First, Adam Sandler’s latest comedy, “Jack and Jill,” failed to measure up to his previous blockbusters. Over the weekend, the star-laden “New Year’s Eve” debuted at number one, but with a final tally of $13 million that few folks found impressive.

And Will Smith, arguably the most bankable star of his generation, has been MIA of late until the lackluster MIB3 trailer hit the Web today.

That brings us to Tom Cruise, the mega-star with the mega-smile. His latest film, “Mission:Impossible – Ghost Protocol,” opens in limited theaters Friday before going wide Dec. 21.

To say there’s plenty riding on the film for Cruise is a Hollywood-sized understatement. Should “Ghost Protocol” falter at the box office, it’ll be all the evidence needed that Cruise is no longer a box office draw.

One could argue we already got that proof with the 2010 actioner “Knight and Day.” an underrated spy caper which failed to crack the golden $100 million mark. But that film offered an original story that didn’t have any franchise tie-ins to goose ticket sales. The new “M:I” won’t have such excuses. Plus, this new “Mission” features red-hot actor Jeremy Renner along with rising star Paula Patton. The best asset Cruise has may be Brad Bird, the Pixar director making his live-action feature debut with “Ghost Protocol.”

It’s been ages, in pop culture chronology, since Cruise jumped on Oprah Winfrey’s couch. We’ve long since moved on from that ridiculous sight. What Cruise is up against now is far more formidable – the notion that audiences have simply moved on to other actors.

That’s an eternity for actors in their prime, let alone arguably the biggest movie star on the planet.

Smith was riding a gaudy career streak up until recently. Hits like “Hancock,” “Hitch,” “Men in Black II,” “I, Robot,” “I am Legend” and “Bad Boys II” all proved his box office prowess was no special effect. Perhaps the biggest test of his audience goodwill came with the 2006 smash “The Pursuit of Happyness.” That film couldn’t fall back on car crashes or existing material to draw a crowd. It was all on Smith, and he delivered.

Then along came “Seven Pounds,” and it felt like everything changed for the erstwhile Fresh Prince.

“Seven Pounds,” a tear-jerker about an IRS agent harboring a dark secret, drew some withering reviews and made a fraction of what a typical Smith movie delivers. A short while later, Smith announced he had signed on to make a third “Men in Black” film, the kind of career Hail Mary lesser actors make. “Men in Black” was an out of left field delight, but its sequel felt like a standard money grab.

Why would a major movie star even bother with the franchise anymore?

That wasn’t the most disturbing news attributed to Smith. We recently learned Smith has signed on to star in director M. Night Shyamalan’s next feature, “One Thousand A.E.” It’s a story set in the future, and it lets Smith co-star with his adorable son, Jaden Smith (“The Karate Kid”) remake.

It’s hard to deny a father from wanting to work alongside his son, but why would a movie star of Smith’s status sign up with the director of “The Happening” … and “The Last Airbender” … and “Lady in the Water?”

Big movie stars stay on top for good reason. They pick the best directors to help them stay there. Tom Hanks aligned himself with Ron Howard (“The Da Vinci Code”), Robert Zemeckis (“Cast Away”) and Steven Spielberg (“The Terminal”) after cementing his position as a major box office attraction. It’s the best insurance a movie star can have against career downturns.

Smith should consider the company he keeps – on set – if he wants to stay in the rareified air of the box office elite.

In an interesting but flawed piece of analysis, The Daily Mail makes some key points and, I think, gets some things wrong:

Various reasons have been suggested to explain this new and — from the stars’ point of view — deeply worrying phenomenon.

Some say that blockbusting actors and actresses are simply pricing themselves out of the market. Depp, possibly the highest-paid actor in movies today, earns around £12 million a picture.

In his time, Cruise has done even better. With gross points — a percentage of everything taken at the box office — he pocketed nearly£50 million from Mission Impossible 2 in 2000.

But that was 11 years ago, when Cruise was in his heyday and the audience demographic was different. Then, the average age of cinemagoers fell roughly between 12 and 25.

Since then there’s been a considerable change. Today, the mass of cinema audiences is aged between 15 and 18 — and that’s what poses such a threat to the existence of big movie stars.

Kids of that age are not interested in veterans like Hanks (55), Cruise (49) or even Depp (48), except when he plays Jack Sparrow in the frankly juvenile Pirates Of The Caribbean series. Watching old men like them on screen would be like watching their fathers cavorting about.

Even Roberts (44), Diaz (39) and Jolie (36), desirable as they might be to the audiences’ dads, come across as little more than auntie figures.

This modern, young audience has no interest in the established stars. What it wants to see is either people closer to its own age (for instance Robert Pattinson, 25, as a toothsome vampire in the Twilight saga) or crash-bang special effects in films such as the sci-fi Transformers series, or in the X-Men superheroes films, or the forthcoming Captain America.

Frankly this is too simple. A to B to C sounds good but doesn’t really add up.

For starters, why did the mass movie-going age suddenly collapse from 12 to 25 all the way down to the even narrower 15 to 18?  Are we supposed to believe people over 18 are genetic freaks who find movie-going unappealing? Society didn’t change over the last decade, the movies did.

Films aimed at teens will never change. Vampires, superheroes, lame musicals, horror films, teen romance, bawdy comedies, etc. This is not a hard nut to crack and that formula has been around since my generation went to high school. So, as we see, the movie industry is still able to hang on to that crowd.  What I have seen change over the past decade are films aimed at those of us over 18 and this change has been a suicidal one for any industry interested in making a profit. 

With notable exceptions, no longer are we being inspired in a darkened theatre or asked to aspire. No longer are we made to feel good about who we are or what we believe in. No longer is the heart warmed or the feel-good feel-gooded. Instead we are guilted, preached to and told nihilism and narcissism are values. Today, going to the movies for grown ups has become one expensive bummer where the asshole next to you is usually on his cell phone. For every “Blind Side” we get 20 anti-American films.

Yep, I’ll wait for RedBox, thank you very much. And sometimes not even that.

Movie stars haven’t done themselves much good, either. What used to be a subculture of transplants from all over the country who knew how they good they had it and understood Middle America (because they came from there or knew someone who did), is now mostly Southern California natives aided by nepotism who look down on their audience.

All we’re guilty of is not-liking them back. 

Finally, there’s also no precedent for teenage moviegoers turning on movie stars of a certain age. In 1984, Arnold, Clint, Stallone, Chuck Norris, Burt Reynolds, Robert Redford, Chevy Chase, Harrison Ford, the “Star Trek” crew and Jack Nicholson were all close to our parents age and older — but we all stood in line to see them. So it’s just absurd to state that kids today are mostly drawn to actors closer to their own age. If that were true, a Robert Pattinson movie where he doesn’t play a moody vampire would be a hit, and that’s simply not been the case. 

The only movie stars left in America have transcended their industry and built up an enormous reservoir of audience goodwill by simply going about the business of making crowd-pleasing projects, not insulting us, and creating an appealing  public persona. Off the top of my head, I would name Sandra Bullock, Adam Sandler, Denzel Washington and Will Smith.

I’ve been very careful in this piece to focus on the film industry as opposed to ”Hollywood” in general because it’s just a fact that entertainment for grown ups is not only flourishing on television, it’s enjoying a Golden Age unlike any during my lifetime. Breaking Bad, Mad Men, The Sopranos, The Wire, 24, Burn Notice, The Shield, Lost, etc. There’s almost too much worthwhile television to keep up with these days.

Some very smart and talented individuals have migrated to the small screen in order to tell mature, complicated stories with complex characters. The talent is out there. The movie industry just refuses to put it to work.

Had this published in Newsweek a few months ago, my guess is that the magazine would’ve sold for 50 cents instead of a dollar.

I think it’s possible that a slightly more obvious, disturbing reason could be behind Undercovers’ failure, and it’s pretty familiar: race. Prime-time audiences just weren’t ready for “super-negros” on the small screen. And that’s exactly what Undercovers was: a show about black people doing very “unblack” things. Before anyone gets upset, let me explain. “Super-negro” was a term my family often used while watching old Sidney Poitier movies back in the day. In Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner (our favorite), Poitier portrays a black doctor in love with a white, wealthy young socialite during the ’60s. Pretty early in the film, you begin to realize that Poitier’s character is not just any black doctor (an accomplishment in itself for most people then, and now); he’s a black doctor with degrees from several Ivy League universities, an internationally known scholar behind cures of dozens of diseases in Africa and elsewhere. Overkill. But Poitier portraying a “regular negro” was simply not good enough during those times, so the “super-negro” was born. The same could be said of his character from In the Heat of the Night, a Philadelphia cop with highly decorated awards.

Fast-forward 40 years, and it’s plain to see that Hollywood still hasn’t figured out a way to move beyond that absurd premise. It still can’t just fit us in. Yes, we often appear as sidekicks or backup characters in an array of popular shows in prime time, but rarely do we carry a show as the star or let the viewers come home with us.

For starters, this premise is just factually wrong. Unless Ms. Samuels is going to push her already laughable theory to the breaking point of splitting the fine hair between movies and television, it’s just a cold truth that Denzel Washington, Morgan Freeman and Will Smith not only qualify as her “super negroes,” but also happen to be three of the most universally popular and beloved actors in America today. Furthermore, only 6 million people tuned into “Undercovers” in a country where 42 million Black Americans currently reside. With those numbers you don’t need anyone of the Caucasian persuasion to create yourself a hit television show.

If NBC can’t win 20% of that particular demographic, how is the failure of “Undercovers” a race issue? Well, Ms. Samuels has an even more outrageous theory to answer that one. Be sure to pay extra special attention to what’s in bold [my emphasis]:

[I]t appears that the powers that be in Tinseltown feel quite comfortable relegating us to reinforcing every negative stereotype known to humanity in low-grade, embarrassing reality shows like Flavor of Love and Basketball Wives. So exactly how does the television audience (black, white, or other) make the gigantic leap from those constant images of foolery to a show like Undercovers? It doesn’t.

Wow.

Taking Morgan Freeman, Denzel Washington and Will Smith off the table as though they alone don’t already completely dismantle this thoughtless line of thought, what Ms. Samuels is saying is that television has so socialized Black America that even Black Americans can’t deal with seeing themselves in fictional roles that don’t fall under her definition of “foolery.”

Of course, there is one exception to this theory; someone uniquely capable of seeing through all of this, someone whose superior intellect can’t be fooled, someone who possesses the otherworldly ability to retain a sense of self-worth even in the relentless face of all this pop cultural racism — ONE incredible human being with the strength and insight to sit back and enjoy “Undercovers” unlike anyone else…

And that someone is, of course, Allision Samuels.

If “elitist” ever becomes a race, I’m becoming a racist.

Gone with the Wind (1939), Star Wars (1977), The Sound of Music (1965), E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial (1982), The Ten Commandments (1956), Titanic (1997), Jaws (1975), Doctor Zhivago (1965), The Exorcist (1973), Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1939), 101 Dalmatians (1961), The Empire Strikes Back (1980), Ben-Hur (1959), Avatar (2009), Return of the Jedi (1983), The Sting (1973), Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981), Jurassic Park (1993), The Graduate (1967), Star Wars: Episode I — The Phantom Menace (1999), Fantasia (1941), The Godfather (1972), Forrest Gump (1994), Mary Poppins (1964), The Lion King (1994)

If you said they all made scads of money, bravo — they are the top twenty-five domestic box-office champions of all time (adjusted for inflation, of course).

But consider another similarity: surprisingly few of them relied on established A-list movie stars — the most famous, the highest paid — for their moneymaking prospects. Gone with the Wind had Gable, yes. The Sting had Newman and Redford. The Godfather, Brando.

As for most of the rest, they either featured no A-listers at all, or used them before they became bonafide movie stars. In fact, many of those pictures can take credit for sending now-famous actors into the celestial Hollywood firmament in the first place. Gone with the Wind made Vivian Leigh known to the world. The Ten Commandments did it for Charlton Heston. The Graduate, Dustin Hoffman. The Godfather, Al Pacino. Star Wars, Harrison Ford. Mary Poppins, Julie Andrews.

Meanwhile, I note that Will Smith, the current top A-lister, is nowhere to be found on this rarefied roll call. Nor is Tom Cruise, Denzel Washington, Jim Carrey, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Julia Roberts, or many others whose compensation has, at various times, made gasp-worthy headlines. Of the modern crop of top-salaried men, only Harrison Ford, Tom Hanks, and wee Leonardo DiCaprio are up there, and only for movies where it can be argued that genuinely astonishing special effects and epic spectacle, brought to life by proven audience-pleasing directors, served as the real stars.

(It’s telling that four of those behind-the-scenes men — Steven Spielberg, George Lucas, James Cameron, and Walt Disney — are responsible for over half of the list all by themselves.)

Is this being too dismissive of the contributions of highly-paid thespians to a movie’s bottom line? I don’t think so. Do you honestly think that Jurassic Park suffered at the box office because Harrison Ford turned it down and was replaced by Sam Neill? Or let’s go straight to the very heights of heresy: if you took Gable’s indelible, iconic performance out of Gone with the Wind, or Brando’s out of The Godfather, and replaced them with other well-regarded actors, would the movies still have made that Top 25 list? If the presence of these vaunted personalities is so magical in and of itself, how does one explain all the flops starring these very same actors?

There are other considerations that trump the movie-star effect in terms of improved profits. Consider that eight of the top twenty-five films were rated G, and eleven PG (four others had a PG-13 rating, and a paltry two were rated R). It’s clear common sense: make a movie suitable for the whole family, and you’ve just doubled or tripled your ticket tally, not to mention all the extra popcorn, soda, and candy getting sluiced through the digestive tracts of America’s moppets in direct violation of nanny-state health doctrine. That’s not to say that there’s no place for R-movies, just that a film’s potential for profit should always remain a healthy multiple of its budget.

Given all this, it’s high time that the stumpy tail of A-list Hollywood stops wagging the studio dog. Ten or twenty million guaranteed, up-front dollars to an actor for any movie (much less an R-rated one) is fiscal insanity. It’s the quality and appeal of the movie as a whole that counts. Once one comes to grips with this, paying a huge salary to a well-known celebrity begins to seem like a far poorer use of a studio’s money than spending the same amount of dough on better special effects, larger advertising buys, a great script, and/or a quality crew of cinematographers, editors, sound designers, and musicians.

Patrick Goldstein, who gets a lot of criticism round these parts, wrote an excellent article last year about the trend towards reduced star salaries. Music to my ears. Movie stars will always be with us, and at their best they add a great deal to a film’s artistry. But perhaps they will once again assume their proper economic place in the hierarchy of moviemaking (less money, less creative control), allowing Hollywood’s much maligned product to get better as a result.

Roland Emmerich, when he still used to make movies that entertained, pitted nerdy Jeff Goldblum, heroic Will Smith, and sensible Bill Pullman against massive enemy spaceships that were all but invincible until, ala War of the Worlds, Smith and Goldblum –  the Marine fighter pilot and the computer programmer — fly a captured alien fighter ship up to the mother vessel to impregnate it with a computer virus.

Smith’s lines remain classics to this day: after opening the hatch to a downed enemy fighter, he punches the slithering alien in the, well, face, and says “welcome to earth,” and while dragging the tentacled, smelly creature back to the base, he shouts, “I coulda been at a barbecue!” While ostensibly the movie pitted “humankind” in a struggle for survival, which Pullman, in one of the film’s lamest scenes, likened to our Independence Day, audiences knew the truth: the United States solved the problem with good old American insight, practicality, innovation, and Big Hollywood’s own Adam Baldwin.

Two relatively average people, not the speechifyin’ president,  account for the victory, with a great deal of help from a suddenly sober Randy Quaid, who has a few of his own choice lines (“Hello, boys. I’m baaa-aack.”)

Those of us old enough to remember the theatrical release also recall that in those days of Bill Clinton’s falling popularity, audiences cheered when the aliens blew up the White House. But President Whitmore (buffed up in the movie as a former fighter pilot himself) escaped the death ray, and more than a few noticed how conveniently the first lady was wiped out in the attack, leaving the president free to, well, date.

Despite the preachy subtext of environmental-wacko-ism, and the unlikelihood of a hungover Quaid winning the day, Independence Day reminded us that even if it is only survival itself, there are things worth fighting for.

In the world of Barack Obama, that message seems much further distant than a mere 14 years.

An excellent example is a recent column written by Owen Gleiberman, a film critic for Entertainment Weekly. In it, Gleiberman lashes out at those of us best described as ”small people” (i.e. not film critics) for having the gall to disagree with an actual critic’s opinion  — in this case, of just how incredibly awesome Jaden Smith (Will Smith’s 11 year-old son and star of the new “Karate Kid”) is.

Starting with this sharply written rejoinder, Excuse me, but what the heck is going on?, Gleiberman goes on to lay out a damning case that explains why racism is the only explanation for those who find young Jaden arrogant and resent the nepotism that made him a movie star. Gleiberman must be right, because his fervent illogical confidence says so. So… 

…if you have the courage to look deep within your unwashed self, please read on. You’re about to discover that you might just be a racist: 

Yet [Jaden] Smith’s rise has been greeted, in far too many quarters (including a number of comment boards on ew.com, like the one on my review), with bitter, gnashing resentment. This 11-year-old really has the haters foaming.

And he’s right. Obviously, what we have here is a classic case of  “small people” getting uppity and disagreeing with A Mighty Critic. So let us all pause and take a moment to salute and appreciate Gleiberman for having the stones to label his own readers — those who keep EW running — racist.

And so we — the newly enlightened – continue:

He’s been excoriated as a bad actor (even though, just a few years ago, most viewers had nothing but praise for the appealingly feisty and precocious performance he gave right next to his dad in The Pursuit of Happyness).

I’m forced to interrupt this critic-ry insightfulness in order to salute Gleiberman for doing the incredible detective work needed to uncover the stunning fact that the very same people who once praised Jaden Smith’s performance in “The Pursuit of Happyness” are now lashing out at him due to the color of his skin. 

Owen Gleiberman

Imagine the amount of journalism that went into discovering this red-hot smoking gun of hypocrisy. Imagine the comment boards our intrepid critic must’ve scoured throughout Al Gore’s brainchild to compare and connect various IP addresses to years-old opinions of Jaden’s performance in “Happyness” until, UNTIL, UNTIL!… Aha! Look! The very same people who once loved Young Smith now don’t…because he’s black!

He’s been called a brat, a spoiled no-talent, an ungrateful beneficiary of his lineage of stardom. He’s been ripped up and down as “insufferable” for his appearance last week on The Late Show with David Letterman. …

Bottom line, for me: Smith was cocky as hell on Letterman, but he was also interesting. For eight minutes, he displayed the confidence to be non-ingratiating and, in the process, he seized your attention. He was brash; he acted like a Hollywood kid who truly had a mind of his own. Perish the thought!

Owen, let me assure you that the thought is now perished.

Admittedly, this was the most confusing part of Gleiberman’s criticism. On one hand he praises Jaden Smith for having a mind of his own, while on the other, brands as racist those with a mind of their own who disagree. Hmm…?

Anyway:

Yet in the online universe of Jaden Hatred, that Letterman appearance played as one thing and one thing only: privilege. And that, on the surface, is what the whole ragging-on-Jaden-Smith phenomenon is really all about — the desire to tear down a child who enjoys the perks of celebrity royalty, even though he didn’t earn them. And now he’s getting a movie career handed to him! You can almost taste the class resentment, the jealousy of folks who only wish, deep down, that they’d gotten such an opportunity themselves[.]

Are you confused? After all, who are the Obi Wans of class resentment if not the Left? But if you’re confused it’s only because you don’t understand the Left’s oh-so important rules. Yes, they teach, breed, and foment class resentment like no other. And yes, they want us to resent the wealthy — you know, those making over $250,000 a year — who work hard and got somewhere in life but in the cruel act of doing so dared to embarrass the lazy and entitled. But what you have to understand is that those rules don’t apply to movie stars.

Duh.

For movie stahs represent all that is good and holy in the universe. They are our kings. Our monarchs. And therefore nepotism doesn’t count and this class resentment from the hoi polloi over a child of privilege – the heir apparent — is downright bourgeois.

And then Owen brings it home:

It’s hard to shake the feeling, though, that too many people are trying to turn Jaden Smith from what he is, which is an insolently charismatic and hard-working young actor, into a focal point of ill will over issues of class, fame, money, and — yes, I’m going to say it — race.

From high atop Mt. EW the powerful Critic Gleiberman has scrawled “race” across his mighty lightning bolt and hurled it across the Intenets. In other words:

You disagree with me, you Small People and refuse to bow down before the Son of Kings!  You have the gall to summon criticism without a pedigree (like a degree in English from the University of Michigan)?!? For your sin of pride I now and forever shame you as RACISTS (and if any of you are black, uhm… SELL OUTS!)! So let it be written, so let it be done…

There’s just one problem. According to his own set of rules our mighty critic appears to have some racial issues of his own.

There’s simply no getting around the fact that Gleiberman is guilty of harshly reviewing a number of films that star and/or co-star people who are not of the Caucasian persuasion. Keep in mind, according to Gleiberman’s own rules, “hating” on a single non-white subject — in this case Prince Jaden — confirms your racism.

So how does Gleiberman explain this, this, this, this, and this? And that’s just the tip of what I like to call The Racially-Insensitive Iceberg. And so we are left with the question….

Does Own Gleiberman have a problem with films starring people who are — yes, I’m going to say it — not white?

UPDATE: I’ve just been informed that Leftists are above the rules. Especially, their own rules. If you’d be good enough to file this article under NEVERMIND, I promise to be more careful in the future.

On a serious note: While I wasn’t a big fan of the overlong “Karate Kid” reboot, I did find Jaden every bit as charismatic and worthy of the starring role as Gleiberman obviously did. I also found his Letterman appearance charming. For an 11 year-old, Jaden has an extraordinary magnetism and poise.

Some might credit nepotism for the young man’s rise; I credit genetics.

The difference between Geliberman and I, however, is that I won’t label as racist those who strongly disagree.

Hollywood politics are no exception to racial attacks. Recently Chris Lee of the Los Angeles Times wrote a piece about “Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time” and “The Last Airbender,” listing them as recent additions to Hollywood’s “rich history” of casting white actors in ethnic parts, giving the example of John Wayne playing Genghis Khan. 

Quickly, before I delve further into why Lee’s article is ridiculous, let me point out a double standard. In Tom Clancy’s book, “The Sum of All Fears,” his villains are Muslim extremists. In the film, they are neo-Nazis. No one complained about that swap, especially the Times, as their review ignores the change. 

Moving on. Lee writes that “the movie industry can still seem woefully behind the times when it comes to matters of race.” This is such a non-committal accusation that the Los Angeles Times should have lost it on the editing floor. It’s a classic strategy that accuses, while giving the writer a cover. 

He then points to Miss USA Rima Fakih, Will Smith and Sonia Sotomayor as examples of how America has moved past its racial prejudice and is embracing ethnic diversity. Let’s flip that around and see what Lee is saying. He argues that Will Smith, Rima Fakih and others are successful despite their race. This insults their abilities. Race has nothing to do with it. Ms. Fakih is a beautiful, talented young woman. Smith is a great actor, and a cool action star. 

Further calling Hollywood out on some racial bias is utterly ridiculous. Hollywood doesn’t just cast white people in ethnic roles. It casts other ethnicities in traditionally white roles as well. Let’s look at a few recent films: Will Smith recently starred in a remake of “I Am Legend,” a role that was played by white actors Charlton Heston and Vincent Price in prior remakes. Samuel L. Jackson has recently played Nick Fury in the “Iron Man” movies, originally a white comic book character. I’m pretty sure the Los Angeles Times hasn’t commented on Marvel Universe’s racial change, as their blog post on Fury doesn’t mention that Fury was originally a white character. 

Casting is not as simple as selecting an actor based on their race. Author Edward Jay Epstein wrote in his book “The Hollywood Economist” that in order for films to get certain tax breaks they will sometimes cast actors from certain countries, or shoot in countries that give them tax breaks. This can drastically reduce the cost of a film. 

Additionally, attaching a name actor like Jake Gyllenhaal to a film (or Smith in “I Am Legend” or Jackson as Nick Fury) ensures fans will support it. 

Finally, even more important than tax breaks and fan base, Smith in “I Am Legend” and Jackson as Nick Fury are examples of studios casting the best actors to play the part. The fact that the Los Angeles Times doesn’t recognize Gyllenhaal’s acting ability in their article shows they would rather fill racial quotas than reward excellence. See the “30 Rock” episode about fulfilling quotas. Even those that benefit are insulted by the practice.

Peachiness is nothing new to Oscar; it has been going on as far back as when those in Tinseltown hid in a Red closet while whispering “Government borscht for all.” The only thing that’s changed is the lack of awareness the winners have to the people who pay for their product, the product being they and their films, and the level of daftness that some accepting the award go to in an effort to feel more powerful than the money and fame they already have. Speaking out can be a good thing, especially when the speakers motive is to lift the awareness of all. Yet in Hollywood, a self-important attitude is hard for most to drop, as is the party line.

Last year, Sean Penn, a man with numerous felony charges including charges of violence against woman, and one who panders to tyrants the world over, preached to Americans after his win of the horrible and hateful state of mind that has fallen upon those who do not see the world as he does. The people of California came to their decision on gay marriage freely by vote, twice. Nevertheless, to Sean Penn the will of the people is only ever served when it slants in his favor or gives way to a photo op of him in a New Orleans boat shotgun in hand. Even his recent Haiti trip ultimately became just a reason for him to have face time on Larry King while hitting “Wiffle Ball” questions out of the park in the hopes of improving his public image, which is limited.

More often winners become so emotional that they lose it on stage like a Springer Spaniel wetting the carpet of its Masters home. Then becoming unable to articulate an awareness needed to give an educated speech in regards to the character they portrayed and how that role may be transferred to a larger audience for greater exposure. The speech they should have given gets lost in the moment of the self.

Case in point, Julia Roberts and Halle Berry

Julia Roberts won Best Actress for playing a strong, tough, stubborn, sexy mother who as a legal clerk took on a corrupt system and won. Yet in Miss Roberts acceptance speech, she failed to thank the very woman who made her Oscar possible, Erin Brockovich. Rather than give a focused acceptance speech empowering young woman to go into the world and become something powerful, (So long as they don’t become Conservative women from Alaska of course.) she giggled like a hyena that’d been poked by a canister of helium set aside for a Macy’s day float. She blathered on about how great she felt to be up on stage, how she never wanted to get down from the stage and how pretty her dress was. She then thanked her boyfriend of the month, her agents, the mountains, the forest, the rain, the sun and all the other geniuses disguised as Hollywood nature. All while forgetting the possibility of the moment, a chance to empower all women with her film.

Interracial discrimination takes place inside the black community in regards to shade of skin color. Many in the black community openly cried foul that Halle Berry was too light skinned to be the first black woman to win an Oscar for Best Actress. Miss Berry never saw the struggles that single black mothers living in this country see every day, but make no mistake, in today’s culture she is seen as a black woman.

Yet Miss Berry, looking as if she’d just come from a Pakistani interrogation room at the announcement of her name, took the stage unable to seize the gravity of her win and blew her chance to make a thoughtful speech about what it’s like to be a black woman of any shade in the world, not just Hollywood. Instead she glazed over the subject with “And now the door is open for all black actresses” as if the best thing for young black woman to do is head off to the crapshoot that is Hollywood. Miss Berry went on to thank Warren Betty, Spike Lee, her agent, manager, her mother, her future ex-husband and on, and on, all while saline flowed from her eyes, snot leaped from her nostrils like bungee jumpers and facial tics took hold suggesting that the Pakistani electrodes where still clipped on and the voltage was on high.

Bush Derangement Syndrome Infects Oscar 2003

Michael Moore is a man who could benefit from Michelle Obama’s war on childhood obesity. Because he is not only fat, but also because he lives in a constant state of infancy making up stories and presenting them to the public as fact like the boy who cried wolf.

Therefore, it came as no surprise when the bariatric blob took hold of his Oscar and was the first to expose “Bush Derangement Syndrome.” He invited his fellow documentary nominees on the stage and said, “I’ve invited my fellow documentary nominees on the stage with us. They are here in solidarity with me because we like nonfiction. We like nonfiction and we live in fictitious times. We live in the time when we have fictitious election results that elect a fictitious president. We live in a time where we have a man sending us to war for fictitious reasons, whether it is the fiction of duct tape or the fiction of orange alerts. We are against this war, Mr. Bush. Shame on you, Mr. Bush. Shame on you. And any time that you have the Pope and the Dixie Chicks against you, your time is up.”

Choosing to come off as just another elitist slob patting himself on the back while giving a lefty hand job the attending crowd, Michelle Moore wasted an opportunity to say something intelligent and though provoking for all to ponder. The show business people in the audience cheered his ridiculous statement and the teamster back stage booed into off stage microphones.

That same night the visiting aliens (Sorry, the undocumented performers.) couldn’t help getting into the act when the “Shark jumping” Bono, having taken his own temperature with his head and finding a slight fever of Bush Derangement Syndrome sang his two cents.

In a veiled protest against the war, which went unreported, Bono, sang “The Hands that Built America” from Gangs of New York, changing two lines of the song:

It’s early fall, there is a cloud on the New York skyline,
Innocents across a yellow line.

Became,
Late in the spring, yellow cloud on a desert skyline,
Some father’s son, is it his or is it mine.

I thank you for the poetic insight Bono, now go plant some potatoes and worry about your own country because your last CD sucked.

In addition, that night our neighbors to the south drop this bomb of wisdom on us via the Jewish-Mexican-American uprising when ‘Frida’ composer Elliot Goldenthal expressed his admiration for the not-currently-fighting-with-Iraq country of Mexico.

Elliot Goldenthal, clearly a “Mexican National,” failed to mention that the reason Mexico is not fighting with us, is that it is too busy fighting itself and that the only country they ever fought and defeated was France. Not the greatest bragging rights yet every year on May 5th we in the US feel the ridiculous need to have a margarita and fucking burrito.

In fairness, that same year the Motion Picture Academy allowed a short conservative rebuttal to any liberal-leaning statements made regarding the war in Iraq. In a press conference that Saturday, Academy President Frank Pierson announced that in fairness to the noble soldiers and “the people who fund our movies”, a Republican representative would be given “equal time” at the end of the ceremony to counterbalance any leftist remarks made by Oscar winners during the program.

Many members of the film community were greatly displeased by the announcement because it brought balance and fact to their Utopian mindset. No one displayed this better than the war historian and geopolitical analyst Renee Zellweger when she said, “I think it’s all a bunch of bull-honky. Winners should get to say whatever they want. I don’t like the war no matter what, and when Mr. Republican-pants gets up there to speak I’m just putting my fingers in my ears and going la-la-la-la-la!”

In the past when an Oscar winner had something to say, they did it with more creativity and insight by not making it about them. In Marlon Brando’s case, it was more imaginative and lasting than anything you will see today.

When Brando refused his Best Actor Award, instead choosing to stay home to eat cookies and milk on his rattan furniture, he sent Sacheen Littlefeather to the 1972 Academy Awards to say “Marlon Brando very regretfully cannot accept this very generous award. And the reason for this being is the treatment of American Indians today by the film industry.” If Sean Penn fancies himself as the A-hole Brando, then he should have taken a queue from Marlon and sent Ellen DeGeneres and Portia de Rossi to the stage with a Judge from San Francisco’s 9th Circuit Court of Appeal to accept his award.

Then there is George C. Scott, who went out of the box before there was a box, and informed the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences via telegram that he would reject a nomination as Best Actor for his portrayal of Gen. George S. Patton in Patton. Though he had tried before to withdraw from an Oscar race-for a Best Supporting Actor nod for 1960’s The Hustler — this time the 43-year-old actor declared that he would simply not accept.

George C Scott returned his Oscar for Patton, stating in a letter to the Academy that he didn’t feel himself to be in competition with other actors. However, also regarding this second rejection of the Academy Award, Scott famously said elsewhere, “The whole thing is a goddamn meat parade. I don’t want any part of it.” You will never hear that from a star today.

The speech that came closest to what an Oscar speech should be was Joe Pesci’s when he won for “Goodfellas.” It should be the framework for all Oscar victory speeches. Pesci stepped to the stage, graciously took the award and said, “I am humbled. Thank you.” Then walked off, unfortunately never to be heard from again.

Warren Beatty famously said, “The Golden Globes are fun. The Oscars are business.” In that sentiment can be found what an Oscar speech should really be. The truly crafted artist of the world know their place and how to maintain the mystery of their craft by being seen and heard on film and leaving the social passions of their heart to themselves.

Only a truly self-realized actor would know that the purpose of his Oscar award speech is to recognize that they and their film are products. That the podium is chance to promote that product to the world by simply plugging their movie to those who’ve yet to purchase the manufactured goods and to say thank you to those who did.

But don’t hold your breath hoping Hollywood will change its speech impediment and get the words out right. I can hear Will Smith now accepting his award for Best Actor at the 2014 Oscars for his portrayal of Barak Obama. He’ll talk of the shameful racist nature of the American people as he quotes the president by saying to Barack seated in the front row “You were so right Mr. President, it’s better to be a really good one term President than a bad two term President. Shame on you America, shame on you.”

And if you’re Tom Cruise, that means you are not only qualified to advise women on how to deal with postpartum depression, but you are also qualified to act as marriage counselor.

That’s right – Tom “Couch Commando” Cruise is, out of the goodness of his heart, David and Victoria Beckham’s new “relationship guru” – because you know with all of their money, they can’t afford a certified therapist:

After an evening with David, Tom decided to have a friendly chat with Victoria about the family’s future, saying it was because he cared so much about all of them,” revealed a source.

“They love each other dearly but Tom is a big believer in talking about issues . He could see they were both worried about the future and what it might hold.”

The Mission Impossible actor is understood to be concerned that the former Spice Girl – who runs a successful fashion empire from her home in the US – will want to stay in Los Angeles while her husband, 35, heads back to Europe.

“He talked to her about David ageing, his football career, the pressures of disgruntled fans, his loneliness when away from the family and how time apart is how marriages can fall apart,” adds the source.

That’s kind of creepy. Tom Cruise giving marriage advice? The man whose current wife is on such a tight leash she can’t even go to work without him there, watching her every move? The same man who, according to reports, rarely lets ex-wife Nicole Kidman see the children they adopted when they were married? The guy whose first wife, Mimi Rogers, reportedly split with him because he was seriously thinking of becoming a monk and felt he had to remain celibate?

Wow, that’s the man I want giving me marriage advice, for sure.

But Cruise is more than just a good friend; he’s a big cheese in the strange world of Scientology and is given credit for the “conversions” of Will Smith and Jada Pinkett. He’s also planning a big recruitment drive while he accompanies Katie on a four-month movie shoot in Australia, which begins this month. (There he goes again, not allowing Katie out of his sight. What, is he afraid she might find someone her own age?)

Remember the Scientology recruiting video starring Cruise, where he claims that Scientologists have “the ability to create new and better realities and improved conditions”? Is this the guy you’d really want giving you advice on anything, let alone how to keep your marriage together?

Run, David and Victoria, run…before it’s too late.