There's a great New York Crimes diss at the end of this too, almost like an added bonus.
Our report yesterday about Angelina Jolie banning press from interviews and requiring interviewers to sign contracts touched off a firestorm. Mostly it was from colleagues who were relieved that we’d finally lifted the veil on all this craziness.
And it wasn’t just about FOX News getting banned from the red carpet. That was bad, but it wasn’t the central issue. Jolie treats all the press with hostility unless she can control the outcome of an interaction. Insisting interviewers sign contracts was an affront, considering that her movie is about the murder of a reporter who tried bravely to do his job. And then to pretend empathy by raising money at the movie for Reporters Without Borders. The hypocrisy and arrogance were overwhelming.
The fact is, Angelina Jolie — despite her posturing as Goodwill Ambassador to the world — is just like everyone else. She’s only different in that she’s created rules for herself that are so far beyond the norm of self-absorbed celebrity nuttiness, that she finally went too far.
It’s too bad, because Michael Winterbottom’s “A Mighty Heart,” which opens next Friday, is really a wonderful film that should be seen by the widest possible audience. That’s why what’s happened is so frustrating: it’s not like Jolie was in a bomb and needed to protect herself.
Of course, then I got reports from last night’s red carpet. It turns out that Jolie simply skipped the entire print area of the carpet, which means she didn’t give interviews for her own film to the many very nice, well-mannered print reporters from magazines and daily newspapers who wait patiently with tape recorders to ask completely innocuous questions like “What are you wearing?” and “How’s Shiloh?”
It’s a good thing Jolie has an Oscar (for “Girl Interrupted”). She will find no support next fall when she wants a nomination for playing Mariane Pearl. There has hardly been a less sympathetic actress in recent history. Even Russell Crowe knows how to be charming when he has to.
Still, there is plenty in “Mighty Heart” to admire and reward, not the least of which is Winterbottom’s direction. He turns what could have been a dead end of a story into an absorbing thriller. And he gets good stuff from his two supporting actors, Dan Futterman and Irfan Khan. None of that can be overlooked.
Jolie’s defense this morning is that a) her lawyer was overzealous with the journalists’ contract; and b) an “oversight” caused FOX News not to be invited to the red carpet. Both the lawyer, Robert Offer, and Paramount Pictures, are ready to fall on their swords for the star.
But neither statement is even remotely true. Jolie, the Ambassador, would never let her attorney distribute a contract without approval. And the good folks at Paramount Vantage know all too well what really happened. They cannot be blamed.
So do see “A Mighty Heart’ next Friday when it’s released. We owe it to Daniel Pearl, and to Mariane and the son Daniel never got to meet. But let’s not forget that it’s a movie, and that actors are playing parts. They are separable from the real people whose lives they conveying. It’s important to remember that, and to observe that in this case, the actor learned nothing from the experience.
Meanwhile, thanks to the New York Times’s Sharon Waxman, who simply stole our story from yesterday, including the news of the contract from Robert Offer, without giving any credit except to elicit a denial from Paramount. Really, really lame.
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