10. Nicolas Cage--Part of the legendary Coppola family (and by legendary, I mean Francis Ford Coppola is legendary), Nicolas Cage began his career in fairly good movies like Raising Arizona while playing weirdos which matched his natural awkwardness. Guys make careers out of this, like Sean Penn. But the devilishly handsome Cage apparently saw a movie star in the mirror, so rather than making Leaving Las Vegas types of movies, his career now consists of being the relative bright spot in terrible movies with insane premises (National Treasure 2, with Nicolas Cage, Jon Voight and Helen Mirren, has as many Oscar winners as The Godfather; make sense?).
9. The Rolling Stones--The band who has probably made more songs I consider absolute all-time classics than any other, I don't fault the Stones for getting worse in their older age because I'm pretty sure that had he lived, Jimi Hendrix would have made a Bach tribute album by 1973 and would have done a duet with ABBA at some point as well. But, seriously, a band that was just about the coolest thing ever when they came out is selling their music to be used by Microsoft. They also have a shitload of merch available (I don't blame KISS for this, because KISS did not sell out: they were merely designed to be a brand more than a band). Worse though was their willing self-censorship during their tepid Super Bowl XL halftime show (and the fact that the band that made "Sympathy for the Devil" and "Gimme Shelter" played "Rough Justice" instead).
8. Steven Tyler--For those unfamiliar with the work of Steven Tyler or Aerosmith, it's basically like The Rolling Stones but slightly worse. Slightly worse made them one of the best bands of the 1970s, mind you. And they had some decent fun rock songs when they made a comeback in the late 80s. And then they recorded "Angel." And then Michael Bay (a pure moneymaker from the beginning, like KISS, who is ineligible for this list) threw money at them for the awful power ballad "I Don't Wanna Miss a Thing". And then, in order to leave no doubts in the minds of the world that he's the reason Aerosmith sold out, Steven Tyler joined the judging panel on American Idol. It's a sellout move so bad that even Kid F***ing Rock (an honorable mention for the list, but he wasn't good enough to begin with to justify listing him) has chastised him.
7. Christopher Nolan--Most directors, as they get more experienced, do bigger movies, and this itself is not a sellout move. Some guys like Scorsese go from nice little neighborhood art movies like "Who's That Knocking At My Door" and use new funds to make "Goodfellas." Others, like Nolan, go from making arguably the greatest movie of the 2000s in his debut with Memento to Insomnia to, um, Batman movies? To his credit, his Batman movies are the most acclaimed of the group, but to his fault, they're still midnight movie types of releases which cater primarily to those under the age of 25 (David Fincher makes these kind of movies, too, but at least he's never spearheaded an advertising campaign used to exploit the death of one of his stars).
6. Flavor Flav--Let's put it this way: My mother knows who Flavor Flav is, but there is a zero percent chance she could name the group where he got his fame. This probably has at least something to do with the fact that Flavor Flav is by far the second banana in Public Enemy, but Flavor Flav I can guarantee has a far higher Q rating than Chuck D, who wrote and was the primary performer on pretty much every Public Enemy song that wasn't "911 is a Joke", a song which I maintain somehow improved when Duran Duran covered it because Flavor Flav is that much of a hack. But being a hack doesn't make one a sellout because at least hacks can try to do well. Doing multiple VH1 reality shows makes one a sellout.
5. Mitt Romney--Mitt Romney began his political career as the kind of Republican I would consider voting for--socially moderate, relatively conservative fiscally, and generally sane. Except arguably for the issue of abortion, where his insanity came from being too liberal (he claimed when running for governor of Massachusetts that he was more pro-choice than Ted Kennedy). One would think that after Barack Obama won the presidency in 2008, the GOP would seek out a candidate who can seduce independents with the ability of Obama, and late 1990s Romney would be a tremendous example of this kind of moderate. But instead, he has flipped many positions, ran away from his UHC plan, and has somehow become less popular as a result of his insincerity, hurting Romney's status as a sellout because he wasn't even good at it.
4. Jaenene Garofalo--Garofalo, for those of you who do not know (she's probably the least successful person on this list, so you get a pass if you don't know), is a marginally talented actress/stand-up comedian who is best known for being a sanctimonious bleeding-heart liberal that even left-leaners such as myself can't stand. But while I can't stand her, I always had tremendous respect for her gumption--unlike most of the politically correct society, she was willing to take a stand for what she believed in. So what's the ideal job for a lefty? Why, acting on 24, the conservative wet dream of a show based on unsubstantiated notions like "torture has, at some point, worked" and "the best military-style approach isn't strategy but is rather just running and shooting when you see anybody". She has even admitted to selling out by doing 24, but she still did it. Self-awareness counts for something, but not much.
3. Bob Seger--If you are not familiar with Seger's songs "Ramblin Gamblin Man" (there's a decent chance you know this one) or "2+2 Is On My Mind" (less popular, but far more prolific in terms of having alternate spellings for the song title), consult YouTube or some other music player. Pretty damn good, right? The former song being along the lines of a Rolling Stones or Creedence Clearwater Revival classic. The latter being even heavier, a slightly more mainstream version of the kinds of music being made in Seger's metro at the time by such greats as The MC5 and The Stooges. Now listen to "Night Moves"--or don't. Now, making awful music meant to appease the masses is common, but what makes Seger stand out is just how much effort he makes to keep you from listening to his late 60s works with The Bob Seger System. Note that Bob Seger, an extremely popular musician who is in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, has his first SEVEN albums out of print. He doesn't get higher because I have a soft spot for "Her Strut".
2. Alex Rodriguez--It's hard to evaluate sportsmen as sellouts most of the time, especially in baseball, because it usually consists of a case like Carl Crawford, who not only got more money from going to Tampa Bay to Boston but also got on a far better team with far better fans and far more long-term job security. But to claim Alex Rodriguez's departure from Seattle was based on anything other than money is utterly asinine. He left Seattle, a very good baseball team with a solid fan base and a new stadium opening, for Texas, a last-place club with fickle fans, an ugly stadium, and 252 million reasons to show up. He could have settled for being a big fish in a small pond in Texas, but then he realized that even when he was putting up MVP-caliber numbers, one good player isn't enough to make the playoffs and manipulated his way to New York. Formerly one of the most liked players in baseball in the late 1990s, A-Rod now enjoys a reputation as one of the sport's whiniest stars.
1. Will Smith--The best actor of the many rapper-turned-actors (I suppose it's a balancing act where if your'e an awful rapper, it helps your thespian skills), but has had a propensity for being in awful, awful movies. I'll give him credit for Six Degrees of Separation and Ali, but his movies tend to be innocuous fluff or enormous action movies. Which is what makes him arguably the biggest movie star in the world. It's one thing if you make mindless entertainment like I Am Legend, a miserable corruption of a solid story by the way, if you're Arnold Schwarzenegger, a non-actor whose best movie remains one in which he barely speaks (The Terminator). But Will Smith has talent; he just happens to completely ignore it. Yet for some reason he is given a pass--I've even seen people call him the greatest African-American actor working today. This is frankly laughable. Denzel Washington was willing to play an insane cop in Training Day. Samuel L. Jackson has almost always played complex characters. Even Morgan Freeman, who normally plays saintly characters (or occasionally God), played a kidnapping cop in Gone Baby Gone. Though Will Smith is almost certainly richer than these three far more accomplished actors. I leave you with this statistic: Will Smith has never appeared in a Best Picture nominated film; John Cazale appeared in five films in his life, three of which won the award and the other two of which were merely nominated).
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