Angelina Jolie as a victim of Hollywood hypocrisy
"I have no desire engage in the production of the 180 millionth film just to amuse its ego. We both know - this project will be a fiasco for both of us. And I'm not going to ruin my career because of the mediocre pampered girl who just took it and put it off for eighteen months to go and shoot her picture. I have no desire to make a film with her or with someone from the sphere of her influence, and not ours. She is good at routs and yes, she is a celebrity, but that is all. In the end, we will be the laughing stock of the entire industry, and deservedly, and all this is so predictable that I cannot believe that we still spend our time on it. "For those who have spent the last three months in a cave and do not understand, com this quote and who its author is, we inform you: this is how Scott Rudin, the producer, spoke about Angelina Jolie in correspondence with Amy Pascal, co-chairman of the board of directors of Sony.
It was about a raw film called Cleopatra, which was going to produce Jolie and where she really wanted to get as a director David Fincher. The latter, in turn, was approved at that time on a biopic about Steve Jobs. All the unpleasant mess was made public in the Gawker edition, which studied Sony's hacked accounts and delivered to the public all srach and ugly expressions for which the authors still apologize. Apart from the fact that residents of the famous entertainment holding company keep passwords from important information in a file called “PASSWORDS FROM IMPORTANT INFORMATION”, a huge commitment of large Hollywood cones to the epistolary genre (they, like ordinary mortals, are able to destroy each other in writing and verbatim throughout the year ), it turned out also that no one, no one at all, takes Angelina Jolie seriously. And hardly ever perceived.
It is no secret that the public loves savory public skirmishes and usually diverges between two opposing sides, exchanging barbs. However, no one came to the defense of Jolie - she was savaged and chewed on all sides by the press, and the expression "minimally talented spoiled brat" is now quoted more often than the Bible. If at one time Jennifer Aniston wrote about the broken heart, it seems even sports newspapers, the gossip this time agreed on a stinging silence and reprinting of insults. Aaron Sorkin, also mentioned in the correspondence as "completely on the zeros," wrote an open letter in The New York Times about the incident with hackers and Sony, and even there - not a word about Angelina. He condemned the media for wanting to profit from someone’s stupidity and its distribution, but suggested that no one be offended by anyone. About how not offended Jolie, you can judge by the photos of her first public meeting and Amy Pascal.
If we speak the language of numbers, then Angelina Jolie can afford to be offended by about 760 million dollars - that is how much she collected in the world box office the film she produced with her in the main role of “Maleficent”. 760 million, if anything, is a little less than the annual GDP of the Gambia and a little more than St. Vincent and the Grenadines. Prior to that, about half a billion dollars were collected by “Mr. and Mrs. Smith”, even earlier - 340 million from “Especially dangerous”, about three hundred million from “Salt”, “Tourist” and “Lara Croft”. In June of this year, Jolie turns forty years old, and if earlier she was a "golden girl", now these forty bring billions.
All the activities of Jolie are taken with ostentatious seriousness, scientific articles are written about her and no one, no one is laughing at her.
Jolie's ambitions are accompanied by numbers - for the last few years she has been trying to become a new Clint Eastwood, that is, to retrain from a Hollywood star of world importance to a director of the appropriate caliber. Eastwood, too, was forty, when he shot his first film, he also released a film a year, until he fussed out his style and filled his hand. But if Eastwood started with a thriller melodrama, for which he did not take a penny and which later became the forerunner of erotic thrillers like "Basic Instinct" and "Fatal Attraction", and continued with military drama, then Jolie was fascinated from the very beginning by the heroic destinies of people who fell under the wheels of war. Her first serious directorial work (apart from the documentary of 2007) was devoted to the conflict in the Balkans - and the impossible love between a Bosnian girl and a Serbian soldier. “Than the child would not play,” many decided, and American critics rather praised: the debut could be much worse, after all, and on this subject.
The second film directed by Angelina Jolie called “Unbroken” was released on Friday in Russian hire, and this is again a military drama: this time about the fate of an athlete during World War II. Most film critics took the picture with restraint, noting, however, the visual splendor of military scenes and the dynamism of the plot. But now it has become completely obvious that Jolie loves scale, and overcoming is her theme. And it's not at all in the Oscar conjuncture.
Where did she get such a passion for wartime? Why does a man who sees the consequences of war and destruction devastate millions to show her horrors on the screen? Jolie began to work closely with the UN after working on the film "Lara Croft: Tomb Raider" in Cambodia, where she was shocked by the problems of the country. She began to actively travel to African countries and spend money on charity, and at the UN, appreciating her work, in 2001 made her a goodwill ambassador. Four years later, Jolie will be awarded the UN Humanitarian Award for active humanitarian work and philanthropy. She will travel to almost all the main points of military conflicts, having managed to drive for four days even to Russia, to the North Caucasus, create several charitable foundations (most often named children and husband) and receive for all this the award named after Jean Hersholt - the irregular Oscar, awarded Academy for his contribution to the cause of humanism.
Jolie, however, practically does not speak loud speeches. There are two topics that worry her deeply throughout her life — children and cancer. To remedy the plight of refugee children, she has been trying for the last fifteen years, partly due to financial contributions and partly adopting children (she has six of them, of which three are adoptive). The topic of cancer became painful after the death of her mother, who fought the disease for seven years and was never able to win. In 2013, Jolie will perform a mastectomy - a surgical operation to remove the breast. Preventive mastectomy is used in some cases with a genetic susceptibility to breast cancer, which in Jolie was 87 percent, and decreased to 5 after the operation. She will write about this low-key column in The New York Times: I feel a surge of strength, as I have made a strong choice that in no way diminishes my femininity. " After this column, TIME magazine dedicated Jolie a cover and a super woofer, where he called her "the symbol of the feminine ideal." “I just need a guy I can trust. How about that guy from U2 with glasses? Nelson's friend Mandela and all that. - Bono? Do you want them to bring Bono? - A colleague doubts my choice.” Bono in the action movie "Shooter" in 2007, once again securing the status of Bono as the main humanitarian figure of Hollywood. Theoretically, this should have happened with Jolie, because she, in fact, is Bono's female version of charity, but have not started joking about her yet. Unlike Bono, all her activities are officially accepted with mock seriousness, for all her statements (there were few of them) give the podium, scientific articles are written about her and no one, no one is joking about her.
You can drive around all of Africa and give millions to charity, but you will still be treated as a mediocre actress and person
It is all the more surprising that such seriousness completely unleashes a language in private correspondence and backroom conversations. The scandal around Sony made Angelina Jolie the epitome of the culture of the hypocrisy of Hollywood. You can be the UN Goodwill Ambassador, go around the whole of Africa, adopt and adopt a billion children, donate millions to charity, cut off your breasts to reduce the possibility of breast cancer, but you will still be treated like a mediocre person and no less mediocre an actress without great roles, and you can thrust your Oscar and three Golden Globes in your ass. It seems that in Hollywood still can not grow together the image of the most beautiful woman in the world and her desperate, compulsive seriousness. A beautiful woman is still supposed to be just beautiful. Forgiveness will be forgiven for her, but let it be better to have the beauty of what a fool without ambition - with such at least it is clear what to do. In Hollywood can understand the fight against cancer, but do not understand its warnings. They understand the box office, but condescendingly treat their apologists as directors. Although majestic women are confidently striding around the world, talented producers call such "spoiled snotty". But, in the apt expression of the same Scott Rudin, she will survive it.
The photo: Getty Images / Fotobank