Angry at the mistreatment of Russell Crowe.

There is a funny article in today's Sydney Morning Herald detailing a journalist's brief flirtation with being Russell Crowe's stooge. The writer, Jack Marx, was approached by Rusty to essentially generate good publicity - be his "mole" in the media. It didn't go flawlessly and now Marx is telling his version of what happened. I think it's funny for what it reveals about both Crowe and the writer.

After reading it, I have to admit I thought it was a bit rich that a "journalist" was worrying about the morality of a situation. I put journalist in quotes because, really, the guy's an entertainment writer. Journalists have questionable enough ethics but showbiz gossip should be about fun, not deep moral issues. Read it for yourself, but my take is the writer really screwed up. This was a golden opportunity. Any job I have ever had essentially involved prostituting myself - taking money from someone to do something I'd rather not be doing.

I probably have this worse than many being a contractor. I jump from job to job chasing dollars - job fulfillment would be nice but most of my focus is simply on getting the next job. I have joked with other contractors before that we should just put "prostitute" on our tax returns to describe our work. We always need pimps; most employers will only deal with agencies rather than hire you directly, so the best we can hope for is a high-class madam like Heidi Fleiss who gives you nice surroundings rather than a street corner pimp who will smack you upside the head at regular intervals.

So yeah, I'd pimp myself out to Russell Crowe in a second. In fact, I've already put the plan in motion: I'm going to periodically say good things about Russell Crowe on the off chance my blog gets popular enough that he would pay me to promote him. That way, when I start taking payoffs, nobody will know the difference. This is almost wandering into urban legend territory - I'm creating the story that I'd be willing to shill for Russell Crowe in the future but I'll start being positive now so nobody can accuse me of selling out in the future. So how would you know in the future is I was being paid because I started writing positive stories about Crowe now? Indeed, how do you know I'm not already on his payroll and this is the start of an elaborate smokescreen?

Have I fucked with your head enough yet?

It's an easy choice to make because he'd be way better than most bosses I've had and the pay and the perks would be good (pretending to be friends with Hollywood stars? Hell yeah!) Besides, I think he is a good actor and I can respect that. So he's not nice to people in public, boo-fucking-hoo. He doesn't want you to like him, he doesn't want to be your friend, he wants you to respect his acting.

And he has been hard done by. That dickhead concierge that he threw a phone at deserved way worse. A self-important prick who is supposed to be helping people getting all uppity and copping an attitude with a star to prove what a wicked attitude he has? Get real you wanker, people paying a fortune to stay in your fucking hotel have a right to get pissed off when you cop an attitude. If I was Rusty I would have paid to have somebody whack you. You got off lucky.

And the bullshit that is the Academy Awards. Crowe deserved an Oscar for Gladiator - seriously, how hard was it to get people to take the whole swords and sandals genre seriously? The downside is he's indirectly responsible for the cavalcade of shit that followed like Troy, King Arthur, Kingdom of Heaven and Alexander. Then he got totally ripped off when he was nominated for "A Beautiful Mind". I think we all know that the Academy Awards are not really about talent, it's all politics, but the campaign against him that year blew my mind.

Competing films ran a campaign against "A beautiful Mind" saying people shouldn't vote for Rusty as best actor because in real life, the guy he portrayed (who was batshit crazy) said anti-semetic things and cheated on his wife and the film ignored this. If that sort of shit is important, why is the awards called "Best Actor" and not "Best actor portraying a character of whom I approve and in a way that conforms to my worldview"?

This is how Orson Welles got screwed on "Citizen Kane" too. It's all about politics, not talent. "Citizen Kane" is easily one of the best films made in Hollywood but was snubbed at the Oscars because Welles pissed off the wrong people (Hearst and his Hollywood suck-ups). That's right, it's out there - I said it. Russell Crowe is a creative genius on par with Orson Welles.

Now prove I got paid to say that.