Jerry Stahl: You’ll Work in This Town Again (Hollywood)
[Jerry Stahl is the author, most recently, of “I, Fatty.”]
GOD bless Mel Gibson.
Of course, the deity doing the blessing is less likely to be Yahweh than Gukumatz, traditional Toltec god of culture, agriculture and opening weekend grosses.
By now the miracles have been quantified. “Apocalypto,” when it opened, promptly took the top box office spot with $15 million. Plus — what are the odds? — his Joseph Campbell-meets-Mesoamerica epic has been nominated for a Golden Globe, and is now being mentioned in the same sentence as Oscar.
It’s the last thing you’d expect for a movie in Mayan — especially one made by a man whose last project was a staging of Hate Crime Theater on a Malibu police-cam. Which begs the question: How low does a human being have to sink before Hollywood shoos him away and he can’t get an Oscar?
Stars have always been bent. Wallace Reid, the silent screen’s first heartthrob — and a full-on dope fiend — needed the studio to slip him morphine to keep production going. (This was the pre-rehab era; Reid died trying to kick his habit in a sanitarium.)
The celebrated Charlie Chaplin? In his 20s, he married a 16-year-old moppet; in his 30s, married another 16-year-old; in his 50s, settled down with a 17-year-old. But his penchant for child brides did not prevent him from receiving the longest standing ovation in Oscar history when he was given an honorary statue in 1972. Of course, Chaplin’s honor also marked his return from exile in Switzerland.
Once, Hollywood required scandal-ridden stars to go away for a while — a penitent hiatus before they could enjoy redemption, their second acts. So after being banished for years for her baby with Roberto Rossellini, Ingrid Bergman was, in 1956, finally welcomed back and given an Oscar.
Roman Polanski waited decades after fleeing a warrant for pedophilia before he finally snagged, in absentia, his best director statue for “The Pianist.” And even Leni Riefenstahl, the Führer’s darling, received a posthumous mention among the notable Hollywood dead at the 2003 Oscars.
But less than five months have passed between Mr. Gibson’s spouting of tequila-fueled bons mots on the dread power of the Hebrews and his basking in the glow of a No. 1 movie. His brief time in the wilderness may represent the fastest about-face since Democrats re-embraced Joseph Lieberman after he bested Ned Lamont in the Connecticut Senate race.
I know what you’re going to say: Fatty Arbuckle. The exception to the rule. Once bigger than Chaplin, he’s now remembered as the gold standard of degraded celebrity, someone who allegedly committed such unforgivable acts that he could never really come back. In 1921, the year he became the first comic actor to make $1 million a year, he was accused of raping and murdering an actress during an orgy at a San Francisco hotel....
Read entire article at NYT
GOD bless Mel Gibson.
Of course, the deity doing the blessing is less likely to be Yahweh than Gukumatz, traditional Toltec god of culture, agriculture and opening weekend grosses.
By now the miracles have been quantified. “Apocalypto,” when it opened, promptly took the top box office spot with $15 million. Plus — what are the odds? — his Joseph Campbell-meets-Mesoamerica epic has been nominated for a Golden Globe, and is now being mentioned in the same sentence as Oscar.
It’s the last thing you’d expect for a movie in Mayan — especially one made by a man whose last project was a staging of Hate Crime Theater on a Malibu police-cam. Which begs the question: How low does a human being have to sink before Hollywood shoos him away and he can’t get an Oscar?
Stars have always been bent. Wallace Reid, the silent screen’s first heartthrob — and a full-on dope fiend — needed the studio to slip him morphine to keep production going. (This was the pre-rehab era; Reid died trying to kick his habit in a sanitarium.)
The celebrated Charlie Chaplin? In his 20s, he married a 16-year-old moppet; in his 30s, married another 16-year-old; in his 50s, settled down with a 17-year-old. But his penchant for child brides did not prevent him from receiving the longest standing ovation in Oscar history when he was given an honorary statue in 1972. Of course, Chaplin’s honor also marked his return from exile in Switzerland.
Once, Hollywood required scandal-ridden stars to go away for a while — a penitent hiatus before they could enjoy redemption, their second acts. So after being banished for years for her baby with Roberto Rossellini, Ingrid Bergman was, in 1956, finally welcomed back and given an Oscar.
Roman Polanski waited decades after fleeing a warrant for pedophilia before he finally snagged, in absentia, his best director statue for “The Pianist.” And even Leni Riefenstahl, the Führer’s darling, received a posthumous mention among the notable Hollywood dead at the 2003 Oscars.
But less than five months have passed between Mr. Gibson’s spouting of tequila-fueled bons mots on the dread power of the Hebrews and his basking in the glow of a No. 1 movie. His brief time in the wilderness may represent the fastest about-face since Democrats re-embraced Joseph Lieberman after he bested Ned Lamont in the Connecticut Senate race.
I know what you’re going to say: Fatty Arbuckle. The exception to the rule. Once bigger than Chaplin, he’s now remembered as the gold standard of degraded celebrity, someone who allegedly committed such unforgivable acts that he could never really come back. In 1921, the year he became the first comic actor to make $1 million a year, he was accused of raping and murdering an actress during an orgy at a San Francisco hotel....