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 Anna Nicole Smith. |
That voice.
That story.
That delicious bit of fame, to be carved up and served fresh by me, to you.
It has taken me weeks to track him down, and now I’ve succeeded. He’s on the phone. He accepts I’m quoting him, and he can even hear my fingers tap my keyboard as the words are pulled from him.
Each sentiment — “Any regrets?” or “Why did you leave the business again?” — drops onto my plate like slices of warm, buttered bread.
I know what you as a reader like, and so I continue a slice at a time.
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It’s now understood: His mention will draw eyes to this piece. His fame and name will help to seal it. And sell it.
So what’s wrong with this celebrity temptation, this seemingly innocent bit of star news to enrich our daily diet?
Perhaps it’s that he just wants to be left alone right now. That his story — maybe — should be his to give, and not ours to take.
“There’s something that doesn’t (feel) right ... but here we are,” he says over the line from New York — his voice familiar, thanks to the times I used to watch him on the big screen.
“I just want to confirm why you left the movie business — to be accurate,” I assure in an earnest voice, which has even me believing my good intentions.
“But I really don’t want to be written about,” he continues, knowing it’s gone beyond that point now.
He’s not angry. More frustrated. He at first said no to an interview, but I have pushed on — contacting his friends and former associates — as I write his life.
“It’s a positive piece,” I explain. “That you left the movie business to concentrate on your family ... That’s admirable.”
“But it’s forcing me to participate ... I don’t see how that’s any different than TMZ,” he counters with a round-house, using the name of the popular but controversial website/TV-show as a modern slur.
Now I’ll stumble back, just a bit, to explain how we got here.
For this feature, I wanted to explore the evolving notion of society’s appetite for celebrity. How much should we be permitted to intrude into the lives of those we adore or gleefully abhor? What’s real and what’s clever marketing? Is society, and by extension the media, confused about the significance of stardom? What part do our idols play in their own over-exposure? And could a Canadian actor, who left screen stardom behind, see things a little clearer than us all? Maybe his view is one of the only unobstructed ones around.
If you were to ask a good number of Canadians — and we have, as part of a national Leger Marketing poll conducted for this three part series — about half would tell you they only glance at entertainment stories to keep track of star gossip. Another 35% say they don’t care and don’t even bother to look — this, despite the overwhelming popularity of entertainment sites and sources.
At the end of 2008, the fastest rising global searches on Internet engines involved — other than social networks — personalities such as Heath Ledger, Pam Anderson, Paris Hilton and the Jonas Brothers.
My check with officials at Google.ca finds Canadians have been more than twice as likely to use the online engine to hunt for ‘Britney Spears’ than search for ‘God.’
If you were to ask most celebrities, they would tell you they hate the intrusive glare — and you’d read those words in the media, as they’re pitching their latest project, or filming a reality series, or alerting photographers what beach they’ll be vacationing on, or between the sheets of their tell-all book. And if they aren’t courting publicity, chances are, their agent — or the star who lives next door — is.
If you were to ask the mainstream press of our part in feeding the hunger, there would be a defensive argument that we’re only giving readers and viewers what they crave. After the death of Princess Diana, many photographers began filing only friendly and non-intrusive photos of the famous having fun. But people soon became bored, and those publications that began to publish shots of stars caught by surprise saw their readership numbers swell.
Factor this into the equation: Last year, Portfolio magazine estimated Britney Spears alone generates $120 million US annually for American photographers, lawyers, magazines and TV programs.
There is an unease among all three players in this process — consumers, the media and the stars themselves. Each needs the other’s full participation, but the collusion is mired in mistrust and a certain distaste.
If you were to ask the celebrities, the reporters and the shopper at the check-out stand gazing at a magazine in her hands whether we, as a society, have ever been this obsessed with fame before, most would quickly say no.
They would be wrong.
We’ve always been addicted to the famous, from the saints to Elvis. James Robert Parish, a 68-year-old Hollywood entertainment historian and author of more than 100 books, points out: “If you go back to the early days of the studio system (where the image of stars was more guarded), there were plenty of fan magazines.”
Before O.J. Simpson, it was actor Roscoe (Fatty) Arbuckle’s rape and murder trial in 1921. Stars such as Paris Hilton and Lindsay Lohan are no different than the wicked debutantes of the 1930s. Today’s angry, boozing young male actors have nothing on 1930s and ’40s swashbuckling actor Errol Flynn, who was tried on statutory rape charges, and was rumoured to have been buried with six bottles of whiskey.
And Anna Nicole Smith was just a lesser, 21st century copy of Jayne Mansfield. A blond sex symbol of the 1950s, Mansfield appeared in an estimated 2,500 newspaper photographs between September 1956 and May 1957. More than 120,000 lines of newspaper copy were devoted to her during the same nine-month period.
Celebrities, and the news they make, is as timeless as two neighbours gossiping over the fence about a third. The difference today is that a rumour, or fact, that would have taken years to navigate into middle-America now circumnavigates the Google globe in less than a fifth of a second.
If a celebrity forgets to wear underwear at 3 a.m. in L.A., readers are trying to digest its significance — with their toast — at 7 a.m.
“And once, photographers stood at a distance and asked, ‘Can we take a picture?’” laments veteran entertainment journalist, Eliot Tiegel. “Now, the concerns are to get an exclusive.”
But having just released Overexposed: The Price of Fame, which follows the controversial careers of young female stars, Tiegel believes stars often try to deflect their own responsibility.
“If you’re in the magazines, you’re alive,” says Tiegel, who, for almost 50 years has been writing for such industry-leading publications as Billboard, Weekly Variety and The Hollywood Reporter.
One industry insider explains it is common to “stage” photos of celebrities looking unaware — almost scripted moments — as they’re, say, shopping or walking a dog in a park.
Nowhere has an increasingly testy relationship between the stars and the publicity machine been more clearly on display than at a March outing by Heroes TV star Hayden Panettiere.
A Hawaiian TV reporter touched Panettiere on the shoulder, asking, “May we talk with you, Hayden?”
The young actress snapped back: “Don’t you ever touch me. You all make my life miserable.”
This was not while she was ambushed trying to leave her home. It wasn’t outside a funeral, or at a private resort where stars go to get their needed rest from their heavy loads. Rather, it was on a red carpet, where professional journalists go to get their stories, and where celebrities show up to become more famous.
Over the course of several months, I have talked to agents, photographers, stars and wannabes. And for an afternoon, I even shadowed hopefuls auditioning for a coming season of Canada’s Next Top Model — trying to imagine my own daughters teetering on their heels with such high hopes.
And I still — honestly — don’t understand much better the life cycle of modern fame.
Which now brings me full circle, and I am on the line with that Canadian actor who found fame, the kind that comes with its own memorable theme songs, and mentions in “all-time favourite” lists.
But — as he originally tried to tell me — he isn’t looking for more fame. From me or from you.
I tried to be understanding and a thorough journalist, continuing to look for crumbs from those who know and have worked with him. Some talked — outlining his reasons for giving up acting. His best friend, however, said no to my interview request, and mentioned something about his lawyer.
That all would have just filled up the plate, had the famous name I went searching for not resigned himself to the fact his story would be written — with or without his participation.
He’s answering my questions now, knowing I will use his name, spread warmly on newsprint and online over easily recognized publicity photos and intimate details of a life he’d rather just keep to himself today.
He asks about my kids. He’s trying to be nice, but the frustration is clear. He has no projects to promote, so why is he forced to serve another morsel to fill our daily diet of celebrity?
The more he talks, the more twisted my insides become. I’m feeling like I’ve just been discovered going through his medicine cabinet.
It’s Sunday, and I want to be outside with my kids and let him go back to his. I want to slink away and murmur, “Never mind. Carry on.”
But we’re all interested in his story — you are still reading this, and I’m thankful for that — so my plate overflows with his thoughts.
Though it’s not about whether he has any regrets — or what he hates about getting old, or what he thinks about American Idol, or if he likes New York in the spring. Instead, he offers: “Not everyone wants to become a movie star.”
“But there are a lot of people who dream of being where you were,” I counter, pulling arguments out of thin air to see if they’ll somehow fly.
“I think your premise is flawed,” he continues — our conversation becoming more about he and I, than about me interviewing him for you.
“No one I starred with started out with the intention of being a celebrity,” he says insistently.
He adds that celebrity actors he knows are just people who want to practise what they love — “no different than Canadian kids who get up at 4 a.m to play hockey.”
“Everything I want to say is in my work,” he says, adding he never had anything against the business, and that he would have done the same if he had worked in sales or drove a truck.
This process just seems wrong, he allows. He knows he “can’t stop anyone from writing about me ... But I just really don’t want to be written about.”
There are long pauses, between confirmations of life details I’ve already gathered without his help. He wishes me well, but I know he doesn’t feel the same about this story — his story.
So, now, I do my job and name him, which is what you’ve been waiting for, right?
He’s wealthy, has fans who’ve made him so — he owes us. For life. And it’s a positive story of a man who decided he didn’t need continued fame. What’s the harm in naming him?
But I can’t. For the simple reason that after dozens of interviews, this one has offered a greater understanding of modern celebrity than any other. That — even as many try to control and mould it — fame doesn’t actually belong to the famous. It’s now ours and yours to slice up and use, or not use, as we please.
I think his rare insight is more telling than even his name.
thane.burnett@sunmedia.ca