Why You Love The Goz
How have I not written about The Goz (né Ryan Gosling) until now? He’s on my Freebie Five ; he’s absolutely one of my favorite actors; since Lainey Gossip shares my affection, I read news about/ogle him on a weekly, if not daily basis. When my Whitman friends and I get together, we watch The Notebook (fast-forwarding through the old people parts, of course). He’s a total babe. But why do I — and so many, many others — feel such an attraction?
I first saw Gosling in a very small, very unseen film called The Believer in the U.S. (and Danny Balint overseas). When I lived in Nantes, France for six months during my junior year, I’d go to the 2 Euro theater on a near-daily basis — each week they showed anywhere between 15 and 30 films, starting at 10 am, including older American/French releases (Amelie played there basically for the duration of my stay) and small art house stuff, and auteur retrospectives. I saw Muholland Drive WITHOUT SUBTITLES and you can only imagine the amplification of my confusion. And I also saw Danny Balint, which had won big at Sundance but never got a distribution push stateside. As a Jewish anti-Semite, Gosling is nothing less than brilliant. Seriously: it’s an even more breathtaking (if perhaps less finely nuanced) performance than Half Nelson.
I immediately knew this guy was something — and was frustrated when his next handful of films (Murder by Numbers, The Slaughter Rule, The United States of Leland) weren’t exactly what I was expecting. And I’m sure this string of films was not what longtime fans of Gosling’s teen work in The Mickey Mouse Club and Young Hercules were expecting either.
And then, and then — The Notebook. Gosling’s role as Noah Calhoun serves as the ground note of his star image and the catalyst for the cult of Gos fandom. Here, the similarities between The Notebook and Twilight are quite stunning — both are based on poorly written novels that touch on something deeply romantic and affecting in spite of hackneyed prose. Both films feature performances that animate otherwise stereotypical characters. And most importantly, the “real life” people who play these roles end up together — thus authenticating the romance and powerful understanding of love as forwarded in the original text. Put differently: the fact that the actors who played these roles *also* fell in love means that this type of love story can, and does, happen, even off of the movie screen.
The direction of The Notebook is somewhat of an abomination. There are several super saccharine moments involving birds and sunsets. I cry like a baby when James Garner breaks down, and I still can’t believe they got Gena Rowlands to play this role (oh, yeah, it’s because her SON, Nick Cassevettes, directs the picture). But Gosling and McAdams have chemistry that crackles. They both emanate tremendous star quality — which is part of why the film has enjoyed such a tremendous second life in video/DVD. This is our generation’s Pretty Woman or Dirty Dancing — the film you keep around (as my friend Alaina does) for hungover afternoons and girls’ nights in.
But I’m a bit ahead of myself. If you’re a Gos fan, you know that he and his co-star, Rachel McAdams, dated (and were rumored to be engaged) for around a year. They didn’t get together while filming; rather, when they were nominated for the MTV Movie Award’s Best Kiss — and won — they had to recreate the famous Notebook run-and-jump kiss.
Sparks flew in the aftermath; they got together. (Again, Kristen Stewart and Robert Pattinson also won this award and recreated their kiss/non-kiss on stage; it was shortly thereafter that photos first surfaced of them holding hands in public. Gosling and McAdams were private (by Hollywood standards), and only a smattering of photos of them together are available. Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes they were not. But they were still enough of a golden couple to warrant a moniker for fans of their relationship — McGoslings — and a mention in SNL’s Digital Short “Lazy Sunday.”
They broke up quietly. But both McAdams and Gosling were busy building their resumes during this time. I’ve already theorized McAdams’ star image at length, but as for Gosling, it seems he took a small detour into the mainstream — first with The Notebook, but also with Fracture (2007) — a thriller starring Anthony Hopkins. I kinda love this film and think it’s underrated — but am I blinded by The Gos’ golden light?
It made nearly $100 international, but Gosling hasn’t been in anything nearly as mainstream since. In fact, he’s worked very little, especially in comparison to other “it” Hollywood actors. He was a revelation in Half Nelson (also 2007) — a film which earned him an Oscar nomination for Best Actor.
I also loved him in Lars in the Real Girl. Praise for this film was a bit more muted, but it features truly beautiful, compassionate performances not only from Gosling, but co-stars Paul Schneider and Emily Mortimer. And if an actor can make you love him even with a moustache and sweater like this — that’s something.
These days, he’s promoting his new project, Blue Valentine, with co-stars and fellow indie darling Michelle Williams. He’s been all over the place with this movie — looking preposterously beautiful in Ray-Bans and a white shirt on the Rivera at Cannes; by turns mugging, teasing, and picking up his child co-star, pictured below.
He recently wrapped ensemble dramedy Crazy, Stupid, Love, starring Steve Carrell, Julianne Moore, and Emma Stone (as his love interest), which looks to be somewhat more mainstream — it’s produced by Relativity, distributed by Warner Bros., and will certainly get a more than art-house release. He’s currently filming the heist-thriller Drive with Carey Mulligan, Christina Hendricks, and Bryan Cranston. In short: he’s taking a break from indie dramas.
There’s his resume. But what does he “mean”? And what type of attractive masculinity does he embody? Or, to rephrase, WHY DO WE LIKE HIM?
I solicited answers from many of you via Facebook and Twitter, and it seems to break down into four categories:
1.) His picture personalities are endearing.
Usually Noah (“He can build a house with his own two hands. The Notebook is real, right?”) but also Lars, or, for those who watched him as a teen, as Young Hercules. Apart from the firecrackers/very angry men he played in his early film career, his most recent picture personalities have been of a piece. Even though Lars may seem a far cry from Noah, they are both tremendously caring men — the former manifests his damaged heart in a much more neurotic fashion than the later, but they both encourage the female viewer to care for them. Same for Half Nelson — I want to wrap him up and make him a dinner with vegetables and wash his sheets and put him to bed. Even in Fracture, you want to protect his obvious goodness (and moral-ness) from the negative force that is Anthony Hopkins.
While I’ve been inflecting much of this discussion with my own female, heterosexual attraction to him, many, many men — both gay and straight — like Gosling, and just as many men responded to my query as women. For these respondents, the attraction — perhaps more accurately named “admiration” — is connected to skill in a certain role. Which brings me to….
2.) He’s talented.
“He has range,” he did amazing job in Half Nelson, his work in Lars in the Real Girl was “brave and effortless.” No doubt about it: he’s got talent. And talent makes it easier to esteem him — and also easier to rationalize your own affection. It’s like the difference between admitting your affection for roast chicken and fried chicken: one is refined and worthy, the other mildly shameful, or at least a guilty pleasure. One is Ryan Gosling, the other is Channing Tatum.
Talent also adds a particular nuance to his masculinity. He may not have a body that betrays several dedicated hours in the gym (which is not to say that he’s fat; far from it) but he is dedicated. He’s picked his projects very carefully and worked far less than he could have. The message: he devotes himself to his craft. And that brand of devotion — to a craft, and, by extension, to a woman — is tremendously alluring.
3.) He’s sensitive.
It sounds like a bad way of describing the guy who liked you in 9th grade (or maybe just the ‘ideal guy’ that you described while taking quizzes in the back of Seventeen magazine). But it’s really at the heart of his apparent demeanor: he seems like a caring, sensitive guy. Like he would talk and touch softly; like he wants to hold you or cherish you. Like he’s not an asshole. Of course, part of this perception stems from his picture personality.
But it’s also the way he is with kids, and this is crucial. You’ve seen the pictures above, but his affection and gentleness with kids extends to his musical “side project.” Gosling can sing — just look at him bringing the house down Boyz II Men style with JC Chasez and Justin Timberlake during his Mickey Mouse Club days. But he’s funneled that skill into a curious but wonderful project, Dead Man’s Bones, which regularly collaborates with kids. Here he is playing with a bunch of Halloween-costumed kids in the graveyard; here’s another one with a kids choir (again dressed Halloween-style). His picture personality affirms it — just look at what a good teacher he is in Half Nelson when he’s not totally strung out on heroin! Endearingness levels = off the charts.
4.) He’s attractive.
Attractiveness is subjective. Gosling is not super-hunk attractive: he’s not super jacked, he doesn’t have the facial structure that makes George Clooney/Cary Grant paragons of male attractiveness. But he has something, and he carries it in an unnameable way — call it confidence, call it swagger, call it charisma — that makes him almost faint-worthy. Lainey Gossip regularly warns readers that if they looked at posted pictures, they won’t be able to finish their thought, let alone their work day. It’s true. He’s got it. Visceral affect. (And I use affect on purpose — his appearance acts upon the viewer — a different connotation than effect).
I do think, however, that without the star image — without the aura of sensitivity, romance, and talent — this affect would diminish. Hotness is a compound quality: equal parts how someone looks and how you would imagine him/her interacting with you. The knee-quivering part of The Gos isn’t about how you look at him, but about how you imagine him looking at you. And that — that’s a quality that endures.
So there we have it: Ryan Gosling is basically your ideal boyfriend. He’s talented, passionate, sensitive, and attractive. He’s good with kids, looks at you with desire, looks good in suits, loves dogs.
He’ll write you a song and it won’t be lame or rhyme or sound like Justin Bieber. He’ll build you your dreamhouse and look at you that one way. He’s good with tools but just as good with art. He’s the liberal arts Da Vinci of our generation, and he’s so totally your ideal boyfriend.
Sure, you say, but isn’t every guy I’m attracted to in the movies my ideal boyfriend? No, of course not. I like Channing Tatum (he’s my fried chicken!) but I wouldn’t want to date him; I’d probably get embarrassed when he started doing crazy dance moves everytime we went to a wedding. I like George Clooney and Brad Pitt, but in no way are either of them “ordinary” enough for me to imagine them even looking at me in the first place, let alone hanging out with me and going to coffee shops and actually being my boyfriend. Therein lies the crucial distinction of The Gos: he’s reconciled the ordinary and the extraordinary, both in his films and in his “real” life, in a way that makes him someone you could actually see yourself dating. Granted, it’d be like winning the dating lottery, but it’s something you can visualize.
Granted, this doesn’t explain why guys like The Gos. Or maybe it does: if Gosling is a girl’s ideal boyfriend, then To Be The Gos = to be the ideal boyfriend. And the fact that he’s not gross-out romantic (and super talented) makes him someone that men want to resemble rather than ridicule.
And as for specificity — e.g. what makes Gosling attractive in this moment, and a star of this generation — I’d argue that he’s proof that the artificiality of the star-making machine (specifically, Disney and Mickey Mouse club) can also cultivate talent that signifies as authentic and invested. Not every Mousketeer grows up to be a man or woman with something to add to our understanding of art and talent — I mean, look at JC Chasez — but both Gosling and, on the opposite end of the spectrum, Timberlake, prove that the spectacle and artificial trappings that attend most stars today can be shed. Talent *does* exist; it’s not all auto-tune and lip-syncing.
I’m curious about where Gosling’s image will lead — how will these two mainstream roles challenge, affirm, or texture his current status as our collective boyfriend? Ultimately, though, no matter how the films do, as long as The Notebook stays on continuous replay, and he keeps getting caught by the paparazzi doing things like doing that half-grin and petting dogs and playing music with kids, this current image will endure.
Rachel McAdams: The Thinking Man's Pin-Up?
Is she or isn’t she?
Rachel McAdams has movie-star wattage. She’s got a big smile, sparkling eyes, lots of roles, and no bad press. She looks good in many different hair colors. She’s Canadian. She’s never abrasive. If she can a.) get an Oscar nom, b.) star in a runaway hit with a truly star-making role (and no The Time Traveler’s Wife is not that movie) or c.) engage in a super high profile romance, full-out stardom is hers for the taking.
Rachel McAdams is NOT Lindsay Lohan
She got her first big breaks as the eponymous Hot Chick and embodying vapidity in Mean Girls. Since then, she was the gorgeous ‘straight woman’ in Wedding Crashers; she garnered praise for working the thriller in Red Eye; she played a believable intellectual sister in The Family Stone.
Getting ready to make me weep
Oh, did I mention she’s in a little film called The Notebook, no question the biggest weepie of the decade? Millions of fans have hitched their hopes and fantasies to the McAdams and Gosling’s portrayal of young love. So when the two met again at the MTV Movie Award to re-enact their ‘best kiss,’ sparks flew, and naturally they got together.
Reenacting the Famous Notebook Kiss
The message: their onscreen story was so powerful that it even rubbed off on the stars! And you, dear viewer, can experience the same sort of romance, simply by viewing The Notebook. On repeat. (Or, like me, just fastforwarding through the old people parts). McGosling (the new name for McAdams and ‘The Goz‘ - and I highly recommend clicking on that link, as it offers a fantastic and profane read on Gosling’s hotness, courtesy of The Stranger) became a sort of weird cultural touchstone: as Andy Samberg and Chris Parnell rap in “Lazy Sunday,” “I love those cupcakes like McAdams loves Gosling.”
McAdams has been called “The Next Julia Roberts” — in part for her megawatt smile, but also for her brand of intrinsic charisma. There’s something about Rachel McAdams - she doesn’t play that fantastic of unique roles, her love life, apart from a two dalliances with The Notebook costar Ryan Gosling, is private and unremarkable. So what is it?
Personally, I love myself some McAdams. I love her sparkly eyes, I love her playfulness. Or let me modify: I love how those characteristics manifest themselves in all of her roles, because I’ve actually seen very little (and read even less) about the ‘real’ McAdams. But she’s convinced me that that’s the kind of person that she is, and through relatively few roles: my understanding of her picture personality depends (perhaps too much) on her roles in The Notebook, The Family Stone, and most recently, State and Play and The Time Traveler’s Wife. It’s as if her turns in The Hot Chick, Mean Girls, and Wedding Crashers simply convince me that the ‘real’ her is the one of her other, more ‘natural’ roles. And I want to be her friend, and many men I know want to be her boyfriend. In other words, she’s the perfect star: well-rounded, likable, and desirable. She’s the anti Megan Fox, and, in truth, the anti Julia Roberts — who many men claim to find unattractive. She’s got it all.
And she has the affection of my kid brother.
My brother isn’t wont to celebrity romances: apart from a juvenile dalliance with Carrie Fischer (which had everything to do with Princess Lea and her bronze brassiere) I can’t think of any star he’s ever told me he finds attractive. But then there’s McAdams. He even has a favorite photo.
My brother, like me, is a nerd. He used to play a lot of Panzer War General; in his early college years, he asked for a complete collection of Proust. For Christmas. Dude reads Hegel for fun. So what is it about McAdams that make her accessible to the thinking man? Or, as I suggest in the title, the perfect thinking man’s pin-up? Granted, nerds love movie actresses. But that’s a different type of nerd altogether — we’re talking fanboys (and all the derogatory stereotypes associated with them) and their affection for Angelina Jolie, Megan Fox, and others soft on the eyes and unchallenging to the mind. But McAdams offers a different allure.
Which is why I’ve asked my brother to virtually hang out with me. He recently quit his gig at The New York Review of Books to go live in the middle of nowhere in Montana, freelance, and do things like write blog posts with his sister. I told him that I’d tell him why I thought he liked McAdams, and he told me he’d tell me why I was wrong. So here goes.
I think you like Rachel McAdams for a few reasons:
1.) Her beauty and body aren’t traditionally fetishized, which would rub you and your thinking man’s sensibilities the wrong way.
2.) Liking her doesn’t make you into a dude; in fact, liking her makes other women think you’re a good guy.
3.) In one of her roles — The Family Stone, the one we saw together for our annual Christmas Day movie — she plays a woman who embodies the qualities of snark, intelligence, vulnerability, and beauty that you would find desirable in your own potential girlfriend. In other words, you’d want to date her, and you’d even let her meet me, and even tell Mom about her, and she’d probably put up with you reading philosophy for leisure but call you on your bullshit.
Am I right OR AM I RIGHT.
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Brother respondz:
I would like, if possible, to move this discussion into the past tense: Why did I like Rachel McAdams? Because I’m not sure that I still do. I just saw two of her more recent films, Red Eye and State of Play, and I can’t say I really cared that much about her in either. Though it was nice that she was there. Oh, it’s Rachel! Did I ever tell you about the time I rode the elevator with her at work? There were a lot of film production companies in my building. That was a good day. But I didn’t really care. And I’m not even sure this is a change: there’s a desire for academics or other figures with cultural capital (I’m now a writer) to take an interest in pop culture. If you have to make small talk with someone in the mail room (or your sister — or those with lots of cultural capital who hate taking about ideas, a common occurrence in NYC), it’s helpful to have some assumed cultural center around which you can banter. Sports is one possibility; pop music another; movies stars another. But the fact is that I chose Rachel (we’re on a first name basis in case you haven’t noticed) as mine. Why?
Now that I’ve started to think about it, which I didn’t really do at first, I’m a little disturbed. A few points:
1. Rachel McAdams is the ultimate WASP. The first role I saw her in was Wedding Crashers, where she plays, I believe, the daughter of the Secretary of State or something. Then she went on to play this bratty daughter of a mainline Philadelphia (?) or some other old New England type clan in The Family Stone. She’s supposed to be a kind of universal materialist So-Cal materialist type in Mean Girls, and not all the Mean Girls in that film are white and WASP-y, but she’s clearly the leader because she’s the natural born WASP. Oh right, she’s the southern belle daughter of some aristocratic family in The Notebook. And then there’s Red Eye, where she runs a high class Florida hotel at the age of like 25 with her classy charms, and in the process saves the Assistant Director of the Department of Homeland Security. Which leaves a question: Is Rachel a Republican?
2. So I just watched State of Play, because I wanted to be a good brother and do some actual research for my sister’s blog, and then I read some of the reviews, and J. Hoberman, I believe, makes the obvious joke that Russel Crowe and Rachel are kinda like Cary Grant and Rosalind Russell in that other great newspaper movie, His Girl Friday. Except of course State of Play kinda sucks and is trying much harder to be like All the President’s Men. I don’t think it would be unfair to say the movie is a cross between a little 30s screwball and 70s earnestness — part of why it doesn’t work at all. But then there’s The Family Stone, which is explicitly modeled on a 30s screwball, with the animated opening montage and all, even though again that movie totally sucks. But I don’t think it’s unfair to say that Rachel McAdams is most reminiscent of a 30s screwball star, perhaps specifically Rosalind Russell. And Rosalind Russell was famous, as I remember David Thomson telling me — because please, I’m not actually going to go and watch those lame old Rosalind Russell films — but she was famous for her very morally proper melodramas: His Girl Friday was just Howard Hawks figuring out how to make her sternness interesting, it was a total outlier. I think David Thomson calls Rosalind Russell a Republican.
Making sternness as attractive as possible
3. So we’re left with a few basic facts about Rachel: she walked out of the Vanity Fair nude cover shoot with Scarlett Johansson and Keira Knightley; she hasn’t done any nudity in any of her films, except the very early no budget My Name is Tanino, when she had no control over which rolls to take (I know this, among other reasons, thanks to a to-do list an editor I know once posted on the Stranger‘s blog: “2. Look up naked pictures of Rachel McAdams” or something like that); she has attempted, if I haven’t missed anything, no indie films whatsoever. Sorry, Nick Cassavetes, you’re not your dad. Maybe I’ve missed this, but she doesn’t play the game of celebrity at all — which is boring and very let’s say bourgeois. Rachel seems to be something of a prude.
4. Shouldn’t the thinking man’s pin-up be Maggie Gyllenhaal?
5. But the fact remains that she is the closest thing we have today to, if not Katharine Hepburn, then maybe Irene Dunne in The Awful Truth? I don’t know if I can imagine any other actress today playing that role. Or any of the other classic screwball roles. I’m a little uncertain what I think of Rachel’s can-do powder-puff feminism. She plays football with the guys in Wedding Crashers. She beats the crap out of an assassin in Red Eye (though he’s killed at the end by her dad — what can you do, it’s a Wes Craven film). She will apparently hand-cuff Sherlock Holmes to a bed and extort him in the film you and I will be watching this Christmas Day (Holmes, yes! finally something good will be at the Lewiston, Idaho theater on December 25). So maybe Rachel is really a third-wave feminist, and her refusal to play the celebrity game or do nudity reflects not the attitudes of a reactionary but those of a highly-developed twenty-first century popular female consciousness? Ha.
6. To sum up the three reasons you give for why I like Rachel — her body isn’t traditionally fetishized; liking her makes other women like me; she has spunk — all three, I think, can be put down to her resemblance to a classic Hollywood 30s screwball star, in which context her body certainly would have been fetishized (check out the dimple), most female stars, even at the time, would not have reflected badly on the men who liked them, and all women, in comedy at least, had real personality. It should be very very telling that we can’t imagine Rachel in a Judd Apatow film. Now that’s a real reactionary. And perhaps why she hasn’t gotten any very good roles, despite Manohla Dargis, in the ‘inside tips’ she and Tony Scott pretended to give out to Hollywood last year, shouting: “Give Rachel McAdams more roles!”
7. Maybe I still love Rachel? Should I? Please tell!
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Sister briefly responds:
She has done an indy picture - Married Life — it just received a very limited release, in part because it wasn’t very good. I saw it; she has bleach blond hair and we’re supposed to believe she loves Chris Cooper. It’s odd, in part because it doesn’t compliment the McAdams image. The screwball comparison honestly had not even crossed my mind, which is ridiculous. You love screwballs! So do I, but I should’ve recalled that your favorite female roles are those fast-talking, verbally eviscerating females of His Girl Friday and The Awful Truth. But I don’t think McAdams is our screwball hero. She’s not, on her face, ‘smart’ enough. I don’t watch her in The Notebook and think that she’s tremendously smart and cunning; I watch her and think she has a specific and irresistible type of beauty and would probably be fun to hang out with. In State of Play, I wish she were in my grad program. Her picture personality is indeed assertive, but, as you point out, assertive in a Condi Rice sort of way, as opposed to, say, Tina Fey, who might actually hold the contemporary screwball comedienne mantel. (And you’re right: Maggie Gyllenhaal is the thinking-man’s pin-up, but that’s because she’s a 21st century Mae West, who had much more of a pin-up body than any of the screwball comedians you mention. Men were attracted to the minds and flirtatiousness of Hepburn, Dunne, and Russell, not necessarily their bodies, were were, as a rule, long, lean, and the opposite of voluptuous.)
But I’m not ready to label her a ‘Republican.’ How do you reconcile her role in The Family Stone? She has a canvas NPR bag and drives a Volvo! And she’s attempting to bring down big corrupt government (and protecting the fourth estate!) and State of Play. As for the idea of third wave feminism — possible. Distancing herself from the clearly postfeminist body politics of ScarJo and Keira Knightly certainly speaks loudly. But she’s said little else. Which is part of the problem, of course — our speculation is based near wholly on her picture personality, leaving us to either map the characteristics of her characters onto the ‘real’ Rachel or fill in the gaps ourselves. (As you can do in your mind: Rachel would love me! I hang out in the West Village!)
In other words, the fact that she hasn’t attempted to flesh our her star image has made it easy first for you to like her, just as it has now made it easy for you to dislike her. Her image is subject to your shifting sense of who you are. I mean, when we watched The Family Stone, I don’t think either one of us was fully conscious of what WASP meant, or what the Diane-Keaton-headed family of that film represented. Now, in hindsight, after you’ve lived in New York for three years, it’s easier to find those depictions problematic, and your affection for her dated. Finally, her lack of public image once was endearing; now it renders her a prude.
Ultimately, your experience illuminates greater trends in celebrity and fan culture: stars become stars because they mean something important to enough people at a certain time. The stars that we like — that we want to be friends with, that we desire, that we think would offend us — speak loudly as to the type of people that we are. Because I’m your sister and I know everything, I know that you’ve changed a lot over the last five years. Along with the fact that you now own towels and pillowcases, you also don’t like Rachel McAdams, or at least the part of you that liked her has matured, learned more, become disillusioned, become attached to different female and cultural ideals. I mean, you didn’t always like screwball heroines — but when you figured out that you did, or when you tell other people that you do, that signifies something crucial about the type of person that you are, the type of things you find funny, the type of woman who challenges you.
So you don’t have to like Rachel McAdams anymore. And maybe the fact that you won’t find another actress to love — other than Irene Dunne — is all that you, or your friends, need to know.
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Brother concludez:
Shouldn’t the fact that I own towels and pillowcases just make me love Rachel more? I bet she has lots of towels and pillowcases, with very high thread counts. (By the way, I’ve always owned a towel and a pillowcase, just maybe not plural.)
I don’t think Tina Fey could play a screwball heroine. She’s completely afraid! She’s like the female Judd Apatow. I haven’t seen 30 Rock since the first season but if it’s stayed the same that show is all about Tina Fey getting put in her place by the wise Alec Baldwin, whose explicit conservatism always turns out miraculously right in the end. And Tina Fey writes that show. Amazing.
There is the question, since we have no idea who Rachel really is, of what we take for her most representative role. Certainly she’s most famous for The Notebook. But I first saw her in Wedding Crashers, where, I have to say I haven’t seen that film since it came out, but I remember thinking she was quick witted and tended to put Owen Wilson and Vince Vaughn in their place. You’re right that she doesn’t strike us as incredibly intelligent. But neither does Irene Dunne or most of the screwball heroines, even Katharine Hepburn in Bringing Up Baby. For me I think the above confusions do show a great deal about how I’ve changed, and not how Rachel has changed. And it’s not like there’s anything wrong with loving a WASP. Guess what, all of the classic screwball women are WASPs! Like really really waspy.
I also don’t think my disappointment with the films Rachel has made since Wedding Crashers is mine alone. She just hasn’t gotten very good scripts. And I would hypothesize that this has much more to do with the contemporary state of Hollywood than it does with Rachel. You don’t have to be super smart to be a screwball star; you just have to be quick and alive; and I think Rachel is quick and alive. But I don’t think Hollywood is. You mentioned that she’s been called “the next Julia Roberts.” Given what you’ve been writing about the decline of stars, it’s not clear to me we’re going to have another Julia Roberts, much less another Katharine Hepburn or Irene Dunne — or Barbara Stanwyck! How did I leave her out?
The true love of my life
Sister has the last word:
INDEED.
Eric Bana: The Little Star That Couldn't
Eric Bana: Still Not a Star
I like Eric Bana fine. I don’t love him, or run out to see his films, which is part of why I’m writing about him. Because several studios, directors, and producers have attempted to make him a bonafide star, but it just doesn’t seem to to take. Eric Bana has starred in many of the big budget, high profile films of the last year — but nearly all of them have either been outright bombs (The Hulk), domestic disappointments (Troy), or so bad as to be labelled camp (The Other Boleyn Girl). Of course, Star Trek was a huge hit - but Bana was nigh unrecognizable in a character role.
I’m writing about Bana in particular because I just saw The Time Traveller’s Wife — a piece of melodramatic, well-dressed jumbo that was redeemed almost entirely by the presence of the always radiant Rachel McAdams and several well-chosen child actors. But in contrast to Rachel McAdams, who seemed a star from the first second I saw her in Mean Girls, Bana lacks….a certain something. Nikki Finke puts a fine point on it: “Erica Bana isn’t leading man worthy. Too dull on screen.”
So let’s have a run-down of Bana’s significant roles/achievements:
- Break-out role in the Australian movie Damages (2000). Still unknown in U.S.
- Supporting point in Blackhawk Down (2001)
- Voice in Finding Nemo (2003)
- Chosen by Ang Lee to star in the much-anticipated Hulk (2003), huge failure.
- Redeeming himself as the straight, boring Hector in Troy, which does very well internationally but only moderately in the U.S. Obviously pales in comparison to Brad Pitt, but not nearly as annoying as Orlando Bloom.
- Perhaps most memorably in Munich (2005), although that film is much more about group collaboration and plot than Bana’s singular performance.
- The embarrassingly bad Vegas drama Lucky You (2006) with Drew Barrymore, which grossed a paltry $5 million domestic.
- Playing Henry VIII in the much-anticipated, star-studded, pre-sold The Other Boleyn Girl, which was pushed back and re-cut several times before getting dumped with a February release in 2008. Grossed only $26 million domestically, $50 million internationally, which, on a supposed $35 million budget (double that for advertising and promotion), marks it as a disappointment.
- Nero in Star Trek — he’s excellent, but as I mention above, he’s neither in the lead nor the true star. He’s the villain and gets to play bad. And his hair is gone and he’s covered in Romulan tattoos.
- The foil in Funny People. Using his actual accent. As discussed at length before, this film is not doing well.
- And now, The Time Traveler’s Wife, a movie that has been in post for over a year (always a bad sign). Honestly, it was better than I thought it would be. Having read the book, I knew the premise and the funky timing (even if it still doesn’t exactly make sense). But for this movie to real work — work in the way that a weepie has to work in order to get over its melodramatic weight — it needs to have a strong male lead, an even stronger female lead, and fireworks — FIREWORKS — between them. My favorite example would be the case of Rachel McAdams and Ryan Gosling in The Notebook, which is clearly a piece of dreck….unless you focus on the performances and chemistry of the leads, which is delectable. Same goes for Meryl Streep and Clint Eastwood in Bridges of Madison County - I mean, have you glimpsed that book? But the movie is ravishing. Point is, Eric Bana is no Ryan Gosling. His persona is simply not big — or notable — enough to make us really, truly care for him and his relationship. Nor does he make a love story believable. Why is this?
Eric Bana Not Pulling It Off in Time Traveler’s Wife
So let’s take stock: Eric Bana seems to do well in period pieces — he’s a convincingly evil and horny Henry VIII, even if the rest of the film is a a miscalculation. He’s also good as both a classic Greek (Troy) and a ’70s assassin (Munich). Where he fails, then, is in roles that ask him to play a contemporary, straight-up lead — a restriction that applies equally to Keira Knightly, who can only play period (and does so convincingly…but put her in the present, and her cheekbones just can’t pull it off.)
Why is this? Part of it is his off-kilter face. But it’s also a lack of charisma, or curiosity about him — and that’s the fault of both Bana and his publicist. What do you know about Eric Bana? Other than the fact that he’s from Australia? Nothing. He’s obviously a big star back home — in part because he’s married to Rebecca Gleeson, the daughter of the head justice of Australia. That’s hot! Or at least interesting! But apparently not to American audiences. He also has two small children with cute names — Klaus and Sophia. But you’ve never seen a picture of them. He’s a huge sports car driver, and has placed in a number of major races. Again, sexy. But they live in Melbourne, which guards them from most American paparazzi.
Cute wife. Cute kids. So what’s missing?
New Line/Warner Bros’ The Time Traveler’s Wife opened to $7.7M and #2 Friday but dropped -17% Saturday for $6.2M and #3. It was a disappointing $18M weekend from 2,988 runs. That’s hardly the $25M rival studios expected. (Isn’t it funny how New Line has gone from pumping out testerone to estrogen? But Eric Bana isn’t leading man worthy. Too dull on screen. And it’s not his publicist either: there he is on the cover of both GQ and Details, as you can see below. He’s been marketed to both male and female audiences, but neither seem to take the bait. At least not enough to make him a star.
So here’s my theory. I’ve previously brought up the theory of extra-textual and textual information and stardom: the idea that an actor becomes a star when information about his personal life becomes of equal or greater interest as his roles onscreen. With this balance between extra-textual and textual information, you also create the balance between the ordinary and the extraordinary — the paradoxical belief that stars are simultaneously ‘just like us’ and superlatives. Richard Dyer believes that within that paradox — that very finely held balance — lies true charisma. In other words, stars that can really convince us that they’re both — those are the true stars. (It’s also a matter of how the embodiment of both extraordinary and ordinary signifies — what it means, what that particular star’s very existence proves is possible, but that’s another post). So the lack of extratextual information on Bana — a combination of the fact that he lives in Australia and doesn’t do anything that scandalous or interesting; he’s not married to a star, he isn’t a womanizer or a drug addict — already puts him at a charisma deficit. But such deficits can be overcome through performance and skill: look at the case of Robert De Niro, who, in his prime, was one of the most charismatic actors onscreen — so charismatic, in fact, that it troubled you that you liked him, whether he was playing Jake La Motta or Travis Bickle. That’s true charisma: the ability to turn someone dispicable into your point of identification and affection.
So Bana’s problem is two-fold: his extratextual life is boring, and he lacks the gravitas necessary to turn him into a renowned character actor. He’s in no man’s land. He’s neither Brad Pitt nor Matt Damon, neither Colin Farrell nor Russell Crowe, another Australian whose personal life is now boring and domestic, but who still has the pull onscreen, even when he’s fat and dowdy. He’s also made some remarkably bad film choices — or at least made the wrong choices as far as rom-coms go. Ultimately, the fact that he can’t sell movies based on two of the best selling novels of the last ten years should tell us something. For Bana to become a star, he either needs an Oscar role or a huge rom-com hit, neither of which seem to be in the cards.
Am I wrong? Tell me why.
