WELL, THAT’S A TAKE: Harrison Ford Is 80. He’s Proof: Silver-Haired Stars Are the New Box-Office Gold.
It could have been a pickup line at a gym, but instead it was a question at the Cannes Film Festival. A woman wanted to know how Harrison Ford, 80, prepared to go shirtless in the new Indiana Jones movie. “I think you’re still very hot,” she said. “How do you keep fit?”
“I’ve been blessed with this body,” he told her. “Thanks for noticing.”
This summer belongs unapologetically to old men.
Ford hoists his famed franchise on his shoulders for the fifth time this month with “Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny.” In July, Tom Cruise, 60, old enough for a senior discount at many movie theaters, sprints into “Mission: Impossible—Dead Reckoning Part One.” On streaming, Arnold Schwarzenegger, 75, saves the world in “FUBAR.” By Labor Day, Denzel Washington, 68, will be delivering vigilante justice in “The Equalizer 3.”
“These movie stars literally invented blockbusters in the ’80s,” says Richard Gelfond, chief executive of IMAX, the entertainment technology company. “There is a reason these old men are still around.”
Celebrities from the ’80s have a link to most every generation alive right now. Studio executives call them holdouts from a time when scarcity ruled and streaming was naught. Big stars released a movie a year, an original story with their name above the title on the marquee. Then they disappeared so everyone could miss them before they came back and did the whole thing all over again.
As John Nolte noted last month: Hollywood Forced to Admit the Movie Star Is Dead.
“The hottest package at this year’s Cannes Film Festival stars a 76-year old action star and is a reboot of a movie that first dazzled moviegoers in 1993.” Variety is talking about Sylvester Stallone and his hit movie Cliffhanger. Yep, Cliffhanger 2 is the biggest deal at a prestigious worldwide film festival: a sequel to a 30-year-old movie starring a guy old enough to be a great-grandfather.
I love Stallone. I hope he lives forever, but imagine the year is 1974, and the hottest property at Cannes is Notorious 2, starring a 76-year-old Cary Grant*. What would the state of the industry have looked like then?
But in 1974, America was buried in young superstars: Al Pacino, Robert Duvall, Michael Caine, Clint Eastwood, Robert DeNiro, Jack Nicholson, Diane Keaton, Sidney Poitier, Woody Allen, Mel Brooks, Pam Grier, Gene Wilder, Gene Hackman, Richard Pryor, Gena Rowlands, Dustin Hoffman, Richard Roundtree, Ellen Burnstyn, Jane Fonda, James Caan, Warren Beatty, Robert Redford, Jill Clayburgh, Steve McQueen, Burt Reynolds, Sean Connery, Peter Fonda…
Wrap your mind around this: In 1974, Charles Bronson, Paul Newman, Jack Lemmon, and Walter Matthau were still younger than Matthew McConaughey (53) is today.
Other hot items at Cannes include 75-year-old Arnold Schwarzenegger’s Breakout, 59-year-old Nicolas Cage’s Lord of War sequel, and a movie starring 69-year-old John Travolta.
In her 2013 book, Sleepless in Hollywood: Tales from the New Abnormal in the Movie Business, veteran Hollywood producer Lynda Obst wrote that Hollywood didn’t need movie stars — they had franchises to mine:
Obst explains the formula for ‘The New Abnormal” thusly:
1. You must have heard of the Title before; it must have preawareness.
2. It must sell overseas.
3. It should generate a Franchise and/ or Sequel (also a factor of 1 and 2).
As Nolte concludes:
Here is what happened: the studios believed they could sell movies based on brands and high concepts forever, but now they are all out of brands and high concepts, and there is nothing left to put butts in seats.
What is more, actors believed they could continue to be cruel, bigoted, humorless, self-righteous scolds, and the world would always fall at their feet.
Well, haha.
Fortunately, there’s fresh talent to take all of the aging stars’ places: Phoebe Waller-Bridge. Oh wait, what am I saying?! Phoebe Waller-Bridge is a franchise murderer — and Indiana Jones is her next victim.
The Critical Drinker agrees: