I used to love the film Almost Famous, partly because I had my own hopes of becoming a Cameron Crowe-esque music journalist who would spend weeks “on the road” getting to know my subjects before writing 10,000-word epics on a life-changing experience that might have the power to change the world.
My first proper band interview, for my student paper, was with the Libertines, which actually ended up being not so far removed from the Almost Famous schtick, if you swap weeks of American west coast glamour for a night outside a kebab van in Oxford. The next proper interview was a polite 10-minute phone conversation with a member of the long-lost British pop group Big Brovaz. One of those has turned out to be a more accurate representation of meeting famous people and it didn’t involve Pete Doherty asking me to buy him two chicken drumsticks for a pound.
New York magazine published a brilliantly candid conversation between Kathleen Turner and David Marchese, who has a skill for these kinds of exchanges, in which she was open and honest about practically everything she was asked. She said that when she guest-starred on Friends, she found the cast “such a clique”. On the craft of acting, she said: “You just shut up and do it.” Burt Reynolds and Nicolas Cage do not come out of it well. It has been widely shared and I suspect it’s because that level of honesty is so rare these days.
In my experience, the smarter young celebrities so are hyper-aware of what might happen to their words after they’ve said them that the canny ones have a way of speaking in platitudes that aren’t interesting enough to go viral. The really famous stars, of course, just don’t bother doing interviews at all. Beyoncé’s September issue cover of American Vogue features her story “in her own words”, which does away with the middle man. When Taylor Swift was on the cover of British Vogue, she wrote a poem, in lieu of a chat.
There were reports last week that people are requesting cosmetic surgery to make them look more like selfie filters in real life (“Snapchat dysphoria”, more heavy on the sculpted cheekbones than it is on the dog ears). The oversharing of selfies and the faking it of filters are now such easy bedfellows that it’s no wonder honesty has started to seem like a nebulous concept. Kathleen Turner’s openness offers a timely reminder of just how entertaining the lost art of candour can be.
Justin Bieber wants us to think he’s now an open book
In order to explain why he and his new fiancee, Hailey Baldwin, had been photographed weeping and cuddling in New York, Justin Bieber flashed a book at the paparazzo who asked him why. “This,” he said, flashing a coversaid. It’s been a long, hard road of self-discovery, but I’ve finally come to terms with the fact that I am simply too old to even attempt to muster interest in Bieber’s love life. I am, however, deeply interested in the books celebrities carry with purpose.
I love to know what someone else is reading. When e-readers briefly threatened to kill off books, the biggest tragedy was that it made it harder to see what the person across from opposite you on the train had their nose in, though apparently that did wonders for sales of erotic fiction. There are There are many Pinterest boards are dedicated to pictures of famous people with books, all of which include Marilyn Monroe reading Ulysses. It’s a gorgeous image that’s hard to better, though Geordie Shore’s Charlotte Crosby was once “caught” reading her own diet book on holiday in Cape Verde, which surely comes a close second.
Type most celebrities’ names and the word “reading” into Google Images, and you get a parade of pictures that reveal what these people would like you to know about them. The Power of Now means they’re sorry about that bad thing they did and are trying to be better. Patti Smith’s Just Kids means they have more than Patti Smith’s Just Kids on their shelf at home.
Bieber flashed Timothy Keller’s The Meaning of Marriage: Facing the Complexities of Commitment with the Wisdom of God. He’s saying, I think, that any future public ding-dongs should be written off, because he has the almighty on hand to sort it out. To paraphrase the Manic Street Preachers paraphrasing a plaque, libraries gave him power, to fend off speculation.
Ruby Rose is a superhero fit for our times
There are so many superheroes crawling all over popular culture that it’s becoming hard to keep up. Just how many capes can you fit into a franchise, how many sequels are too many sequels and what exactly is a “multiverse” anyway?
Special powers have long since felt obligatory for a cinematic blockbuster, but they’re starting to appear all over the small screen too and it’s easy to feel a similar sense of weariness, a suspicion that networks are running out of ideas faster than they’re running out of franchises to adapt.
Still, news that Ruby Rose will play Batwoman in a TV series for the CW network sparked excitement, partly because Batwoman’s alter ego, Kate Kane, has been gay in the comics since 2006. There’s already a much-loved lesbian superhero called Thunder in Black Lightning, but so far she has been a supporting character to her dad’s main story (and more’s the pity). Rose’s Batwoman will be firmly front and centre, a nod to the fact that there’s still a powerful message about difference and acceptance to be learned from fantastical tales. It’s also quite likely that she’ll be an improvement on Ben Affleck’s Batman at the very least.