Washed Up

While I was getting my pontification on yesterday - that sounds like I either bought a shitty American car made by a company that just got bailed out, or I crossed that river George Washington john boated across years ago – I watched Will Ferrell doing a type of one man Broadway show as George Dubya Bush.  Will Ferrell is still running around acting like G.W.B., even though he left SNL three funny movies and about five not-so funny movies ago (Semi-Pro, sans the Ferrell-fro, was less funny than GWB’s last four years).  He’s still hilarious doing it, too; in my opinion, it’s probably his best character.  Several people, however, hang on for far too long and don’t let go of the characters that made them famous. 

Long after the characters have ran their course and are no longer hip, cool, funny or mainstream, the actors who portray them can’t let go; this either happens because they can’t branch out into anything else, or they don’t want to get off that gravy train of cash and fame.  For instance, Steven Segal (See-gall) played a guy that may or may not have actually been himself – all chunky, slicked-back-hair-havin’, kung-fu junction-knowin’, loners.  He generally beat the urine out of a lot of people, and saved either families, hot chicks, cities, or the free world - which contains all of the above.  He could never get away from playing this type of guy, and now he needs to be on the back of a Starbucks cup or a beginner set of nunchucks (these are the type made for militant Catholic women); who the hell knows where he is since this genre of movie fell out of favor with the general public?  Where’s that chick who played Mary Catherine Gallagher, or whoever it was that smelled her pits and always jumped backwards into stuff within a three minute time frame?  That’s not exactly a role you can have a De Niro or Pacino-like career with; but she played the hell out of it on SNL, and then even convinced somebody to finance a whole a movie about that shit.  The movie came out and then she disappeared from the Hollywood scene quicker than pet rocks.  Dudley Moore played that drunk quasi-midget English cat to the hilt with so much success that it killed him.  That’s a case of art limiting life.

A lot of actors had characters that were hotter than a Thai VD, but they realized to progress as an actor or artist they had to let those things go and come up with something different.  Will Smith got over being the Fresh Prince, and worrying about his parents not understanding.  If he was still hanging out with Jazzy Jeff, Jada Pinkett’s last name wouldn’t be Smith, and he would not make about $20 million a film.  Chevy Chase is interesting because he got over being Gerald Ford, and actually left SNL to get away from it - but he couldn’t ever get away from being Clark Griswold.  In my church of Vacations, we don’t recognize Vegas Vacation, and Cousin Eddie is a patron saint.  Sylvester Stallone got trapped by too hot characters in Rocky and Rambo, and got away from both of them to make a bunch of generally ignorant movies.  After seemingly ending both series with sub-par films, he then came back years later to make what appears to be the finale of each series.  If for no other reason, it’s because he is currently somewhere around 60, so any future installments would involve massive amounts of prune juice, Depends, and Ben-Gay.

Why can’t these people let go sooner?  Well, when you’ve got a ton of cash being thrown in your direction, you don’t notice how stupid  “John Snow 8: Hell Is Going To Freeze Over” sounds.  All you think about is how you can defer some of that money, hide it in off-shore bank accounts, and tie in the movie promotions with a refrigerator and snow cone machine manufacturer.  Those roles brought these people to the big time, and they are going to keep grindin’ with them until the chaperon comes over and says there has to be enough space for them and the Holy Ghost.  Can you really blame them?  Nah.  You only blame them when it isn’t funny, or the movie isn’t good any more.  Men in Black I was good, but the rest sucked and you started to think the whole idea was goofy.  It got ludicrous when Putty was an MIB agent, and Jackass was an alien in that one sequel.  If hindsight really was 20/20, we’d all have eyes in the back of our ass.  I mention it frequently, but Tropic Thunder illustrates this point perfectly with the plight of Tugg Speedman.  I’m not going any further than merely typing Tugg Speedman again, the name alone says enough.