You want to hate him. But then you get to know him, and he gets to know him�self, and you won�der if Vam�pire Boy might just turn into the man who teaches a gen�er�a�tion of jaded sex sym�bols how to be movie stars we love.
By sep�a�rat�ing his sur�pris�ingly mod�est per�son�al�ity from his gra�tu�itously over�sexed per�sona, Pat�tin�son has obliquely demanded that he be taken seriously.
A funny, unex�pected thing hap�pened to me on a recent Sat�ur�day in New York: I lit�er�ally ran into Robert Pat�tin�son, and he left me� starstruck. He had to earn it, though, as I tend to cow nei�ther to celebri�ties nor the young male heart�throb kind. I�d met the actor at an event for his new film Remem�ber Me, which comes out Fri�day, but an acci�den�tal encounter with him and his entourage in a hotel cor�ri�dor � where the stench of syco�phancy lin�gered like stale piss � got things off on the wrong foot. About twenty min�utes later, Pat�tin�son and a not-quite-as-rank entourage greeted me and a hand�ful of other jour�nal�ists. I didn�t expect much. His vagina aller�gies aside, the world�s most con�spic�u�ous vam�pire since Drac�ula is noto�ri�ously shy, and Remem�ber Me wasn�t espe�cially good. What was left to discuss?
A lot, as it turned out, most of which hinged on the basic sep�a�ra�tion of per�sona from char�ac�ter, of pub�lic from pri�vate, of myth from man. Not that Pat�tin�son him�self, as one of the world�s most in-demand men, would dare reduce his life to such binary terms. Instead, he went on and on about his lim�i�ta�tions. �If I could do sup�port�ing roles in things, then I�d love to do that,� he told me. �But it�s dif�fi�cult to get sup�port�ing roles because it would be really weird most of the time. �Well, there�s the guy from Twi�light play�ing the park�ing war�den,� or some�thing.� He smiled and laughed beneath that noto�ri�ous shock of hair, not quite swear�ing off ambi�tion as much as sug�gest�ing the cost of self-importance was sim�ply too steep to pay � even for a twenty-three-year-old who made $18 mil�lion last year. He was down to earth about being stratos�pher�i�cally famous, and it was� refreshing.
Now I don�t know what exactly I expected from Pat�tin�son, but it def�i�nitely wasn�t this kind of canny pro�file man�age�ment. In a day and age when other young sex sym�bols seem to grap�ple with the bur�den of per�spec�tive, Pat�tin�son tran�scended his brood�ing pul�chri�tude with mod�esty and charm. �What can you do?� he seemed to ask. It�s a shame he couldn�t infuse Remem�ber Me with some of that lilt, but ulti�mately, the movie needs it much less than the gen�eral cul�ture around Pat�tin�son. And by gen�eral cul�ture I mean feed�ing frenzy from mid�dle school gym class to the upper reaches of Hol�ly�wood stu�dios and, yes, to the lives of ordi�nary grown men who like going to the movies.
Indeed, Pat�tin�son might do well to host some sort of sem�i�nar for his col�leagues: Per�sona Con�trol in the New Age of the Sex Sym�bol. From his co-stars in the Twi�light fran�chise to the megas�tar�lets and over�ex�posed princes around whom increas�ingly more of Hol�ly�wood orbits, you can sense the resent�ment of what fame has wrought. I often find them bristling and pout�ing their ways through sur�real every�day sce�nar�ios like the one above, con�sumed with anger and fear that they can have any�thing they want except what they really want: to be taken seri�ously. But as an out�sider, it never occurred to me to take some�one like Robert Pat�tin�son seri�ously at all � until he relin�quished the com�pul�sion to con�vince me. That was the star move, and don�t be sur�prised to see it adopted by an entire gen�er�a�tion of would-be stars once they real�ize that, if they want to sur�vive this racket, they have no other choice.
For starters, take Kris�ten Stew�art, bit�ing her lip in protest � as per usual � on her way to the podium on Oscar night. Pattinson�s Twi�light co-star was all gor�geous, coiled sulk � a hilar�i�ous coun�ter�weight to co-presenter (and her other Twi�light co-star) Tay�lor Laut�ner, whose plas�ticine perma-grin defied Stewart�s pub�lic exis�ten�tial cri�sis. Laut�ner may seem all looks and no brains, but at least he knows when to live in his abject super�star�dom. Not so with the nineteen-year-old Stew�art, who despite grow�ing up in Hol�ly�wood and hav�ing acted half her life still insists on play�ing the out�sider. But what, exactly, are young women like her defend�ing against? Ask any�one who�s worked with Stew�art and they�ll tell you she�s too stub�born, too ambi�tious, and too sen�si�tive to sput�ter out-of-control � to throw away the tal�ent that she�s clearly dis�played in smaller films like The Cake Eaters and Adven�ture�land. In fair�ness, I can�t imag�ine the pres�sure of being teth�ered to her Twi�light siren, Bella Swan, for years to come, either. Yet this con�trived dis�tance between the Stew�art who�ll soon appear as a young Joan Jett in The Run�aways and the one who�ll throw her�self at Pat�tin�son and/or Laut�ner this sum�mer in Eclipse has stretched too thin to sup�port the young woman in the mid�dle. Dis�com�fort in one�s skin is one thing. Snarling enti�tle�ment is another.
Maybe Megan Fox, at twenty-three, can save her�self from the same fate. Much has been made of her appar�ent moti�va�tion to cor�ner the mar�ket on sex sym�bol�ism and voice of a gen�er�a�tion, but I�m one of the few peo�ple who�ll stick up for Jennifer�s Body, which pur�posely enlisted her to demon�strate the steep costs of sex�u�al�ity for sexuality�s sake. That she played along with it (and pulled it off, I swear) was a tes�ta�ment to the �seri�ous actress� Fox can be � the clever young woman who spot�ted and took the oppor�tu�nity to redeem her own myth. The prob�lem is that Fox spent the entire run up to Jennifer�s Body explain�ing the joke to death, com�plete with the angry punch line, �I am a seri�ous actress.� Whereas once she couldn�t out�run the Trans�form�ers fran�chise fast enough, now she appears to real�ize it can enable both con�trast and free�dom in her career. She may have missed this with Jennifer�s Body, but she�ll do bet�ter going for�ward. Or at least as well as the cur�rent face of Empo�rio Armani under�wear and the pistol-packing pros�ti�tute in this summer�s mega-comic-movie Jonah Hex can do with�out blam�ing every�one else for turn�ing her into a car�toon. Pro�fes�sor Pat�tin�son would tell her to just own it, and he�d be right.
Again, I don�t pre�tend to know what it�s like to nego�ti�ate this ter�rain at such an age, and I def�i�nitely wouldn�t ascribe this com�plex to beau�ti�ful young women alone. After all, though they�re a lit�tle older (and should thus know even bet�ter), you can�t escape the likes of John Mayer and Ash�ton Kutcher swoon�ing at their sounds of their own voices. Mayer is Mayer, know�ingly edgy enough to infu�ri�ate but too much of a self-righteous pussy to com�mit � just another blame-the-media type, even if one of the media is Twit�ter and he�s bury�ing him�self 144 char�ac�ters at a time. Kutcher�s not as bad (is any�body?), though I love that he thinks Twit�ter gives him some lever�age against those who�d dare to com�pro�mise his pub�lic cit�i�zenry. �It�s a beau�ti�ful envi�ron�ment,� he said recently. �You can take the con�trol back in your rela�tion�ship with the media. You can dic�tate your own view.� Yes, Ash�ton, because your encoun�ters with Lady Gaga or your upcom�ing film Killers � a roman�tic com�edy with that other persona-embattled young thing, Kather�ine Heigl � demand only the purest stan�dard of dissemination.
But just in case the lessons of Pat�tin�son are lost on them all, there may yet be hope for youth. Watch and see what hap�pens with Greta Ger�wig, the indie dar�ling whom Noah Baum�bach recruited as the female lead in his upcom�ing Ben Stiller dram�edy Green�berg. She already has acquired a sort of mini-legend from her con�certed, clothes-allergic �Mum�blecore� efforts like Han�nah Takes the Stairs and Nights and Week�ends. But Gerwig�s pres�ence oppo�site Stiller � and her charm in the pro�mo�tional realm over the last month � may por�tend a new kind of model for the acces�si�bil�ity of the earth�bound hot�tie. Which also brings to mind Alice Eve, whose She�s Out of My League directly addresses that very acces�si�bil�ity with a schlub played by Jay Baruchel; Eve has done just fine express�ing her con�cerns about objec�ti�fi�ca�tion with�out all the bale�ful moans and mopes.
And of course, there�s Pat�tin�son him�self � that new ambas�sador of extrater�res�trial beauty � who seems to get how fleet�ing, how absurd, how extra�or�di�nary it all really is. Oh, and how to make it work. Shouldn�t we all be so lucky?
Source Via RPLife Via thinkingofrob
No comments:
Post a Comment