Falling From Grace

Last week on Tuesday I posted a mini-review of "Season of the Witch" and lamented about how Nicolas Cage is only doing crappy action movies for the last three years or so.  That night I went home and watched the indie dramedy "The Good Girl" starring Jennifer Aniston, which reminded me that post-Friends she's been doing the same thing only with crappy romantic comedies.

I remembered too an article I read paralleling the careers of Bill Murray and Adam Sandler about the time "Jack and Jill" was released.  The gist of the article is that back in the '80s Murray post-SNL was doing a lot of comedies like "Caddyshack," "Stripes," "Ghostbusters," and so forth.  And then in the late-90s he started doing more dramatic roles starting with Wes Anderson dramedies "Rushmore" and "The Royal Tenenbaums."  Then more-or-less full-fledged dramatic roles in "Lost in Translation" and "Broken Flowers."  And really except for voicing Garfield in those two crappy movies and a cameo in "Zombieland" he hasn't really gone back to the comedy well.  Whereas in his post-SNL career Adam Sandler started with comedies like "Billy Madison," "Happy Gilmore," "The Wedding Singer," and "Big Daddy" before trying some more dramatic roles like "Punch-Drunk Love" and "Reign Over Me" and "Funny People."  The difference though is that Sandler keeps going back to the crappy comedy well with movies like "Click," "Don't Mess With the Zohan," "50 First Dates," "Bedtime Stories", and of course "Jack and Jill" where he probably hit a new low--and that's saying something with "Little Nicky" and "8 Crazy Nights" on his resume.

I think in large part the article was pointing out that if you want to reinvent yourself and have people take you seriously then you need to be more consistent about it.  If you want to be seen as an artist you can't do a piece of crap film just for the easy paycheck.  You've got to be a little more principled about it and turn the crap down.  (Also, don't write shit like "Bucky Larson" and then have some other poor schmucks go act it out for you.)

Of course I shouldn't just pick on Sandler or Nic Cage or Jennifer Aniston.  Lots of stars do it:  Will Smith, Eddie Murphy, Ben Stiller, even Robert deNiro.  They just can't resist doing the easy paycheck movie, despite that most of them probably have enough money by now to live like kings for the rest of their days.  But I think especially in the cases of someone like Sandler or Aniston or Stiller where most of what they do is crappy comedies, when you see them do something more dramatic and it's not terrible, you think, "Why the hell don't you do that more often?"  Because apparently you're not a terrible actor, so why aren't you putting your skills to better use?

Maybe because it's just easier or more lucrative to do the same crap over and over again.  I think I've talked about that with authors too, wishing some would take more chances instead of churning out the same formulas over and over again.  But like yesterday's post I think some of the blame has to go on YOU as well.  YOU who pay to watch the garbage instead of the good stuff.  So there's plenty of blame to go around I guess.

But I also think something the article on Murray vs. Sandler pointed out is when you keep doing the crappy paycheck movies eventually the well is going to run dry and then what do you do?  That's why especially when you're getting older it's good to get people to start taking you seriously so you might be able to get more work.  For women the problem is more superficial.  Most actresses are seen in Hollywood as a nice pair of tits with legs.  So once those tits get saggy and not even plastic surgery can save them, they got nothing to fall back on.  That's why Aniston should probably broaden her resume because she's already what, 43?  The clock's ticking for her.  It won't be long until the only roles she gets are as the mom of some hotter chick.  At least Ben Stiller can fall back on directing movies and Adam Sandler can write more shitty movies for his friends to act out.  And like most of us when we get older, you have to start thinking about your legacy.  Do you really want to be remembered as that guy/girl in all those terrible movies no one will remember 20 years from now?  So maybe Bill Murray didn't want to be remembered as only that guy from SNL who did "Ghostbusters."  Good for him.

On Monday the cover for my novel A Hero's Journey is revealed!  I think you'll be pleasantly surprised.  (Unless you're Rusty Webb and then just pretend to be surprised...)