The Last Movie Star

A dissenter from the Cult of Clooney speaks out:

[George...] Clooney seems to have inherited the mantle of the supernova movie star. One way you can tell he’s being groomed to replace Jack Nicholson as the Zeus of the Hollywood Olympus is the deference he is paid at awards events. He’s the guy that the emcee and the other actors give a shout out to from the stage, that the camera constantly seeks out. Last night on the Oscar red carpet, Regis Philbin gushed that it used to be "everyone in this town wanted to be Cary Grant, and now they want to be George Clooney”. This week's Time magazine has a cover story titled "George Clooney: The Last Movie Star" in which the author says "this guy… really is a movie star. Maybe the only one we have now."

The only one we have. Wow. There's one teensy-weensy problem, though, that nobody seems to have noticed. One tiny little thing missing from the George Clooney is the World's Biggest Movie Star storyline…nobody watches his movies. [...]

Basically, his argument is that few of Clooney's films have made big money, and those that did so owed as much to Clooney's co-stars as they did to the man himself. The contrast with Will Smith – a.k.a. Mr Fourth of July – in terms of box office takings is striking, but completely misses the point.

Quite apart from the general objection to treating box office take as a measure of anything meaningful to those not entitled to a share of the gross, there's the question of why people are film stars. It's not the money, it's the quality of the films, the iconic roles. We don't remember Cary Grant for his films' box office takings, but for his performances. Half a dozen of Clooney's films are going to be both remembered fondly and regarded as at least minor classics thirty years from now.¹ Thus far Will Smith's best shot at immortality is probably Ali; his biggest box office hits are destined to look somewhat quaint at best thirty years on.

If you're going to argue for anyone as a rival to George Clooney in the World's Biggest (Male) Movie Star stakes, it'd be Tom Cruise: although his star has fallen somewhat lately, when he was on the way up Tom Cruise mixed big, commercial films and films with more adventurous directors.

[Via kottke.org]

1. Whilst it's certainly true that in some cases Clooney benefited greatly from working with the likes of the Coen Brothers or Steven Soderbergh, that's no different to Cary Grant's good fortune in working with Hitchcock and Howard Hawks and Frank Capra. Other than Michael Mann, which top-drawer writers and directors has Will Smith worked with? ↩