Post by Hey Man on Sept 29, 2011 13:21:15 GMT -5
It doesn’t happen often. But every once in a while the stars – such as they are – align correctly and you suddenly see it: the tectonic shift in Hollywood when one generation of actors clicks into the superstar gear, just as the next generation of stars locks in right behind them.
It’s that next generation that excites. You can see them moving into position to be the superstars of tomorrow. Certainly, a handful of them already are. They’re already competing for the roles of the major stars – and the major stars suddenly recognize just how short their tenure could be.
I caught a glimpse of that this summer and it’s become clearer in the past month. It was as much about seeing older stars suddenly fade as watching new ones emerge. But a pair of movies in particular made me look at this hard enough to really see the boundaries separating the generations, to recognize that sometimes incremental, sometimes astonishingly swift transition.
The two movies were “Larry Crowne” and “The Ides of March.” One was a commercial flop (though it’s still a movie which, having seen it twice, I enjoyed immensely); the other will be released next week.
(I’m talking about actors only here; actresses face entirely different challenges, which I’ll address at another time.)
“Larry Crowne” marked Tom Hanks, who is now 55, as a star who can no longer open a movie. Not that he’s lost anything as an actor – or as a writer-director. He hasn’t; he gave a nuanced, witty and heartfelt performance in the film, which was entertaining and thoughtful. But the movie flopped, for a couple of reasons (and neither of them were the odd hair coloring or the cosmetic adjustments that made Hanks look preternaturally smooth-faced for a man of his age).
The first is that Hanks isn’t a star who is attractive to the demographic – the 18-to-34 crowd – that crowns box-office stars. And the second is that the audience that is interested in Hanks – which is closer to his own age – isn’t rushing out to see movies on their opening weekend. Really, it’s sort of the same reason, just seen from different angles.
Hanks – like Harrison Ford, Tom Cruise, Bruce Willis, Mel Gibson, Kevin Costner and a few others – is a star of the 1980s. He had his best decade as an actor in the 1990s, winning two Oscars. But he became a star in the 1980s, as did the others I mentioned.
Hanks is actually part of a cusp group: too young to be part of the great crop of actors and stars of the ’60s/’70s (Hoffman, Pacino, De Niro, Nicholson, Duvall, Hackman, Eastwood, Beatty, Redford) – and too old to be part of the current crop of superstars, who began to hit their stride in the 1990s.
To be sure, Cruise still remains a force. But the young generation of moviegoers accepts him as a star because, to them, it’s received wisdom; they didn’t crown him and, before we know it, they’ll ignore him the same way they ignore other superstars in their 50s – as someone their parents liked. (Sean Penn is part of Cruise’s cohort – but he’s never been a box-office force.)
Which is where “Ides of March” came in. That film teams a pair of stars who stand on either side of the generational line: George Clooney, who has hit his superstar peak (and who is now at about the same point where, say, Cary Grant was in the 1950s), and Ryan Gosling, who is just coming into his own.
Everyone knows who Clooney is, as well as his cohort: Brad Pitt, Hugh Grant, Robert Downey Jr., Johnny Depp, Will Smith, Denzel Washington, Russell Crowe. They’re a generation of actors who picked up the gauntlet in the 1990s, battled their way through heartthrob and flavor-of-the-month status to achieve a certain longevity. They’ve now reached their prime or are just gliding past it. Gosling is now where Clooney or Pitt were 15 years or so ago: an actor with some strong credits but not quite the mass-audience awareness.
(Again, we’re talking about good actors who are also box-office names. Philip Seymour Hoffman and Paul Giamatti, two of our very best film actors, are part of the same generation as Clooney. But while they can each carry a movie and attract awards, obviously neither of them qualifies as the kind of heartthrob that Pitt, Clooney or Gosling are.)
Gosling and Joseph Gordon-Levitt are part of that new generation. And a few others: Jake Gyllenhaal, Ewan McGregor, James Franco, Adrien Brody, even (we’ll see) Seth Rogen and Jesse Eisenberg.
You could put Leonardo DiCaprio at the head of this particular class, though he’s a few years older than Gosling and Gordon-Levitt. He’s the group’s biggest superstar, Scorsese’s new chosen muse; he is to his peer group what De Niro and Pacino were to their generation – the gold standard.
Gosling is willing to put his muscle behind an art film like “Drive” or a mainstream comedy like “Crazy Stupid Love.” Similarly, Gordon-Levitt is capable of toggling from something as dark and transgressive as “Hesher” to something as effervescent as “(500) Days of Summer,” starring in a bromance like “50/50” or slipping into less showy roles in things as varied as “Inception” and the awful “G.I. Joe” movie. The point is that they – and many of their peers – are risk-takers with star power; they can and will go in both directions, as Clooney has.
It’s not just these changing generations that come into focus. So does that glorious group of ’70s actors, though their options are dwindling at this point.
It’s a marker when Warren Beatty has one of the studios dump a project of his, but also a symptom. Jack Nicholson is Jack Nicholson; if he hasn’t retired (as Hackman has), he’ll show up and surprise us sometime soon. Robert De Niro and Al Pacino keep working and undoubtedly still have great work in them; whether they’ll be offered material worthy of their talent (and whether they’ll select it) is another question. And Clint Eastwood, ever the contrarian, keeps directing (and occasionally acting) into his 80s.
No doubt their generation will continue to show up, plucked from semiretirement by some young director who wants to give them a revival: like Martin Landau in “Ed Wood,” Peter Fonda in “Ulee’s Gold,” Burt Reynolds in “Boogie Nights” or even Mickey Rourke in “The Wrestler.” Perhaps they’ll generate strong, memorable work of their own – they’re all certainly capable of it.
So there it is – a glimmer when you can see both into the past and into the future at the same time. Time is the conqueror – and the wheel keeps turning.
It’s that next generation that excites. You can see them moving into position to be the superstars of tomorrow. Certainly, a handful of them already are. They’re already competing for the roles of the major stars – and the major stars suddenly recognize just how short their tenure could be.
I caught a glimpse of that this summer and it’s become clearer in the past month. It was as much about seeing older stars suddenly fade as watching new ones emerge. But a pair of movies in particular made me look at this hard enough to really see the boundaries separating the generations, to recognize that sometimes incremental, sometimes astonishingly swift transition.
The two movies were “Larry Crowne” and “The Ides of March.” One was a commercial flop (though it’s still a movie which, having seen it twice, I enjoyed immensely); the other will be released next week.
(I’m talking about actors only here; actresses face entirely different challenges, which I’ll address at another time.)
“Larry Crowne” marked Tom Hanks, who is now 55, as a star who can no longer open a movie. Not that he’s lost anything as an actor – or as a writer-director. He hasn’t; he gave a nuanced, witty and heartfelt performance in the film, which was entertaining and thoughtful. But the movie flopped, for a couple of reasons (and neither of them were the odd hair coloring or the cosmetic adjustments that made Hanks look preternaturally smooth-faced for a man of his age).
The first is that Hanks isn’t a star who is attractive to the demographic – the 18-to-34 crowd – that crowns box-office stars. And the second is that the audience that is interested in Hanks – which is closer to his own age – isn’t rushing out to see movies on their opening weekend. Really, it’s sort of the same reason, just seen from different angles.
Hanks – like Harrison Ford, Tom Cruise, Bruce Willis, Mel Gibson, Kevin Costner and a few others – is a star of the 1980s. He had his best decade as an actor in the 1990s, winning two Oscars. But he became a star in the 1980s, as did the others I mentioned.
Hanks is actually part of a cusp group: too young to be part of the great crop of actors and stars of the ’60s/’70s (Hoffman, Pacino, De Niro, Nicholson, Duvall, Hackman, Eastwood, Beatty, Redford) – and too old to be part of the current crop of superstars, who began to hit their stride in the 1990s.
To be sure, Cruise still remains a force. But the young generation of moviegoers accepts him as a star because, to them, it’s received wisdom; they didn’t crown him and, before we know it, they’ll ignore him the same way they ignore other superstars in their 50s – as someone their parents liked. (Sean Penn is part of Cruise’s cohort – but he’s never been a box-office force.)
Which is where “Ides of March” came in. That film teams a pair of stars who stand on either side of the generational line: George Clooney, who has hit his superstar peak (and who is now at about the same point where, say, Cary Grant was in the 1950s), and Ryan Gosling, who is just coming into his own.
Everyone knows who Clooney is, as well as his cohort: Brad Pitt, Hugh Grant, Robert Downey Jr., Johnny Depp, Will Smith, Denzel Washington, Russell Crowe. They’re a generation of actors who picked up the gauntlet in the 1990s, battled their way through heartthrob and flavor-of-the-month status to achieve a certain longevity. They’ve now reached their prime or are just gliding past it. Gosling is now where Clooney or Pitt were 15 years or so ago: an actor with some strong credits but not quite the mass-audience awareness.
(Again, we’re talking about good actors who are also box-office names. Philip Seymour Hoffman and Paul Giamatti, two of our very best film actors, are part of the same generation as Clooney. But while they can each carry a movie and attract awards, obviously neither of them qualifies as the kind of heartthrob that Pitt, Clooney or Gosling are.)
Gosling and Joseph Gordon-Levitt are part of that new generation. And a few others: Jake Gyllenhaal, Ewan McGregor, James Franco, Adrien Brody, even (we’ll see) Seth Rogen and Jesse Eisenberg.
You could put Leonardo DiCaprio at the head of this particular class, though he’s a few years older than Gosling and Gordon-Levitt. He’s the group’s biggest superstar, Scorsese’s new chosen muse; he is to his peer group what De Niro and Pacino were to their generation – the gold standard.
Gosling is willing to put his muscle behind an art film like “Drive” or a mainstream comedy like “Crazy Stupid Love.” Similarly, Gordon-Levitt is capable of toggling from something as dark and transgressive as “Hesher” to something as effervescent as “(500) Days of Summer,” starring in a bromance like “50/50” or slipping into less showy roles in things as varied as “Inception” and the awful “G.I. Joe” movie. The point is that they – and many of their peers – are risk-takers with star power; they can and will go in both directions, as Clooney has.
It’s not just these changing generations that come into focus. So does that glorious group of ’70s actors, though their options are dwindling at this point.
It’s a marker when Warren Beatty has one of the studios dump a project of his, but also a symptom. Jack Nicholson is Jack Nicholson; if he hasn’t retired (as Hackman has), he’ll show up and surprise us sometime soon. Robert De Niro and Al Pacino keep working and undoubtedly still have great work in them; whether they’ll be offered material worthy of their talent (and whether they’ll select it) is another question. And Clint Eastwood, ever the contrarian, keeps directing (and occasionally acting) into his 80s.
No doubt their generation will continue to show up, plucked from semiretirement by some young director who wants to give them a revival: like Martin Landau in “Ed Wood,” Peter Fonda in “Ulee’s Gold,” Burt Reynolds in “Boogie Nights” or even Mickey Rourke in “The Wrestler.” Perhaps they’ll generate strong, memorable work of their own – they’re all certainly capable of it.
So there it is – a glimmer when you can see both into the past and into the future at the same time. Time is the conqueror – and the wheel keeps turning.
