. . . Otherwise, where will we get such awesome journalism as this NYTimes article about how male movie actors are getting fat as they get older?
A scene from the new journalistic thriller “State of Play†says it all.
Jeff Daniels, as the politician George Fergus, squares off with Russell Crowe, as the pen-wielding journalist Cal McAffrey.
Two men. One notebook. Four chins.
Hollywood’s pool of leading men is getting larger — and not necessarily in a good way.
The best part — and there are plenty of good parts, including the bit about how today’s aging male leads might be thinner if they just smoked cigarettes, like Humphrey Bogart (dead at 57 from throat cancer), Clark Gable (dead at 59 from a sudden heart attack), and James Stewart (dead at 264 from being a nice guy) — is that the article ends by treating an utterly implausible quote for a Hollywood PR rep at face value!
[Russell Crowe] might want to get some diet advice from Jason Segel.Mr. Segel, 29, was fairly hefty in “I Love You, Man,†a comedy released by Paramount Pictures and DreamWorks in March. But his face looked surprisingly thin on billboards advertising the film.
The advertising photos were done some weeks after the film shoot, with a slimmer Mr. Segel, said Katie Martin Kelley, a publicity executive with Paramount. “There was no retouching done,†Ms. Kelley said.
Yeah, that’s a mega-dumb article, and one I’ll return to when all the newspapers go away to make me feel better about that happening.
The premise doesn’t even seem remotely true — nearly every generation’s male stars put on a bit of weight, including to my eye Gable and Stewart. Here’s a double-chin on Gable
http://www.newsday.com/media/photo/2008-02/35827530.jpg
but who cares? He’s Clark Gable!
I mean, how terrifying would DiCaprio be if he stayed Gilbert Grape thin for his entire career? He’d be Don Knotts, not Humphrey Bogart.
I also don’t know how you’d write a “fun” article about leading men gaining weight and leave out poster boy Alec Baldwin. Although I’m sure if Jeff Daniels thinks about it for a second, he’ll be flattered that anyone cares to make the comparison old and new.