“So this interview has gone very badly,” Gary Oldman said while talking to Playboy, in an interview that has yet to go online but has everybody clutching their pearls in terror as one of their favorite actors defends Mel Gibson, calls Nancy Pelosi a “fucking useless cunt,” and does that thing old people do where they whine about political correctness. Above is a picture of Gary Oldman talking to RoboCop, presumably about how Alec Baldwin isn’t such a bad guy after all.
Celebrities saying stupid shit is hardly new—it’s part of what makes them celebrities!—but in Oldman’s case, it’s kind of a bummer, just because… well, I’m not sure why, actually. When I respect somebody’s work (and Oldman’s work is pretty impossible not to respect), I tend to assume I’d respect them as a person as well—even though we’ve all been repeatedly shown how absurd that assumption is. Still, hearing Oldman go off like this seems more unexpected than it should, either due to the image we’ve collectively made up for him, or because Hollywood’s conservatives rarely speak out, at least compared to their bleeding-heart brethren. This should make watching Dawn of the Planet of the Apes interesting, though, so long as you assume Caesar & Co. are launching a war against mankind because they didn’t care for Oldman’s Playboy interview.
IN RELATED NEWS, yesterday’s Marketplace featured an interview with Citizen Hollywood author Timothy Stanley about the intersection of “how Hollywood has always played a big role in politics”—particularly in terms of campaign financing and image-crafting. It’s well worth a listen if you care for either movies or politics, even if it’s not quite as lurid as listening to Commissioner Gordon vent his furious rage against the house minority leader and talk about how Hollywood is run by Jews.
You could also just mumble “asshole” to yourself and get on with your life, but if you need a three paragraph blog post to work out your feelings, I understand.