Get over it
Hollywood is harsh. This we know, even if we've never been
there. In this cruelest of marketplaces, actors, actresses,
starlets, and rock gods are bought and sold daily, used and
abused for a few years, then thrown onto the scrap heap to join
all the other celebs whose careers have fallen off. Vulture-ish
tabloid talk shows and storefront rags tell us all about it.
Nowadays, most celebrities don't stay on top for more than three
years or so. Performances get boring and audiences get bored.
Sometimes, the star breaks the law or does something unexpected,
and pictures are splashed throughout the glossies ("Leif Garrett
did what?"). I'm reminded of a quote I once heard from
former weekly Bop magazine cover-boy Luke Perry, who said
the best advice he'd ever received at the height of his fame was
from Robert Downey Jr.: "Get over it." In three simple words,
the one-time golden boy summed up the entire Hollywood ethos.
Sure, there are a few stars of yesteryear (we're talking '70s
and '80s) who have managed to turn their bad luck around. But
the mud usually sticks. Right up until the reading of the
obituary on Entertainment Tonight, which mentions your
former "wild ways." And really, would Hollywood be as enticing
without these blunders? They make celebrities look as mortal as
everyone else; on the cover of People magazine on day, in
a half-inch column in the National Enquirer the next.
Our fascination with this process is the subject of Moby's new
single and video, "We Are All Made of Stars." Here, Moby and
director Joseph Kahn indict not only Hollywood's
slam-bam-thank-you-teen-TV-star attitude, but also our tendency
to obsess over its victims. Moby -- standing in for us -- plays
an astronaut, who, having landed on "Planet Hollywood," finds
himself surrounded by some of its most recognizable heavenly
beings, all at different junctures in their careers. There are
those who've bottomed out due to some scandal or other (Corey
Feldman, Todd Bridges and Gary Coleman, Tommy Lee), those famous
for all the wrong reasons (Kato Kaelin, Ron Jeremy), those who
have become entertainment industry novelties (Verne Troyer, the
Toxic Avenger), as well as symbols of beauty (Dominique Swain,
Angelyne, Molly Sims), and wealth/power (Robert Evans). There
are also images of big stars living "normal" lives (Dave
Navarro) and those perpetuating the "star" stereotype (Sean
Bean), as well as stars just now riding the success wave (J.C.
Chasez, Thora Birch, and Leelee Sobieski).
Floating through occasionally, Moby observes the stars in
moments of elation and self-satisfaction, despair and frailty.
Each appears in a specific environment, lipsync-ing Moby's
lyrics. Kaelin, for example, is found in "the Frolic Room,"
drowning his sorrows in a few cocktails; Evans sits atop an
expensive car, stroked by pretty hangers-on; Birch looks bored
at a Hollywood party. But if these images seem nothing out of
the ordinary, seeing Troyer in a strip club as he stands atop a
box to ogle the semi-naked woman in front of him, or porn legend
Ron Jeremy doing a bit of photocopying at the local Kinko's, is
a little harder to absorb.
In fact, Troyer's scene is almost tragic: Mini-Me throwing cash
at a stripper. And what of Jeremy? Imagining him anywhere but in
bed with big-haired, platinum blondes is difficult, but at
Kinko's? We're forced to visualize these people as human beings,
prisoners on Planet Celebrity, unable to shake people's (our)
conceptions of them.
The images of Feldman and Tommy Lee parody such conceptions,
throwing them back at us, making us responsible. Feldman flips
his cell-phone like the movie mogul we thought he wanted to be
back when, while Lee engages in his own private striptease,
chest bared, exuding confidence (sort of like he's doing now,
with his solo act). Sims, Angelyne, and Swain make fun of their
images as sexual objects. Angelyne shines brightly on a huge
billboard, Sims looms out the front of some kind of suggestively
named establishment on Hollywood Boulevard, and Swain slithers
seductively in a nightclub, exuding the same "innocent"
sexuality exploited in Adrian Lyne's Lolita (has she not
changed at all since 1997?). Such performances are
expected. What else would J.C. Chasez, for example, have to do
but lounge by the pool with bikini-clad beauties?
At last we see Moby, out of his space suit, spinning in a
supermarket, playing his own part as a product, underlining his
awareness of his function amid the Hollywood cycle. For one
thing, he's recalling (and hiring) some celebrities who're
likely happy to have the work: Feldman, Coleman, and Bridges,
especially, are poster boys for industry disillusionment.
Newbies Birch, Sobieski, and Chasez might seem to provide
balance for such well-known tragedies, yet even their presence
is potentially sad, a precursor to their own eventual failures,
of failure means the inability to score massive movie deals or
recording contracts.
Each scene means something different. We can feel sorry for
Troyer, laugh at Lee, smirk at Chasez, and yet, they all share
something the majority of us never will: the eternal loss of
anonymity. Moby substitutes for us and not-us. He watches the
stars, as they are always watched, and for whatever reason,
always remembered.
— 25 July 2002
