celebrity gossip, academic style

A few weeks back, David Poland, industry observer and long-time writer/analyst/blogger for Movie City News, tweeted something to the effect that being around Emma Stone is incredibly exciting. Not because she’s gorgeous, because she’s not, not exactly, or even because she’s funny, which she definitely is, but because she has a certain energy around her, eminating from the fact that she is about to become the next big American movie star.

I can’t find the Tweet, but I can rest assure that he posted it, as I immediately had to go to the Google machine to figure out exactly who she was. I mean, I knew the name, I had a vague idea, but she’s by no means household. With the picture, ah yes, I saw - and even more, with the audio, I recognized her immediately. Stone possesses a distinctively husky voice — think ScarJo meets Lauren Bacall — and when you hear it, you remember all the other times….most likely her mini-star turns in Superbad and Zombieland. If you’re a Stone aficionado, or maybe just like crappy movies, you’ve also seen her in The Rocker (poor Rainn Wilson, I really do hope he gets a film career), Ghost of Girlfriends Past, and using her voice alone in the stink-bomb that was Marmaduke. And, ahem, House Bunny? She was also featured on the cover of Vanity Fair’s Young Hollywood issue — and if memory serves, she was the one girl I didn’t immediately recognize. But VF’s issue is equal parts hot-now and hot-future-tense, and they seem to have chosen wisely.

Because what you really need to know is that Poland is right: this girl’s got something. She’s not just beautiful: Jennifer Aniston she is most definitely not. She’s hilarious, but not in the “unruly woman” way that generally excludes many female comedians from mainstream success (whether Rosie O’Donnell, Margaret Cho, Roseanne Barr, even Kathy Griffin). Her body is that of a star; her face is that of a star. And she’s got charisma - loads of it. She’s a flirt in interview, but not in a cloying way. She young, she’s hungry — four movies in the can over the last 18 months, 1 in production, 2 slated - and if Easy A hits, and all signs seem to point to the fact that it will, she’ll be the next big thing.

Here’s the trailer for Easy A — (my favorite line is the very last one)

Most are likening her to Lindsay Lohan, pre-breakdown. Easy A will ”do for her what ‘Mean Girls’ did for Lindsay Lohan,” according to Moviefone, while “the world needs a new ‘Mean Girl’ to shake up the Fall movie season: get ready for Emma Stone.” Moviefone (and others) have also labelled her the new ‘It’ Girl — a banal (if fitting) title that deserves some history.

The very first ‘It’ Girl was Clara Bow, and boy, she was something.

She was a star of silent cinema — along with Joan Crawford, one of stars “made” through a “star search” fan magazine contest in the mid-1920s. She came to Hollywood, slogged through a few pictures, and became a sensation via her role in It (1927). Sounds like a monster movie, but It referred to a undefinable certain something — an ‘It’ quality, according to screenwriter/popular author Elinor Glynn — that separates some girls from the others. Charisma, sure. But what she’s really talking about is sex appeal. (Dorothy Parker famously quipped, concerning Bow, “It? Hell, she had those.). Click here for my absolute favorite scene from It — if you watch to the middle, you’ll see what exuberance and pure joy she takes in being onscreen. I always show It when I teach — in part because Marsha Orgeron has a fantastic essay on the way Bow’s star image embodied the consumer culture of the 1920s — but also because students are always struck by how modern Bow seems. In contrast to, say, Garbo, Bow looks like you could dress her in some contemporary clothes and she’s still be a star today.

Garbo had an ethereal quality, and the only person I can think of with a similar presence onscreen — and dexterity with little more than the face, the eyes, the voice — is Tilda Swinton. And neither Garbo nor Swinton are ‘It’ girls, although they are so much else. But Bow was the beginning of a long lineage of female stars, all of whom have wed charisma, a sense of vivacity, sex appeal, and a certain modernness, as if these girls forecast the future of female stardom and what young starlets will aspire to in years to come. The best examples: Rita Hayworth, Sophia Loren, (maybe Racquel Welch), and, most recently, Julia Roberts. (Lindsay Lohan was there too, but has been put on reserve). They’re not traditionally beautiful, but that’s part of what’s captivating: the representation of something unique, seemingly unmanufactured, the flaw that proves the rest immaculate.

My name is Rita Hayworth: red heads have more fun!

You’ll also note that all of these women — Stone included — were red heads, either for the role that made them famous (for Roberts, see all-important auburn curls of Pretty Woman). Indeed, Bow’s red hair was such a phenomenon that sales of henna skyrocketed.

Redheads are unique; they’re sexy. They’re ugly ducklings as teenagers and blossom into something voluptuous. Their marginalization helps them find humor in the everyday, in being different. They’re feisty, they don’t have a lot of girlfriends, they like to play. Mind you, I’m not saying that red heads really ARE these things — but that’s what red hair, especially dark, auburnish red hair, signifies. (Kathy Griffin’s hair seems to signify something else entirely, as does Lucille Ball’s — something unruly. It’s as if the the slight touch of brunette in the auburn hair makes these charismatic women tread the line between normal and exotic and end up flat-out sensual). You’ll also note that many of these women (post-Bow) were not natural redheads — Hayworth’s studio had her “Latin” hairline electrolysized and her black hair changed to red, while Emma Stone, a natural blonde, admits that she wasn’t getting any work as a blonde…went brunette, had to go red for Superbad, and has been cast as a redhead ever since.

Part of this is a matter of fit - Stone’s dead-pan, husky-voiced persona seems to fit with that of a redhead. It’s also a peg on which the rest of Hayworth, or Stone, or Roberts’ star image can be draped — and something that defined/will define each of them for the duration of their respective careers. When they deviate from red, it’s weird: see Hayworth’s much maligned performance in The Lady Shanghai, in which her chopped blonde hair feels like punishment from her angry then-husband and director of the film, Orson Welles. Or Julia Roberts’ dismal career after she ditched the hair in the mid-’90s — so dismal that when she attempted a comeback with My Best Friend’s Wedding, she declared “my hair is red and curly just the way you guys like it — please come see this movie!”

The way we like our Julia Roberts

These red heads are equal parts girl-and-guys’ girls: girls don’t hate them (see: Megan Fox); they might even like them. (The girl girls hate? The Amanda Bynes and Sarah Jessica Parkers of the world). And bonus: guys DO like them. Julia Roberts may not be a sex symbol now, but she was hot stuff in 1990. Same goes for the rest of the bunch. Which means that while Stone will draw in women — Easy A is tracking extremely well with teenage girls, according to The Wrap, probably in part because of the presence of Gossip Girl fav Penn Badgeley. But it will also draw men, and not just kicking-and-screaming boyfriends. That’s what makes an It Girl: multi-quadrant appeal.

As proof, take a look at the clips below, one from Chelsea Lately, the other from Jimmy Fallon, both filmed in the last week as part of Stone’s promotional tour for Easy A. Note her repartee with Fallon — she’s just one of the guys! She has a filthy mouth/mind, but she’s hot! But also note the way that while she’s clearly cut of the same cloth as Chelsea Handler, she lacks Handler’s willingless to completely desexualize herself through vulgarity. Put somewhat differently: Handler is the foil that emphasizes the fact that Stone is equal parts sex and humor; Handler SAYS sex, while Stone suggests it.

[The bit on the Hot Pockets just KILLS me. I too love Hot Pockets, but no telling.]

Stone is not only red-headed, feisty, charismatic, and genuinely funny, but also has solid industry connections. In an interview with Movie City News (which is pretty hilarious, especially the beginning, when she and Easy A director Will Gluck go back-and-forth), Gluck hints at the fact that Sony “loves her.” Indeed it does: Superbad and Zombieland were both distributed by Sony-owned subsidiaries; both Easy A and the forthcoming Friends with Benefit (featuring a star-studded cast) are from Screen Gems, Sony’s “genre” arm, e.g. the subsidiary that trades on relatively low-budget, clear-cut genre pictures: teen pics, romances, horror flics, thrillers. To give you a better idea: Dear John was a Screen Gems picture; so was Obsessed. Sometimes the formula fails miserably, as in, um, Legion. But when it works, it works incredibly well — Obsessed, Dear John, Resident Evil (and its sequels) have cut significant profit margins. Some of these films work on the basis of high concept or pre-sold idea, but they also require a charismatic, if not altogether traditional star, with appeal to a specific audience: Beyonce, Channing Tatum, Milla Jovovich, and now, Emma Stone. I’m not suggesting that Emma Stone is a contract player for Sony; she is, however, a known commodity, and one that they’ve added value to over the last four years, hoping for this very pay-off: a $20 million projected opening weekend on a film that cost $8 million to make. Just because the star and studio system are things of the past does not mean that the cultivation of stars is purely the provenance of agents and publicists.

The success of Easy A will prove whether or not Stone is ready to move past genre fare. She’s currently filming the film adaptation of the runaway bestseller The Help, which I very randomly happen to be reading. it’s a very Oprah-esque book, however compelling, and it’s produced by Chris Columbus’ company, so my hopes are LOW. But if she can somehow make the banal come to life, the way that, say, Rachel McAdams did in The Notebook, I’ll reconsider. If Easy A if her Mean Girls, or even her Mystic Pizza, then The Help could very well be her Steel Magnolias meets Pretty Woman. She’s hosting SNL in late October, which, to my mind, is always the test of an actor’s true skill and charisma. After the hoopla dies down and Jimmy Fallon stops saying things like “I’m so excited for you, because you’re going to be like the biggest movie star, like, ever…I’ve got my money on you!”, she’ll have a choice: does she become a spunky rom-com star, or do something truly risky, even unruly? She’s all of 21 years old. This girl has something. Call it “It,” call it multi-quadrant draw — but she’s the closest I’ve seen to true movie star material in a long time.

As final proof: Emma Stone, master of The Shake Weight.