FINDING TRUTH IN TINSELTOWN : Separating the Real Tinsel From the False in Tinseltown
Happy birthday to you, Happy birthday to you, Happy birthday, Outtakes dearest, Happy birthday to you. --Traditional song
This is the second birthday of our Outtakes column. With enormous thanks to John M. Wilson and Pat H. Broeske (they like middle initials; gives them an air of respectability), who chase down most of the items with a variety of correspondents.
In some circles the occasion may not cause the throwing of confetti, since we have frequent demurs to many of our Outtakes.
The column is devoted to news and feature-y reports from the entertainment world. Some items are serious, some less than serious, if not to say silly.
And the questions keep arising: How serious and how silly should we be? What is fair comment and what isn’t? What is the public interest and what is private business?
Last week Pat did the item on Sally Field doing the film “Surrender” with a non-union crew. (See Letters, Page 95.) Her publicist and then her husband, a producer on the film, called Pat back. This was non-news, they said. No big deal. Who cares anyway?
It seemed to us, as we debated using the report, that no one who ever saw “Norma Rae” can forget the image of Sally Field screaming for the rights of workers and being dragged away.
It struck us as a neat irony of Hollywood image making and well worthy of relating.
We can debate what sort of personal business is reasonable to relate to the world and what isn’t.
For example, a young man from Costa Mesa was happy with Patrick Goldstein’s recent article about Michael J. Fox and his upcoming film, “Light of Day.” But “a major issue--Mr. Fox’s love life--was completely omitted. . . . “
Has Calendar “fallen victim to celebrity blackmail journalism”? He cited Playboy interviews with Brando and Streisand, who were later revealed to have had “editorial control” over the stories: “Why not refuse to interview artists who won’t allow your interviewers to ask anything they please?”
Grillings aren’t always appropriate. We’ve done pieces on a lot of errant characters, but most of our interview subjects aren’t the sort of people who are accused of war crimes and need to be grilled and beaten with hoses.
It’s complicated figuring what enquiring people want to know. People may want to know about Fox’s dating, but other enquiring papers do a better job on that. It’s hard to imagine John grilling Marlon Brando about who he had sex with last night.
We got word one day that a major-major macho star may do a new movie without his hairpiece. Pat drew the assignment and called his manager . . . who was enormously incredulous at the question.
“Why would he (his client) do that?” he snapped.
Pat stammered: “Well, I don’t think it’s so bad. Sean Connery does movies without his wig.”
“So what?”
“Well, uh, Sean Connery is still a big star.”
The manager snarled, “My client is still a star!”
He hung up.
How far do we go? It’s not worth the trip just to embarrass the star without any point to be made. We decided that (1) the report wasn’t true and (2) the simple discussion of the possibility wasn’t a fair comment.
Hollywood being Hollywood, we in this community are invariably somewhere near the center of the silliness when it comes to such star images. Stars always want to change their images; stars always want to be taken seriously and play Camille.
Photos raise the most anxiety. You can thumb through the old picture files and, what with the face lifts, tucks and yanks, whatever it is you do to faces these days, our old stars look like so many Ghosts of Christmas Past. So the stars get necessarily anxious when we shoot pictures of them. And, no, we don’t give photo approval.
If you keep a sharp eye on some stars, you’ll notice that the camera only looks at them from one side: Can Calendar please shoot the good side?
Well, OK, there is the occasional item that we can’t defend beyond all reasonable doubt. Like (see Page 15) the item on Michael Jackson’s overdue book at the Ojai Public Library.
This is a tough one. We know that Michael Jackson likes to play the mysterious character. There are many people in show biz who like to play mysterious characters and are strange.
So we voted to put this item in the category of Eccentricities of the Rich and Famous. It’s a recurring category for Outtakes and likely to keep us happy for many, many more happy birthdays.