A new Documentary was screened recently at the Toronto Film Festival: PARIS, NOT FRANCE. A film about Paris Hilton. What can possibly be next? A documentary about Kathy Lee Gifford? Or Oprah Winfrey’s non-lesbian girlfriend?
There will be interest in the film. But from who? That’s the question. And what could anyone hope to learn or care to learn about a celebrity whose main ambition in life is to be famous? That she’s self-centered? Who could that possibly be news to? That she’s dumb, except on behalf of her own relentless self-promotion? Who could that be news to, as well?
In the review of the film was a comment that Ms. Hilton was at the premiere, and that “as is her habit, she had nothing to say.” That’s not a habit, that’s a fact of who she is: its not that she’s being savvy or coy - its that she truly has ABSOLUTELY NOTHING to say. All she craves is our attention and once she has it - there is no there, there.
I remember being struck by a response in a newspaper article she gave shortly after she got out of jail last year when she was asked if jail-time had changed her in any way in terms of any new insights about herself or life in general, and she replied: “Yes, I would like my voice to be deeper when I get upset.” No there, there, at all. No way, no how. Here, to me, is what is truly scary: there are people who admire and want to be (like) Paris Hilton. Pubescent girls. Not only, but I’m afraid - primarily. What does this say about the values of these young persons? About the households they are being raised in? About their parents?
A new film opens also this week: THE WOMEN. Women in the entertainment industry, with the exception of one of them - Diane Lane,* have become BORING. When they talk about themselves these days all they want us to know is how powerful and self-sufficient they are. How STRONG and MACHO. How strong the relationships with the other women in their lives are.
I find myself wondering if, because of how strong these ties are to the women in their lives if they ever talk to one another about how focused they are on their own looks and how desperate they are to be seen as sex objects? These days when I see these women on TV, over the age of let’s say thirty two, and the ceiling is dropping fast, being interviewed, the first thing my attention goes to are the faces, and how much work they’ve had done on them. Many of them look like guppies with swollen lips: i.e. Calista Flockheart, to name just one.
Meg Ryan stars in THE WOMEN. Here’s an actress that began fooling around with her face when she was in her late twenties. Has messed around with it continually since. So much so that the review I saw of the film declares that she “now has the face of Goldie Hawn.” YIKES!! Dat ain’t no complement!
Recently I’ve seen interviews of Carol Burnett and Mary Tyler Moore. Who’ve both had wonderful careers in the entertainment industry. But, my God - look at their faces!! The work they have both had done on those faces! For who …. for what? And mostly - WHY?? Don’t either of them have any idea at all that their successes never had a thing to do with them being sex objects, or their looks. And everything to do with something God given - their talent. Or maybe they’ve both simply had way too much time on their hands. Its like they’ve no concept at all of the phrase …. “aging gracefully.”
Diane English directs THE WOMEN. She made her name on Murphy Brown. So its no surprise to learn the film, or rather, her version of the story of the film is a love story between two women. What else is new? Men? Nah, there isn’t a man mentioned as even being in the film, except for some cheating bastard of a husband who is married to Meg Ryan’s character in the story.
Why are women today having so much plastic surgery done on themselves? It certainly can’t have anything to do with men. Because, to hear women talk these days, men are almost always left out of the equation. Women want to be thought of as so self sufficient they no longer need men. Men are no longer essential to women is what these women would have us believe. So then, who is all the plastic work being done for? Other women?? I mean, last time I checked there were just two sexes in the world.
I can’t remember the last time I read about or heard a woman connected with the entertainment industry talking about the man in her life as being great, or charming or even OK. Or that the reason she cares about her looks having anything at all to do with men. With these women, its as though there are no men at all on the planet.
How refreshing it would be to have Meg Ryan say the reason she’s had so much work done on her face (and who knows what else ) has had everything to do with the fact that she desperately needs to be thought of as beautiful and desirable and sexy by the opposite sex, more than anything else in her life. And that she’s been desperately seeking this since her late twenties, at least.
For years women in the entertainment business bitched about men having all the power ….
Men having all the best parts in films .… the best careers …. that men relegated women to careers as mere sex objects. I wondered to myself what might happen when women got their shot, got into some positions of power - what might they do? The answer: absolutely nothing new.
The few women in power simply use their position to make chick flicks. Actresses like Sandra Bullock, and Bette Midler when they attained power surrounded themselves with women in their careers, left men completely out of the picture - and have paid the price:
they made movies no one cared to see.
They completely overlooked the fact that the reason 
they both became stars in the first place had everything to do with MEN writing and directing and photographing them, and creating stories that made the public fall in love with them. When women got their chance, all they’ve done is to do to men what they accused men of doing to them.
I’m bored to death with the women in the entertainment industry. All your talk about strength and power and self-sufficiency: GET OVER IT!! Maybe one day, one of you will begin to suspect something you have completely overlooked today: the greatest movies ever made were celebrations of the complementary energies - the polarity between men and women, not women and women.
WOMEN ( of the entertainment industry) - PLEASE …. PLEASE….
GET REAL!!! You don’t ever catch Paris Hilton talking or behaving that way. And who is more real than Ms. Hilton? Come on - she even has a sex tape of herself to prove it. And now there’s a documentary on her, as well. So there!
Anyhow, why sugar coat it? What I really want to say is this: the MOST BEAUTIFUL, SEXY AND POWERFUL WOMEN are NOT those being photographed or filmed on camera.
And for sure, they are NOT actresses, models or the so-called singers. They’re nowhere near the entertainment industry.
The most beautiful, sexy and powerful women are those in grocery stores, behind cash registers; the CHECKERS. Those in restaurants and coffee shops, the WAITRESSES, who take our orders and serve us, the public. LADY BUS DRIVERS , SECRETARIES and RECEPTIONISTS - the women we interact with on a daily basis all across America. Who serve and perform the most vital and essential jobs and services in the workplace that make our country the greatest in the world. I’m not being flippant. I mean it. They are pound for pound, and inch for inch some of the most gorgeous physical specimens I have ever seen on the planet. Also the most intelligent, charming, and sexy. Period!
And they don’t need smoke and mirrors and plastic work to present themselves to us. Because, by and large they simply cannot be bothered to be that desperate or even overly concerned about what they look like. They’re too busy being the real women of America. And, in my opinion, the real role models. For my money, they should be the ones getting all the press coverage, having documentaries made about them, not the Paris Hiltons of the world.
These are the women who enjoy men. Enjoy sharing the planet with them. Beauties too relevant and truthful to spout off feminist jargon about how powerful they are, how independent and self-sufficient they are, and that they don’t need men blah, blah, blah. If you don’t believe me, you haven’t been paying attention to the real world. You’ve been taken in by the media and the artificial world, that has never been the real world which is the entertainment industry.The biggest decision a Paris Hilton has each day is trying to decide which shade of lipstick, or panties to wear. The women I’m referring are too busy making our country run and run smoothly to have any time at all for the superficial concerns and values of the Paris Hiltons, or Madonnas, of the media and entertainment worlds.
We’ve lost sight of who the real stars in our culture are. They’re not the privileged hotel heiress wannabes, or fifty year old crotch grabbers, unimaginably self-centered and living solely on behalf of the most superficial concerns, values, and goals imaginable. No, the women I’m referring to, the REAL WOMEN OF AMERICA possess a generosity of spirit that begins where the self-love of a Paris, Madonna, or Janet Jackson stops!
I’m referring to all the women in our society today NOT in the entertainment industry - who are being overlooked, simply because they have way too much class, character, self-respect, and genuine love in their hearts and spirits to make spectacles of themselves. Think I’m kidding? Try to find a sex tape on-line or for sale in a video store of one of them. To these ladies, making love isn’t something you do to get noticed. Or something you use in a documentary about yourself to promote yourself.
It's something a lady does because her heart and soul: her SPIRIT- is made of it: LOVE. And if some guy is lucky enough to be on the receiving end of that kind of a blessing being extended to him - he begins to discover why he’s alive, what he’s here for. And, if he’s smart his every action for the rest of his life is his way of serving up to that blessing, of showing that he’s worthy to receive it. And any guy who’s lucky enough to know what the hell I’m talking about here, knows that his heart pumps not blood but GRATITUDE - for HER.
I’m sorry, Paris. But where you are concerned, and this is just one person’s opinion: THANKS BUT NO THANKS - AND I DO NOT MEAN FRANCE!! I mean you, Ms. Hilton.
* Diane Lane’s a fox - what can I say.
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