By KEVIN D. GULLEDGE
Hollywood has created many Frankensteins in the past, but now the film industry is accused of bringing to life the monsters within its own actors.
1997 was a rough year for some of silver screen’s regulars. The death of Chris Farley and the incarceration of both Robert Downey, Jr. and Christian Slater shocked some, while others only bowed their shaking heads and mumbled, “That’s life in the fast lane.”
Does the industry screw bolts into the necks of our actors? Is it the viewers who dictate film content? Are we asking for more sex, drugs, crime and violence? Where is the sacrificial scape-goat hiding?
“The industry absolutely magnifies the problem,” said Rhett Bautista, 25, a senior from Minnesota, majoring in Theater and Media Arts. “Hollywood is a vampire that sucks the blood of anyone it can, until it can’t give anymore”.
There is no doubt that pressure is becoming more intense for these actors who seek alternative methods of relieving stress. “These kids are afraid they’re going to be yesterday’s news,” said Mary Jo Slater, casting director and mother of Christian Slater.
Sometimes yesterday’s news becomes today’s obituaries. Farley died of a drug overdose late last year. He was always “the fat funny guy,” going from one extreme to the next to find balance, eventually ending up in a downward spiral, Bautista said.
“I think Chris would be alive today if people would take a stand and put their foot down.”
Is the lesson being learned? From inside the cells of an L.A. prison, two celebrities are contemplating the answer. Slater added assault and drug charges (for beating his girlfriend in an alcohol and heroine binge last August) to his lengthy list of brushes with the law.
“I’m learning and developing certain tools and skills for living that I didn’t necessarily possess before,” Slater said in an interview with Entertainment Tonight. “I would say I have learned more in the past 70 days than I have learned in my entire life … I’m more happy right now than I have been.”
Those skills may involve some of the 90 days of community service he is performing. According to Access Hollywood, his happiness might stem from the TV/VCR in his cell. Or maybe it’s because he gets to bring and wear his own clothes, and also bring and cook his own food. The phone in his cell suggests it’s business as usual for the star.
Is the treatment fair? Is the pill others are sentenced to swallow taken with a spoonful of sugar? Downey’s earlier probation was altered by a judge to allow him to continue working on films and avoid immediate jail time, even if he should relapse.
Relapse he did. Downey went on a drug and alcohol binge last July, resulting in the revocation of his probation. The same judge, who previously altered his probation last April, ordered him to immediately begin serving six months in an L.A. County Jail.
“I’m running out of ways to rehabilitate you,” Judge Lawrence Mira said at the sentencing. “I’m going to incarcerate you, and I’m going to incarcerate you in a way that’s very unpleasant for you.”
People need to learn a lesson and, unfortunately, people with power (political, social or economical) are the last ones to learn, Bautista said.
Professor Dean Duncan of the Theater and Media Arts Department said it isn’t the industry so much as it was a sad result of lifestyle choices.
“I think it’s just an example of young men with too much money and too little restriction,” he said.
“I have no excuses,” Downey said at his sentencing. “I find myself defenseless. I have been addicted to drugs since I was eight years old.”
So is the industry off the hook? Every industry is dangerous, Duncan said, if you are not squared. Slater’s next big film is ironically titled “Very Bad Things” in which he plays a party-hound caught at an outrageous bachelor party. “This movie really gives me an opportunity to let the best out,” Slater told ET in an interview from the set.
Both actors have now committed to taming the beast within. Of his son, Robert Downey, Sr., said, he was “a great artist, a great friend. And when he beats this, he’ll be a great man.”
How are BYU students to avoid the “disaster of success,” as Duncan put it? Bautista said, “The principal way to be prepared is to understand the nature of the beast, preparing morally and ethically.”
“Some people think `just because I’m a church member … I’ve got it coming to me.’ But it’s not that way, you must fight for it,” Bautista said.
Duncan agrees. “Good people work hard, sacrifice and lose things.” We are safe, if we are safe in the first place, he said.
