 Starring: Brad Pitt, Casey Affleck, Mary-Louise Parker, Sam Rockwell
Director: Andrew Dominik
Year Of Release: 2007
Plot: 19-year-old Robert Ford idolises outlaw Jesse James and wants to join his gang. However Ford’s love of James starts to give way to disillusionment when he see that his idol is paranoid and unpredictable. The film explores the two men’s difficult relationship, leading up to the event referenced in the title and then showing how Ford and his brother exploited their notoriety. |
They say you should never meet your idols and that’s certainly true for Robert Ford (Casey Affleck) in The Assassination Of Jesse James By The Coward Robert Ford. Impressed by the reports of Jesse James' (Brad Pitt) outlaw ways, Ford sets out to find the bandit and try to join his gang. But whereas the Jesse James depicted in the newspapers is dashing and almost Robin Hood-like, in reality he’s a paranoid, distant and somewhat heartless man.
As always the reality of a genuine human being can’t live up to what Ford has created in his mind, and he ends up killing James partly out of anger that the outlaw was such a massive disappointment compared to what he hoped he would be.
I’d have to say that while Robert Ford’s reaction was a little extreme and that killing any idols who have disappointed you isn’t to be recommended, it is true that it’s often best not to get too close to celebrities and others who you’ve put on a pedestal, because sometimes it’s better not to spoil things with first-hand knowledge of the fact they’re actually just normal human beings.
Over the years I’ve been fortunate enough to see and/or interview quite a lot of movie stars (I know that makes me sound like I’m just boasting, but I’m well aware that it’s not particularly impressive). As a massive film fan, I can’t help getting a bit excited when I see a movie star that I like, even though it seems compulsory for film journalists to act as if celebrities are the most boring things on the planet.
Sometimes you see someone famous and it’s great. For example I once rather randomly shared an elevator with Kurt Russell. I didn’t say a word to him and he didn’t say a word to me, but it was bizarrely thrilling to be doing something so everyday as riding an elevator, but with the star of Escape From New York stood beside you. I know it’s stupid and that celebrity is somewhat meaningless, but it’s difficult not to get excited in circumstances like that. Perhaps best of all was that he was talking to an assistant about how the studio was completely screwing up the marketing of his latest movie, which allowed me to feel like I was some sort of insider journo, even though I blatantly wasn’t.
However while things like that are cool, oftentimes it’s difficult not to come away feeling slightly underwhelmed by a star encounter. For a start a lot of celebrities don’t look right. It may come as a disappointment to some, but most movie stars aren’t as good looking in real life as they are on camera, as reality reveals the flaws that the camera covers up (although oddly a few celebs are actually more attractive than they are on the screen). Even more disturbing is that an inordinate number of them have giant heads.
I swear to God it’s true. I’m not sure whether it’s that many stars are ridiculously skinny and therefore their heads look bigger by comparison, or whether people with genuinely oversized bonces look better on screen and are more likely to become stars, but there have been several times where I’ve been genuinely shocked about how oddly proportioned some movie stars are.
For example Tom Cruise has a reputation for being short, however at 5' 7" it’s not like the Little People Of America will be inviting him to join them anytime soon. Where I think the reputation has come from is that he has a very small waist and a big head, which makes his body look small and therefore gives the impression that he’s shorter than he is. It’s the same with Arnold Schwarzenegger, who’s 6' 2" but looks rather squat from a distance despite the muscles, again because of the big head.
It’s often even worse for women, who in Hollywood are forced to be skeletally thin (and when you see some of them they really do look like they might snap at any moment), which tends to make their heads look oversized whether they are really any bigger than normal or not. They also often have volumised hair, which makes their heads seem even more enormous. I remember seeing the female cast of TV’s Friends standing in a line and thinking it looked like a bobblehead convention. Sorry, for being a bitch, but it’s true.
However it’s not just that a lot of movie stars don’t look right that means it might be best to leave them on the silver screen rather than trying to get close to them in real life.
I’ve been fortunate enough to encounter two of the stars of The Assassination Of Jesse James By The Coward Robert Ford, Brad Pitt and Mary-Louise Parker, both of whom are actors I like an awful lot. However, I can’t help but half-wish my first real-life encounter with each of them hadn’t happened.
I first saw Brad Pitt before I became a jaded film journalist when I was living in LA. My apartment was just around the corner from the Mann Village Theater in Westwood, which is where many of the big Hollywood premieres are held (more premieres take place in Westwood than actually happen in Hollywood itself), and so being a sad bastard I used to wander down in the evening and go star spotting.
One of the premieres was for Erin Brockovich, and the after-party was being held across the road in a multi-storey car park (that’s how glamorous Hollywood is - they hold their parties in a car park), so I stood around watching people going from the cinema to the party. While most of those in attendance, such as Julia Roberts and Denzel Washington, walked across the road, for some reason Brad Pitt and Jennifer Aniston (who were together at the time) decided they needed to take a car to travel the 100ft between the cinema and the party – although to be fair, if I had a chauffeur, I’d never walk anywhere either.
The result was that their car pulled up right next to where I was standing and the next thing I know I’m standing face-to-face with Brad Pitt. Not being quite as used to celebrities as I am now, I completely froze and didn’t know what to do with myself.
People around me started to call out to get an autograph (a lot of the people who stand outside Hollywood premieres are professional autograph hunters who take celebrity photos with them and then get people to sign them so they can sell them on E-Bay), and despite my frozen state, I did manage to pull out a pad of lined paper that I happened to have with me and thrust it in his face.
Brad dutifully signed my pad while giving me an odd look, as obviously he wasn’t expecting to sign random bits of lined paper that some bloke forced into his path. He was very nice and friendly, but I couldn’t help feeling disappointed afterwards, just because of my reaction. You’d hope that when you meet your idols that you’ll give a good impression of yourself. However for the millisecond that I’d got close to one of the biggest celebrities on the planet, I must have looked like some sort of star-struck freak. The little look he gave me certainly suggested that he was wondering what the hell I was. However I got an autograph out of it, so it wasn’t a complete loss.
With Mary Louise Parker it was a few year later, by which time I’d been a movie journo for quite a while and had become used to interviewing all sorts of people, and I was going to talk to her about the DVD release of the first season of TV’s Weeds. However from Fried Green Tomatoes to Angels In America, I think she’s one of the best actresses on the planet, and so it was difficult not to get excited about talking to her. I couldn’t help but hope that it’d be a good interview, that she’d give interesting answers and that I’d get some genuine insight into this person that I like so much.
From the moment I started talking to her, I realised that I’s committed the cardinal sin and was expecting her to be the Mary-Louise Parker I’d created in my head rather than a real person. She was friendly enough and answered my questions, but she seemed slightly disinterested and bored and I can’t say I felt any connection with her at all.
Of course this wasn’t her fault. Once I’d typed it up, it was actually a pretty good interview, but she’d had a long day of doing press and I was probably the 3000th person to ask her basically the same questions. It’s not surprising then that she didn’t sound particularly animated or act like I was her dream interviewer. It’s also true that she’s never given the impression that promoting her films and TV series is where her heart is, so why should I expect her to suddenly enjoy it when it’s me asking the questions?
With both these encounters, it’s not at all been the celebrity’s fault that I’ve come away feeling slightly disappointed, it’s just that the people we see on screen aren’t who they really are, and sometimes even the most media savvy of us can forget that coming across these people in real life won’t be anything like how you’d hope it’d be in your head.
Perhaps the answer is just to leave those people we idolise alone, as the dream is often better than the reality. It’s not that there’s anything wrong with the star, but there’s a disconnect from reality in how we think about them. It’s also important to remember that while an encounter with a star might mean a lot to you, it doesn’t mean the same to them, and to expect them to give you all you’d hope for is asking a lot.
Instead I reckon it’s best to try and meet people you quite like, but who you don’t put on a pedestal (like Kurt Russell), as I have to say that generally my encounters with those people have been much more fun, largely because I haven’t expected them to be the most amazing interview subjects ever and nor have I just stood there, mouth agape, looking like a freak.
Maybe if I ever get close to Brad Pitt and Mary Louise Parker again, I can act a bit more rationally, but perhaps I should just leave them alone and continue to enjoy them on the screen. Either way, I don’t think I’ll be like Robert Ford and shoot them.
Oh, and just in case you were wondering, both Brad and Mary-Louise have perfectly normal-sized heads.
TIM ISAAC
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