHT UP?
There are several moments — mostly within Kevin Bacon’s “inner sanctum” — when I’m pretty sure that this movie is making a joke about bad Bond films from the ’60s. The sipping of champagne, January Jones’s bad acting, Kevin Bacon’s earnestness, the matching outfits -
Plus the incredible moment when McAvoy reads Jones’s mind and a montage of missiles making their way across a giant world map materializes. (This is hard to describe, but if you’ve seen the film, you know what I’m talking about — I laughed *really* loudly). Now, in the case of Black Swan, I loved the debate over whether it was camp or not, whether it was trying to be camp and therefore not camp, etc. etc. I also like when a genre refuses to take its conventions too seriously (see: Iron Man). But again, this movie can’t decide if it’s campy or very serious, a Guy Richie-esque series of montages (see: the training segments with the split-screens) or a straight-up super hero story. Two very disparate tones, one jumbled movie.
2.) WHY ARE THE WOMEN IN THIS FILM SO INCREDIBLY UNINTERESTING?
I love Jennifer Lawrence, and despite the inanity of January Jones’ star persona, I do like her particular brand of bad-acting in Mad Men. (I especially enjoy how the writers/directors use it to convey the fact that Betty Draper was/still is trying to act a certain part in life, and her inability to convincingly play that part). And Rose Byrne shouldn’t be appearing in this movie so close on the heels of Bridesmaids: I keep expecting her to serve me some giant Parisian cookie. As Anne Thompson notes, the women in this film are under-developed, poorly-directed, seem to be bad actresses, or all three. Female super-heroes can be sexy, they can be stubborn, but don’t make them so sucky. I wouldn’t want to be any of these women.
1.5) ARE KEVIN BACON’S HENCHMEN ACTUALLY CLONES OF THAT RANDOM OTHER-DUDE FROM THE BLACK EYED PEAS?
Am I right or am I right?
1.) AND MOST IMPORTANTLY, WHY ISN’T THIS MOVIE ALL FASSBENDER, ALL THE TIME?
McAvoy v. Fassbender; Decision: Fassbender
James McAvoy is one of my star boyfriends. But in this movie, I couldn’t care less about him — and giggled each time he did put his finger to his temple in arch concentration. He’s supposed to be our hero. This is a HUGE problem. Can the next movie just be a pre-prequel when we follow Fassbender before he arrives in Switzerland?
Do you have even more crotchedly-ass questions to add?
Hollywood vs. Marilyn Monroe
Another entry in the “Problem Stars” Series — and the last star study of this chapter of my dissertation. Please excuse the haphazard citations, but please enjoy the images. Again, comments and suggestions are very welcome.
According to Billy Wilder, Marilyn Monroe had “flesh impact” — a rare quality, shared, in Wilder’s opinion, only with the likes of Clara Bow, Jean Harlow, and Rita Hayworth. “Flesh impact” meant having “flesh which photographs like flesh. You feel you can reach out and touch it.”[i] Whether or not it was “flesh impact,” Monroe clearly possessed something indelible. But she also had business acumen, personal volition, and a startling, if subtle, awareness of her own image. She made her studio, 20th Century Fox, a tremendous amount of money when predictable hits were few and far between: as classic stars failed to draw audiences, she seemed to promise that new ones could still be cultivated. But Monroe was no meek studio star. She tested the weakened boundaries that governed star contracts in the early ‘50s, and fled Hollywood, formed her own production company, and chose her own projects. Monroe also “acted out what mattered” to people in the 1950s — which is to say, she acted out sex — and did so in a manner that seemed to heighten and soothe anxieties about sexuality during the era. As a result, she also proved a singular challenge to the gossip industry, which had little experience in processing an image of which sexuality was so forthrightly a part.
Ostensibly, Monroe was a fan magazine’s dream: under contract to 20th Century Fox during her rise to stardom, she participated in myriad interviews, confessionals, and domestic ‘exposes’ between 1952 and 1955. But the current of sexuality that ran through the Monroe image stymied attempts to fit her within the dominant paradigm of female stardom of the time, exemplified by domesticated mothers Janet Leigh and Esther Williams. When Monroe declared her desire to be a normal housewife, such words still emanated from her seemingly perpetually half-open mouth, with her trademark breathy voice, from her body, all of which were laden with the signification of sex.
For stars such as Ingrid Bergman, the sudden visibility of sexuality created scandal. For Monroe, sexuality was the very foundation of her star image, and her studio, her agent, and Monroe herself had no qualms about forwarding that image. Ten years before, that image never would have been possible, let alone palatable. In the 1950s, however, her image reconciled innocence and sexuality — the amalgamation of the virgin and the whore — in a manner that seemed to arouse and appease sexual appetites without guilt or shame. How, then, could the historically conservative fan magazines profile her? How could they alter their attitudes towards explicit sexuality? They certainly could not decry and condemn the most popular star in the nation. Instead, they employed three rhetorical tactics: 1) pseudo-psychologizing Monroe’s behavior, using details of her past to explain her current actions; 2) framing her as an object to be pitied — the lonely flip side of life as a sex object; 3) explicitly dividing Monroe into parts: one sexual, the other innocent.
Monroe spent most of her life traded amongst foster homes and extended family, dropping out of school to marry the son of a next-door-neighbor, getting a start in modeling, divorcing, and posing for cheesecake photos before eventually scrapping her way to the top of the Hollywood heap.[ii] In 1949-1950, with the help of boyfriend/William Morris agent Johnny Hyde, Monroe landed a string of bit-parts before winning a small but significant turn in All About Eve, in which she played “a breathless if somewhat dim-witted” actress, willing to “make herself available to nice men if it might advance her career.”[iii] The part established the ground note of Monroe’s image and picture personality. Over the next five years, her roles would prove variations on the selfsame theme.
Hyde was dying, but he set the table for the feast that would be Monroe’s future, arranging private acting lessons and fostering connections between the star and the gossip industry, which would lead to a Photoplay profile in September 1950. In December, Hyde secured Monroe a seven-year contract with Fox. He would die before the end of the month, but Monroe’s future was secure. Her film roles remained, for a time, unremarkable, yet her exposure was growing: Stars and Stripes, the magazine for soldiers in Korea, “featured a Monroe on its front page every day,” she appeared on the covers of Look and Life, she was declared “the Nation’s number one sex thrill” and “the hottest topic of conversation in Hollywood.”[iv] Various “Monroe-isms” — “I never suntan because I love feeling blonde all over,” etc. — were in wide circulation. A high-profile romance with Joe DiMaggio made her a fixture in the gossip columns. Theater owners billed her over classic stars Ginger Rogers and Cary Grant, and Fox raised her loan-out rate to $100,000 a picture.[v] Where ever the Monroe name and image appeared — on the screen, in the pages — profits followed.
Conflicted reactions to Monroe’s explicit sexuality quickly began to circulate. A Photoplay reader complained that Monroe “seems to think that the only way she can get noticed is to shed her clothes,” yet conceded “I don’t mean that she should hide those gorgeous curves…but she doesn’t have to disrobe to appeal to us men. I enjoy looking at her, who wouldn’t?”[vi] This reader, like many other fans, was drawn to Monroe, yet conflicted about her overt violation of social mores. His internal struggle mirrors that of the gossip industry, which found themselves attracted to the readership and profits that Monroe copy would offer, even as the star’s image conflicted with every standard theretofore set for magazine and its subjects.
Photoplay addressed the conflict head-on with an November 1952 article, ostensibly penned by Monroe herself. While Photoplay had published treatments of the star in the past, this article would form the true foundation of its future treatment, attempting to establish the star as vulnerable, lonely, afflicted by a troubled past, and forced to rely on sexuality due to the lack of female guidance in her life. “I Want Women to Like Me,” addressed apparently animosity towards Monroe on the part of female fans — presumably because they disliked the way that the star affected the men in their lives.[vii] Monroe confesses, “I have never, in my whole life, had but two women who were outright kind to me. I had no family life in my childhood…I was separated from my mother not long afterward.”[viii] Monroe proceeds to play to female readers’ concerns about her actions, admitting,
Up until now, I’ve felt that as long as I harmed no other person and lived within the bounds of good taste, I could do pretty much as I pleased. But I find that isn’t really true. There’s a thing called society that you have to enter into, and society is run by women. Until now, I’ve never known one thing about typical ‘feminine activities.’ … All I know about cooking is how to broil a fine steak and make a good salad. That, you see, is all any man wants for dinner…I don’t sew. I don’t garden. But now… I’m beginning to realize that I’m missing something.”
That missing something: female friendship.[ix] Through its use of biographical tragedy and lack, “I Want Women To Like Me” invites reader to think of Monroe as a human, not simply the object of their husbands’ affections. Photoplay and Fox understood that Monroe’s appeal was lopsided; for her to become an authentic star (and not just a sex object), Monroe’s intrinsic sexuality needed to be complimented with an authentic sense of humanity, supported by a plea for protection and affection. The strategy that would go on to structure Monroe’s sustained success.
In 1953-1954 marked the height of Monroe fever — a symptom of America’s fascination with sexuality, but also a catalyst for that fascination. Monroe appeared in a a quick succession of films — Niagara, Gentleman Prefer Blondes, and How to Marry a Millionaire — that refined her unique brand of innocent sex appeal. She was Photoplay’s Star of the Year, and, in January 1954, married Joe DiMaggio.[x] 1953 was also “a year of extraordinarily compelling significance in the history of sexuality”: Kinsey released his report on women, inciting “the most massive press reception ever accorded a scientific treatise,” and Playboy published its first issue, with Monroe on the cover.[xi]
The cover featured a picture of Monroe as Grand Marshall of the 1952 Miss America Parade. Monroe’s dress featured a plunging neckline that sparked intense debate at the time — and evoked a brazen, guilt-less sexuality that Playboy wished to associate with its fledgling brand. But the money shot was the magazine’s very first centerfold: a reprint of Monroe, posing nude, from the “Golden Dreams” calendar. Monroe had posed for art photographer Tom Kelley in 1948; the photos were subsequently reprinted in numerous calendars, of which “Golden Dreams” was the most famous.
When Monroe’s star rose in the early ‘50s, she was identified as the model in the photos. Her response to the revelation became as fundamental to her image as the photos themselves. Instead of attempting to avoid or deny the rumors, Monroe answered them head-on: she had been “hungry,” was “three weeks behind with [her] rent,” and had insisted that Kelley’s wife be present. “I’m not ashamed of it,” she averred. “I’ve done nothing wrong.” Hedda Hopper would deem this forthright defense “The Monroe Doctrine.”[xii] Once the potential for scandal had dissipated, she promised “I’m saving a copy of that calendar for my grand-children,” admitting “I’ve only autographed a few copies of it, mostly for sick people. On one I wrote ‘This may not be my best angle’”[xiii] As Dyer explains, the crux of Monroe’s image in the wake of the photos — the notion that sex was “guiltless, natural, not prurient” — was the exact philosophy proselytized by Playboy.[xiv] By confronting the rumors, Monroe had transformed a potentially scandalous story into one that further bolstered her image. What’s more, the salience and generalized acceptance of Monroe’s defense forced the gossip industry to cultivate and further this very narrative of innocence, muting objections to such behavior on the part of its subjects.
Several months later, Photoplay was at the center of another brewing scandal, when Monroe made an ostentatious entrance at the magazine’s Gold Medal Awards Dinner, with all the major stars in attendance. Monroe “wriggled in, wearing the tightest of tight gold dresses. While everyone watched, the blonde swayed sinuously down the long room to her place on the dais. She had stopped the show cold.”[xv] Joan Crawford denounced Monroe’s “burlesque show,” claiming ‘Kids don’t like Marilyn…because they don’t like to see sex exploited.”[xvi] The gossip industry exploited the battle between two very different types of stars: Louella Parsons called Monroe, promising to tell “her side of the story,” cultivating sympathy for the star by relating the details of her difficult childhood and emphasizing her hurt feelings.[xvii]
Photoplay exploited its role as “host” of the feud, sensationalizing the story under the title “Hollywood vs. Marilyn Monroe.” In what had become standard ‘50s Photoplay style, the article offers a tantalizing hook of scandal, but then proceeds to contextualize the offense in terms of Hollywood history, woven with distinct threads of nostalgia and moralism. The author allegorizes the confrontation as an “offensive” against Monroe, with Joan Crawford as its “general.” In a cunning twist, Monroe’s behavior is compared to Crawford’s during her “hey-hey girl” days in the late 1920s. The conclusion: Monroe’s “offenses” are not all that offensive, and Crawford was hypocritical and out of line.[xviii] The resultant portrait was of an old fashioned and embittered star criticizing another who had stolen the limelight, with the gossip industry firmly on the side of the new star, brazen sexuality and all. Photoplay thus managed to both exploit the controversy and ingratiate itself to Monroe; the following issue, the cover heralded its “SCOOP!” of intimate details of the DiMaggio/Monroe romance. It would prove a harbinger of things — and strategies on the industry’s part — to come.
In 1954, Monroe and Photoplay repeatedly attempted to domesticate her image, framing her romance and eventual marriage to the conservative Joe DiMaggio as catalyst for a profound personality change.[xix] At home, where their lives were “as ordinary as a couple’s in Oklahoma City, Monroe “slips into an apron and begins opening cans and getting things ready for the big fellow’s dinner, which she cooks with her own hands.” Another article proclaims Monroe’s marriage philosophy, which called for “candlelight on bridge tables, budgets and dreaming of babies” — simple, plain, domesticity.[xx] “Joe doesn’t have to move a muscle,” Monroe boasted, “Treat a husband this way and he’ll enjoy you twice as much.” This “New Monroe Doctrine” was in stark contrast to “Monroe Doctrine” of old.
But the rhetorical masonry of the fan magazines buckled under the weight of Monroe’s preexisting image. Even as Monroe proclaimed subservience to DiMaggio during their Honeymoon to Japan, she detoured to Korea to appear in ten shows for 100,000 eager servicemen. As she and DiMaggio played house for Photoplay, Monroe privately complained that “Joe’s idea of a good time is to stay home night after night looking at the television.”[xxi]
A few months later, Billy Wilder invited the press to observe the filming of the now-famous “air vent” scene for The Seven Year Itch. Hundreds of spectators surrounded the shoot as Monroe’s dress flew high, infuriating DiMaggio and incited a yelling match between him and Monroe, witnessed and reported by Walter Winchell.[xxii] The two would divorce soon thereafter, confirming the unspoken speculation that sexuality and domesticity could not coexist. Such incompatibility recalled Monroe’s 1951Modern Screen confessional, “Who’d Marry Me?”, in which the star admitted that any man “would have to hold me awfully tight to keep me home. Because I’m a girl who wants to go places.” Monroe concluded that “right now, I have a one-track mind — screen work.”[xxiii] That “one-track mind” had stymied the most sincere attempting, including those of the gossip industry, to domesticate her image.
Monroe extended this new-found independence to her career, leaving Hollywood and Fox in early 1955. It wasn’t the first time that Monroe had rebelled against her studio — in late 1953, she had balked when Fox cast her in yet another derivative song-and-dance film, The Girl with the Pink Tights. Eager appear in more serious roles, a furious Monroe refused to report to the set. Fox put her on suspension, but soon negotiated a deal: Monroe would appear in the mediocre There’s No Business Like Show Business in exchange for the coveted lead in The Seven Year Itch. After Itch wrapped production, Fox persisted in type-casting her; acting on the advise of photographer and confidant Milton Greene, Monroe retreated to New York. “The New Marilyn” was born.
“The New Marilyn” attempted to shed her one-note image and cultivate her acting skill, sitting in on classes as the Actor’s Studio. With Greene’s assistance, she self-incorporated, forming Marilyn Monroe Productions. When The Seven Year Itch was released to massive box office success, Monroe had the upper hand against her former studio. She renegotiated her contract, leveraging profit participation for her production company and the authority to reject any script or director, accentuating the shift in the power from studio to star. Many doubted the sincerity of Monroe’s ambitions, but her performance in Bus Stop, the first film under her new contract, received the best notices of her career. During this period, Monroe began her relationship with playwright Arthur Miller — 11 years her senior. Never before had a major star attempted to renovate her image so radically on her own accord.
The gossip industry struggled to reconcile this “New Marilyn” with the Monroe of old. The incongruities were immediately apparent. To announce her production company and new direction, she called a press conference in New York wearing a full-length white ermine coat -the very signifier of her previous bedazzled image.[xxiv] When asked for names of potential projects she’d like to pursue, Monroe replied “The Brothers Karamozov.” She meant, of course, that she would like to play the lead female role of Grushenka, for which Monroe would be a perfect fit. Her response, however, was (perhaps maliciously) misinterpreted, and word spread that she wished to play one of the brothers. A Monroe-ism also began to circulate concerning her production company: “I feel so good,” Monroe purportedly told a wardrobe assistant, “I’m incorporated, you know.” The press persisted in reading Monroe’s old image into her new one, effectively suggesting the “New Marilyn” as little more than publicity stunt.[xxv]
The other tactic was to explain Monroe in terms of dueling images. The Saturday Evening Post divided Monroe into three: “the sex pot Monroe” of the early 1950s, “the frightened Marilyn Monroe,” from the tales of her childhood, and “the New Marilyn Monroe,” a “composed and studied performer.”[xxvi] Photoplay distinguished between Monroe The Legend and Monroe The Woman. The Legend was draped in furs and jewels, responsible for “Monroe-isms,” and “robbed The Woman of friends, love, and peace of mind,” while The Woman was “shy, hesitant, removed, and terribly lonely.”[xxvii] Monroe’s marriage to Arthur Miller offered The Woman a third chance at happiness, but only if she can put the “frankenstein-like Legend” to rest, and “The Woman also becomes a mother.” Both magazines were performing a form of star analysis, underlining her “polysemy” — the fact that her image was available for widely varied interpretations and exploitations. Photoplay’s description of the warring sides of Monroe’s personality proved prophetic, as Monroe continued to struggle against the images created for her, growing increasingly difficult to work with, and separating from Miller before succumbing to a drug overdose in 1962.
The bifurcation of Monroe’s image served a distinct ideological purpose. Neither magazine — or the gossip industry at large — could render sexuality and intelligence, or sexuality and happiness, in conjunction. If both needed to separate Monroe’s explicit sexuality in order to approach her as a human, it follows that overt sexuality is not human — or at least not part of the human woman. Despite Monroe’s popularity, the gossip industry was unable to mediate Monroe’s image, let alone endorse it, without siphoning off and condemning the sexual component of her image. The resultant image was an aspiring domestic, lonely, and desperate to shed her sexuality, and completely at odds with the behavior and demeanor that characterized the star in action.
Monroe challenged the status quo for appropriate female behavior, and made sex visible after a long history of sublimation on the screen. But she also confronted, even flaunted, the rules that had theretofore governed acceptable behavior for a star contracted by a studio. At the same time, she proved an immensely lucrative asset to a struggling studio, and leveraged the resultant power against the studio to her artistic and financial advantage,. Coupled with a handful of similar deals negotiated during this period, Monroe’s negotiations helped further tip the balance of power from the studios to the stars.
The gossip industry’s fumbling attempts to mediate Monroe’s image illuminated its inability to convincingly represent or confront sexuality. Another magazine, much more savvy and willing to exploit, rather than sunder, the expression of sexuality would capitalize on this inability throughout Monroe’s career. This magazine, cleverly named Confidential, took Hollywood and the nation by storm, rising to prominence the month it placed Monroe, and the promise of revelation of true scandal, on its cover. Until Confidential, no mainstream magazine dared publicize, let along speculate, on the truly scandalous actions of public figures. Here was a magazine that didn’t even consider itself a fan magazine — and refused to play by the Hollywood rules. By exploiting that which Photoplay and the rest of the fan publications were too shy, or too cowed, to cover, they heralded a new mode of reportage in the gossip industry - scandal mongering — that would soon characterize even the most historically conservative of gossip publications. The business — and the way Americans thought of and valued stars — would never be the same.
[i] Martin, P. New Marilyn Monroe. The Saturday Evening Post v. 228 (May 5 1956) p. 25-7+
[ii] (Rose 148).
[iii] (Rose 148).
[iv] ((Hedda Hopper, “Marilyn Soared to Stardom on Torrid Monroe Doctrine” LAT May 4 1952, D1) (John Crosby, “Anyway, the Men Like Her Fine,” Wash Post Nov 4 1952, 31).
[v] (Florabel Muir, “What Hollywood’s Whispering About,” PP Dec 1952, p. 14).
[vi] (“Readers Inc.” PP June 1952, p. 8).
[vii] According to Monroe, women regularly charged her with “putting the country in a worse state than it’s in,” accusing her “of startling all the rapes.” (John Crosby, “Anyway, the Men Like Her Fine,” Wash Post Nov 4 1952, 31).
[viii] (Marilyn Monroe, “I Want Women to Like Me,” PP Nov 1952, p. 58)
[ix] Photoplay aimed to make it clear that Monroe’s plea had the desired effect, publishing a letter from one reader who proclaimed “I hope…this opens the eyes of some of those jealous women gossipers who do nothing but criticize her…Marilyn, this is one gal who loves you.” (“Readers Inc.” PP Jan 1953, p. 18).
[x] See Dyer 27
[xi] (Dyer, Heavenly Bodies, 27)
[xii] (Hedda Hopper, “Marilyn Soared to Stardom on Torrid Monroe Doctrine” LAT May 4 1952, D1; Dyer, Heavenly Bodies, 31). Photoplay emphasized the fact that Monroe did not have to come forward and address the rumors; “libel laws being what they are…so long as Marilyn didn’t admit she had posed for the photo, reporters would have thought twice before identifying her.” But Monroe, unashamed, “just had to tell the truth.” Sheilah Graham, “Why Gentleman Prefer Blondes,” PP June 1953, p. 52)
[xiii] (Martin, P. New Marilyn Monroe: Here She Talks About Herself. The Saturday Evening Post v. 229 (May 12 1956) p. 26-8+)
[xiv] (Dyer 31)
[xv] (Sheilah Graham, “Why Gentleman Prefer Blondes,” PP June 1953, p. 52).
[xvi] (Barbas 316).
[xvii] Monroe would show her gratitude to Parsons for the rest of her career, favoring the gossipist over Hopper and granting her the exclusive on the Monroe/DiMaggio marriage the following year.(Barbas 316).
[xviii] The author does caution Monroe that “it’s foolish to try founding either a marriage or a movie career on sex attraction alone.”
[xix] DiMaggio was notoriously private, making Photoplay’s exclusive access to their home all the more sensational. “The Private Life of Joe and Marilyn” (Are Joe and Marilyn Married?) George Armstrong, PP Dec 1953, p. 40).
[xx] (Sidney Skolsky, “260,000 Minutes of Marriage,” PP August ’54, p. 52).
[xxi] (Lesley Anne Dick, “I Just Want to Be Wonderful: The Cultural Legacy of Marilyn Monroe,” Unpublished Dissertation, p. 104).
[xxii] CITE
[xxiii] (“Who’d Marry Me?” Marilyn Monroe, September 1951, in The Best of Modern Screen, p. 208)
[xxiv] (No author, “Studio Claims Marilyn Is Still Under Contract,” LAT Jan 9 1955, pg. A).
[xxv] Other sources chose to authenticate the “New Marilyn,” most forthrightly through description of her new self. This new Monroe was “liberated, happy, cooperative, friendly, and relaxed”; her “shy, tense, little-girl voice” was gone, replaced with a woman who radiated “confidence and aplomb.”25 A copy of Ulysses on Monroe’s coffee table, marked with dialogue notes for future rehearsals, provided further proof of the shift.26 The “Monroe Doctrine” was repurposed to describe Monroe’s new attitude towards movie-making: “I don’t want to be the highest paid movie star in the world,” she proclaimed. “I want memories of having been a real actress.”27
[xxvi] (Martin, P. New Marilyn Monroe. The Saturday Evening Post v. 228 (May 5 1956) p. 25-7+).
[xxvii] (“The Woman and the Legend,” Dorothy Manning, PP October 1956, p. 58).
Tweeting = The New Hollywood PR?
I’ve been thinking a lot about Twitter’s function in Hollywood of late. In part because I just finished reading P. David Marshall’s fascinating essay ‘The Promotion and Presentation of the Self: Celebrity as Marker of Presentational Media‘ in the inaugural issue of Celebrity Studies, which you can access in full (and for free!) (Imagine my tremendous surprise and delight when I reached the end of the essay and realized he had cited my earlier work on celebrity Twitter and the generation of authenticity . While I don’t always agree with Marshall (his understanding of the way that celebrity works is far more deterministic than my own — in his major work on the subject, Celebrity and Power, he theorizes celebrity as a means of generating self-surveillance and complacency in capitalist democracies) I admire his work tremendously . Along with Graeme Turner, Su Holmes, Chris Rojek, and Joshua Gamson, he was amongst the first to rigorously theorize the way that celebrity functions within society. In other words, his work helped make celebrity studies (and not just ‘star’ studies) legitimate, and it is an honor to think that I contributed to his thought process.
Tangent over — and back to Twitter. My thoughts on the ways in which celebrities generate clouds of authenticity around themselves and their disclosures remain static. While Ashton Kutcher and Demi Moore may have tempered their Tweeting, the number of celebrities who have taken to Twitter over the past year has increased exponentially. Whether Conan or Tom Hanks, Elizabeth Taylor or Coach from Survivor, Twitter has firmly established itself as a means of extending one’s celebrity persona/image.
But Twitter and production information is another matter entirely. Hollywood observer Anne Thompson (an avid Tweeter herself) recently wrote a series of posts dealing with the ways in which Twitter is changing the way that publicity for films in pre-production, production, and post-production has been disseminated. Historically, such information was the provenance of the trades (Variety and Hollywood Reporter). When Entertainment Weekly debuted in the early ’90s, selling itself as a ‘trade for the mainstream,’ it began to trade similar information — but rarely were they exclusives or breaking news, in part due to the EW‘s weekly publication schedule. (Side note: if you ever meet me and get a glass of wine in me, make sure and ask me about my hilarious childhood devotion to EW.)
But with the trades in free fall for myriad reasons, most of the breaking trade news has migrated online — most prominently to Nikki Finke’s Deadline Hollywood Daily, but Anne Thompson’s ‘Thompson on Hollywood’, The Wrap, and even non-insider blogs like Cinematical are all now breaking trade news. Granted, Finke’s blog is probably the only one providing the sort of ‘inside baseball’ info traditionally organic to the trades, but the popularity of all of the aforementioned speaks to the growing fascination with production details outside of Hollywood. Put differently, ‘laymen’ — whether academics or just those independently interested in the industry — have become conversant in the trade language of Hollywood, and hunger for specifics concerning signing details, actor salaries, mergers, and weekend grosses.
Why are people more interested? Can we attribute it to increased levels of cinephilia? (Or DVD culture?) Not necessarily, no. When I was researching Entertainment Tonight and its start in the very early ’80s, I found dozens of articles trumpeted ET’s innovation and brilliance in their move to provide such information to the general public. Up to that point, no one was reporting how much stars were making, how much films were grossing, or how different television shows were faring in the ratings. But once that information was provided, the public came to view it as crucial in determining whether a show as successful — or whether they could call themselves an expert on a show, a movie, a star, or Hollywood more generally. If you provide stats, even if they’re ultimately somewhat meaningless, as reported weekend box office takes can be, people will begin to think of those stats as essential. Today, the general public is so versed in the parlance of weekend box office — and so assured that opening weekends determine the popularity of a film — that such stats turn into self-fulfilling prophesies. A #1 weekend ensures that the film will continue to draw consumers, not because the film was good, but because it’s so obviously marked as ‘popular.’ (Unless, of course, that film is G.I. Joe). (See also my summer piece on how box office speculations — and the discourse of ‘box office disappointment’ — unfairly doom pictures like Public Enemies).
So how does Twitter fit into this? As Thompson explains, more and more, stars, producers, and directors are taking to Twitter to break their own news, essentially obviating the need for trades altogether. Jon Favreau just Tweeted the (theretofore unannounced) news that Harrison Ford would be starring in his new picture; Tom Hanks posted a Twitpic of his casting session for his new film; Jerry Bruckheimer reports from screening of Prince of Persia at Wondercom. Jon Favreau posted a ton at the beginning of Iron Man 2, apparently got in trouble, but is now back at it, as evidenced by his Ford announcement.
To my mind, there are two forces precipitating this move. First, as described above, the lay men (e.g. the vast majority of those following the likes of Favreau, Bruckheimer, etc.) is hungry for ‘insider’ information. And, even more importantly, he/she will feel more ‘a part’ of a product with which they’ve been intimate for a long time. In this way, providing ‘inside’ information from pre-production is basically a way of hooking ticket buyers early: if they get in at the ground floor, they’re be more likely to show up to see the top put on the skyscraper. Second, Hollywood is, without a doubt, in financial crisis. No matter how many hundreds of millions of dollars made by the huge blockbusters, it still takes a tremendous amount of money to get a film made — and part of that ever-escalating budget is P.R. Thus, if you can publicize your film for NOTHING to an audience of millions of self-selected fans via Twitter…..why not? The same logic holds for the celebrity using Twitter to promote their general image: why keep a P.R. agent and stylist on retainer when you can publicize yourself with little more than an internet connection and a free Twitter account?
So it’s a smart business move. But it’s inciting all sorts of anxiety, in part because it, like the dissolution of the trades, threatens to fundamentally change the way that Hollywood does business. Because Hollywood, as an industry, is much more than simply the people who actually ‘make’ the movies — it’s also composed of vast armies of agents, assistants, managers, and P.R. agents. And if you take away those middlemen, replacing it with Twitter, a tremendous amount of people will be out of work. In some ways, I think the seismic effects of the internet (and digital technology more broadly) can only be compared to the demise of the studio system in terms of wide-spread ramifications in the way that Hollywood does business.
Which isn’t at all to suggest that the P.R. agent and agency is dead, or that the trades (print or online) will be rendered obsolete. The number of actors, producers, and directors using Twitter to break news straight to the consumer is still proportionally minuscule. But the possibility is there — and it’s going to continue to cause anxiety. What interests me most, then, is that it took a platform as widely ridiculed as Twitter to make both the movement itself and anxiety over it visible.
James Cameron: Star Maker?
Cameron and His Raw Clay
James Cameron makes huge, monstrous movies. I’m not going to delve (too deeply) into the critical melee concerning his most recent film - I saw it; it’s tremendously striking and aesthetically pleasurable, it’s also ridiculously, embarrassingly ideologically f-ed. (You wonder why this film is doing so well internationally? Because it makes Americans look destructive, one-minded, intolerant, profit-minded, and controlled by roided-up guys with bad scalp scars. I’m just sayin’.) Jonathan Gray at The Extratextuals has a compelling take on Avatar’s ‘anti-fans’; Maria Bustillos at the always dourly and smarmily entertaining The Awl shreds the film’s progressive claims; I appreciate the balance of appreciation and critique at work in David Denby’s review.
But what few people are talking about — in part because they’re too busy arguing how Avatar will or won’t change the way that films are made forevermore — is the fact that James Cameron has further established himself not as a director, or an innovator, or a somewhat derivative writer, but as a tremendously skilled star maker.
Before we get to Sam Worthington, let’s take a trip in the wayback machine. Remember these kids?
Leonardo DiCaprio was sorta kinda a rising star when Cameron cast him in Titanic. That is, if you can call a head-turning performance in This Boy’s Life, an Oscar nom for What’s Eating Gilbert Grape and a recurring role in Growing Pains credentials for the mantle of ’rising star.’ Remember: Cameron cast him before he appeared in Baz Luhrmann’s Romeo + Juliet. Cameron knew what could happen with this kid. As for Kate Winslet, she was, at that point, pure arthouse. She had attracted attention for her roles in Heavenly Creatures and Sense and Sensibility (including an Oscar nom) and starred in Jude and Kenneth Branuagh’s Hamlet, but she was certainly no household name. She didn’t have a Cameron Diaz body; she didn’t star in action films; she wasn’t funny. And while Winslet has mostly kept with arthouse fare (Hideous Kinky, Smoke, Quills, Iris, Finding Neverland, Eternal Sunshine, Little Children, The Reader, Revolutionary Road, to name only half) and wouldn’t be trusted to open a film, she’s a hot prestige commodity. As for DiCaprio, following a few manic years of “Leo-mania” post-Titanic, he has managed to tread the line between action star and prestige commodity (not to mention Scorsese’s new muse).
Most importantly, Titanic — and Cameron’s selection of them to star in it — effectively made their careers what they are today.
Go back a little further and you’ll find Cameron’s most brilliant find: Arnold Schwarzenegger. See The New Yorker‘s profile of Cameron from a few months back for details, but suffice to say that Cameron not only convinced Schwarzenegger, then known only for Conan the Barbarian, to take the role, but also wrote the lines that would allow his particular enunciative qualities to endure in American culture for decades.
And then there’s Avatar. How can you make stars out of ‘Real-D’ digitally rendered characters? THAT ARE BLUE AND LOOK LIKE CATS? You don’t. But with a human component, you don’t have to make the cat smurfs themselves stars. The Na’vi and their likenesses can be synergistic moneymakers — can you imagine how many kids are going to dress as Na’vi next Halloween? — but Cameron also knew that he needed human bodies to make this film profitable. As was the case in Titanic, most of the roles in Avatar are purely utilitarian, put in place simply to advance the narrative: what do we know about the Colonel (Stephen Lang), the asshole corporate guy (Giovanni Ribisi), the pilot (Michelle Rodriguez), the nerdy scientist (Joel Moore) or the other nerdy scientist (Dileep Rao) other than clipped statements or actions that establish them clearly as good or bad guys?
Do you see Zoe Saldana here?
The character of Neytiri, voiced by Zoe Saldana and modeled on her facial features and body movements, is a unique case. Zoe Saldana herself has been a long struggling Hollywood actress — please recall both Center Stage and Crossroads — and is coming off a key franchise role in Star Trek. She has a handful of biggish movies in post-production; she’ll be in Neil LaBute’s Death at a Funeral and several action-esque movies that make ample use of her midriff. My guess is she’ll end up a star, if not a huge one — but not necessary because of Avatar. Her face is too absent from the film.
Sam Worthington, however, is another story entirely. Here’s a guy who, as has been well-rehearsed in publicity for this film and Terminator, was LIVING IN HIS CAR before he was cast in Avatar. He apparently went to an audition to an acting school with his then-girlfriend; he got in, she didn’t, they broke up. When he was 30, he wanted to “reboot” his life, so he sold all of his belongings, netted $2000, bought a car, and ended up living in said car. He tried out for an unnamed project with no director’s name attached; a few days later he received a call from Cameron, who wanted him to come in for six months of auditions. He eventually got the part. While Cameron was endlessly tinkering in post, he “sent” Worthington to McG, who was directing the fourth installment of Cameron’s former baby, Terminator. Granted, Terminator: Salvation was no tremendous success, but it put Worthington’s name (and face) on the map. In essence, Cameron was prepping the market for his new star.
Worthington, Terminator-style
With both Terminator and Avatar on his resume, Worthington was cast in three big films, each of which are now in post and scheduled for release within the year: espionage thriller The Debt (with Helen Mirren and Tom Wilkinson); quasi-rom-com Last Night (with Keira Knightly) and, most significantly, CGI-orgasm Clash of the Titans, in which 300 meets Avatar meets Grand Theft Auto. He’s basically establishing himself as a Matt Damon/Russell Crowe hybrid — equally adept at action, thrillers, drama, fantasy, and historical epics.
Worthington, historical-CGI-epic style.
I mean, the guy’s a babe. He has that sweet hint of Australian accent sneaking out in his speech (you can hear it distinctly in the voiceover for Avatar); he has big arms; he’s got that look of the innocent and the slightly busted and the huge-hearted, all of which are crucial to pulling off the action/heartthrob role. (See Daniel Craig and Crowe for exemplars in this vein). He kinda looks like Tom Brady, which is to say he kinda looks like he wants to be America’s hero; he’s genial in interviews; he has a fantastic ‘origin story’ (I mean seriously, living in your car? Only Hilary Swank can compete!); and he’s hungry. He appeals to men and women, which is, of course, crucial. Even older women like him, as emphasized by this fawning EW blogger.
Tom Brady's dimple-less doppleganger
He’s not as pretty as Leonardo DiCaprio, but he’s pretty enough. His muscles aren’t as big as The Terminator’s, but they’re big enough. He’s just unique enough to be interesting, but not crazy or volatile and thus uncastable like Colin Farrell or old school Johnny Depp and Robert Downey Jr.. His image was completely malleable going into the publicity for Avatar, which was exactly what Cameron wanted. Just as in the case of the technology he uses in his films, Cameron molds his tools — and that includes his stars — to fit his purpose. Worthington will most likely go on to huge success following this film. But he did it on Cameron’s terms, and Avatar will always be the ground note of his stardom. Cameron isn’t doing anything novel — star makers such as Selznick, Mayer, Henry Willson, and others have long practiced this sort of career manipulation.
Ultimately, it’s fascinating to me that we, as media studies academics, film critics, and informal industry observers, make such noise about everything to do with Cameron — his bombastic filmmaking style, his visionary use of technology, his insistence on playing by his own set of rules, his rejection of the maxims of contemporary conglomerate Hollywood — yet fail to see the very clear ways in which he operates very much like an independent producer, and star maker, of classic Hollywood style.
Nikki Finke vs. The World
Nikki Finke, as imagined by The New Yorker
I’ve previously posted at length on Nikki Finke and her divisive role in New Hollywood — see also Alisa Perren’s nice take on the strife (and lack of public attention) around the war between Finke, Variety, and industry bloggers David Poland (The Hot Blog), Sharon Waxman (The Wrap), and Kim Masters (The Daily Beast).
My earlier post was incited by a short by succinct article on Finke by The New York Times. Yesterday, The New Yorker went live with a new article, available here (don’t worry, it’s not behind the pay wall), that has incited a bit of a Hollywood shitstorm, most of it fueled by Finke’s own incendiary rebuttal.
The article was authored by Tad Friend, a NYer staff writer who often pens the “Letter from California” or “Letter from Hollywood” section of the magazine. The article, available on newsstands today, is part of the magazine’s annual “Money Issue” — and explains why the piece takes the tact that it does, reporting on Finke’s leverage within the industry of Hollywood (as opposed to, say, a gossip columnist’s leverage in celebrity culture).
For me, there are several salient points of the article:
1.) Nikki Finke is not, or at least is no longer, a journalist. She feels no need to heed journalistic ‘ethics,’ however one defines them.
2.) Nikki Finke is not a gossip columnist.
3.) Nikki Finke does not care about movies, per se.
4.) Nikki Finke cares about power, reputation, and melodrama.
In other words, the comparison between her and the “unholy three” gossip mavens — Friend enumerates them as Louella Parsons, Hedda Hopper, and Sheilah Graham — is, like the New York Times‘ comparison to Walter Winchell, off the mark.
We love to tell stories — and write profiles — by evoking the personas of others: George Clooney is the new Cary Grant (I did that one myself); Lady Gaga is the new Madonna; Angelina Jolie is the new Elizabeth Taylor. Journalistic profiles especially take this tact: either by photographing the celebrity/persona in a manner evocative of other historical figures (one of Annie Leibowitz/Vanity Fair‘s favorite traditions) or dropping specific allusions throughout the article.
But such comparisons leave much to be desired, especially as all four of the classic gossip columinsts were working in classic Hollywood — and the stakes, not to mention the ‘rules’ — were incredibly different. Winchell dealt with New York cafe society and, to some extent, Hollywood; the others were concerned with the studios and the stars employed by them.
By contrast, Finke writes about money, agents, deals, and massive media conglomerates with international holdings across film, television, print, new media, and hardware. The old school columnists wrote for the public at large; Finke writes specifically for the industry — and does not deign to modify her style to an Entertainment Weekly/Tonight-style industry news.
Finally, Finke is ridiculously brazen. So were the other columnists, but none would have dared to have posted the following:
I’m too superficial to read The New Yorker because it’s so unrelentingly boring. Even the cartoons suck these days. So back in 2008, soon after the writers strike ended, I said no when The New Yorker first approached me to cooperate for a profile. Fast forward to this summer, when the mag was desperate to liven up this week’s dullsville “Money Issue” with some Tinseltown mockery.
Or further indict the publication for collusion/hypocrisy:
I found Tad Friend, who covers Hollywood from Brooklyn, easy to manipulate, as was David Remnick, whom I enjoyed bitchslapping throughout but especially during the very slipshod factchecking process. (Those draconian Conde Nast budget cuts have deflated the infamous hubris of this New Jersey dentist’s son.) But I wasn’t the only one able to knock out a lot of negative stuff in the article without even one lawyer letter, email, or phone call. I witnessed how The New Yorker really bent over for Hollywood. NYC power publicist Steven Rubenstein succeeded in deleting every reference to Paramount’s Brad Grey. Warner Bros and Universal and DreamWorks and William Morris/Endeavor and Summit Entertainment execs and flacks and consultants also had their way with the mag. (They were even laughing about it. When I asked one PR person what it took to convince Tad to take out whole portions of the article, the response was, “I swallowed.”)
Or, for that matter, drop the C-bomb — first by putting the word in Weinstein’s mouth, and then by appropriating it herself:
At Harvey Weinstein’s personal behest, his description of me as a “cunt” became “jerk”. (Then the article would have contained two references to me as a “cunt” in addition to its four uses of ”fuck”. Si Newhouse must be so proud…) And so on. Now remember, readers: you, too, can make The New Yorker your buttboy. Just act like a cunt and treat Remnick like a putz and don’t give a fuck.
Of course, all of this is, as my former adviser and secret gossip aficionado Michael Aronson pointed out, part of Finke’s own plan to a.) direct massive amounts of traffic to her site and b.) reify her image. She’s already known within the industry as cutthroat and crude — the article, and her response to it, simply amplify that image, making it available for (quasi) popular consumption.
Finke will never be Perez Hilton, but she does live and report on Hollywood, which has enjoyed a long and spirited feud with New York. Indeed, as Anne Thompson, Finke, and others point out, Friend’s “Letter from Hollywood” only highlights how out of touch even a reporter tasked with knowing the business really is. He’s an outsider — and will remain so. A tourist on sunny vacation, believing what’s whispered in his ear as truth.
Interestingly, I think both Hollywood (embodied by Finke, Thompson, Variety, and all the other industry bloggers and journalists) and New York (represented here by The New Yorker) are suffering from inferiority complexes, perhaps rooted in the fact that neither industry (Hollywood or New York Publishing) have figured out how to monetize their old media forms in the new media environment, perhaps best evidenced by Variety‘s plans to move back to a pay wall, The Hollywood Reporter going from a daily to a weekly, and today’s announcement that Conde Naste was eliminating Gourmet. Even Finke, who sold her site to mail.com for a reported $10 million, gets relatively little traffic — granted, most of it is very loyal, but we’re not talking huge ad dollars.
This brings us back to Alisa Perren’s interesting observation about the non-hoopla over the ‘brawl’ between these entities — sure, Finke, Thompson, Variety, and all these other players hate each other; sure, Ari Emanuel colludes with Finke and alienates other parts of Hollywood; sure, Finke said she ‘bitchslapped’ the editor-in-chief of one of the nation’s long-established high brow weeklies.
But does any of it matter when T-Mobile’s Sidekick service is down, one of the Real Housewives of Atlanta’s ex-fiance was murdered, and there’s sweet zombie movie in theaters? This is great gossip for those of us interested in the machinations of Hollywood and media more generally, but rather banal for everyone else. That’s why Finke is not Winchell, Hopper, or Parsons: those columnists had loyal audiences numbering in the millions. Their subtle insinuations may not have always been legible to those not ‘in the know,’ but their gossip about clothes, romance, and betrayal was still readily consumable and spurred discussion in circles outside of The Ivy.
The question, then, is if Nikki Finke swears up a storm and no one, or at least relatively no one, really hears her, does it even make a sound? I suppose the answer would be yes: posts Finke writes and deals she scoops have real ramifications on the types of media that we consume. But I’m still dubious as to whether or not Finke is a gossip so much as a power-hungry, popularity-obsessed instigator. She doesn’t make public appearances, but that simply ups her rep. Again, I’m tempted to make the comparison to Lew Wasserman, who eschewed publicity and, like Finke, had but one or two photos of himself in public circulation — and still controlled Hollywood for much of the postclassical period. But Wasserman was an agent, actually making deals and profiting off of them — and Finke is just writing about them and calling names. Which doesn’t necessarily make her less influential — of all people, I celebrate and appreciate the tremendous power of discourse — but does, in some ways, put her in perspective.
