THE PITTS OF DESPAIR
2017 is the year of the incredible collapsing Hollywood hunk
THE biggest celebrity confessional of 2017 so far goes to Brad Pitt, who recently gave GQ an interview best described as offbrand. For decades, Pitt’s been an avatar of old-school American masculinity, the rough-hewn Midwesterner who wore his good looks casually, worked hard and said little. No more.
The GQ profile, in which the 53-year-old Pitt offers up a forensic exam of his emotional, parental and spousal failings while brewing matcha tea, is the apotheosis of a new phenomenon: the male superstar in mid-life crisis. Have we ever seen so many unravel so spectacularly, so publicly?
Ben Affleck’s tabloid narrative is way more compelling than any recent work. After announcing his split from wife Jennifer Garner in 2015, Affleck, 44, has been repeatedly photographed in disarray, a tableau that’s become the male midlife crisis writ large. Here he is, almost daily, unshaven and bleary-eyed. Or carrying some extra weight, vaping alone in a brand-new muscle car, shot in a stealth moment romancing the nanny, showing off a supremely ill-advised back tattoo, showing up on talk shows sounding more than a little buzzed, going to rehab for two weeks and posting about it on Facebook.
The narrative is unchanged: Today, “Sad Ben Affleck” pulls up over one million hits on Google. Vulture posted a photo essay called “A Miserable Gallery of Ben Affleck Smoking Through the Pain of Existence.” Estranged wife Garner weighed in on the back tattoo, a Technicolor phoenix rising from the ashes. “You know what we would say in my hometown about that?” she told Vanity Fair. “Bless his heart.”
On Thursday, The Hollywood Reporter published the extensive piece “Johnny Depp: A Star in Crisis and the Insane Story of His ‘Missing’ Millions.” Among the revelations: “Depp’s lateness and alleged heavy drinking” while filming the latest “Pirates of the Caribbean” caused mas- sive production issues; he’s spent $30,000 a month on wine and $5 million to blow Hunter S. Thompson’s cremains from a cannon.
Reports have also surfaced that Depp, who most regularly looks overweight, unwashed and in dire need of deep oral hygiene, has become so lazy or incapacitated that his lines are fed to him through an earpiece. He’s become Marlon Brando on the set of “Apocalypse Now.”
He’s not unaware of his reputation — but Depp, ever the rebel at 53, doesn’t care. “It’s my money,” he told The Wall Street Journal last month. “If I want to buy 15,000 cotton balls a day, it’s my thing.”
Then, last week, Rolling Stone published a profile with recently divorced Chris Rock, who has been funneling his bitterness through stand-up. The piece opens with Rock, 52, trying out material at the Comedy Cellar downtown, the audience unnerved by his hostility. “Me, it’s a lot easier to be faithful when no one wants to f--k you,” he said. The magazine reported that “some of the women hissed, and many of the men stared into their drinks.” Rock went on to complain that he might have to take “some s---ty TV work” to pay for his divorce and alimony.
According to divorce filings, Rock’s net worth is an estimated $70 million, and he’s just signed a reported $40 million deal for two Netflix specials. He refers to his current “Blackout Tour” as “the alimony tour.”
It’s curious to see so many male megastars — so good-looking, wealthy, undeniably privileged — unravel so transparently. Maybe, in each of these cases, it’s a byproduct of living in the bubble for so long. Each came to fame in the ’90s, when the Internet was in its infancy, and the mechanisms of fame and control of one’s narrative have shifted wildly. Post-Oprah, we’re a permanently confessional culture, and the quickest route to celebrity redemption remains the ostensible tell-all.
But maybe there’s something larger here, too. Over nearly the past 10 years, ever since the Great Recession, women have fared better than men. Women outperform men in college degrees, the job market, investing.
Amongthe most important books of 2016 was “Men Without Work,” and writing in Time magazine, author Nicholas Eberstadt laid it out plainly: “It is past time for America to recognize the collapse of work for men as the grave ill it truly is . . . casting men into the role of dependents and encouraging sloth, idleness and vices perhaps more insidious.”
With such catastrophic economic and societal shifts comes a still-unfolding redefinition of American masculinity. So maybe it shouldn’t be such a surprise to see Pitt, once the apex of ’90s American brawn in “Fight Club,” go full Zoolander in his accompanying video short for GQ, prancing and rolling his way through America’s national parks. The subtext is Pitt’s biblical atonement; the text of the article is much more clear.
“I’m 53,” Pitt said, “and I’m just getting into it.”