Midweek Mumble – Celebrapocalypse; when fame fails

Welcome to the midweek Mumble, Rodney is here again to discuss Celebrity Gossip… enjoy

Today’s mumble is not quite about movies – it’s about the people who appear in them. In recent weeks and months we’ve seen some quite exceptional pieces of gossip coming out of Tinseltown, most of the time the kind of stuff we generally ignore as yet more rancid promotion for Kim Kardashian’s latest underwear line (or whatever it is that she does). Alec Baldwin got himself a new fiancee/wife/punching bag, while two of Hollywood’s biggest stars, Johnny Depp and Tom Cruise, have suddenly become single again.

It’s an established fact that Tom Cruise is completely insane, so the news that his wife, Katie Holmes, filed for divorce recently is hardly surprising – I guess what is surprising is that it took so damn long. Ever since the Cruiser’s infamous Oprah Couch Jumping Incident, the world has watched on in horror at the daily happenings in camp Scientology as my personal favorite member of Dawson’s Creek was slowly but surely embedded within that most ludicrous of religious cults. TomKat’s daughter, Suri Cruise, who has a better wardrobe and accessories package than the members of Jersey Shore, Gossip Girl and Swamp People combined, is of course going to end up becoming a pawn in what will undoubtedly become a massive custody battle – no doubt any judge would side with Katie, but then again, this is America we’re talking about, and they gave us frickin’ Tom Green so there’s no depths to which they won’t stoop to confuse and confound the Western World.

Johnny Depp lives a life of relative privacy, at least as private as one can be when you’re consistently in the top 10 most desirable men on Earth, alongside Pitt, Clooney and Connery (is he still really that desirable?). His privacy can be blamed on the fact that he lives in France and nobody in France is interested in actors enough to trouble the hottest man on earth for a photograph. That said, he’s been married to Vanessa Paradis, so I doubt I’d leave the bedroom either; it’s a toss-up between who I admire more, Johnny Depp or Orlando Bloom, both of whom have dated, married or been involved with women far hotter than they are.

And then there’s Alec Baldwin – top bloke and terrific actor, and only one of these points is correct. Baldwin, who famously left a frankly terrible voicemail message on his young daughters phone, a message which was – of course – used by ex-wife Kim Basinger in court proceedings to gain custody of said daughter, has long been known as one of Hollywood’s bad boys, but once more he’s gained some kind of legitimacy by marrying his Yoga instructor, Hilaria Thomas. Just saying that name makes me laugh.

Then there’s poor John Travolta, who’s had a bit of a rough time of it lately because he’s been accused of hitting on several of his personal (male) massuessessessess. Now, I’m not really into that kind of thing, but I’ve been around the internet to know enough about it to formulate a hypothesis which may or may not be correct – that John Travolta (gasp) could be bisexual. This titillating possibility comes in the shadow of his personal tragedy of losing his son, Jet, from drowning back in 2009. I’ve always liked Travolta, even though he’s right there alongside Tom Cruise as a spokesman for Scientology, and I find it hard going to pick on him in light of this personal tragedy; I guess if everyone’s doing it, it must be okay then?

Celebrity Relationships have long been the backbone of many a tabloid magazine and newspaper. Salacious photographs, obtained by lenses longer than an elephant trunk protruding through the tinted window of an unmarked van parked seven miles away, have held together many a flagging publication until the death; while it might be okay for some to sit in the doctor’s waiting room and flick through pics of Angelina Jolie’s latest cellulite shocker or Chris Brown’s latest attempt at keeping his girlfriend in line, to me it’s borderline tacky. That’s not to say I don’t like it, but sometimes I find my skin crawling. When magazines publish photos of stars kids, for example – that’s a line that shouldn’t be crossed, if you ask me.

We love to know that celebrities, who are just like you and me, are actually just like you and me for realsies. We love to find that they have problems in their silver-touched lives just like the rest of us. We delight in their failures as people, just like we hate our own, because it vindicates the feeling that being paid a gazillion dollars to appear in front of a camera and pretending to be someone else could easily be done by anyone, not just the chosen few. The fact that a vast majority of Hollywood couples get together after appearing in the same project indicates the gypsy-nature of film-making, the transitional attraction that, after months and years of separation as people move on with other things, wears thin.

We love to watch. Why? Well, that’s an intangible, isn’t it? Here’s my opinion: it’s a minimalist kind of self-loathing that makes us gaze upon the puffed and preened and become all judgmental, because we know we could never do any better perhaps, and we resent them. As superficial as it is, We’re attracted to beauty, and repulsed by it in a way as well.

Except for Johnny Depp. No-one could ever be repulsed by him.

Johnny Depp is beautiful.

About The Author – Rodney Twelftree

Aussie film fan Rodney has been writing about film, DVD and Blu-Ray since 1998, when he became Chief Reviewer at a now-defunct Adelaide-based online retailer. A fan of blockbuster and mainstream cinema, as well as dabbling in arthouse and independent forms of the industry, Rodney prefers to spend his nights and weekends in front of the television watching the latest release on Blu-Ray instead of out getting sloppy drunk like many of his friends. When he’s not out in the Front Room, Rodney can be found writing reviews for his own website www.fernbyfilms.com, helping good mate Al K Hall over at The Bar None, and dabbling in lists over at Top 10 Films.

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