Midweek Mumble – How To Survive A Celebrity Scandal

As a follow up to last weeks mumble, Rodney is back with some ideas for the Celebs to help them avoid the inevitable scandal before them

Celebrities. There’s no escaping their sordid lives and incomprehensible life decisions. And when I say “celebrity”, I mean “movie star”, because Kim Kardashian is often called a celebrity and there’s no way in Satans Hell I’m including her in this. She’s what I’d call laughably a “personality”. At least a celebrity brings something constructive to humanity. Yeah, they’re human just like us, but they’re famous so they obviously have things better in life that the rest of us mere mortals. So when a celebrity, be they rich, famous, or rich and famous, is embroiled in some kind of scandal, we view it with a mixture of salacious bewilderment and vicarious “dude, you got OWNED”, waiting for all the dirt to be dished to the surface.

The recent breakdown of Tom Cruise’s marriage to that chick from Dawsons Creek highlighted something I want to bring to the table today – Cruise, one of the most prominent faces of creepy not-quite-legitimate religion Scientology, was pressured by his church peers into keeping a lengthy, messy divorce out of the courts to save his popularity and the reputation of the Church itself (which is oh so important), so he seemed to cave pretty quickly to whatever demands his wife might have made just to stop things getting public. Rumor has it that as part of the settlement he had Katie Holmes sign a contract stating that she’d never reveal the terms of their divorce nor speak about their marriage, not that she seemed the type to blab anyway. Suri, on the other hand, seems to be a bit of a tattle-tale little thing, so who knows what she’d say to the tabloids to prop up the cost of maintaining her pre-teen shoe collection.

Celebrities seem to become “embroiled” in scandals every other week – be it a marriage breakdown (TomKat) or a drunken car wreck (Lindsay Lohan) or a drunken train wreck (Charlie Sheen) – but if you ask me, these are scandals that could easily be avoided. Trying to stay out of the headlines is actually pretty easy, really, if you ask me…. which nobody has, but I’m putting this out there anyway. Here’s my “How To” guide specifically to aide our many celebrity friends in staying out of the negative press.

1 – The “Beyonce Had The Greatest Music Video Of All Time” Award. This is the kind of award given to celebrities who believe their own press a little too much, and end up becoming a bit of a spanner. Kanye West managed to come across as a complete tool for his attention-seeking grab for glory at the VMA’s a few years back, stealing the microphone from winner Taylor Swift and deciding to completely debase himself at the alter of Beyonce. Just because you’re a celebrity, doesn’t mean you can behave like a twat.You’re famous because people like me pay to see/read/watch/hear your stuff, so be thankful.

2 – Don’t drink to excess. This rule applies to everyone, really, but celebrities – thanks to the paparazzi around them – become highly sought after targets when they stumble from the local nightclub at 3am and attempt to clamber back into their limousines without revealing any camel-toe. If you’re famous, just assume you’re gonna gets snapped chugging back that keg of beer (or whatever popular beverage celebrities drink these days) and you’re gonna find yourself center-spread on the tabloid rag next day if you stumble, fall over, undress or flash flesh, throw a tantrum or attempt to karate-chop your way through the gaggle of waiting paps. It’s a given that paparazzi hunt in popular spots for celebrity trash to congregate (a bit like flies on shit, really, he he he) so if you’re Paris Hilton, stumbling from some trendy discotheque late at night with a boob out and your hair looking like you’ve engaged in some Eastern European gang-bang, don’t hope like hell somebody left the lens cap on. Chances are, they won’t. Keep yourself relatively sober – at least, sober enough to know the difference between spilling your drink on your clothes and simply peeing your pants – and you should make it through the day without causing a scene.

3 – Become an emotionless automaton. Everyone loves it when a celebrity snaps. My personal favorite thing to see is when normally sweet, nice celebrities decide that punching a photographer for taking pictures of your kids buying a latte at a cafe is a better option than just moving on. So how do you combat that surge of rage you get when some long-lensed pap decides to upskirt your kids? You become a robot, suppressing your rage using some kind of ancient meditation techniques or using hard drugs. That way you’ll never have to concern yourself with any annoying problems like unathorised photographers.

4 – Learn to drive. How many celebrities have crashed their cars? How many have died as a result of crashing their cars? Ever since James Dean would up at the Pearly Gates wondering just how hard he had to press the brake pedal, the world has watched in disbelief as famous star after famous star has forgotten the basic principles of driving a motor vehicle. I don’t find it that hard commuting to work and back each day, and I’m damn sure less famous that Lindsay Lohan. Give a celebrity a high-price sports car or Panzer Tank-cum-Suburban SUV and they suddenly think that the rules of the road – let alone the laws of physics – don’t apply to them.If you’re one of those celebrities who loves to party a little too hard on the booze or the pills, and you think scooting up along Mulholland Drive might make it easier to get home without getting busted, be aware that you’ll probably end up wrapped around a tree, somebody’s mailbox, or another vehicle. Sidebar: if you’re Tiger Woods, it’s more likely to be a crash while dodging flying golf clubs.

5 – Don’t marry somebody you met on a film set. And there’s people who think giving gay folks the right to marry will ruin the sanctity of the institution of wedlock. Celebrity weddings, especially those which happen suddenly and with maximum publicty, are doomed to failure. Damn, I was so  hoping to avoid mentioning a Kardashian in this article, but it can’t be avoided. When you get married, it should be for love, not a larger bank balance or possibly divorce settlement. The nadir of celebrity marriages, and the sham they’ve become in the last few decades, was the recent 72 day coupling of Kim Kardashian and that Chris Humphries dude. While there was no sex tape to speak of out of that pairing, the money made by both parties on their wedding endorsements and subsequent divorce a few months later seemed especially underhanded. Obviously, Humphries must have thought he was getting into the Big End of being famous by snagging one of the more famous “personalities” getting about Los Angeles. Celebrity relationships are usually formed over long days on set, between super-hot co-stars who happen to fall in lust with each other. Trouble is, once the cameras stop, and each party in that relationship moves on to different projects, the fire dwindles and the separation is too great to endure. Cue prenup. Here’s my solution. If you’re gonna marry somebody, make sure it’s somebody who isn’t a famous movie star or fellow celebrity – because the ratio of successful marriages within Hollywood’s incestuous film industry is quite low. Just ask Tom Cruise. He’s been married three times now.

6 – Keep your body trim, taut and terrific. Because we live in a society where exposing rolls of fat, stretch-marks or cellulite is as abhorrent a thing as child porn, you simply must ensure that as a celebrity, you live up to the enormous expectations to remain hot, gorgeous and sexy forever – or at least until you’re too old to care. Sophia Loren ruined it for everyone by still being hot well into her 70′s. Every inch of your body is going to be analyzed, scrutinized and scoured for any tell-tale sign you might be… you know, a normal human being… so hit that gym and make sure you’re toned, taut and terrific, even if you do fall over drunk at parties. Nobody wants to see a wrinkly body on a fifty foot cinema screen, so save us all the embarrassment and keep yourself in tip top shape.

7 – Sex Tapes. Dear God. Please, spare us. Unless you’re Scarlett Johansson, please, we don’t want to see you doing the horizontal gypsy dance with whichever himbo you’ve snagged at that after-party, even in hi-def handycam quality. Real celebrities know that the camera should be kept at work, not in the bedroom. Unless you’re Scarlett Johansson.

8 – Don’t punch your partner to teach them a lesson. Chris Brown, take note. Hitting somebody is not right. Period. If you’re gonna get smacky with the better half, you deserve all the hate comin’ your way. If you wanna cause a ruckus, release an illicit sex tape instead.

9 – The Mel Gibson Clause. For Gods sake, if you’ve got opinions that you know are controversial, like hating the Jews for killing Jesus, or thinking Hitler might just have been right, or if you think that jumping on household furniture to declare your undying love for your latest squeeze is a way to further public opinion in your favor, you’re in for a world of hurt. Sometimes, it’s better to just keep your opinions to yourself, lest you find yourself on the recieving end of some enormous public backlash against you. Just because you might have a platform to unload your theories about life and everything, doesn’t mean we all want to hear it.

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.

Got your own suggestions for our celebrity friends? Of course you do! We want to know what you’d suggest to keep these famous folk on the straight and narrow. Let us know in the comments below!!