Famous For Being Famous

There comes a time when just about everyone needs to come to grips with the fact that we will not become hugely famous solely based on who we are as people. Who among us has not felt as though we were watching an artificial carbon copy of ourself or someone we know when we watch television or a movie? Who among us hasn't believed that a movie could be made based on our own life or a situation we have been in? This is especially true for younger people who tend to think that their life experiences are vastly more interesting than they really are. Don't believe me? Watch what happens when high schoolers get web cams (I don't recoment watching more than 30 seconds of this clip or your mind might cave in). I am as guilty of this as anyone. There is no footage of my idiotic antics on youtube, but I do maintain that my freshman year roommate is a direct descendant of Wooderson from Dazed and Confused. Certainly I would not even think to suggest that people's real life experiences are not frequently captivating (to be explained later), instead I suggest that in our own minds our stories and personalities have a tendency to be far more fascinating than they are to the outside world. This is proven everyday by two phrases "I guess you had to be there," and "and then I found five dollars." Yet despite the beautiful and universal truth that in our own minds we are fascinating and engaging enough to make millions being ourselves on television, it isn't going to happen. The rules, however, change if you have already been blessed with mild celebrity.

What comes to mind when I say Brett Michaels? How about Flavor Flav? Or Paula Abdul? We are in the middle of a cultural phenomenon in which individuals who were at one time famous have now transcended time, space, and the entertainment industry standards to become equally if not more famous just for being themselves on television. Somehow, someway, someone felt that a slew of former celebrities could breath new life into current popular culture, and somehow they managed to be right. When you think of Brett Michaels, you think of one of two things; the band Poison who achieved arena style stardom with Every Rose Has It's Thorn, or you think of him as the love interest for a bevy of half-crazed 20-somethings on VH1's Rock of Love. Flava Flav for you is either one of the members of Public Enemy, or he is the focal point on Flavor of Love. Paula Abdul? Cold Hearted Snake or 1/3 of the most influential music critics of our time on American Idol. The strange thing is, the latter would not have been possible without the former for any such celebs. In order for the formula to work effectively, one MUST have been famous years ago, been a subject of a Where Are They Now special, and then re-appeared in the spotlight as a tour de force of popular culture influence. It has been said that one can never be as popular as one's predecessor (i.e John Lennon's son Julian, Terry Bowden, or the remake of The Gong Show), but what happens when the predecessor is one's self? Some celebrities have achieved enormous fame by being themselves based on the fact that they had at one time been enormously famous for something else. We shall from here on refer to this as retroactive fame or retroactive celebrity where fame plus 10-20 years begets equal or greater fame. It would be considered a comeback except that they are not retroactively becoming famous again in their original genre. Instead they are becoming retroactively famous for being themselves outside of their original genre. The last 5-10 years have proven to us all that the world of celebrity rotates on a constant axis in which it is possible, dare I say probable, that once one has experienced and wained from celebrity status, it is only a matter of time before the entertainment world makes one full revolution to once again shower them with the light of popularity in equal or greater proportions. Science rules.

There is an age old argument in the psychological world. It stems from the question of whether or our personalities are the result of our (a) bio-genetic make-up, or (b) a reflection of one's own life experiences. You may have heard it referred to as the "nature vs. nurture" debate. The common compromise states that our personalities are the result of a mixture of both our genetic and experiential background. This is why celebrities will always be famous. Confused? And rightly so.

Fame is a peculiar beast. You never quite know when it will happen or who it will happen to, but there is one universal truth about anyone who has ever become famous: at some point, someone saw in them an undefinable quality that sets them apart from anyone and everyone else in the world. Before they formed as a rock group, Paul Hewson and David Evans were school mates. Both played guitar for their peers in the school yard, but David has remarked that Paul always managed to have a bigger gathering than him. David knew he was a better guitar player, so he could never figure out what it was about Paul that drew people's attention, but it did. This is the perfect example of the "it" factor, as it has often been referred to. Later on Paul Hewson became Bono and David Evans became The Edge in the Irish supergroup U2. Every year thousands of hopeful comedians dream of being full-time cast members on Saturday Night Live, yet only a handful of extraordinarily lucky people get the honor. Why? It. American Idol is the highest rated show on television today, and it consists of young adults performing for the nation only to have the nation decide who the winner will be. How do they decide to pick Kelly Clarkson, Ruben Studdard, and David Cook from the pack of clearly talented singers? It. How does Kevin Costner keep managing to get work despite is heinous acting? It. There is some quality about who they are that sets them apart from everyone else and which leads them into a life of fame. This is a pretty good sumation of a celebrity's nature.

What does the term "party like a rock star" mean to you? Long before it was a terrible hip-hop song by the Shop Boys, it was an uncredited phrase referring to the intensity in which musicians have fun. The standard visual is that partying like a rock star includes exorbitant amounts of drugs, alcohol, and easy, uninhibited sex with countless people. This partying usually lasts until everyone either passes out or someone dies (to limit a "rock star party" to a mere night is thinking small time). The end result being that if you are a bona fide rock star, it is automatically assumed that you have made (or destroyed) a living having a wilder time than any of us mere mortals can ever dream of. In our current culture, this type of lifestyle is not limited to musicians. Look at some other actors who have indulged in a life of excess: Drew Barrymore, Corey Feldman, Eddy Murphy, Chris Farley, John Belushi, Lindsay Lohan, and the list certainly goes on and on. For the special few who have managed to indulge this lifestyle and survive, they must certainly come away with some seriously interesting stories and experiences thus reating a well-rounded story of their life experiences.

And there you have it, statistically celebrities have an abnormally high combination of both nature and nurture, moreso than the average person. That is all it is. A single sentence that did not really need to be explained in three long-winded paragraphs.

But how does this relate to the cylindrical world of entertainment. Why do celebrities become retroactively famous once they have fallen from grace? Because fascination with celebrity does not really happen until post-celebrity, or at least until peak-celebrity. Let us examine the celebrity arch: A 16 year old boy, let's call him Dan, from small town New Jersey wants to be an actor. He is gifted and has a clear "it" factor. At age 18, moves to New York, gets an agent, appears in a number of low-budget Indy films first as an extra, then supporting characters. He finds he has a knack for being a character actor and feels he should pursue that living versus that of a leading man. Through his agent he lands a part in a Coen brother's film as Joel and Ethan are known for their portrayal of colorful characters. He is a hit, winning an Emmy nomination for best supporting actor. He is offered roles in numerous high budget films. He begins dating attractive celebrity women, going to Hollywood parties, and buying expensive houses and cars. At this point, he has "made it." The world becomes fascinated with Dan. He is on the covers of a number of supermarket tabloids obsessed with who he is dating and what kind of coffee he drinks. He is now 28. Still young enough to consider himself immortal, yet old enough and wealthy enough to be fully independent. He loves the celebrity lifestyle, but the wild parties all seem the same, and he needs a little "extra boost" to keep having fun. He drinks more than he used to. He starts snorting cocaine, first on a limited basis, then almost daily, then multiple times a day. His wallet starts to shrink, and his bar tab starts to grow. The tabloids are filled with pictures of him looking horribly wasted and distorted. He is no longer interested in being an actor because he is no longer interested in working. Calls from film producers are replaced with calls from creditors. Now he is 35 and he can't beg for a film role, and he can't afford the coke he needs to get out of bed. Right around the time his second wife leaves him he decides it is time to clean himself up. A year later Dan is completely sober and ready to start working again. By this point he has completed the full celebrity arch from discovery, through success, through self-destruction, and finally to rehabilitation. And it is through the stages of success to self-destruction that the public is fascinated with him, and it is through rehabilitation that we become truly interested in the whole of Dan's journey. He is no longer the characters he has portrayed on film, he is instead the Dan that has led a strange and horrifyingly intriguing life, and that is what the public wants to see, thus after being cast out of the public eye once he becomes embarrassing, he re-emerges as a washed up success story. Hence the cycle of celebrity. His nature made him a celebrity, but his nurture made him a retroactive celebrity. Now he is ready for a VH1 reality show. Obviously this is a grossly overly stereotyped arch, and many celebrities who become retroactively famous are not victims of the lifestyle of excess, but in some way they do go through a journey of sorts with their own peaks and valleys.

And here is the bottom line. You can't write this stuff. The true life story of a person is vastly more intriguing than anything someone can write only because when we know something to be true, we can't help but be awe-inspired provided it is actually an interesting story. This is why the film "Remember The Titans" is vastly more interesting than "Major League" or why "All The Presidents Men" is more intense than "Clear and Present Danger." When we know something to be true, we aren't burdened with the need to analyse the probabilities of plot lines. We can't say "that would never happen" during a non-fictional story because, for all we know, it did happen as it is portrayed in front of us. As movie-goers we love this because when we watch movies we desperately want to believe in the legitimacy of a story, but often times we can't help but be taken out of it. This is not an option during non-fiction movies. Despite the fact that producers and directors have a tendency to take "artistic liberties" with story, we blindly believe every moment of the film from start to finish regardless of how ridiculous it may seem. The same is true with people. Ridiculous characters are immediately thought to be complete fabrications while ridiculous people are thought to be intriguing and captivating.

As in the case of how Hollywood works, we can now construct a formula where the goal is to create a reality television program with a high level of public interest. [A(XN+YI)+E-J]/T=P where (A) is an actor, (XN) is the degree of nurtured experience where (N) is constant, (YI) is the degree of one's "It" factor where (I) is constant, (E) is working experience, (J) is current employment, (T) is time since the last employment, and (P) is public interest. Now simply plug in in various celebrities and solve for (P). Once you find someone with a high level of public interest who is desperate enough to accept your offer to be themselves, you have a new television host.

The two biggest success stories in terms of retroactive celebrity in my mind are unequivically Ellen Degeneres and Jon Stewart. Ellen Degeneres is a very funny comedian who had between 1994 and 1998 achieved a reletively high level of fame as the leading character on the sitcom "Ellen." The show is probably most remembered for an episode in 1997 where, at the shows peak, Ellen (both the show's character and Degeneres herself) publicly announced that she is a lesbian. I remember that episode being groundbreaking at the time, but is also, in some circles, considered to be the sitcom's downfall. Following the cancellation of the show, Degeneres faded from the spotlight, but kept her career afloat by appearing in several forgetable films until 2003 when she reemerged with a vengence as the voice of a dimwitted yet loveable fish named Dori in Disney's "Finding Nemo." That same year was the inagural episode of her daytime talkshow "The Ellen Degeneres Show" which has since proved to be one of the most watched talkshows of today. She started as a comedian, became a sitcom star, faded from the spotlight, and then achieved astronomical fame again as herself.

Jon Stewart, on the other hand, has a bit of a different story. Stewart, since the early 90's, had bounced around from television show to television show keeping himself known but not too well known. His career was far from lucritive, but he managed to keep himself from working at McDonalds on the side. My favorite role of his was as the "enhancement smoker" on Dave Chapelle's stoner film "Half Baked." It is tough to say he ever reach a high level of fame, but in the early 90's he was the kind of actor most people had heard of, they just couldn't think of anything noteable he had done. Then Comedy Central came calling. The original host of Comedy Central's "The Daily Show" was Craig Kilborn, and in 1998 Kilborn and Comedy Central had a bit of a falling out, and "The Daily Show" needed a new host. Stewart took over and achieved the kind of success story that actors dare to dream of. He has since established himself as one of the funniest, startest, and most insightful comics, satirists, and comedy producers in America today. He has since won Emmy's, Critics Circle Awards, and even Peabody Awards, as well as hosted both the 78th and 80th Academy Awards. Again, Stewart had become mildly famous for nothing noteable, disappeared (though it wasn't too tough for him), and reemerged as a powerhouse player in the entertainment world late in his career.

There is another possible reason for retroactive celebrity: Hollywood wants name recognition, but doesn't want to front a lot of money, so they land the name of a washed up celebrity who will work cheap. This is only possible because people are stupid though. No explanation necessary.