Biopic predictions: who will become fodder for 2060's blockbusters?

A recent article in the New York Times article pointed out the gutsy side of producing a movie like The Social Network: "[Hurdles faced] included the need to tell a less than complimentary tale about a billionaire, Mr. Zuckerberg, without owning rights to his life story."  It must indeed be difficult to produce a somewhat autobiographical movie about someone who is still alive, and additionally not on board with the project; it seems somewhat distasteful, presumptuous, and patronizing to claim to tell someone's life story for them, regardless of how impartial they may be.  This is why I imagine it to be much much easier to tell someone's life story once they are dead and therefore can no longer protest, make disgruntled statements to the press, and cannot legally be defamed.  Or at least, wait until they are really really old and can't be bothered.

This leaves me to wonder, who, in 50 years time, will be being immortalized, romanticized, demonized in Hollywood blockbuster biopic.  Which of our greatest idols and icons will become grist to the mill of the silver screen creatives?  Whose emotional angst, struggles against the politico-corporate machine, starry-eyed dreams will set against a swelling score and soft lighting?  Here are some of my best guesses:

1) Jon Stewart:  Stewart's life seems like a prime specimen for biopic fodder, filled with big political issues, corruption, famous people, and the glamorous press, as well as good ole' American dream angle.  From a confused, brainiac young adult working various jobs, he rises through his talent and perseverance to become one of the most influential political commentators and entertainment innovators ever!!!!  He takes on the Man through his subversive and intelligent comedy.  And just when everything seems to be going perfect for him and his has a successful satirical rally, the existential crisis hits:  Is he a political figure or an entertainer?  Is he a serious journalist or a mere actor?  Oh the angst, the angst!  But somehow, with the help of his loving and supportive family and business partners, he gets through it.  I'm not saying this biopic will be good or even accurate, but I can definitely see it happening.  Maybe we will even get dueling biopics, one financed by the old boys conservatives and the other envisioned by the morally dubious flaming liberal.  And then 30 years later they can make a film about that! . . . And if no one buys any of this with the Jon Stewart name we can just rebrand it with Stephen Colbert.

2)  Angelina Jolie:  Ok, there is a reason why no one has made a Marilyn Monroe or Elizabeth Taylor  yet (that I am aware of) so maybe Jolie will just as too-iconic, but the material is so great!  Mysterious actress, troubled and raucous teenager, heartthrobs and romantic scandal--- home wrecking???, philanthropy and global good-willing, celebrity babies.  There is enough her for an HBO special series.  Or one could simply adapt a dramatic play written about the epic and immortal Aniston-Jolie rivalry (Oscar nominations for the lad who gets to play the supporting role of Pitt) while someone else produces Angelina: mother to the third world.  Perhaps a trilogy: first Angelina, and if that does well enough follow up with Brad and then Jennifer.  Where, oh where to begin!  [Of course there is the potential risk that her many many children will be able to keep the lawsuits coming.]

3) We can be sure that there will be some people from the music industry up for optioning (just think of the added revenue when they merchandise the soundtrack) but who will it be.  Certainly not Gaga for the same reason no one has attempted Bowie.  But who will it be:  Bieber, West, Rihanna (she does have a compelling domestic abuse storyline primed for exploitation).  Depending on how she ends up, Lohan has been doing her best to make her life full of dramatic arcs, but she is a bit too obvious.  I would put my money on Britney Spears or Madonna.  In a dreamworld, their lives could be explored in a sort of artsy mash-up a la The Hours as we watch one youngling crash and burn only the eventually pick herself up again while the pop sensation grows old, finding herself sad and alone in her old age.

4)  Katie Holmes:  We just know that once Shiloh comes of age she is going to write a tell-all memoir about what really went on in the Cruise family.  Will it be a Mommie Dearest expose or will it reveal  Cruise as a manic brainwasher turning Holmes in a Stepford?

5)  Obama: for obvious reasons

6) Sarah Palin:  Someone has to get the bottom of how this insane woman came to be a nationally recognized politician?  celebrity?  what?  what is she?  Someone please interpret her existence for us!

7)  Stephenie Meyer or JK Rowling: Oh the saga of the rags-to-riches story! Meyer might make for better material as her work continues to illicit raving mobs of both rabid fans and enraged haters.  After struggling to get her work published, how will she cope with this mixed reception?  How do both women cope with their sudden riches?  How??? HOW????

8) Various Corrupt or Whistle-Blowing Politicians or Businessmen

Runners Up:  Heath Ledger (maybe), Oprah (if we dare), Elton John, Hilary Clinton, Zuckerberg???  We need some sort of new media innovator on this list!

Can the Beholder be wrong?

"Beauty is in the eye of the beholder," we say.  And to at least some extent, this is true.

Once the objet d'art is created and displayed, the artist certain retains little control over its reception, interpretation and perhaps most importantly, its being understood.  We all blithely concede that each person who looks upon a painting with not depart from the viewing with the same impression of the piece or with duplicate feelings and emotions stirring within them.  One onlooker views the Mona Lisa or a Picasso or Warhol or Pollack and thinks it a pleasing enough work of art.  Another finds himself overcome, tears pouring down his face.  A third, while understanding the artistic merit and historical relevance, thinks the entire thing quite ugly and shudders to think of it hanging above her sofa.  [A fourth, perhaps we can imagine, just doesn't 'get' this whole art business and silently contemplates the dullness of this entire outing.]

Now, my dilemma is this: does this apply to the written word and narrative?

Generally speaking, does not an author compose his prose with a certain thesis, theme, exploration, or conclusion in mind, however general?  Is there not always something the reader is meant to realize, do, or understand?  This can be as specific as after reading this essay or watching this documentary one should ban the Twilight series from all school reading lists and libraries, or it might be as general as, after reading this novel or viewing this film, one should be reflecting upon one's attitudes toward love--- but what is fundamental is that this "it" is always there.

Therefore, one can actually leave a work of prose or narrative with an impression or understanding of the work's meaning (purpose, theme, thesis, moral etc.) that is, in fact, wrong.

As an example, I shall recount an event that inspired me upon these reflections:

I recently watched an excellent television miniseries, a costume drama that follows the life of a upper class British family from 1870s until the 1920s.  Presupposing the work's lovely cinematography, dumbfounding,  stunning costuming and cast as a given, what is most extraordinary about this series is its delicate handling of its two central characters: a rich, profoundly repressed, and jealous young man who and the young, beautiful, artistic, poor woman who naively marries him to relieve the temporary financial burdens of her father's death.  As expected the marriage quickly turns sour, fraught the inherent unsuitability of the partners, the husband's fervent but repressed passion for his wife, her deadening depression and unhappiness, the complete inability of either to communicate with the other, complicated by the husband's obsession with viewing their relationship in terms of ownership and rights--- a view that is sanctioned by society's rules, both social and legal.  Both parties do rather horrible things, but with the cards so stacked against her, I think it is fair to say, as one character does, "I rather think she has suffered more."  Regardless, the beauty of the series is its ability to keep the viewer from completely villainizing either character.  Somehow it manages to keep an adulteress and a rapist profoundly sympathetic, and as it took such pains to do so, I assume that one of the main aims of the narrative is to reveal the complexities of a failed marriage, explore the incompatibilities of people with different understandings of love, and the devastating and destructive nature of Victorian views of marriage and wifely obligation and husbands' rights.

So, I was greatly taken with this series, considered it a triumph, a great success, and consequently suggested it to my mother.

One can imagine my astonishment when she reports back to me her complete lack of sympathy for the wife.  She found her completely unsympathetic, and generally, she brings all her suffering upon herself due to her "not trying at all to make her marriage work."  I tried to counter that she does try somewhat, and that as the early months of their marriage is skipped over we can probably assume that she probably tried more and also had to recover the the sheer shock of discovering the true jealous, repressed and misunderstanding nature of her husband, and that she does acknowledge becoming both cold and apathetic but being too depressed to rise to the occasion.  I also pointed out that her husband not only generally smothers her and misunderstands her, but is completely incapable of considering her wants more than superficially (especially as they are usually counter his own), yells at her and berates her, bars her from seeing her friends and plots behind her back to essentially hoard her to himself in a secret house in the country.  My mother's response: well he buys her all those nice things, and he only does those terrible things as a reaction to her apathy and coldness.  She doesn't even try to communicate with him or make him or herself happy.

I am, in short, flabbergasted in that my mother has watched the same miniseries as I and come away with an impression not only completely opposite my own, but completely opposite what I perceived to be the fundamental message and purpose of the narrative itself.  For example, the fact that the husband attempts to win his wife over by showing her with gifts, in my book, cannot be used in his defense because the film uses those very actions to demonstrate his inability to understand her, his inability to express himself outside of the terms of ownership, and his inability to consider her desires above his own.  The man literally rapes his wife (or as he probably understands it, demands his husbandly privileges) and then buys her a ruby necklace in the morning, and cannot understand why this does not remedy their frosty relationship.

My mother's considering the wife not only unsympathetic, but completely at fault for the failed marriage due to her frigidness and lack of wifely effort is not just in opposition to mine, but is actually the incorrect way to interpret the narrative and not what it intends the viewer to conclude.  She is wrong.

But is she?  Can one have an incorrect interpretation?  This returns me to my original concern.  Is beauty in the really eye of the beholder.  My mother and I have found different and opposing 'beauties;' can they coexist?  Or can the beholder view the thing entirely wrong? In some cases of art we seem to say, "Yes of course!  You completely misread that passage!" and other times we seem to say "No, of course not.  It is up to interpretation."  Does the answer to this question lie with the artist's intent?  If the artist intends degrees of interpretation, then interpretation cannot be wrong or incorrect, but if not, and he desperately tries to steer the beholder to see things from a certain vantage point (a practice around which filmmaking and narrative I think revolves and excels in mastery) interpretations based on an extremely distorted point of view can be wrong.  Or do we hold fast to the maxim of beauty-finding being the sole privilege of the beholder?

Or more perplexing even still, if we take a leaf from the book of Oscar Wilde, is all this disagreement really just an expression of some discordant element in the worldviews of my mother and I?  Wilde writes: "It is the spectator, and not life, that art really mirrors."  So, perhaps, neither of us wrong.

Although, I can't help but feeling, as most probably do, that when it comes down to it, I am right and that the makers of the series would agree with me.

Residence Hall Safety at Rutgers

Most of this post was written as an intended comment to the coverage and discussion of the recent suicide of a Rutgers student by Jezebel.com. But as I was writing it, it became something longer, but something I still wanted to put out there for people to think about.

For the specifics of what went/is going on I'm going to direct people to the article and comments I am responding to: http://jezebel.com/5650995/rutgers-sex+spy-victim-commits-suicide and the new articles they link to at the end of the post. The basics of the situation is that a Rutgers student was recently taped (without his or his partner's consent) having sex with a same-sex partner by a webcam planted in his dorm room by his roommate and another student. The two students then broadcast the video on the internet. They were arrested, and charged with invasion of privacy. Devastatingly however, the victim (of this invasion of privacy? assault? hate crime? see the discussion at the link above) is now believed to have committed suicide on the 23rd.

This breaking of this story is causing a lot of discussion about criminal charges, legal issues, hate crime, harassment, young peoples' lack of empathy and respect, university culture, suicide and depression etc. but I want to bring up an additional factor: student safety at Rutgers, specifically student-housing resident safety:

I am a graduate student at Rutgers and also just this month moved my little sister into her Rutgers dorm for the start of her freshman year. On move-in day my parents and I were simply flabbergasted by the condition of the locks in my sister’s residence hall. Her co-ed dorm (which is supposed to be by far one of the best Rutgers has to offer according to word of mouth) is set up in a suite-style: 3 two-person bedrooms with a communal bathroom and common room. Each suite of course has a door, and each bedroom has a door. However, while the suite door has a “security lock,” the bedroom doors have “privacy locks” (to use housing office terminology).

What is a “privacy lock”? Essentially, a lock that does not work. Residents are given a key to their bedroom privacy lock, but it is not necessary. Anything will open a privacy lock: the official key, my dad’s car key, a quarter, my thumbnail, shoving the doorknob with enough force. It basically functions just long enough for the resident inside the room to, as my sister’s RA put it, shout “Wait, wait, wait! I’m changing! Don’t come in yet.”

My parents did all they could to keep from guffawing with astonishment when they discovered the ineptitude of this ‘privacy lock’ and its apparent normalcy. They went, as one would predict, to talk to a housing staffer about getting the lock fixed or replaced. What they were told is that the university can replace the lock, but only at the expense of the resident; “Privacy locks” were a normal and unproblematic issue. In other words: if you cough up the $200 to buy a new lock for us, we will keep your child safe. And of course, if you don’t, we are not liable for any loss of valuables.

This is an outrageous enough demand, but what has further frustrated my parents is the university’s attitude toward their concerns. They have responded as if my parents’ refusal find this security policy acceptable puts them into the category of the crazy college-student parents that one hears about in horror stories. Seemingly oblivious not only to basic assault and sexual assault statistics in general, but also school-specific violence and sex crime issues (Collegetown creeper anyone?), and complacent towards the theft in the Rutgers/New Brunswick area, they point out that there is after all a quite functional lock on the suite door.

But what anyone who has lived in campus dorms can point out: 1) that still leaves free access to a resident’s private room open to 4 additional people (beside the roommate) and anyone these people invite into the suite; 2) dorm culture often finds residents leaving their suite doors open, in (falsely-secure) efforts to foster community and camaraderie--- and this is a common practice in this particular dorm; and 3) even though there is card-access to the building, it is usually not difficult to gain access to a dorm if you are a friend of someone inside, loiter around the entrance long enough, are a delivery person, or are an official or official-looking university staff or maintenance person.

This means my sister, and any other resident, is actually unable to reasonably and confidently protect her/himself from not only theft of valuables (such as a computer, which a lot of Rutgers students can probably not afford to replace) but also from breaches of privacy, sexual or physical assault (remember, a lot of sexual assailants are people known to the victim), grey-areas of participation in illegal or banned drug/substance use going on in the suite (at many universities, even if you are not using the drugs/alcohol or know about their presence, if your door is open, your room is considered part of the space in which the illegal activity is going on)---- and let us remember school shootings, something for which most universities now claim to have protocols and security measure. But what do security officials usually advise individuals to do in these situations? Barricade yourself in your room. My sister cannot really effectively do that unless she has the time to push her dresser against the door. Additionally, all this applies to situations in which the resident is conscious and present, and if they are unconscious, for example, if they are, oh I don’t know, sleeping?

To get back to the events of the original Jezebel post: I’m not saying Rutgers’ housing/security policies or conditions are responsible for the independent malicious and harmful intentions/actions of these students, but I do think they should be asked to account for creating conditions in which crimes like this are extremely easy to perpetrate.

In my opinion, the university is demonstrating clearly that they do not care about their students’ (especially female students’*) safety, privacy, and therefore well-being. A call for replacement of old and dysfunctional locks in campus housing is not an outlandish request. But especially now, in light to the budgeting crisis, the university seem more interested in increasing enrollment to cover costs, pouring money into the underwhelming football program (see this opinion article for just a taste of the football issues http://www.dailytargum.com/opinions/let-athletes-choose-their-own-paths-1.2337417), and luxury construction projects like the new ‘welcome center,’ than actually spending money where it is needed and in the interests of its students.

While, I am only familiar with this one dorm and cannot speak to the conditions of the dorm involved in this particular criminal case, it is something I intend to investigate and needs to be investigated in general. As my sister’s dorm is “one of the best” I am going to speculate that the security measures in the other dorms are likely to be the same, if not worse.

This is an issue that I think other people and other Rutgers’ families need to hear about. With student/parent outrage at the continuing tuition hikes and the moving of costs to ‘student fees’ (which are often not covered by many forms of financial aid) this is yet another cost a student is expected to absorb (or not absorb at his/her own risk), and yet another example of the university’s inability or unwillingness to put the student first.

*This is a “female” issue for me simply because of the statistical likeliness of females to be sexually assaulted. But clearly, most (even all) of the concerns I’ve touched on are issues that affect all genders, and as this article/incident demonstrates, we should remember this should certainly include those of non-traditional genders and sexual orientations. In addition, I do think this is an ‘income’ issue and thereby possibly a racial issue, as those with resources are more able to purchase their child’s safety and absorb the financial costs of theft and trauma.

P.S. If you are familiar with the Rutgers dorms, especially if security measures in other buildings vary greatly from what I have described, or if you just want to send some information or corrections my way, please do.

My love affair with Kristen Stewart continues

Since Kristen seduced me with her BAFTA speech, I have found myself feeling more and more protective of her. She did her duty as a presenter (probably invited in order to draw in the younger viewers) at the Oscars last weekend. Even though she was one of the few ladies who took the stage that did not have serious difficulty going down the stairs, the blogosphere hated on her for clearing her throat between sentences. I never realized coughing was such an ultimate faux pas!

Likewise, Joan Rivers (who, granted, is mean to everyone) spat some venom her direction. As her co-commentors tried to mercifully point out that K Stewart was cutting a pretty good rug on the red carpet as someone who was normally really bad at it or "anti-red carpet, anti-glam," Rivers tells her to then "get out of the business." I mean, seriously, how excessive! A talented, promising actress should not be forced out of the business because she feels uncomfortable with interviews, expensive dresses, and wild displays of self-importance.

But was perhaps more irksome was the response of some of my fellow Oscar-watchers. As Taylor Lautner and K Stewart came onstage to announce the tribute to horror movies, several girls around me started to boo:

Girls: (generally) Boooo!!!
Girl 1: (about Taylor) I like him. Don't boo him, boo her.
Girl 2: Yeah, she is so annoying. I'm not booing him, I'm booing her.
Girls: (at K) Boo!

I'm just as willing to jump into a hate-fest on Twilight and Bella, but people's ability to distinguish between the actor and the character seems to be rather selective, especially when it comes down to gender. I feel like in general no one is really blaming the Twilight boys for the fan frenzy that follows them around. Sure some people complain that RPatz is ugly and that they don't understand what all the fuss is about, but they don't seem to blame the rabid fan-girl pestilence up on him personally. It is rather the fault of the rabid fan girls. Taylor's plague of fan-girl locusts is slightly more tolerated by the critics, mostly because he is not RPatz and general Team Jacobness. But again, he is not blamed for the phenomenon. Rather the two male actors are often depicted as victims of insane, tween, vampire wannabees. However, this coutsey seems not to be extended to Kristen Stewart.

Instead she is hated on for (1) being Bella (and I find this the most sympathetic argument), (2) being popular, and (3) struggling with her fame. The boys of course have the likability of their characters working for them, but issuse (2) and (3) should be just as applicable to them as it is to K Stewart. However, instead the public seems to covet and sympathize with RPatz and TL, while booing Stewart off the stage and telling her to stop feeling sorry for herself. It is hard for me not to this as arising from (a) female viewers jealously of Kristen Stewart for being linked to these handsome men (and being gorgeous and popular) and (b) the unfair standards of perfection set for celebrity women rather than men. While it is ok for men to complain about being harassed by fans and tabloids, when Kristen Stewart-- a young and developing person-- struggles with the limelight, she should apparently throw in the towel, pack her bags, and never show her face again. It is additionaly irritating to hear her take such disproportional flack for the Twilight phenomenon, when compared with her male costars, especially since, let's face it, she's got the better credentials. Stewart has definitely proven herself to the industry and looks on track to continue to do so. Don't see Lautner or RPatz with a BAFTA, do we? If anyone should be staying the game, it should be K Stewart.

I was glad to see Stewart some what stand up for herself when she appeared on Leno. Defending her cough, for which she has been much ridiculed, she points out if she had not cleared her throat she would not have been able to finish the sentence, which she reckons would have irritated people more. Also, she adds that she finds the whole 'cough' controversy quite funny because she had been in fact so proud of herself that night for getting through the lines and the evening without any serious embarassments.

And I say, yes Kristen, be proud! It is the rest of us snarky women that should be ashamed.

Puppy Love: Michael Sheen

I have decided to be in love with Michael Sheen this week. For some reason, seeing the fantastic, versatile, fun, adorable actor at the Oscars this year threw me into a fit of rapture and adoration. Almost weeping tears of joy, I exclaimed to my fellow tv watchers "It's Michael Sheen! Michael Sheen! I love him!" None of them cared at all, so in a fit of self-indulgence I am going to celebrate him briefly with this post (I cannot wait to see him in Tron!).

Not only is he super cute, charming, and a beautiful actor but he makes following his career quite an enjoyable romp, going from serious dramatic films to imaginative, scifi films. And he makes all of the random characters majorly attractive.

For example, he rocks the dated hair as suave David Frost in Frost/Nixon:




















He, of course, places Aro in New Moon. Here he is being an awesome dad at the premiere:





















But he has also played Tony Blair in three different films, most notably of course, The Queen:














and the classy (but so passionate) Lucian from Underworld. What a dreamboat!





















And I cannot forget his terrific, flamboyant, snobby, yet tragic Miles from one of my favorite films, Bright Young Things (which I think might warrant its own post one of these days). Here he is with another of my puppy loves, Stephen Campbell Moore (and Fenella Woolgar).

In addition to being all the various sorts of stupendous he is, he is also really really funny. If you love him anywhere near as much as I do, check him out on the Graham Norton Show and fall in love.

Angelina's evil plot against the world

So this week the tabloids, gossip columnists and other lame people have been having brain aneurisms over Shiloh Jolie-Pitt's hair. Egad! It is short! It is boyish! FREAK OUT!!!

"WHY IS ANGELINA TURNING SHILOH INTO A BOY??????"

This is just ridiculous on soooooooooo many levels.

(1) Who cares? Maybe the kid likes to dress that way. Has anyone bothered to ask her opinion? Thought not! And besides, it could have a very logical explanation: My parents kept my hair quite short because I fussed and cried so much when they brushed my hair. Don't like have your hair brushed kid, fine, we'll make it so you don't have to have your hair brushed. Sounds like a good plan to me. Did I feel oppressed and traumatized about it? No!

(2) Who on earth really thinks Angelina has some sort of radical counter-cultural plot to turn her child into a boy? Insane people. And you know, plenty of parents go out of their way to protect their kids from limiting gender roles. It is nothing new. It is nothing to call social services about. In fact young girls who display more androgynous characteristics tend to have higher self-esteem.

(3) Taking on gender roles and encouraging your kid to defy them is pretty darn awesome! We should all do it more often. Go Angelina!

(4) And wait a just a flipping minute, how is this all Angelina's fault anyway??????

(5) I'm sorry but WTF!!!!!!!! is with the comparisons to Suri Cruz? Who on earth decided that she was the penultimate example of little girlhood? Is the press really trying to pit two celebrity CHILDREN against each other? Really? REALLY? Can't we at least wait until they are a tad older, and maybe, I don't know, can read and write? AND since when are Suri and mom saints with their high-heeled shoes and designer purses that we all spat out our spleens over last week? You can't have it both ways people!

(6) This whole issue is so freaking stupid I makes me want to spit!!!! We are supposed to live in a new modern and accepting world full of liberal minded PC people. And it is suddenly ok to go all bad-mother-finger-pointing because a TODDLER is tomboyish? How on EARTH are we supposed to accept ADULTS who transgress these apparently set-in-stone rules and regulations.

AHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! **is a figurative one-person riot**