Am I a freak?

[trinityvixen]

Last night as we were hanging out, working on getting her wedding invitations finished, Ms. Beans shows me a clip online of the stars of Prince of Persia...all trying to spell Jake Gyllenhaal's name. (Only Gemma Arterton did it. Man, is she cute.) This came after the interviewer asked him to pronounce it for the record, and he (jokingly, I believe, but it's hard to tell) said something that had about fourteen extra syllables than you'd think it could possibly have at the most.

I scoffed, perhaps a little too mightily, and Ms. Beans was like "WTF mate?" I have this...thing. It's hard to explain the whys/wherefores, but basically watching interviews with celebrities makes me cringe and blush so hard with embarrassment I have to go away. Immediately. Sometimes--only sometimes--I can make it through the clip. If it's on a show like The Daily Show, where Jon Stewart makes sure his guests are aware and honest about the ridiculousness of their own celebrity and how much whoredom goes with it, I can--sometimes--watch. But I can't otherwise. Read an interview? Sure. But something about watching these people hock themselves (because that is what they're doing) makes me extremely uncomfortable.

Ms. Beans gave me the biggest, least amused o.O face to my reaction to the clip, and then I just started shrieking a bit (like I do when I'm excited in any fashion) about how stupid! it! is! And I can't! stand! celebrities! thinking! they're! funny! What a waste of time! ::HYPERVENTILATES:: She asked me if I never watched special features. And you know what? I almost never do. I will watch features on special effects where they talk to people who do serious engineering work, but watching actors talk drives me batty. You guys, am I a total freak-bag or what?

And on that note, I leave you all for the weekend. I love leaving people with a good impression of me!

Comments

[gryphonrose.livejournal.com]

No, I think most actors have proven they're far less interesting/appealing/engaging/witty as themselves than they are when they have a good writer behind them. :)

[trinityvixen.livejournal.com]

There is nothing worse than watching someone laughing it up who isn't funny and doing so on television in front of an audience. It's why I have never watched Leno or Letterman or even Conan (who is funny himself) because I can't stand the awkward. Even the ones who are funny make me nervous waiting for them to start being awkward.

This may have everything to do with knowing the process that goes on before those interviews, in which everything is pretty much scripted and it's still awful.

[oblvndrgn.livejournal.com]

I don't think I can completely reject all actors-trying-to-be-funny type material solely because of Sir Ian McKellen on Extras.

[trinityvixen.livejournal.com]

So I watched the first season of Extras, and it made me want to die. Not just for the celebrity thing, though that was part of it, but for the Ricky Gervais awkwardness-is-humor thing. The celebrity parts were actually funny at times because the celebrities weren't playing themselves. They were playing obviously fictional versions of themselves, like Neil Patrick Harris in Harold and Kumar. They're still acting. This is different from when they're on a talk show trying to make us care about them when their job is to make us care about the characters they're playing instead. So long as they're acting, we're good. When they try to be, like, people, I don't like it!

[charlie-d-blue.livejournal.com]

I agree, though it's not so much the awkward-trying-to-be-entertaining facet so much as the fact that there's a real person, right there on my screen, acting out a performance of themselves for my benefit, in order to pimp a certain idea of themselves. It's not even the obvious falsity of it all that makes me cringe, so much as feeling awkward for them? Like, I know it's part of their job, but I hate feeling like I'm engaging with, or encouraging that kind of stardom whoredom.

Not all the time, but yeah, when I do get that awkward feeling, it hits hard.

[trinityvixen.livejournal.com]

YOU HAVE PINPOINTED IT EXACTLY.

As I said above, when celebrities appear as themselves in movies/TV but it's obviously the celebrity playing him- or herself, it's still an act, and I'm okay. When they go on talk shows, they are still pantomiming themselves, but it's supposed to be real and ::shudder::

And when it's really bad, when it's obvious that the part they thought they were playing got upended by a random question--like asking SIR BEN KINGSLEY to spell his fucking coworker's name (hey interviewer? Try asking if Jake Gyllenhaal knows how to spell Ben Kingsley's real name!)??? I die so hard I throw myself away from the screen in the process and freak out my friend, apparently.

[ivy03.livejournal.com]

I watch special features, where the actors are just talking about making the movie and all. Actually, most of the interviews I watch are for TV shows, and are made years after the fact, when the DVDs come out. So they're actually reminiscing about the show, not hawking it.

But I also cannot stand press interviews. Most of the time because I can tell they're on a press junket--stuck in a hotel conference room in front of a backdrop as a neverending stream of interviewers ask them the same questions.

Really, for me to watch an interview, it's all about the interviewer. Teri Gross could interview anyone and have it be interesting. Jon Stewart and Colbert, too. The contributors to This American Life, mostly. But being a good interviewer is a really hard skill. Most of the time, I'm wincing because the interviewer, as a stand-in for me, the fan, is being a vapid kiss-ass.

[ivy03.livejournal.com]

The only celebrities I can stand to see in person are the ones who never drop the persona. Like Bruce Campbell. It's a lot more comfortable to interact with a persona, since I have no expectation of authentic connection to this person and no worry about being awkward myself. All I'm looking for is entertainment, and the persona is entertaining.

Oh, I can't stand to watch videos from cons either, and I'd never go to a celebrity centric con. I don't care how many people link me vids of the Supernatural cast being funny at cons, I just can't watch them.

[ivy03.livejournal.com]

There are some celebs (like Bruce Campbell) for whom that part of being an actor is clearly something they enjoy and are good at. But there are so many who clearly just want to act and hate all the publicizing that goes with. Like Matt Damon. Or Robert Pattinson. Or actually, Robert Pattinson is so clearly not into the pimping his movies that he does the opposite. He publicly criticizes them and insults his fans. It's like anti-publicity. He's gone so far in the opposite direction it's actually entertaining to watch.

[saikogrrl.livejournal.com]

Yes, yes you are. XD

Haha well actually the only special features I'm usually interested in are deleted scenes and bloopers. Unless I'm particularly hot for an actor, in which case I wants all the footage, all of it!

[saikogrrl.livejournal.com]

Yeah I enjoy commentaries done after the fact, especially like Red Dwarf, done waaaaaay after the show when they are reminiscing and can drop in hilarious little anecdotes of stuff :)

[ivy03.livejournal.com]

My favorite are the Highlander DVDs, where they're absolutely candid. The director will be talking about the episode, like well, we thought this would be a good idea, but it really didn't work. Or, the actress we cast as the romantic foil had no chemistry for the lead and it was a disaster. Or, an assistant lost the film from one of the camera's and we had no money to reshoot, which is why that fight is only covered from one crappy angle. It's great.

The Hercules DVDs get into some of that stuff, too, especially Rob Tappert. As opposed to the Moonlighting DVDs where they're desparately trying to pretend that they're epic and widely publicized feud didn't happen.

[cbreakr.livejournal.com]

Revel in the absurdity of the world and watch for the little things which slip through the cracks in their facades. Or something like that. A great many "real" people in the world are just playing out a role of some sort and trying to sell an image - celebrities have just taken it to the next level and made a profession out of it. Treat it like a sociological observation and it gets easier.

Though, really, this is why I miss the kind of show Conan did back in the day (like late 90's). The guests would usually realize that they could pretty much do anything and it'd be fine after seeing the masterbating bear, and CoCo had a real talent for being just silly and awkward enough to bring out some genuine responses. Jimmy Fallon sort of does a similar job on the show now. He has a great repor with guests... if only the written material wasn't ungodly awful.

[trinityvixen.livejournal.com]

You know, the responses to this post are making me feel like less of a freak. I also totally know what you mean about cons and famous people attending them. I think you and I have the same celebrity non-interaction policy, too, so that makes sense that we would both be allergic to celebrity whoredom being paraded about. I am more comfortable not pretending to interact with the real person, thanks.