The Olympic Games Go Hollywood

Now that the Paris Olympics are history, I can go back to watching movies instead of international sporting events. But I must say I fully enjoyed 16 days of stirring competition, despite the sometimes smarmy NBC coverage and (of course) the endless commercials. The games themselves were mostly a delight: exciting outcomes, lots of sideline drama, and the most beautiful locations imaginable. (How can L.A. in 2028 possibly hope to compete with those shots of the Eiffel Tower? Honestly, the plugs at the end of the late-night broadcast for our next Olympic Games made my birth city look gorgeous, though I’ve learned that a lot of the hoopla on the beach was filmed not in L.A. or Santa Monica but some miles down the freeway in Long Beach.) 

 Once upon a time, I was lucky to attend the closing ceremonies of the 1984 Los Angeles Olympic Games. It was a simpler era, with less demand for outsized spectacle. The highlights, as I remember them, included the finale of the first-ever women’s Olympic marathon: we all cheered for the last-place finisher as she staggered painfully into the Coliseum, clearly ailing but waving off medical help because she was determined to finish the race. There was also Lionel Ritchie singing about partying as though it were 1999 (that date seemed so far off!). And the Joffrey Ballet (then L.A.-based) performed in tandem with a Korean dance troupe, as a prelude to 1988 in Seoul.

 One thing that surprised me about Paris 2024 was the TV coverage’s repeated emphasis on Hollywood stars in the stands. The NBC cameras picked out the celebs: Nicole Kidman, Natalie Portman, Matthew Broderick and Sarah Jessica Parker, et al. Then of course there was the constant intrusion of ageing rapper Snoop Dog, sometimes with his BFF (really!) Martha Stewart. True, Snoop does come off as surprisingly endearing, but I would have strongly preferred coverage of some of the more obscure sports and some of the more exotic national teams. I’m sure they had their own stories to tell.

 At the Paris closing ceremony, following a rather overblown dance-drama about the resurrection of the Olympic games of ancient Greece, we moved into an L.A. state of mind via a memorable stunt that underscored the Hollywood aspects of Southern California.  It featured none other than Tom Cruise, plunging into the stadium from on high, grabbing the Olympic flag, and roaring off on a handy motorcycle, heading through the streets of Paris to an L.A.-bound plane. What fun! But also a promise that LA 2028 would be heavily invested in Hollywood star culture.

 Which made me muse  about how many movies have used the Olympics as their climax. Some have been silly (like Walk, Don’t Run, a wildly exaggerated look at Tokyo 1964 that featured race-walking and Cary Grant). Some have been stirring, like The Boys in the Boat and (best of the lot) Chariots of Fire. Of course there have been documentaries too. The most notorious is Olympia, the portrait of the 1936 Munich games by Adolf Hitler’s favorite filmmaker, Leni Riefenstahl. Tasked with glorifying the Fatherland, she introduced brilliant camera techniques that are still widely used today. She also included plenty of awe-inspiring Hitler footage, but couldn’t resist according the same admiring gaze to the Black American athlete Jesse Owens, who won four gold medals in track and field events.

 It used to be that newly-minted Olympic champions went to Hollywood and got turned into movie stars. Like Johnny (Tarzan) Weissmuller and skating cutie Sonja Henie. But it didn’t always work. Remember the acting career of Mark Spitz?  

 

Fake News: "To Die For"

 To Die For was released back in 1995, so why does it seem so up-to-the-minute? Partly this is due to the sad fact that it was consistently mentioned in obituaries for the late Buck Henry, who left us (alas!) on January 8 of this year, at the age of 89. Henry wrote the tart and brilliant screenplay, based on a novel by Joyce Maynard (who as a college co-ed had a secret sexual relationship with the fifty-three-year-old J.D. Salinger -- a spicy tidbit that has nothing to do with this story). Maynard's inspiration for her novel was an actual New Hampshire criminal case involving Pamela Smart, a cute young thing who seduced a naive high school kid, then persuaded him to murder her husband.

In the film, the role of the adorable but conniving Suzanne Stone is played by a bubbly and blonde Nicole Kidman, in what I consider one of her very best roles. What resonates with me in the current day and age is Suzanne's ambition. Although not especially talented, she will do whatever it takes (including murder) to succeed as a television personality. Her mantra, repeated several times in the film, makes it quite clear what she wants out of life: "You're not anybody in America unless you're on TV. On TV is where we learn about who we really are. Because what's the point of doing anything worthwhile if nobody's watching? And if people are watching, it makes you a better person."

That's why, after nabbing a Girl Friday job at a tiny local cable-access station, Suzanne sets off on a campaign to turn herself into an on-camera personality.  Like some of today's TV superstars I could mention, she seems far less interested in delivering the news than in burnishing her own reputation as a sexy commentator on public affairs. Her obsessive quest for celebrity of course shakes up her marriage to an adoring local guy (Matt Dillon) who simply wants  a loving wife and a baby.

The cast is filled with effective supporting players, including Dan Hedaya as Suzanne's Italian father-in-law, Wayne Knight as her bemused boss, and Buck Henry himself (complete with dorky mustache and bowtie) as a prim high school teacher. Illeana Douglas has a vivid role as Dillon's cynical ice-skating sister, someone smart enough to mistrust Suzanne from the start. Among the trio of high school misfits Suzanne pulls into her lethal orbit are two future Oscar winners, Casey Affleck as the spaced-out Russell and Joaquin Phoenix as the love-besotted James. The third partner-in-crime, a self-loathing young girl played by Alison Folland, notes at the end of the film that -- thanks to her small part in the murder plot and the subsequent media attention surrounding it -- she herself has enjoyed some of the fame that Suzanne had promised would come from appearing on-screen in the living-rooms of a nation.  Such irony! Folland's Lydia fully intends to live out the fact that "if people are watching, it makes you a better person."

As we've all seen recently, there's no end to the good that  can come to you if you make a splash on television. It's not fake news to say that TV celebrity can lead to much bigger things in much wider circles of power. "On TV," as Suzanne has insisted, "is where we learn about who we really are." It's also where a nation discovers what kind of person tickles our collective fancy. In an election year, it's especially worth pondering what makes someone telegenic, and what gives him or her a public reputation to die for.