This isn’t a new headline. Her battle with drugs and alcohol has been scattered across the blogosphere. However, her most harrowing addiction isn’t discussed often. It is the most powerful drug of all: attention.
And we are her supplier.
At this point in her career, Lindsay is more famous for being infamous than she is for her talent. Everyone knows her name, but many don’t even know what she does. Is she a singer? An actor? A WNBA player? A gangsta rapper? The celebrity gossip columns are abuzz over Lindsay who hasn’t had a major hit… whatever she does… in years.
For what it’s worth, Team Lohan has milked the limelight brilliantly. They have managed to turn an unfortunate, drug-ridden, spiraling career into Lindsay’s name becoming among the most often mentioned in Hollywood. She has the full “viral celebrity kit”: the pretty face, the “good girl gone bad” storyline, the family feud, the ambiguous talent but charming personality, and the coup de grâce, a nickname that is a truncated version of her full name, “LiLo.”
Lindsay Lohan’s life has become a circus that we can’t stop watching. Even those who will never see her movies, buy her CDs, or wear her jersey (or whatever she does for a living) still find ourselves compelled against our will to click on links to stories dishing on her latest escapade. When she’s in jail, we want to know. When she’s partying, we want to know. When she’s in rehab, we want to know. When she’s wearing Nike’s or eating McDonald’s or blowing her nose with Kleenex tissues, we want to know!
Now in her fifth stint in rehab, the question everyone is asking is, “When will Lindsay finally learn?” The short answer: she already has.
• Lindsay has learned that every time she gets busted and goes to court, her search engine hits go through the roof.
• Lindsay has learned that jail time can be reduced to the equivalent of a toddler going to timeout. Magazines will toss millions of dollars her way for the right to have the first interview after her release. Nightclubs and restaurants will clamor to get her in their doors.
• Lindsay has learned that there are absolutely no consequences or accountability when you’re über famous.
• Lindsay has learned that, despite not recently having much of a career outside of getting in trouble, she remains one of the most followed, most photographed, most discussed celebrities in Hollywood. Like it or not, our LiLo obsession has made her a bonafide A-lister.
She seems to want to get it together, but there is really no incentive for her to change her ways.
Around this time of year, it’s hard not to reflect upon Jamie Lee Curtis — the actress, activist, children’s-book author and HuffPost blogger whose performance in John Carpenter’s original Halloween made getting scared personal (and suburban), simultaneously launching her storied career. She’s come a long way from fending off unstoppable slasher Michael Myers three decades ago (and then, when the genre returned to trendiness, cleverly fending him off again). From Trading Places and Perfect to Forever Young and Fierce Creatures, it’s not unreasonable to dub her an icon of ’80s and ’90s hipness, a quality which she’s craftily transformed into maternal roles in more recent movies like Freaky Friday, Beverly Hills Chihuahua and You Again.
Lee Cohen interviews Jamie Lee Curtis.
Elegant, astute and ticklishly real, Ms. Curtis (a.k.a. Lady Haden-Guest) recently spent a long, fun October day amongst friends and fans in Santa Monica, discussing a few of her finest films at the Aero theatre and signing her children’s books at the grand opening of the new gallery location of Every Picture Tells a Story. I attend a lot of events, and yet I never use this phrase: It was a blast.
The day began with an afternoon screening of Mark Waters’ madcap remake of Freaky Friday, starring Curtis and some feisty girl called Lindsay Lohan — after which Curtis entertained the crowd, including lots of children, with reflections on making the movie — including especially the useful life-lesson that acting “is just make-believe.” Regarding Lohan, Curtis happily revealed, “I did love working with her — I love her very much.” She then cracked everybody up when asked about her onscreen collision with Lohan:
“It hurt a lot! And that’s why God invented stuntwomen — and those women it hurt a lot. And then when Lindsay and I did it, it hurt a lot. You know, guys, you see professional athletes do it all day long, that thing when you jump up in the air and you throw your chests forward and, chest-bump? It hurts when you’re a woman. Again — children in the audience — but there’s a reason why it would hurt a lot more for women to do it than men. And Lindsay and I — it hurt, if you know what I mean.“
The robust Lady Curtis remained stalwart and direct when asked about her feelings for her recently-departed father, Tony Curtis: “The truth of the matter is I never really knew him… that being said, I loved him and appreciated very much his great work, and I think he appreciated mine.” She offered fond reflections of swimming with him and her sister, actress Kelly Curtis, off Sardinia, as well as:
“I remember he came to the True Lies premiere, and I remember sitting next to him when I did the dance — in the movie True Lies, which none of you children have seen, or will! — and there’s a moment in the dance that’s very funny, and I remember he laughed, how thrilled he was. I remember that very well.”
Hilarity ensued when Curtis was asked about her children’s-book career, at which point she admitted it was never a goal. Ever the entertainer, she rose up and delighted the crowd by acting out the following scene: “My daugher was four years old, and I was sitting at my desk, and she walked into my office, and she went like this: ‘WHEN I WAS LITTLE, I WORE A DIAPER, NOW I USE THE POTTY!’ — and she walked out of the room.” Gesturing to host Lee Cohen, “And the look on my face was the look on your face. It was like, what just happened? And I sat down at my desk — I took my pencil and I wrote down on a piece of paper: When I Was Little: A Four-Year-Old’s Memoir of Her Youth. Which made me laugh out loud. And then I wrote a list of those accomplishments. And at the end of the list of accomplishments I wrote three things that made me cry, so at the end of this list I had tears cascading down my face. And I went, oh, I think this is a book. And that’s how I wrote my first book. I never thought about it one second before it occurred… and so in my life, every single good thing that’s ever happened to me has popped into my life, like: Boom.“
Curtis-palooza!
On that excellent note, Curtis adjourned to Every Picture to sign her several books, including her new My Mommy Hung the Moon: A Love Story. Surrounded by revelers as well as imagery and books ranging from Snoopy to superheroes (and, this being October, a “Halloween Tree” as well as a portrait of Ray Bradbury gazing down from the wall), Curtis tirelessly held court. She not only led a chorus of “Happy Birthday” for a five-year-old fan, but did it twice, since his guardian’s camera konked on the first take. That’s class.
Arty party at the new Every Picture Tells a Story
Curtis poses with an admirer.
Yet another crowd then filled the Aero for the double-feature of A Fish Called Wanda (so funny, so weird, so wonderful) and True Lies (which I’d never seen before: Cameron is best when he simply amplifies a familiar genre; Arnie was born for ultraviolent clowning). Between, Curtis blazed through another, more raucous Q&A, hosted by actress Lee Garlington (notably of two Psycho sequels, as Curtis’ mother Janet Leigh starred in the first).
Her charm and wit somehow quadrupled as the day wore on, Curtis immediately joked, “Good! Thanks for having me!” at the notion of being Hollywood royalty — then settled in, sighed, and clarified matters: “Look, I’m fifty-two years old, I’ve spent my life defending myself, if you will. I’ve spent a long time trying to own my own life, even though everyone would say that I have the life I have because of my parents. And the truth is: I have the life I have because of my parents. And: I made my own life.”
Jamie Lee makes a point.
She mused at how Halloween led to John Landis led to Trading Places led to an English friend telling her a Python was after her: “I of course thought he meant he was looking for my husband (Christopher Guest), who is brilliant and funny. And he said, ‘No, he’s looking for you.’ And I was like, ‘Okay… right.’ And John Cleese took me out to lunch on Sunset Boulevard, and said, ‘I’m gonna write a movie for you, Kevin Kline, Michael Palin and myself. It’s gonna be really fun, it’s gonna be really funny, and it’s gonna be really successful, would you like to do it?'” Curtis then scanned the audience: “There are no kids here, right? That shit happens to me every day!” (Guffaws ensued.)
With such a rich career, there was much to discuss, but my fave part was when Curtis absolutely lost it to prolonged fits of giggles when recounting her work with Donald Sutherland on the “just dreadful” trainwreck of a sci-fi thriller, Virus — which this pro critic would like rave up as “ASTOUNDINGLY TERRIBLE!” Oh, those laughs felt good.
The exuberant star’s personal and professional philosophy led her right back to her work on Halloween:
“For me, I just show up and do what I do. And for me it has to be real — anything I do, I don’t care what it is. On Halloween, I can remember, John Carpenter’s first and only real direction to me was, ‘I want people to believe this is a real person.’ All I care about is trying to make anything real — and then because I’m brave I’ll try anything.”
It was an awesome day. I close this piece as Jamie Lee Curtis closed the evening: “Peace and love.” And Happy Halloween!
You don’t have to be Jewish to understand how much good the American Jewish World Service, a charity that helps alleviate poverty, hunger and disease in developing nations, does. But just in case you didn’t know about it, Judd Apatow made this hilarious PSA with all his Jewish and non-Jewish celebrity friends (and Lindsay Lohan!) to draw attention the organization on its 25th anniversary.
Watch the video below to see celebs like Andy Samberg, Jerry Seinfeld, Tracy Morgan, Sarah Silverman, Triumph The Insult Comic Dog and more roast the organization and talk about why you don’t have to be Jewish to think it’s a great organization (with a pretty terrible name).
Disney’s television show “The Mickey Mouse Club,” which began in 1955 and ended in 1996, remains one of the most iconic children’s programs in TV history, with cast members ranging from Annette Funicello to Ryan Gosling. Jennifer Armstrong, author of the new book “Why? Because We Still Like You: An Oral History of the Mickey Mouse Club,” talks about the club’s lasting influence on American culture, Walt Disney’s involvement, and which former Mouseketeers she has crushes on.
Why should we still care about the 1950s Mouseketeers anyway? And if it was only on for three years, why does everyone still know what it was?
We should care mainly because they were the first generation of what’s now a billion-dollar business that has taken over much of our pop culture — Disney-bred child stars. These were the first Britney Spearses, Lindsay Lohans, Miley Cyruses, Selena Gomezes. What they went through — being famous so young, then struggling to live their Mouseketeerdom down for the rest of their lives — informs what these kids go through today. Granted, it was on a much smaller scale — though the fact that a lot of them still struggled to get over their early fame only shows how much worse this paparazzi-fueled generation is going to have it. I worry for Miley and Selena and the rest.
The reasons we still remember the Mouseketeers even today lie partly in the complexities of TV syndication and the fact that Disney kept repackaging and rerunning the show for years after its demise — making it, incidentally, that much harder for those kids to live down their Mouse images. But the simpler answer is two-fold: those ears, and that song. (“Who’s the leader of the club that’s made for you and me? M-I-C …” It’s now stuck in your head if you know the song at all. Sorry.)
How did The Mickey Mouse Club influence pop culture (besides the obvious, like the song and the ears)?
It definitely endured as the quintessential symbol of the smiling, everything’s-perfect 1950s. Those kids worked hard, lined up in military formations, wore uniforms, and took orders. They were designed to demonstrate obedience and order, not to stand out. Some of them couldn’t help it, though, and became breakout stars at the time, like Cubby O’Brien and Sharon Baird and Lonnie Burr. And one became an icon of teen stardom: Annette Funicello.
But their influence went much further than that: They were the first to prove that kids love watching shows starring kids, which is the basis for both Disney Channel and Nickelodeon now. “High School Musical” basically owes it all to the Mouseketeers, for better or worse.
What is the relationship between this Mickey Mouse Club and the one in the ’90s that included Britney Spears, Justin Timberlake, and Christina Aguilera?
It’s the same thing, in theory — with 35 years between them. Disney kept the original going in repackaged versions through the ’60s without actually hiring any new Mouseketeers, then tried a new Mickey Mouse Club in the ’70s (with a cast that included “The Facts of Life”‘s Lisa Whelchel), but it was a bust. The Disney Channel started in the ’80s as a pay channel, but it was slow going for a while — until the company decided to revive The Mickey Mouse Club, which was quite a success. It was even more of a success in retrospect, however, when Britney, Christina, and Justin, not to mention Ryan Gosling and Keri Russell, became huge stars after getting their first break as Mouseketeers.
What was the Mouseketeers’ relationship to Walt Disney himself?
There are hugely conflicting stories about this, which are recounted in detail in the book, but it seems that basically they didn’t have much of one. Walt Disney was a very busy man during the mid-’50s when this was happening — he was at the top of his game in terms of movie production, he was hosting a show called Disneyland (the one that included the super-famous Davy Crockett serial), and he was launching his dream project, the California theme park called Disneyland. In fact, The Mickey Mouse Club was conceived as a way to get park funding from the ABC television network, but besides that, Walt didn’t care much about it. That is, except for one key ingredient of it: He hand-picked Annette for the Mouseketeers and supported her career afterwards as well. The overwhelming amount of fan mail she got proved he had something of an eye for talent.
Annette Funicello was a much bigger star than any of the other kids on the show — how did that play out behind the scenes? And how do her costars feel about her now?
Generally, her costars claim to have loved her from the start — and there’s little evidence to the contrary. You will never hear more genuinely nice words spoken about a person, in fact. Unfortunately, she’s been struggling with multiple sclerosis for decades, and isn’t able to do interviews anymore. There were, however, some minor petty backstage skirmishes involving mascara.
Who was your favorite former Mouseketeer?
I could never choose one, but I will say this: Annette sounds like a dream, but I think if I had been a kid in the ’50s, Doreen Tracey would’ve been my idol — she’s gorgeous and has this irresistibly mischievous glint that has been borne out in her life story: She did not one, but two, nude photo layouts in the ’70s to stick it to Disney (though she later made up with the company); she worked for Frank Zappa and toured Vietnam with a rock band. She’s still vibrant and hilarious. And I think I would’ve had a crush on Lonnie Burr, who’s super-intellectual and has a killer vocabulary.
So…uh, any auxiliary lotharios for whom you would have cultivated romantic, if quixotic, idealizations?
I also get a little swoony for Tim Considine and David Stollery, who played Spin and Marty in the “Adventures of Spin and Marty” serials — they were huge teen heartthrobs at the time, but left the business to become huge successes in other fields. Tim’s now an automotive writer and David is a big car-design guy; in fact, they stayed in touch and Tim writes about David from time to time. It’s one of my favorite full-circle stories in the book — they originally met at an audition by sharing toy cars. How cute is that?
If you’ve spent the last several weeks, as I have, watching candidates for state and national office deny sorcery, explain away a background in professional wrestling, debate the appropriate use of the word “whore” in a campaign, or remind the voting public that the rent is, in fact, too damn high, then you don’t need me to tell you about the American freak show. Like a black-and-white scene from “Night of the Living Dead,” the freaks have us surrounded.
After watching from my front row seat on “Morning Joe” the endless parade of Blagos, Balloon Boys, Snookis, and Salahis, I felt compelled to assemble our new political and pop cultural superheroes in a single book — a Hall of Justice for freaks, if you will. The characters in “American Freak Show” are all real; their stories are made-up (although just barely). The challenge, of course, was to parody a group of people who had done such an exceptional job of it themselves.
One of the early inspirations for the book came when a disgraced, bushy-haired former governor named “Rocket” Rod Blagojevich burst into our studio for an interview to promote his book. The bounce in his step showed that Blago was the only one who didn’t know he’d been disgraced. To Blago’s way of thinking, impeachment and public humiliation weren’t things to be ashamed of — they merely provided a turning of the page to Act II of his new celebrity life. A new American freak had been born before our eyes.
