Conversations with Mitchell, Part 4: Zac Efron

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Part 1: Justin Timberlake, Lena Horne, Doris Day, Jill Clayburgh, Cary Grant, Don Rickles.
Part 2: Woody Allen, Joan Crawford, Lily Tomlin, Claude Rains, Burt Reynolds.
Part 3: Joan Rivers.
The game: I pick a bunch of famous people, without alerting Mitchell as to who they are beforehand. I throw their names at him one by one, first asking him to describe each person using only one word (because nobody sums people up like Mitchell), and then moving onward to a discussion. Mitchell and I have been friends since we met in college. We have been having conversations like this for years, so I thought it would be fun to start taping them.

First up? ZAC EFRON, an actor/singer/dancer/sex-symbol Mitchell and I have already discussed ad nauseum. I was riveted by what he did in Neighbors (wrote about it here), but I’ve liked him in other things as well.

So let’s get to it.

Sheila O’Malley: Zac Efron. One word.

Mitchell Fain: Oh God. I’m already trying not to be prurient. I’m just going to say Prurience and call it a day. So the first thing is that he becomes famous when he’s a kid. He’s so pretty he looks like Japanese anime.

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And he’s the kind of boy who is so beautiful that he’s almost feminine. He doesn’t behave in an effeminate manner, but –

SOM: He’s beautiful, as opposed to handsome.

MF: Of course now he’s becoming handsome as he gets older and thicker … and … I can’t talk about it … hairy-chested … This is going to be painful. I have an appreciation for talented cute teeny-bopper boys. Justin Bieber, Justin Timberlake, Lance Kerwin, Willie Aames, Scott Baio – adorable beautiful boys.

Zac is the fantasy of little girls and little gay boys everywhere, especially in High School Musical, because he was so un-threatening. What’s interesting about Zac Efron, and I would put Daniel Radcliffe in a similar category: These boys got an amazing opportunity, young, and for a long time they had very little control over their careers. They were children.

But let’s go back. Let’s not dismiss High School Musical. The High School Musical phenomenon is not to be under-estimated as far as the buying power of Tweens. High School Musical almost invented the word Tween. We started to talk about Tweens almost because of High School Musical.

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SOM: Those Tweens will be fans of Zac Efron until he’s 80. If Ralph Macchio opened in a movie right now, I would camp out outside the theatre. That’s a crush dating from when I was 12 that will last my life. Please continue.

MF: In a way, the fall and limitations of someone like Ryan O’Neal is such a shame to me because I’d still go see him in anything. If he were still a viable movie star the way that Richard Gere is still a viable movie star … He changed my life at 6 or 7 years old, when I first saw that beautiful blonde man.

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Like Radcliffe, Efron has now taken control of his career. Maybe Daniel Radcliffe has made smarter choices, more intellectual choices, but both of them have taken control in a way that is appropriate for them, and it’s rare, and cool.

There was that thing at some red carpet event where Zac Efron reached into his pocket and condoms fell out. Really, Zac? Come on. I think that was a completely deliberate thing. I think he and his friends or he and his managers were like, “How do we get people to think of me as a person who fucks people? I need people to stop thinking about my pretty face. I’m a grown-up now and I want you to think about the fact that I put rubber on my hard cock and then put it in people.” The red carpet moment made you think: Zac Efron carries condoms?

We were just talking about Jean Harlow, and her luscious body wrapped in satin cut on the bias. And now it’s 2016, and we get to objectify Zac Efron’s body.

SOM: And he participates in that as though he’s posing for Michelangelo.

MF: AbsoLUTEly. And he drives even other straight men crazy with desire. I mean, the way Seth Rogen responds to Zac Efron? Rogen went on an entire press tour talking about the perfection of Zac Efron. People can’t handle it. We now live in a time where straight men can talk about their man-crushes.

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Now let’s go deeper. Efron was a musical theatre kid and he could sing and dance. And in High School Musical, he’s really dancing, which is very sexy. But they dubbed his voice for the singing. In the second movie, he insisted on singing himself.

And then he made the super wise choice to be in Hairspray, and he NAILED it. He was so sincere in Hairspray, and I think that’s what it comes down to: You don’t expect that boy to be sincere.

SOM: It’s a killer combo.

MF: In Neighbors, which we both love … the movie is constantly making us think of the way his abs lead down to his No-No place. And, again, even in Neighbors, he’s so sincere.

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SOM: That’s why that movie is what it is.

MF: What comes to mind for me when I think about Zac Efron, and why I think you and I love him so much, is Errol Flynn. Errol Flynn was so handsome, so unbelievably gorgeous. He had so much charisma. And so it was hard to take Errol Flynn seriously.

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It took Bette Davis 30 years after the fact to go, “I re-watched Elizabeth and Essex and he was so much better than I gave him credit for, and I was mean to him and I wasn’t fair.” And looking back, how do you take him seriously? It pissed Bette Davis off that anyone would take him seriously enough to put him in a film with her.

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And I think Zac Efron pisses people off in a similar way, in a kind of “Fuck him. Pretty boy” kind of way. Meanwhile, though, he’s busy quietly garnering the respect of his peers. Seth Rogen and that cool group of guys are taking him in.

SOM: Him and Channing Tatum.

MF: Efron and Channing are similar in that they are channeling or representing … I know I use this word too much, but there’s a zeitgeist, a shift in male sexuality that’s post-metro-sexuality. It’s starting to be a little bit unfettered from the homophobic vibe of the past. So if Seth Rogen and James Franco and all these cool dudes think that Zac Efron and Channing Tatum are cool and if Seth Rogen admits that he thinks Zac and Channing are insanely hot, then it’s cool for you to like your pretty friend in the same way. Dudes are admitting that they can appreciate other pretty dudes.

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I see it in my really young friends. A friend of mine, 22, has a posse of friends, and he’s so proud of the fact that they’re all beautiful, that none of them are homophobic, and he’s vain about it in a way that somehow is very sexy. It’s not vain like “Fuck you”, it’s vain like “Come appreciate us.”

SOM: That’s Magic Mike in a nutshell.

MF: YES.

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SOM: Early on, when he was trying to establish himself post-High School Musical, Zac Efron made a couple of dismissive comments about the High School Musical audience, trying to distance himself from them. I remember thinking, “Oh God, no, don’t do that … Those girls will love you forever, don’t alienate them.” Of course, he was very young at the time.

MF: He hasn’t done a musical since Hairspray. He was very smart to do Hairspray but he has deliberately not done one since. As it turns out, he really can sing and dance. Who knows if he can sing live onstage, but he can sing and dance. But he has that thing that you and I talk about all the time that makes someone not just an actor – which we love, too – but a movie star. And it was in Neighbors where he flipped the switch on that, because there’s a darkness to that character in Neighbors too. I wonder if the success of Daniel Radcliffe and Zac Efron as young adults has to do with the fact that they learned how to act as children. There’s an openness to receiving, in both of them, because that’s how it is when you’re a kid. When you’re a kid, you receive everything. There are very few people who have Zac Efron’s charisma. You can’t learn it.

SOM: It probably pisses a lot of serious actors off.

MF: It probably pisses him off too. I worry about him a little bit in a way that I don’t worry about Radcliffe, because Efron is so smoking hot (although Radcliffe, I think, is incredibly sexy too). But Radcliffe never has to work another day in his life. Who knows if Zac Efron is in that same financial position. Daniel Radcliffe never ever ever has to work another day in his life, period, end of story. He’ll always be Harry Potter. Zac Efron does have to work a little bit harder.

There are a couple of things that are interesting about Zac Efron as a personality, things that I worry will get in the way of his work. The condoms on the red carpet. The “Oh, I just happened to be naked on that balcony” behavior. I’m not judging it. Don’t get me wrong. It’s fucking fantastic. He is spank-bank fodder for many many people and he knows it. I think it’s great that he uses it in his work.

SOM: It would be silly not to.

MF: Not to give him this much credit yet, but in the way that we’ve talked about in terms of Catherine Deneuve and how she has always used her looks in whatever roles she takes. It would be silly for her to be in a movie that did not acknowledge her beauty.

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That’s why I didn’t like that Clint Eastwood movie The Changeling. To have Angelina Jolie walk into a room and not have everyone in that room acknowledge that she looks like that … it’s a lie and I’m out of the movie. Sorry. It would be like pretending Lauren Bacall didn’t look like what she looked like. Katharine Hepburn talked about being on location with Lauren Bacall for African Queen and coming out of her tent and seeing Bacall pouring a cup of coffee for Humphrey Bogart, looking like a million bucks in the middle of the jungle, and Hepburn thinking, “Fuck You … except I love you and you’re fabulous.”

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What I hope is that the reaction to Zac Efron is also “Fuck you, but I love you cause you’re fabulous” as opposed to dismissing him. It seems like it is that, because he seems to have the respect of his peers, and he seems very well-liked, but I worry that there are a lot of people telling him ways in which to manipulate his image. The condoms. Oh hi, I just happen to be naked on the balcony. I don’t mind him teasing his body to people or what they call “gay-baiting”, which they accuse Nick Jonas of doing too. The interesting thing is that Nick Jonas is very honest about it. He’s like, “I am absolutely doing that. I wouldn’t call it ‘baiting.’ I have a lot of gay fans and they really like me and they really like my body and I’m really proud of my body and here it is.”

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In a way, Nick Jonas is doing what I’d like to see Zac Efron do. Nick Jonas is actually doing edgier material. Playing a closeted fratboy on Scream Queens, or playing that boxer who may or may not be queer in Kingdom.

I worry about Zac Efron because I think he is potentially a major MAJOR movie star.

According to most people’s reports, Dirty Grandpa is a nadir of pretty much everyone’s careers. Even Aubrey Plaza, who is so funny, does not come across well. Like, enough. Who is leading his career? Zac Efron has the potential to be a 21st-century male sex symbol pinup. In the way we’ve talked about with Burt Reynolds, Richard Gere, Errol Flynn. Like with them, the structure of Zac Efron’s body …

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SOM: Insane.

MF: It’s designed to make us think about sex. He takes care of his body, he works on his body. He has had a little bit of issues with drugs, he did a stint in rehab. He has the charisma, but sometimes that charisma can hurt you, or trap you.

SOM: Let’s think about that. Someone like Burt Reynolds or Errol Flynn, in their heyday … What happened with them is happening with Channing right now. It’s not happening with Zac yet, but Channing is 10 years older, so that may be the difference. But as with Burt, or Errol, or Richard Gere, whatever, the industry recognized the value of what a male sex-symbol movie star like that brings to a project, and gathered its forces to put them in stuff that gave the public what it wanted. So there’s Burt Reynolds doing all these films for different audiences, that all became one audience, like Smokey and the Bandit and Deliverance and Starting Over … People could not get enough of him.

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MF: Efron has not had a Smokey and the Bandit yet, he has not had a Robin Hood yet, he has not had a Magic Mike yet …

SOM: The industry misses the point with this all the time, especially with men. It is slow to value megawatt male stardom like that. Those men are CAST in stuff, of course, because they’re gorgeous, but nobody seems to know where to put them at first. Stories need to be designed FOR them. And so where do you PUT Zac Efron? Someone like Seth Rogen, an industry insider at this point, but there’s an independent outsider-ness to him as well – created the character in Neighbors probably with Zac Efron in mind … and went about getting out of the way to let Efron do his surprisingly complex and touching thing, as well as the megawatt superstar thing too. But let’s think about where he’s at right now in his career and what’s happening with some of those other former teeny-boppers: what if Efron was put into a Coen Brothers movie – as just happened with Justin Timberlake, as just happened with Channing Tatum, or what if Efron was put into a Woody Allen movie – which happened to Leonardo DiCaprio…

MF: Right, Zac Efron hasn’t had that yet at all. It’ll be interesting to see if those offers start coming in.

SOM: I just saw The Vow with Channing Tatum and Rachel McAdams, and it’s pretty bad. Channing Tatum plays a bohemian independent record producer who has a bunch of bohemian friends, and it’s like … For real? Bohemians don’t have bodies like that, who are you kidding. But strippers DO have bodies like that, right? But where do you PUT Channing Tatum, except in rom-coms? Or maybe war movies. And then suddenly, same year as The Vow, along comes Steven Soderbergh’s Magic Mike … and Channing’s stripper past is now public knowledge, and it all falls into place for him. He suddenly got to be himSELF. And Boom: Superstardom. Magic Mike changed the game.

MF: The game-changer for Channing Tatum was Magic Mike because it came FROM Channing Tatum. It’s HIS story. What will be the same thing for Zac Efron? You and I hope – because we like him so much and we respond to his charisma and also just the pure sex of him – not a bad thing! – that he will find projects that will acknowledge his beauty, and use him correctly. Back in the day, we had, say, Sophia Loren.

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She was so unbelievably gorgeous, she had to become a star, and then everyone realized what a wonderful actress she was too, which she was all along, of course.

SOM: Brigitte Bardot.

MF: There are any number of freakishly gorgeous people who then showed us what wonderful actors they were. But it started with the looks. Hollywood is based on this kind of objectification. I’m not mad about it. I’m happy to go see those people.

And as long as Zac Efron takes off his clothes and keeps teasing us with how much of his clothes he’s going to take off, I’ll still go see his movies. But it will be interesting to see if he gets the chance to develop more. Neighbors was a pretty typical movie, genre-wise, and then he did something extra with it. That “extra” was all him.

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What if he had a movie that was already “extra” … could he show up to that, too?

SOM: I really think he could.

MF: I worry about him. [Long pause.] And I want to see his dick.

SOM: I think we should probably end there.

MF: Please.

About half an hour passed, and then we came back to Efron. Clearly, we weren’t done.

MF: Thinking more about Zac Efron and Daniel Radcliffe as far as being famous as kids in major cultural phenomenons and then how they’ve proceeded through their careers. Radcliffe decided to go do Equus, which then came to Broadway. He took that risk which was extraordinary. He didn’t have to take that kind of risk. That’s insane.

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Daniel Radcliffe in “Equus” (2007)

And that choice says to me that he’s a real artist because he was willing to take that kind of risk.

SOM: People laughed about him doing it.

MF: Yes! People laughed and made fun of him for it. And of course, now he’s gone on to have quite a successful stage career. But the perception at the time was dismissive. It was a huge risk for him.

It was like when Cher first went and saw Silkwood by herself in a movie theatre. She had disguised herself and sat there with a regular audience. The credits came up in the beginning, and there were the names – Meryl StreepKurt Russell – and when her name came up, the audience burst into laughter. It was like: CHER coming up after those two names? People thought it was hilarious.

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Then, of course, she was nominated for an Oscar for her performance in Silkwood, and then she won the Oscar for Moonstruck, and everyone stopped laughing. But she had to be courageous enough to take that risk in the first place.

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But Efron and Channing Tatum

Okay. Here’s the thing. I think Channing Tatum actually is already doing this with Magic Mike and maybe even in the Coen Brothers‘ movie too.

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If Zac Efron can figure out how to tap into that thing going on now where it’s now okay for men to admit a sexual attraction to other men and still be straight – in the way that women can do with women, and gay men can do with women … Men have never been allowed to say, “Fuck. If I were gay, I’d stick my dick in Zac Efron.”

SOM: There’s that great anecdote about Carl Perkins first meeting Elvis. Perkins shook hands with Elvis, did some small talk, kept it together, but the second Elvis walked away, Carl Perkins said to someone standing right there, “That’s the best-looking man I’ve ever seen before in my life.” Carl Perkins wasn’t gay, but he didn’t care, he HAD to address it. Quentin Tarantino showed that in the first scene of True Romance, when Christian Slater says, “If I HAD to fuck a guy, I’d fuck Elvis.”

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MF: Right! But straight men, in general, have a hard time admitting that. It’s way too threatening. But it’s changing now, and Zac Efron is tapping into it to some degree, but what if he tapped into it deliberately? What if there was an American Gigolo-type of movie for him?

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What if there was something of substance that tapped into it and used him to do it? Neighbors taps into it: Seth Rogen has that line: “He looks like he has been created in a lab by gay men.” It’s Rogen’s way of acknowledging: Holy crap, that’s what beautiful men are supposed to look like.

But what if there was a more serious exploration of it? That’s what will turn Zac Efron from a movie star into … something else. A phenomenon, like what’s happening with Channing. But someone’s gotta write that script for him. And who knows if we’re even ready to talk about it, but it’s already happening and he’s a part of it. As is Channing Tatum.

SOM: It’d have to be written by a man, a man who’s open to that stuff. It’s not Judd Apatow.

MF: Apatow is too conventional.

SOM: Apatow is a domesticated suburban man, comparatively.

MF: It would have to be someone like James Franco. James Franco could write it, because James Franco’s entire career is based on: “I may not have sex with men, but the idea of having sex with men is fascinating to me.”

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SOM: “I could be talked into it.”

MF: “I could be talked into it or I could talk you into it, or let’s talk about it.” Even in This is the End, there’s that whole discussion, and one of them says, “At some point, Franco’s gonna suck our dicks.”

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The dudebros of Seth Rogen’s “This Is the End.” I love this movie.

SOM: Of course it’s gonna be Franco!

MF: If they’re stuck there forever, and someone’s gonna have to do the dick-sucking, it’s gonna be Franco.

SOM and MF: [Laughing that goes on for some time.]

SOM: Everything seems to depend on the straight boys … maybe because they hold that kind of power …?

MF: Yes. They hold the power to change. To change everything, to change the conversation, to change how straight men talk about this stuff. We can have that conversation, amongst ourselves, but until they’re on board with it, we’re still stuck. But do straight men have the balls to really address this? That’s what Zac Efron needs. If someone can write something for him that pokes a hole in the balloon that is that thing … the male fear of finding other men sexually attractive … and that balloon is being pierced, culturally, already – Magic Mike being a huge part of it – and if Efron could be a part of something like that deliberately … I mean, sky’s the limit, right?

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16 Responses to Conversations with Mitchell, Part 4: Zac Efron

  1. Jill V. says:

    These are the best types of conversations. Hours long about the tiniest of details and speculation. I have a few friends that I can talk with like that. It’s a joy to read others as well

    • sheila says:

      Jill – thanks! It was so fun – I agree, the best kinds of conversations. And you can’t talk with everyone like this.

      I have four more of these installments to transcribe and put together. Four new people. It’s such a crazy eclectic group but wanted to get Zac up first!

  2. Maureen says:

    I really love your conversations with Mitchell! Zac Efron is interesting to me-like you said, he has that charisma that goes beyond good looks. Can I also say, I LOVE that he doesn’t wax his chest. I know this is a personal preference, but I find this incredibly sexy in an era where there seems to be a Ken doll kind of look with some actors.

    Hairspray is a favorite movie of mine, my daughter and I went to see it in the theater, and my face actually hurt from smiling by the time we left. He was incredibly good in that.

    I am watching a Bravo show right now, Girlfriend’s Guide to Divorce, and there is an actor in it, Will Kemp. I first saw him in the movie Van Helsing, and he struck me as such an Errol Flynn type-super good looking but with that charisma that you either have or you don’t. Fast forward years, and seeing him on this show-I would seriously campaign for this guy to be the next James Bond. He has that kind of “It” factor. His appeal comes across so strongly, and I think it goes to what you and Mitchell were talking about, the great looking guy, who is also a really good actor. There needs to be more movies for them.

    Can’t wait for the other installments!

    • sheila says:

      // Can I also say, I LOVE that he doesn’t wax his chest. //

      Maureen – I love that too!

      I love how he works the microphone in that number from “Hairspray.” It is so old-school, and he OWNS it.

      There’s a kindness in him that somehow – I don’t know how – cannot be controlled or held back. I’m sure at some point he will play a psychopath and perhaps he will be quite good – but what I found so touching about him in Neighbors – in that Linklater movie about Orson Welles – in Hairspray – is his irrepressible kindness. It’s unexpected.

      I’m not familiar with Will Kemp but I will look him up.

      Charisma is somewhat out of style now – the culture/industry rewards the more “serious actor types” (no disrespect), who speak seriously about their craft, and have five o’clock shadow, and all the rest. There’s a place for those actors, and they scoop up awards.

      But boy, I value good old-fashioned star power and star charisma. It’s not that it’s “hard to do” – it’s that it can’t be done at all if you don’t already have it. And that is worth its weight in gold (and, in my opinion, has way more staying power.)

      Thanks for reading and commenting!

      Working on the next installment now.

      • sheila says:

        Okay, I just looked up Will Kemp. He started as a ballet dancer! He is seriously hot, too. The only thing of his I think I have seen is Step Up 2, but I need to watch it again to refresh my memory. (I love those Step Up movies.)

        • sheila says:

          Maureen – I am thinking a little bit about this charisma thing. The Zac Efron thing. The Errol Flynn thing. Channing Tatum. Burt Reynolds. It’s a sexual thing, sure, and they’re handsome …

          but I wonder if the real common denominator – the thing that REALLY puts charisma over the edge – is the sense you get that these guys don’t take themselves too seriously.

          There’s a sense of humor somehow.

          Maybe because they’re so good-looking – and if you’re that good-looking, maybe you think, “Hell, I was just born this way. I had nothing to do with it.” As opposed to “Yes. I deserve all of this because I am a Greek God.”

          I suppose good looks can also go in that second direction – but these superstar men all seem to have … not humility. That’s not at all the right word, because damn straight they all are aware of the gift of their looks and how to use them.

          But they all seem to have … a sort of goofy relationship to themSELVES. Almost like they’re getting a total hoot out of how much attention they get.

          I’m not sure Zac Efron is quite there yet – he still isn’t QUITE a “grown-up” yet – but Neighbors gave me real hope that he understands what he has – the good looks – and can use them in a way that is fun and hot and unselfconscious – but can also under-cut it with the feeling that he’s not taking himself too seriously – that he knows who he is, what movie he’s in, what his purpose is … He didn’t seem at ALL like he had a lot to prove.

        • sheila says:

          … and let’s be honest: it’s got to be extremely strange to be that beautiful and get all kinds of weird attention from when you were a little kid. Like: what does that feel like? How does that shape you? These people have to sense they’re different, almost immediately. Kids understand. But how do you make sense of it? And how do you keep your head about it?

          Elaine Dundy, in her wonderful book Elvis and Gladys – (it may not sound wonderful – but it’s actually a real piece of scholarship and research – a real SOUTHERN book, contextualizing Elvis as a Southerner) – but anyway, she goes off into bits of speculative analysis that I find annoying in a lot of people – but with her, some of her observations stick.

          And she speculates a bit on what it must have felt like to be, say, 10-year-old Elvis, with these burgeoning good looks – and not just a cute kid – but this exotic almost bizarre beauty – and what that does to the people around him. People are drawn to beauty – but they also can be intimidated by it, or hostile of it.

          Elvis was an isolated pampered mama’s boy, with not a lot of close pals. He was a loner. He stuttered pretty badly. He was shy. So all of that may have contributed to the fact that he didn’t have many friends.

          But Dundy theorizes that his beauty had a lot to do with it.

          People (kids, especially) sniff out “difference” in their peers … and close ranks against it. Or maybe Beauty generates a kind of quiet respect – like: “wow, okay, that kid has something we will never have …” – but it doesn’t exactly make other people warm up to you. They’ll just leave you alone.

          So it’s this weird thing, kind of like Hitchcock’s relationship to beauty. He loved it – he envied it. He fetishized it – he reveled in be-smirching it (Cary Grant rolling around in the dirt, hiding from the crop-duster.) I think Hitchcock really tapped into how regular everyday people feel about beauty: God, we love it, and God, we’re envious, and God, we LOVE to see those people taken down a peg.

          • Maureen says:

            Sheila-are you the most awesome person ever? Why yes, I think it is so! You are one of the few bloggers, when you blog something, or comment on a comment-makes me think of something that much more.

            I LOVE what you say about beauty and a sense of humor. That is exactly what Flynn had, and while I don’t know much about Kemp in his personal life, on screen he is funnier than shit and can deliver a line. To be that good looking but like you said, to be able to deliver a great line-as a woman I melt, and I can’t help feeling the rest of the population, whatever your sexual orientation has to respond. Burt Reynolds is the perfect example (have I mentioned I saw him at the TCM festival and wanted to faint?). Personally, I find nothing more attractive than men who know they are good looking, but have a good sense of humor about it. I think why I love it-most reasonable people know looks are fleeting, so for the beautiful people to say “lets enjoy it now!’, with a grin and a smile-sign me up.

            My sisters always say I should have been a casting director-I fell in love with Donny Osmond when no one else did, Russell Crowe was in my sights after the Sum of Us, James Macavoy after a teeny part in Lorna Doone. But I think I, and everyone else must see this spark.

          • sheila says:

            Okay, now I really MUST check out Will Kemp’s work. He sounds wonderful!

          • sheila says:

            I think you did mention seeing Burt at the TCM Festival – I’m so envious!! I mean, that guy is HILARIOUS. His appearances on Carson? Where he shaved off one side of his mustache? The man was a goofball. And yet the biggest sex symbol of his day.

            What an amazing combination of attributes – damn near irresistible.

  3. sheila says:

    Maureen – Sorry I’m moving my comments down – still the same conversation but I’m getting a little lost in the comment-threading.

    // most reasonable people know looks are fleeting, so for the beautiful people to say “lets enjoy it now!’, with a grin and a smile-sign me up. //

    That is SUCH an insightful point !!

    I wonder if it’s different with women … who have more anxieties about growing older? (Valid anxieties.)

    Maybe it’s different with men. I mean, Burt Reynolds, of course, has had plastic surgery (Mitchell and I discussed that in one of the former installments) – I’m not a person who judges plastic surgery. I actually don’t believe in judging it. It’s a personal choice. I think it can be a silly choice – especially for actors – but I don’t judge them for feeling the NEED to do it in such a ruthless industry. Actors need the fluidity of their faces more than they need anything else (my casting director friend said she cast an actress for a commercial. After the day of shooting, the guy who directed the commercial called my friend up and said, “Don’t send me anymore Botox-ed babes. She could not move her face.” Doh!!)

    But anyway: Mitchell and I were discussing Burt, especially now- and that he has an almost feminine fear of growing old. Which makes perfect sense when you consider that he – as macho as he was – was practically a va-va-voom Raquel Welch type figure – whose sexuality was so strong that it was irrepressible in everything he did.

    But I am thinking about female sex symbols and whether much of this applies to them.

    I think maybe it’s different on a pretty essential level. Women have always been “objectified.” I don’t think that’s necessarily a bad thing. I wrote about that in my By the Sea review. Male objectification of women gave us Marlene Dietrich. Garbo. Titian’s glorious red-heads. Whatever.

    But the objectification of men is less accepted – although you can also see it going on back to antiquity. All of those gorgeous naked Greek charioteer statues. I mean, they’re like a Bruce Weber photo shoot!!

    So how do we objectify men? There are those men who slip through the cracks, who bring to their work an almost feminine sense of their own sexuality – they aren’t bulked-up against it, or trying to prove they are cool and “tough.” Like Rudolph Valentino. Cary Grant. I would count Elvis. Channing Tatum is definitely in this category. Burt Reynolds. Their sexuality is generous and GIVING. It’s totally de-stabilizing to “our” ideas about men and gender and sexuality – which is why it’s such a slam-dunk with audiences. They suggest all KINDS of radical possibilities.

    AND: except for Valentino, who experienced a lot of homophobic slurs, and who seemed to have mostly a female fan base – all of these male sex symbols we’re talking about were beloved by MEN too.

    They allowed men to admit attraction to other men. Not in a “gay” way, but in an aesthetic way – which some men can’t ever admit to. I’ve had conversations like that on my site before – where a man, who may admit he loves Elvis (for example – where it’s happened the most) – he refuses to admit that he finds him handsome or sexy. “Well, I’m not gay, so I can’t speak to that …”

    Dude, do you have EYES IN YOUR HEAD? Don’t worry, pal, no one’s gonna think you’re gay if you say “Elvis is hot.”

    This is one of the reasons why the official approved Elvis commentary can be so lacking (as good as much of it is). The men are less willing to go ga-ga over the sexual power of what he did … they focus on the music solely (which, of course, is very important too). Lester Bangs is the only straight male critic that I know of who admitted, essentially, “My cock got hard when I saw Elvis walk onstage.” Bangs’ exact words: “He was the only male performer I have ever seen to whom I responded sexually; it wasn’t real arousal, rather an erection of the heart, when I looked at him I went mad with desire and envy and worship and self-projection.”

    Other male writers certainly admit the good looks, acknowledge the sexual frenzy of his fans … but in a way that isn’t as participatory as Bangs’ comments.

    Men, in general, have a much bigger problem with this than women do. Women can say, “Oh my God, that woman is so SEXY” without feeling like their entire sexual identity is crashing down around them.

    Oh, and I would put Jensen Ackles into this crowd as well – who is working in that old-school male sex-symbol way on a kind of epic scale.

    And holy shit: Russell Crowe in The Sum of Us!! Sexy as HELL.

  4. sheila says:

    I just watched Lee Daniels’ The Paperboy and I remember the buzz of it at the time – it was booed at Cannes. Roger Ebert said it was great trash. It is that. Wow. I remember seeing clips of Nicole Kidman and hearing about how insane her performance was.

    It is insane. And she is great. Everyone’s good in it, and the whole thing is steeped in messed-up sex and Florida swamp-funk.

    And our boy Zac Efron is wonderful in it.

    But … wow. I mean, wow.

    • Heather says:

      Hi Sheila,
      I saw “The Paperboy” recently also and, yeah- wow. I totally get the ‘great trash’ thing, pulpy for sure. But I NEEDED to talk to people about that movie after watching. It stayed with me and I saw images for days. It has been quite some time since that has happened.
      That movie made me want to have conversations about sex. The essence of sex. Nicole Kidman’s character has a line something like, “having sex with a man is the most natural thing in the world” and the way she delivered that line changed everything for me regarding her character. My shoulders relaxed.
      Cusack was the weak link for me, but no matter.

      • sheila says:

        Heather – ha, love these thoughts!! And yeah, I don’t think many people saw it – although they really should have, considering how CRAZY the whole thing was. Alligators and swamps and illicit S&M scenes, plus … breastfeeding swamp-people? And mutual orgasm out in public, with a prison guard watching? And jellyfish stings cured by … urine?? Oh, Lee Daniels, I love thee. (When I heard he would be directing a movie about a butler who had served 8 US Presidents … I thought of The Paperboy and was like, “Wait. WHAT??”)

        I thought Kidman was great. That character could have been a caricature – and I guess she was … kind of … but the caricature tipped over into some kind of tragicomic reality – she’s a woman who “acts” every second of her life anyway.

        I agree about Cusack.

        I thought Macy Gray was absolutely wonderful, too. I loved the relationship she had with Zac Efron’s character.

  5. Honeybee says:

    This article was like discovering that specific food you’ve been searching for high and low for. It’s fascinating reading in the #MeToo and post-Weinstein moment. I literally had these exact thoughts (and giggles; loved the jokes) about Efron during this period. There was a shift in the NEIGHBORS performance; a bit of darkness registered now behind those baby blues whereas before they could read blank. What Lee Daniel’s(another early objectifier) didn’t understand about Efron’s beauty that Seth Rogen did is that it’s volatile.

    As queer/female gaze gain more space in viewing mediums, those roles will be created that allow for the types of roles and careers for men that Catherine Denevue built her greatness on. And how delicious will it be for audiences to witness that male archetype being built right in front of our very eyes.

    Side-note: We know he will come from France because…of course he will?

    • sheila says:

      Honeybee – I just love your comment so much!! Those of us who recognize the potential PHENOM that is Zac Efron (and appreciate the phenom he already is) have to stick together!! I was so excited for Greatest Showman – since he got to use some of the things that got him started in the first place – I thought he was wonderful in it, a perfect romantic leading man – who can also sing and dance. Slam-dunk. If it were 1940 or 1950, the industry would know what to do with him.

      // There was a shift in the NEIGHBORS performance; a bit of darkness registered now behind those baby blues whereas before they could read blank. //

      I agree with this!! It was such an exciting performance, I thought.

      and weird you mention France. Alain Delon is one of my favorite actors and he worked in this realm we’ve been discussing – the fluid realm – a man, a SEXPOT of a man, who created all these destabilizing responses in women, but mostly other men. It was his bread and butter, his natural milieu. A crazy erotic muse, aware of his own beauty – but indifferent to it in a way – I’m endlessly fascinated by him. I have him on the brain because the Quad Cinema in New York is doing a huge retrospective of his career in September and I can’t WAIT. https://quadcinema.com/program/lhomme-fatal-alain-delon/

      Delon is chilly – whereas Efron is warm – and Channing Tatum is warm – so he has a different affect – Efron wouldn’t be right for the roles Delon played. It’s hard to picture Efron in Le Samourai – it just wouldn’t work.

      But Delon was fluid in his presentation of self (still is) – fluid in his sexuality (I’m not talking actually – I don’t care about whatever the details might be about his personal life) – fluid in that he wasn’t trying to perform traditional masculinity – at all – he seemed open to sexual possiblilities (Purple Noon is the chilliest example of this – he was my favorite “Tom Ripley” onscreen).

      So yes – I still look to France with hope!!

      I’m glad we made you giggle. He and I have been talking like this for 30 years at this point, #MeToo or no, we will continue to do so. We love actors and sexual personae and people who use themselves in unique ways.

      Again, thanks so much for your comment!

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