Tweet Misery

Imagine how much sooner the Hollywood studio system would have collapsed if stars back in the day had had the option of Tweeting or writing on each other's Facebook walls.

For most of the 20th century it took a barrage of lawyers, publicists and press agents working overtime to keep stars like Errol Flynn and Charlie Chaplin out of the papers or jail, and even then the peccadilloes of these film legends still landed them in constant trouble. But at least there was a mechanism in place to protect movie stars from themselves.

Now celebrities like Lindsay Lohan and Courtney Love are only too eager to air their sordid family laundry and minimal grasp of the basics of grammar in a medium that exposes their rants to millions of people in real time.

If Marilyn Monroe had been able to Tweet about her relationships with the Kennedy brothers, her life might have had an entirely different outcome -- or it might have ended even sooner. I can imagine her posting her current mood online the way people do today, but in her case she'd select something like "slutty/suicidal."

Take a look at just a fragment of Ms. Love's Tweets about her ongoing custody battles for Frances Bean, her daughter with rock legend Curt Cobain. It's sad to see a woman cut off from her child (who just turned 18 this week) and trying to rationalize the mess to herself and her indifferent daughter, but is this the forum for such jumbled, personal emotion?

i shouldve hooked up in some loveless marriage to a powerful hedgefund guy then youd be safe, im sorry i didnt. for your sake.i love you.

im done, you arent dumb you know what youve done what youve sold i couldnt shelter you from them i suppose its my fault, im so sorry bean. x

and im sure her dog., everyone else has a fucking agenda , that chantel if i see her shes a goner thats for dammed sure. grosspig≥poisonkids

with that that kid s=mustr ee somne accountability or shes going to believe thier insanity narcissism and lies, one human loves her truly ME


at her most vulnerable and feed her uttter bullshit based ona FORGED forensically proven to be FORGED operating agreement, so well have fun


she a little baby; sheltered to SOME degree, phony cop raids, seeing her mother cuffed for no reason other than i found out and theyGRABHER

The wall that once kept us from seeing that celebrities are as misguided and fallible as we are has been eroded, and in its place is a 24-hour gossip cycle that makes them seem as mundane as the rest of us. It makes me nostalgic for the days when movie magazines told us the stars were different from us, even if we never really believed it.

On the Lohan

To paraphrase the lyrics of a number from The Sound of Music, how do you solve a problem like Lindsay Lohan? She's like that fairly smart girl in high school who insisted on besmirching her reputation by hanging out in the smoking area with the stoners and greasers. But because of the fast-moving times we live in, she's had to step up her skank game to make more of an impact.


First, I refuse to believe that she lives in such an insulated bubble that she was unaware of what she was doing when she attended her sentencing wearing an obscenity shellacked onto her fingernails. Even the most wild-eyed axe murderer knows to dress as innocently as Shirley Temple on your court date -- and if she doesn't, her lawyer will certainly advise her to err on the side of caution with her sartorial choices. 


No, I think it's entirely in keeping with the attitude of a young starlet who once told some young men she'd inadvertently kidnapped on the Pacific Coast Highway that "celebrities can get away with anything." She was driving 100 miles an hour in an apparent state of narcotic intoxication at the time. She's attempted and quit rehab three times in the last three years, had half a dozen car accidents including hit-and-runs, didn't bother to attend court-mandated substance abuse meetings, was hours late for the hearings she did make, violated her probation, set off her alcohol-detecting SCRAM anklet numerous times, and conveniently "lost" her passport in Cannes when she was due back in an L.A. court. Her behavior was so unprofessional on the set of the instantly forgettable comedy Georgia Rule that director Garry Marshall gave her a rare dressing down that even impressed film veteran Jane Fonda. No, the nail polish was a direct "fuck you" to the judge and the system, and the real question is why her lawyer didn't choose to protect her from her own arrogance. Perhaps Shawn Chapman Holley had had enough by that point, since she quickly dropped her celebrity client immediately following the sentencing. And Lindsay's reaction at receiving a 90-day sentence -- of which she'll probably serve about two weeks -- was priceless. "Are you kidding me?" she shrieked at her attorney. 


You'd think that her mother would rein Lindsay in, if only to protect her only meal ticket (since the second daughter is, as an old friend of mine used to say, no oil painting), but Dina Lohan is a notoriously delusional stage mother from hell, even agreeing to a lucrative reality show that invaded her home without being able to feature the only child of hers anyone might want to watch. The father, too, has made his own cottage industry out of professing love and concern for his daughter, while slipping once again into a circus of tabloid staples -- jail sentences, Larry King Live appearances, and endless, endless twittering.


As I've said before (Train Wrecks), the career arc of the downward-spiraling starlet has gotten shorter and shorter. I've already seen poster art portraying her as Deep Throat porn queen Linda Lovelace in a film that has yet to be made -- and most likely never will be. You have to ask yourself why this young actress, unlike contemporary Natalie Portman or classic star Natalie Wood, who both made smooth transitions from child roles to mature ones -- equates growing up on film with vulgarity and bad taste, and if her jail sentence, which begins this week, will serve as a wake-up call. I'm thinking it won't.

Train Wrecks

Everything moves faster these days -- including the celebrity career arc. It used to be that even the most self-destructive starlet took a decade or so to totally self-immolate. Marilyn Monroe may have teetered on the edge of oblivion for much of her film career, but it still took her over a dozen years to flame out. Judy Garland skirted disaster more frequently and for far longer, but still managed a triumphant comeback every few years until the final tumble through sycophantic hangers-on and multiple ill-advised marriages, expiring on a London toilet seat at 47. Even Anna Nicole Smith, perhaps the least equipped for fame and the least talented, managed to hang on until the ripe old age of 39.

Now it seems that by the time I've become conscious of a star's existence she's already losing her place in the firmament. The first time I heard Amy Winehouse sing "Rehab" on the car radio I thought it must be an old Motown hit I'd somehow missed, but knew it couldn't be because "rehab" would never have been part of the vernacular of the day. By the time I bought her CDs she was already spiralling out of control and speculators were doubting she'd make it to her 25th birthday. I barely know who Lily Allen is save for her public feuds with other entertainers and her bouts of drinking and drugging. And it seems just moments ago that I was watching Lindsay Lohan do double duty as twins in the remake of The Parent Trap and now she's the poster child for anorexia, addiction, poor decisions, and victims of stage parents.

Child stars going all the way back to the Great Depression have had notoriously bad luck making the transition to well-balanced adulthood, let alone continued career success. Even "Kitten," the youngest daughter on television's straight-laced pioneer comedy Father Knows Best eventually confessed to a lifetime of prostitution and drug dependency spawned by her inability to overcome her saccharine sit com persona. MacKenzie Phillips has made a two-decade cottage industry out of rehashing her addictions and mining the minutae of her life for ever more explosive ore, culminating with her recent revelation that she was the lover of her own famous father. Former Brady Bunch star Maureen McCormick came late to the game, revealing the sobering news in her bio that if she hadn't gone to the audition stoned, she may have gotten the role of Princess Lea in Star Wars.

Why do today's young talents, ingenues, and "It" girls blaze out so soon? It may be our 24-hour online culture, which holds a microscope to their every move -- there's simply no way to hide a misstep or indulgence, be it chemical, sexual, or even sartorial. Dozens of inane reality shows thrust people who literally have no talent or charm into our consciousness -- there has never been a time where so many people were famous simply for being famous, a realm once reserved almost exclusively for the Gabor sisters. And with star-making machines like American Idol that turn out pseudo-celebrities like sausage, there's more competition for attention and blog space.

It's nice to see when someone like Nicole Ritchie cleans up her act and manages to keep the locomotive on the tracks. But for every Nicole, there are dozens of Mischa Bartons and Courtney Loves barreling along, never aware until too late that the bridge ahead has washed out.