Celebrities
The death of Paul Newman this past weekend was a big blow to the world of actors who can both act and carry off being a hot-shot celebrity. In Hollywood these days, they don't make 'em like they used to.
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It's been a bad weekend. They say celebrity deaths come in threes, but we've had two in two days and both were so unexpected, so early, that their load feels unbearably heavy. We don't need a third loss, thank you very much. First, genial and wickedly funny comic Bernic Mac, dead at 50. And now, legendary singer, songwriter, actor, and owner of many other entertainment job titles, the one, the only, Isaac Hayes.
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I awakened early this morning to the news that comedian Bernie Mac had died at age 50 of pneumonia. Mac, born Bernard McCullough, was hospitalized late last week and, despite suffering from sarcoidosis, an inflammatory lung disease, he was expected to be released and to recover. All of which made this morning's news that much more surprising and sad.
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The photos of Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie's twins, Knox and Vivienne, hit the newsstands on Monday in the latest issue of People magazine (the cover photo went live on the magazine's Web site Sunday afternoon and can be seen here). People paid a reported $15 million for the photos, which will be featured in a 19-page spread in the magazine.
The magazine's editors hope interest in the celebrity babies will be strong enough that folks will plunk down their diminishing discretionary dollars to buy the issue. Will you? Do you plan to buy the latest issue of the celebrity magazine? Or will you merely look at the photos while standing in the check-out line instead of buying a copy?
Full disclosure: I was never a huge fan of "Sesame Street." Though I continue to compare people's behavior, from time to time, to that of Snuffleupagus, I wasn't impressed with the Muppet-driven show when it was age-appropriate for me, and my feelings didn't change when my youngest brother was born more than a decade later and I had a chance to re-formulate an opinion.
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I'll be the first to admit that I spend a great deal of time on the Internet looking at paparazzi pictures of celebrities. I'll also admit that I think 99 percent of this stuff is garbage and makes me glad I'm not a big shot star (at least not in my own mind).
The only reason I bring this up -- because by now I've learned that all of you who tirelessly read about celebrities actually hate reading about celebrities -- is because two noteworthy photos surfaced this week. One photo shows Britney Spears smoking a cigarette in a bikini as her 2 1/2-year-old son Preston stands nearby, getting ready to lift her smokes off of a table. This image was actually on the cover of the New York Post, teasing a story about how horrible a mother Britney is.
The other image shows Brad Pitt out for a cruise in a golf cart with his young daughter Shiloh riding on his lap. The photo is reminiscent of Britney again, who got more bad mothering heat for riding in her car with one of her kids on her lap.
Some will say Britney and Brad should know better by now, that they live their lives within range of long camera lenses and everything is fair game because they're celebrities. I'm not going to condone the actions being taken in either of these photos, but I think that's a little crazy. It's ridiculous to expect these people to be perfect at every turn when we, the people who feed on their every misstep, would look just as silly under the same microscope.
Regardless of Brad and Brit's parenting skills, who in their right mind would want to be a megawatt star in this day and age? Do the hotels and the boats and the cars and the houses really offset the lack of privacy that comes with being pursued 24-7?
Think about it as the helicopter hovers overhead as you stand there looking bloated in your bikini, your 2-year-old momentarily reaching for your cigarettes before a picture is snapped and sent around the world. Would it really be worth the hit record or the blockbuster movie?
Much has been made of Katharine Heigl's comments that she wasn't worthy of an Emmy nomination this year because the "Grey's Anatomy" writers didn't give her an Emmy-worthy storyline to work with. Mark Harris makes a very thoughtful argument in defense of Heigl in the July 25 issue of Entertainment Weekly (page 18 if you have a copy. I'd post a link but EW.com doesn't have it up yet). Some have argued that the comment was a ploy by Heigl to get herself written off the show so she can pursue her movie career (hopefully with movies much better than "27 Dresses"). Rumor has it that the "Grey's" writers will give Heigl her wish, they are going to give her character, Dr. Isobel "Izzie" Stevens, a fatal brain tumor. All is can say to that is ... YES!
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You'd have to be dead to not know that this is a big week for a particular movie star who is no longer with us. Heath Ledger's turn as the Joker in the new Batman film is being hyped and hailed as Oscar worthy, and for the first time since "No Country For Old Men" I'll probably make a trip to the theater.
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For me, Ledger falls into the category of celebrities who died too soon and are actually worth missing. His death from an accidental overdose of prescription pills in January was a shocker and my sympathy for those who were actually close to him is coupled with my own selfish regret that I'll no longer see him on screen. I felt the same way when River Phoenix died in 1993 -- again very talented, very young and again from a drug overdose.
In 1994, I was deeply saddened when Nirvana lead singer Kurt Cobain took his own life. Something about having the architect of your life's current soundtrack suddenly disappear will put a crimp in your turntable. I imagine many people felt the same way about Elvis or Jimi Hendrix or Janis Joplin or John Lennon or Jim Morrison or ...
Is it the shocking death that makes the star burn brighter for us? Plenty of huge stars live into old age and die with less media fanfare than Ledger. Leaving one final critically acclaimed performance on celluloid doesn't appear to hurt one's legacy. Yet how do we explain Anna Nicole Smith or the inevitable next star who burns out without leaving a body of work one would deem worthy of the coverage their death generates?
As we appreciate the work of the Joker this week and watch the box office dollars roll in for "The Dark Knight," take a moment to remember an actor or musician who impacted your life and was then gone, too soon. Are you still affected by what this person left behind when you see or hear it? Do you appreciate it for what it was then and leave it at that, or do you wish he was still alive today as whatever brand of entertainer time had turned him into?
Everyone has always misspelled my first name. But the more I read about celebrity baby names, the less I feel like complaining. With this weekend's arrival of Knox Leon and Vivienne Marcheline Jolie-Pitt, let's review this latest batch of star baby monikers.
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Just when I thought my "Vacation" from the 80s might be permanently over, back came Christie Brinkley this week. The Girl in the Ferrari, as IMDb.com lists her for that 1983 movie, zoomed onto the gossip pages and cable TV with her lurid, public Long Island divorce trial. Aren't you glad?
I guess the saving grace is that the proceedings against soon-to-be-ex-husband Peter Cook ended fairly quickly thanks to a settlement between the two parties Thursday. Brinkley gets the kids and the knowledge that a certain segment of the public that paid attention now knows Cook was her fourth husband. And they know that the decision to go public with the (normally) private and (likely) devastating business of dismantling a marriage was her idea. And that same tuned-in public now knows that Cook cheated on his supermodel wife with a teenager he met at a toy store. And he spent a good deal of money every month on Internet pornography. He gets $2.1 million in the settlement.
I don't feel like I'm better off for knowing any of the information I learned from this entire public display. Marriages end in crummy ways -- knew that. People look at porn online and spend lots of money doing so -- knew that. I guess what I didn't know is that a once famous Sports Illustrated swimsuit model was in a lousy relationship with a jerk. Was it worth it for me to know that, Christie? Your kids are 10 and 13. Did their friends need to know everything?
A court-appointed psychiatrist, Dr. Stephen Herman, testified that Brinkley needs to examine her taste in men and that Cook is a narcissist with a bottomless ego. There's your one-line takeaway from this week's "Vacation" from reality to celebrityland.
