Fellow Overthinker Matthew Belinkie regularly comes up with some of the cleverest pieces on our site. I’ve always felt that way. That’s why it pains me to say he’s not quite right.
Last week, Belinkie wrote a post asking if the 2000s had heralded the end of movie stars as a commodity: the end of the bankable face.
But in the last 10 years, has Hollywood produced any new A-list talent? The Ulmer Scale is an anual ranking of the most bankable actors. Their most recent top 10 list was: Will Smith, Johnny Depp, Brad Pitt, Tom Hanks, George Clooney, Will Ferrell, Reese Witherspoon, Nicholas Cage, Leonardo DiCaprio, and Russell Crowe. With the exceptions of Ferrell and Witherspoon (who I’m not buying as the #1 leading lady, by the way), all of these people were huge stars more than a decade ago. Hollywood is standing still.
First off, that list strains a little. Russell Crowe was a huge star in 2000 – ten years ago – because of Gladiator. Prior to that, his biggest roles had been in L.A. Confidential (an ensemble picture) and The Quick and the Dead (a likable but small Sam Raimi western). And Will Ferrell wasn’t opening movies before Elf.
But his point is otherwise sound. Will Smith was huge in the 90s (Independence Day, Bad Boys) and the 00s (Ali, I Am Legend). Nicholas Cage got movie posters all to himself in both decades. Ditto Johnny Depp; ditto Tom Hanks. And the reason that’s stayed true is obvious: they can reliably play the same character.
Except that’s not quite the case, is it?
Let’s look at Johnny Depp. In the early 90s, Depp was playing heartthrobs. He was either the pretty boy with a bad edge (Cry-Baby) or he was the handsome outsider (Benny and Joon; What’s Eating Gilbert Grape?). Either way, he was getting by on looks. Then, in the mid-90s, Depp started playing more eccentric characters (Dead Man, Ed Wood, Donnie Brasco, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas). In the early 00s, Depp took on roles of cocky authority: a CIA agent in Once Upon A Time in Mexico, a legendary pirate in Pirates of the Caribbean, a police inspector in From Hell, America’s earliest cocaine dealer in Blow, etc. While none of these are a radical shift from the prior category, you can see how they’ve evolved. Imagine the soft-hearted juvenile delinquent Cry-Baby as a CIA agent ten years later.
Johnny Depp has stayed a star for the last twenty years, but not by being the same person.
I would not be intimidated by this man.
Consider also Will Smith. Smith started out as the smart-aleck kid, or roles where being smart-aleck and young would work to his advantage: a Bel Air teenager, a maverick Miami cop, a fighter pilot. He has since matured to take on more dependable roles: a date doctor, the last scientist in New York after a vampirizing virus, a father struggling to provide for his son. It makes sense that Smith would try more grounded roles as he got older, but it didn’t have to work out that way. Rob Schneider certainly hasn’t tried to get any more grounded, and we’ve grown tired of his schtick as a result. But Smith has changed and we keep rediscovering him.
So in order to retain your place in the spotlight, you need to reinvent yourself. That seems obvious enough. But how often do you need to reinvent yourself? How long can you stay a star before you need to become someone new?
Fortunately, that question has already been answered: three years. You can be a star for three years.
In 1997, writer and critic Louis Menand wrote a brilliant article for The New Yorker called “The Iron Law of Stardom“:
Tom Hanks won the Academy Award for Best Actor in both 1993 and 1994, beating out eight of our most respected actors. Does anything prevent him from winning the Oscar forever? Yes: the law of the three-year limit, otherwise known as the Iron Law of Stardom. This law dictates that stardom cannot last longer than three years.
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One apparent countexample can be disposed of at the start: the Beatles’ six-year reign was, in fact, two consecutive three-year terms. They were two different groups: lovable mop tops (1964-67), and hippie artistes (1967-70).
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“Stardom” is here used in a particular and technical sense, as a discrete and recognizable episode in the life of a star. It is the intersection of personality with history, a perfect congruence of the way the world happens to be and the way the star is. The world, however, moves on. The star does, too, an animated relic. Tom Hanks may win the Oscar for Best Actor again, but if he does people will just enjoy the reminder, as they did when Al Pacino won an Oscar for “Scent of a Woman” in 1992. Pacino had already had his three years of stardom (1972-75).
Note that the “three years” are not themselves ironclad; all of the examples he cites had between three and four years of stardom (Pacino: ’72, ’73, ’74, ’75). But three years is a close enough anchor.
Also: Menand draws the distinction between a celebrity and a star, the same distinction Belinkie gets at when talking about “A-list” actors. He uses the line – and I’m paraphrasing, because I read this over a decade ago and it’s not preserved in the online abstract – that a celebrity is someone who’d get recognized in a restaurant, but a star is someone who’d get talked about in a restaurant.
By way of example: remember when you couldn’t turn the TV or radio on without being exposed to Jennifer Lopez? She’s in a new movie. She released a new album. She’s dating this guy. She was wearing this dress. That period (2000-03) is over. Jennifer Lopez still appears in movies (The Back-up Plan), still wears dresses when she goes places and is still married to a famous man. But she’s no longer an object of media obsession. She’s no longer at the perfect center of the zeitgeist.
Not dead yet.
(You may be tempted to waste your time listing a lot of examples that you think break this three-to-four-year law. You can sound off in the comments if you like, but I encourage you not to waste your time. I’ve spent the thirteen years since I read this article studying celebrity and looking for counterexamples. There just aren’t any. Take it as given; it’ll open your eyes)
So, with this Iron Law to guide us, let’s take a look at some of the other examples Belinkie cites:
It’s been that way all through the 2000s: Hollywood thinks it’s found a winner, but audiences think differently. In 2002-04, it was basically impossible to make a movie without casting Colin Farrell. Even if you didn’t recall hiring him, he would just show up on set and start acting. There was Minority Report, Phone Booth, Daredevil, and most memorably (to me), S.W.A.T. But the delightful train wreck that was Alexander took some of the wind out of his sails. Now he sticks mainly to indie films like In Bruges and Crazy Heart. The guy has a perfectly healthy career, but he’s not the next George Clooney.
2002 to 2004 is exactly three years! The law is vindicated! Colin Farrell had his moment of stardom, that time on Fortune’s Wheel when everyone craved his gravelly imitation of an American accent. And then it passed. That’s what happens to everyone.
“But not to George Clooney,” I can hear you saying. You’re right, not to George Clooney. Because he’s not the same man as he was at first. The wisecracking slickster of One Fine Day, From Dusk Till Dawn and Batman & Robin is not the weary working man of Solaris, Good Night and Good Luck and Syriana. He still makes movies where he plays a fast-talking con man (the Ocean’s remakes), but those are pleasant reminiscences of the man he was when he was younger. He’s no longer an object of media obsession.
(You want proof? Without Googling, name George Clooney’s current girlfriend. Now name his last one. People who are truly at the center of the zeitgeist don’t date in anonymity. Lindsay Lohan, when she was in her “child star disintegrating due to fame” stage, couldn’t leave a club without everyone knowing whose arm she was on)
So Colin Farrell hasn’t quite found a reinvention yet. Give him time! Maybe At Swim-Two-Birds will be the critical rekindling he needs. Years from now, we’ll all talk about Farrell’s 2010-2013 period and all the great movies he made then. And he’ll be trotted out to star in some action picture, a la The Recruit or S.W.A.T., and we’ll all ask, “Man – who today has the star power of Colin Farrell?”
Look at him! He's so tortured.
Belinkie’s observation, that the 00s haven’t generated any new stars yet, isn’t inaccurate. It just suffers from being too nearsighted. You never know who’s going to be a star until you have the advantage of distance. Remember when Jessica Alba was “that chick from Dark Angel“? When Katherine Heigl was “what’s-her-face from ‘Roswell’ “? When Christian Bale was “that kid from Newsies“?
The 00s have produced several stars who’ll have generational lasting power. We just don’t know who they are yet.
Believe it or not, I didn’t write this post just to disagree with my esteemed colleague. I wrote it (sorry!) to talk about Tiger Woods.
Last week, Tiger Woods made the news by returning to the Masters Tournament, the most prestigious tournament in golf, after a self-imposed exile following his separation from his wife. On the same day the Masters Tournament kicked off, Nike – one of the few corporate sponsors who did not kick Woods off their payroll – aired the following commercial:
This is the Mrs. Dalloway of TV commercials. It diverges so much from all expectations of the medium that we almost need a new language to even discuss it. Consider the following:
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None of the following elements, all necessary for a sports commercial, are present: triumph over a persistent foe; underdog vs. champion; pride; willpower; reveling in the joy of performance for its own sake; thrilling an audience; fulfilling the dreams of youth in the capacity of adulthood; shaky camera; hot cheerleaders.
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None of the following elements, all true and recent facts regarding Tiger Woods, are referenced: his professional success; the renewed media interest in golf following his success; his status as a multiracial icon in a predominantly white game; his immense wealth; his prolonged affairs; the steps he took to cover up those affairs; his estrangement from his wife; the continued revelation of even more provocative details regarding his affairs; his self-imposed exile from tournament golf; his return to the Masters; hot cheerleaders.
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Tiger neither speaks nor moves. We see none of him from the shoulders down.
That’s all of the things the commercial isn’t. But what exactly is it?
As soon as the commercial aired, the professional commentariat began debating whether or not this “penance” was “sincere.” Polls went up. Comments on YouTube exploded. Sports pundits and columnists took sides. That, to my jaded eyes, is proof positive of the incredible power of advertising as a medium – because nowhere in the ad does it say Tiger’s doing penance. You fill that in for yourself.
How do the geniuses at Nike – and I use “genius” deliberately; in terms of power to send a message without words this ad’s on par with “Guernica” – do this? Simple.
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They present the audience with Tiger’s one remaining vector of sympathy: his recently deceased father, Earl Woods. Very few people can sympathize with a philanderer. No one can sympathize with a multiple philanderer. And nobody whatsoever can sympathize with a multi-billionaire. But anyone who’s lost a father, whether through estrangement or death, can sympathize with Tiger Woods. We’d all forgotten that Tiger had lost his father in the recent media furor, partly because it’s irrelevant to whether a guy who cheated on his wife with pornstars should play Augusta this year. But Nike reminds us. And subtly, too: not by showing pictures of the funeral or anything that crass.
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They edit sound clips together to make it sound as if Earl is addressing Tiger. And who among us hasn’t sat through the I’m-not-angry-so-much-as-disappointed speech from our fathers before? Of course, it is in fact impossible that Earl addressed Tiger on this subject, as Earl is dead.
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Tiger says nothing and does nothing. What can Tiger possibly say to defend himself? Nothing. What can Tiger possibly do to defend his actions? Nothing. So if you want to depict Tiger as penitent, what do you show him doing?
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Nike releases the video on YouTube and to popular blogs. This guarantees that people who want to find and discuss it – like yours truly, whoops – can. It also provides another method for framing the debate. For instance, had I seen this live on TV when it aired I wouldn’t have known that was Tiger’s father without being prompted. But it’s listed in the description of the video on NikeGolf’s YouTube channel.
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Black and white, Tiger’s fatigued look, etc.
Once again, I cannot say enough, and with total sincerity, how much this commercial impresses me. Those of you who’ve struggled through David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest, as I recently have, will recall protagonist Hal Incandenza’s essay on the thanatoptic tongue scraper commercial that lay waste to the advertising industry: the graphic depiction of tongue bacteria, the horror of all who witnessed it, the paralyzing shame of its victim, etc. Now this is the real world, fourteen years later, and Nike has actually made that commercial.
“Is Tiger Woods sincere in his penance or not?” Of course he’s not sincere. Even the most affectless sociopath wouldn’t think that the most effective way to make amends to his victims – his family – would be through an oblique commercial by a shoe company, released the day of his return to professional golf. And since Tiger Woods isn’t insane, we can discount that possibility out of hand. There’s no way anyone should be able to conceive such a deliberate gesture as sincere.
And yet that’s the debate Nike has started. They framed the question and left us to answer it.
To circle back to my original thesis, Tiger Woods needed to reframe the debate around his sincerity vs. his ambition in order to become a star again. He’d already had his three years. In fact, he’d had two three year cycles.
Wunderkind (1996-98): Tiger’s debut on the pro circuit. At the age of 19, the youngest golfer ever to etc, etc. The focus here was on his youth and potential.
Golf Superstar (1999-2002): At this point, Tiger’s youth is no longer the focus of the story. Now it’s his consistent performance: winning back to back Masters. Holding all four PGA titles in the same year. Five, six, seven, eight consecutive wins. Mentioned in the same breath as Nicklaus, Faldo and Old Tom Morris.
2003 on. Tiger Woods was still an incredibly successful golfer at that point – even after his surgery – but he was no longer a star. He was no longer the subject of constant media scrutiny. Tiger no longer sat at the center of the zeitgeist. This goes to show just how fickle a thing stardom is: that you can still make hundreds of millions of dollars in endorsements and be one of the most consistently successful professional golfers playing today, and still not be “a star.” But it takes a lot of effort to stare that long at something that bright.
Then: disaster. The bizarre car crash over Thanksgiving weekend. The revelations of infidelity. The estrangement from his wife. The mounting list of names. The brief retirement from golf. How can Tiger return to stardom after a series of blows like this?
Reborn Penitent (2010-2013). If Tiger’s going to return to the height of stardom, he needs to shape his own image. The Nike Commercial he appeared in last week is the best way of doing that – a stunningly good way, in fact. Suddenly the public debate goes from “what does he deserve from us?” to “is he penitent or not?” There will doubtless be many more moves he has to make in order to keep up this new facade. But this is the facade he has to wear. He can’t go back to being the young kid, impressing us all with his virtuosity. And even if he lands all four major titles in one year he won’t be the golf superstar of the early century (though it will be a pleasant reminder). For the next three years, Tiger will always be the man carrying the cross, or the lady-killer looking to make good, whichever your preference. Tiger’s gone from the face of the future to the Man With a Past.
And if you’re already tired of hearing about Tiger Woods? Relax. This’ll only last for three years.