Mailbag for January 12, 2024
Dear Squawkers,
Selena Gomez has been the main character all week since the Golden Globes because she was gossiping with Taylor Swift and Keleigh Teller and the whole internet tried to lipread what she was telling them. That night, Selena was nominated for a Golden Globe for her work on Only Murders in the Building. She’s also a producer on the series, which is going into a fourth season, and as we have posted about many times at LaineyGossip, with the success of Only Murders in the Building and 13 Reasons Why, and her makeup line, Rare Beauty, and “Calm Down”, which was one of the biggest songs of 2023, she has established herself as a major creative force over the last few years.
The Selena we’ve been talking about over the last few days, however, isn’t the one who’s an entertainment boss. But then on Wednesday she posted a shot of herself reading Simple Dreams, Linda Ronstadt’s memoir, leading to speculation that she might be playing Linda in a biopic. Soon after, Rolling Stone confirmed it. They did not say who they confirmed it with but other outlets followed with reports of their own, including TMZ with an exclusive about how Linda approved of Selena taking on the role.
The film is currently in pre-production. There’s a production team in place but there is no information about a director or a screenplay which says, to me at least, that they probably don’t have a working script yet. So it’s early – as in nowhere near filming. But we’re hearing about it now… specifically this week… because…
Coincidence or conspiracy?
Selena’s team hasn’t directly responded to the story, but they don’t have to. There’s already a new headline about her making the rounds and redirecting the attention – to her work. This is smart media management and while, sure, a lot of people on TikTok will remain focused on the lipreading and the Chalamet of it all, people in the industry will be reminded that Selena, in addition to all her wins on the television and music and lifestyle and beauty side, is a creative powerhouse.
I’m not saying that, um, she and her people were behind this move but, you know, if they were, it was a good move. Especially heading into Emmys on Monday where Only Murders is nominated for Outstanding Comedy Series and on the heels of Only Murders’ SAG nomination for Best Ensemble Comedy Series.
About the Emmys – we had such a great time live chatting the Globes that we’re doing it again for the Emmys! The thread will be open half an hour before show time so please join us so you can share your Bear thirst! There was a LOT of Bear thirst last week during the Globes live chat, and it actually helped us figure out our LaineyGossip content for the next day. So you’d be doing us a solid by coming to the group watch and chat. Thank you in advance!
OK, time for questions. Here’s one that was in one of the daily chats this week:
Question from Ketri: Noticed yesterday that Ryan Reynolds posted an IG story promoting Maestro as “one of the most beautiful films” he’s ever seen. Sincere or part of a last desperate attempt by Bradley Cooper to get some momentum going...?
Lainey’s Answer:
Oh I think it’s sincere. Ryan Reynolds and Bradley Cooper are friends. Remember back in October of last year Ryan, Blake Lively, Hugh Jackman, and Taylor Swift were all at a party at BCoop’s? Also Ben Affleck, I think it was on the Smartless podcast, was one of the first people who screened Maestro and talked about how good it was. This is what they do, this is part of the campaign – they’re stumping for the people they know, and eventually, probably, voting for the people they’re close to. So while, yes, BCoop is definitely thirsty for those nominations, I don’t think this is an example of desperation. It’s what everyone is doing, it just so happens that his friend, Ryan, has a big social media presence and wanted to support him. Bradley was just nominated for SAG so he obviously has some support among actors…which… I mean now that he’s a director, other actors might want to be extra nice to him. By now everybody knows that the Oscars are a popularity contest, right?
Sarah reviewed Maestro a few weeks ago and described it as pedestrian. I feel the same way about the film – it is not, in my opinion, the strongest work of the year. It tried to be too many things to too many people. Carey Mulligan is magnificent in it, but she wasn’t really the focus of the story, so that’s another disconnect. And I also found some of the basic shot decisions rather perplexing. Like during one scene, when Leonard and Felicia are having a really serious, pivotal conversation, you can’t see their faces – they pull out way wide, and the two leads are obscured by a tree by the pool or something, and I guess it’s because they’re hoping the audience focuses on the disagreement that they’re having but what happens instead is that you miss the emotion, the way their bodies were reacting to each other in that moment of tension and conflict. It was such a weirdly disjointed choice, it pulled me right out of the story. And for my taste, a pretentious one. Which people in Hollywood, like Ryan Reynolds and Ben Affleck, are obviously responding to. It’s the kind of thing they get off on. After all, Hollywood can never resist a film about artists, they get off on themselves. And they’re the ones voting, not us. So I do believe it when Ryan and Ben are all gush and praise about this kind of work. This is what appeals to them.
Question from Meghan: Sarah, what do you think about the use of colours in Saltburn (red, blue, golds)? What’s Emerald Fennels next steps as a director? Her two films have been among the most affecting of the last few years for me - so curious to hear more of your thoughts!
Sarah’s answer:
Well, shooting on 35mm film is the first thing, it gives such richness and depth to the colors. Digital “film” gets better all the time, but it still does not equal 35mm celluloid for resolution and depth of image. Emerald Fennell obviously likes color, and uses it very intentionally, with the neons and pastels of Promising Young Woman evoking bubblegum pop and the kind of girly things prestige culture usually disrespects. The colors of Saltburn make up a more classical palette, meant to evoke the classical paintings you might find on the wall at a place like Saltburn (Fennell referenced Caravaggio as an inspiration).
What stuck out most strongly to me (with only one viewing under my belt) is how gold appears most around Felix, the sacrificial lamb, as it was used in Renaissance paintings mostly to embellish Jesus, martyrs, and the mother Mary: holy figures, most of whom die. The visual clue to Felix’s fate is how much gold concentrates around him. Similarly, the nightmarish red of Oliver’s birthday party, obviously because red = blood = murder, but also, it’s fever pitch, it’s hot and sweaty, it’s unsustainable.
Any time red builds like that in a film, something terrible is about to happen. Some colors you can count on, and an excess of red always means trouble in a movie. It’s super popular in visual art not only because of the emotional association with life and death, and sex and violence, but also because the human eye sees such a wide scope of shades. Our eyes are constantly evolving to comprehend ever more finely graded colors, and we’ve been seeing red, green, and brown since we opened our eyes as a species. We’ve had millennia to evolve that palate, and we can see so many shades of red it actually does produce different reactions in our brains by shade. That’s why there’s so many shades of red lipstick—it’s one of our oldest and most refined erotic signals.
Question from Alix: Celebrities I think of as being quite successful seem to constantly be hustling eg. Ryan Seacrest, Kate Hudson. Why? Particularly Ryan Seacrest, when will he allow someone else to get a hosting job?
Lainey’s Answer:
Kate Hudson was so good in Knives Out: Glass Onion, I was wondering whether or not she’d pick up some momentum from her performance in that film but I don’t know that that’s happening. Her next film is an independent feature: Max Minghella’s Shell, which recently started production, co-starring Elisabeth Moss and Kaia Gerber. It’s about our cultural obsession with youth and beauty dressed up as a thriller and Kate is playing the CEO of a cosmetics company who may or may not be a villain. Elisabeth Moss has great taste, and from the synopsis it sounds like she and Kate may be going head-to-head, so this could be a juicy role for Kate to sink her teeth into. But until that comes out, there isn’t much more on the slate so far. So, yeah, like other celebrities, she’s been also focusing on her health food business and whatever other wellness projects she’s been attached to over the years. Twenty years ago, no doubt, Kate Hudson had her pick – but there really hasn’t been a lot of notable onscreen work for Kate in a while. For what it’s worth, her contemporaries in the business are the likes of Reese Witherspoon, Jessica Chastain, Anne Hathaway, Michelle Williams, Rachel McAdams, Amy Adams. I’ll just leave that there.
As for Ryan Seacrest – I mean, he’s allowed to go for any job he wants, but just because he wants to host everything doesn’t necessarily mean that he can. It’s also up to production, the network heads, etc. They’re the ones who keep hiring him for all the hosting jobs so, to me, this is a question for them. They have the power to make the changes, or not. When they keep hiring Ryan, it means that they’re going with what’s safe. He’s been doing this for years, they know exactly what they’re getting, and they likely won’t lose money. The money is a huge part of it. And these people are financially risk averse. If we’re talking finances though, we have to bring the sponsors and the advertisers into it. They’re risk averse too, and a lot of these brands, especially the ones associated with the programming that Ryan is a part of, aren’t all that interested in innovation. So this isn’t a conversation just about him – it involves a whole system that lacks imagination.
Question from Myra: Re “once you’re A list you’re always A list” how does that apply to late-recognized stars in their 40s or 50s like Greta Lee and Brendan Fraser? Can someone enter this A list later in their career, or is it too late and they’ll always be a bit of an outsider?
Sarah’s answer:
First of all, Brendan Fraser is not “late-recognized”. He was a HUGE star in the 1990s and 2000s, he just experienced a comeback after withdrawing—not entirely by choice—from mainstream entertainment.
And yes, you can enter the A list as an older actor. Harrison Ford, for instance, was 35 when Star Wars came out—ancient back then! Samuel L Jackson has been working in film since the early 1980s, but he didn’t get famous until the 1990s, well into his 40s, and he’s a household name and has been for the last 30 years. Another late-breaker is Bryan Cranston, who didn’t get household-name famous until his 40s with Malcolm in the Middle. And Lucille Ball! She was a gigging actress aging out of the (cruel) studio system when I Love Lucy took off and made her an icon at age 40. Judi Dench was 51 when A Room with a View made her an international star.
Even Brendan Fraser had “where did he go?” profiles written about him during his semi-involuntary absence. It’s not like we didn’t notice when he seemed to vanish overnight, and even then, he never actually stopped working! He just wasn’t making the same caliber of stuff until he started picking up prestige TV roles in the late 2010s, and then The Whale returned him to the center of pop culture. So it’s entirely possible to become A-list as an older actor, because once you do hit the A-list—whenever you get there—you don’t leave.
Question from Johanna: Old gossip question! I never saw any gossip about the Kate Mara and Jamie Bell marriage. But Kate was with Max Minghella for years... and Max and Jamie were best friends for many of those years. Was there ever any drama, friendship breakups over this?
Lainey’s Answer:
Did you read Elliot Page’s memoir, Pageboy? Highly recommend. Anyway, one of the revelations that made headlines when the book came out last year was what he shared about his relationship with Kate Mara. Elliot and Kate were lovers when Kate and Max were dating, which Max knew about because the two were in an open relationship. According to Elliot, Kate described her experience as being “in love with two people”. Elliot and Kate remain close, and Kate apparently signed off on Elliot including this in his book because she showed up to support the book launch.
So, knowing that, where Kate and Max and Jamie are concerned…
I’m inclined to believe that there is no drama since their love obviously wasn’t conventional. It may not work for everyone, and certainly not those whose boundaries are more on the traditional side, but given what we now know about Kate and Elliot, it’s probably more realistic to view Kate and Max and Jamie through a more unorthodox lens.
Max was actually asked about Kate and Jamie a few years ago in an interview with Glamour and basically said the same thing. The question was straight up, your best friend is married to your ex… what’s going on with that? His answer:
“I will tell you this: It’s a beautiful part of my life. I see them every single morning, and Jamie’s son is my godson. I can understand why the optics might be very confusing, but it’s not a complicated thing for us.”
The majority of Hollywood gossip is fueled by jealousy and pettiness (which is where I live my life, lol) and these days, with all the Housewives and the Vanderpumps and the Kardashians, cultural perspectives have been shaped by those behaviours, further entrenching certain binaries about love and friendship. I worry that it’s made us culturally less open-minded about the different kinds of love that can exist, and the fact that there can also be a healthy variety of relationships that don’t necessarily conform to what some people consider to be the standard. Elliot, Kate, Max, and Jamie are one such example – a really beautiful example.
Question from KathyK: For Sarah. Keeping with comedy gets no respect. What comedic films do you think should have won an Oscar?
Sarah’s answer:
REAL GENIUS. That’s an easy one, and it holds up AMAZINGLY well. Anytime people say “that’s just how it was” in relation to racist/sexist jokes in the 1980s, I point to Real Genius, which has nerdy Asian characters who are not treated as the butt of jokes, a gamut of female characters—including one that scans as neurodivergent—who are not solely there to be sexy and/or mocked. Real Genius was doing it! But that movie was way too anti-capitalist for the 80s, and no one knew what to do with Val Kilmer, the 80s were less flexible about who starred in comedies, and Kilmer showing up so hot and blonde confused everyone (every hot, funny guy in movies today owes it to Val Kilmer. Ryan Gosling should send Kilmer a bouquet of roses if he gets nominated for an Oscar for Barbie).
Also, Blazing Saddles—for Mel Brooks and Richard Pryor writing it, at the very least—and/or Young Frankenstein, absolutely gobsmacking that Mel Brooks never won an Oscar until this year, when he received an honorary Oscar at the age of 97.
Clueless should have won Best Adapted Screenplay and Best Costume Design; The Royal Tenenbaums should have won the screenplay Oscar that year (then called “Best Writing, Screenplay Written Directly for the Screen”, what a mouthful), as well as Best Supporting Actor for Gene Hackman.
Planes, Trains & Automobiles is also a criminal oversight. John Candy’s mini-monologue alone is worth a screenplay Oscar. Part of the reason I’m rooting for The Holdovers this year is that it’s a spiritual successor to PTA, and it’s about time this kind of misanthropic buddy comedy gets its due.
That’s it for this week’s mailbag, thanks as always for your support. And thanks, again, for showing up to the live chat last weekend. It was SO MUCH FUN. It gave us the warm fuzzies – even Sarah’s black heart thawed out a bit seeing all that community participation. You, the Squawk community, are the best. Another reminder then about the Emmys live chat on Monday. And because of the Critics and Emmys going back-to-back, we will not be sending out a Tuesday newsletter next week, but we’ll come back to it the following week once we’re over the early rush of award shows.
Keep squawking, keep gossiping,
Lainey and Sarah
Oh I should go back and find it but I just saw a Tik Tok with Ethan Hawke on a slight rant about how directors who only care about cinematography set up shitty shots in films lol. He said Denzel Washington always asks why a director wants him to go a certain place. He said that the audience isn’t dumb and will pick out when shots don’t make sense.
I just have to say it: I can’t deal with anything Downton Abbey related, but Julian Fellowes deserved that screenplay Oscar just for the line “Difficult colour, green...”