BrianH
At the Start
From today's Observer - I must declare an interest, I have played poker with the author more than once:
Angelina Jolie: now she's what I call a bad boy
Victoria Coren
Sunday January 16, 2005
The Observer
Colin Farrell is so last century. How ridiculous is it for any man, in this day and age, to be described as a 'hellraiser'? Farrell is never described as anything else. He drinks noisily and often, therefore he is ubiquitously 'hellraising Colin Farrell'.
This is an impossible title to carry off with any glamour. It might have worked for Peter O'Toole in the Sixties and Seventies, but that was before people had any real image of what happened to hellraisers in the end. Imagine Farrell now, sinking his whisky with a Guinness chaser, and you can't help imagining his like-minded ancestors, the ghosts of his future: wheezy Oliver Reed, ruined Peter Cook, legless Jeffrey Bernard, fat Brando. Even now they are among us: gaunt, baffled George Best still trying to pick up random women in the pub; white, pinch-faced Gazza looking like he was accidentally locked overnight in a meat fridge.
And yet there he goes, sexy Farrell, boozing and 'hellraising' like he invented it. During the filming of Alexander (the Oliver Stone turkey which has just been released to worldwide amusement), he was nicknamed 'Cock-Out Colin' because he constantly dropped his trousers while smashed, as well as stubbing his fags out on hotel furniture.
This is also the man who told American GQ magazine that he had smoked heroin and found it 'pretty fucking nice'. The man who once paid £10,000 to keep a Los Angeles lapdancing club open after hours so he could carry on drooling over his favourite strippers.
He has also talked of the time he managed to consume 20 ecstasy tablets, four grams of coke, half an ounce of dope, three bottles of Jack Daniel's, 12 bottles of wine, 60 pints and 280 cigarettes in one week. Ooh, ye naughty little Oirish leprechaun, ye. And how very square to keep count.
I have a theory for the failure of Alexander: Farrell just looks too silly next to Angelina Jolie (who, one year older than Farrell, plays his mother; trusty old Hollywood). Jolie is a far more interesting bad boy altogether.
Sure, she drinks and sleeps with the wrong people, but she also has a Tennessee Williams quote tattooed on her arm. She got married in a white shirt with the groom's name smeared across it in her blood. She describes her boyfriends as 'friends who I meet in hotel rooms'. She travelled through Sierra Leone on a motorbike. She grew up wanting to be an undertaker. She's an ambassador for the UN. She is an ass-kicking single mother to a Cambodian orphan. She's in Elle this month holding a black panther.
And Farrell - what - likes the odd pint? Stand aside, young man, and let Angelina play the Macedonian warrior herself.
'Hellraising' is the wrong word for Colin's antics. Men just like the phrase because it sounds macho. But all this noisy, boozy stuff is nothing to do with hell, which is a smaller and less 'glamorous' thing altogether.
Hell lies in the tiny frustrations, the pointy little nuggets of mental destruction. Satan doesn't go boozing and sleeping with too many women; Satan hides your car keys when you're late for a meeting. Satan presses on your bladder in the middle of a concert when you're in row Q and can't get out. Satan leaves an upturned plug on the bedroom floor. Satan crashes your computer at crucial moments, hides traffic wardens behind trees and prices milk at 2p more than you happen to have in change.
In hell, you do not drink and shag; nor do you burn and scream. Nothing so exciting. The human mind couldn't comprehend a hell which was too full-on; after a while, it would just become white noise. Real torture must have a drip-drip-drip effect - the Chinese knew this and Satan does too. So, in hell, you can never find your keys, you always need the loo and you're forever barefoot on a road of upturned plugs.
The true 'hellraisers' in our society are the people out there doing small, mean, petty things. Liza Minnelli telling the world that David Gest had a hair transplant. Princess Anne sneering at a wellwisher's flowers. Bryan Adams finding his popular local pub too noisy, buying it up and closing it down.
If Colin Farrell really wants to raise hell, he should have a look at Celebrity Big Brother and learn from its miniature tactics. John McCririck was happy to be locked up, happy to perform arduous tasks, happy to live in a cramped mass environment. But when did he go mad? When they took his Diet-Coke away.
Angelina Jolie: now she's what I call a bad boy
Victoria Coren
Sunday January 16, 2005
The Observer
Colin Farrell is so last century. How ridiculous is it for any man, in this day and age, to be described as a 'hellraiser'? Farrell is never described as anything else. He drinks noisily and often, therefore he is ubiquitously 'hellraising Colin Farrell'.
This is an impossible title to carry off with any glamour. It might have worked for Peter O'Toole in the Sixties and Seventies, but that was before people had any real image of what happened to hellraisers in the end. Imagine Farrell now, sinking his whisky with a Guinness chaser, and you can't help imagining his like-minded ancestors, the ghosts of his future: wheezy Oliver Reed, ruined Peter Cook, legless Jeffrey Bernard, fat Brando. Even now they are among us: gaunt, baffled George Best still trying to pick up random women in the pub; white, pinch-faced Gazza looking like he was accidentally locked overnight in a meat fridge.
And yet there he goes, sexy Farrell, boozing and 'hellraising' like he invented it. During the filming of Alexander (the Oliver Stone turkey which has just been released to worldwide amusement), he was nicknamed 'Cock-Out Colin' because he constantly dropped his trousers while smashed, as well as stubbing his fags out on hotel furniture.
This is also the man who told American GQ magazine that he had smoked heroin and found it 'pretty fucking nice'. The man who once paid £10,000 to keep a Los Angeles lapdancing club open after hours so he could carry on drooling over his favourite strippers.
He has also talked of the time he managed to consume 20 ecstasy tablets, four grams of coke, half an ounce of dope, three bottles of Jack Daniel's, 12 bottles of wine, 60 pints and 280 cigarettes in one week. Ooh, ye naughty little Oirish leprechaun, ye. And how very square to keep count.
I have a theory for the failure of Alexander: Farrell just looks too silly next to Angelina Jolie (who, one year older than Farrell, plays his mother; trusty old Hollywood). Jolie is a far more interesting bad boy altogether.
Sure, she drinks and sleeps with the wrong people, but she also has a Tennessee Williams quote tattooed on her arm. She got married in a white shirt with the groom's name smeared across it in her blood. She describes her boyfriends as 'friends who I meet in hotel rooms'. She travelled through Sierra Leone on a motorbike. She grew up wanting to be an undertaker. She's an ambassador for the UN. She is an ass-kicking single mother to a Cambodian orphan. She's in Elle this month holding a black panther.
And Farrell - what - likes the odd pint? Stand aside, young man, and let Angelina play the Macedonian warrior herself.
'Hellraising' is the wrong word for Colin's antics. Men just like the phrase because it sounds macho. But all this noisy, boozy stuff is nothing to do with hell, which is a smaller and less 'glamorous' thing altogether.
Hell lies in the tiny frustrations, the pointy little nuggets of mental destruction. Satan doesn't go boozing and sleeping with too many women; Satan hides your car keys when you're late for a meeting. Satan presses on your bladder in the middle of a concert when you're in row Q and can't get out. Satan leaves an upturned plug on the bedroom floor. Satan crashes your computer at crucial moments, hides traffic wardens behind trees and prices milk at 2p more than you happen to have in change.
In hell, you do not drink and shag; nor do you burn and scream. Nothing so exciting. The human mind couldn't comprehend a hell which was too full-on; after a while, it would just become white noise. Real torture must have a drip-drip-drip effect - the Chinese knew this and Satan does too. So, in hell, you can never find your keys, you always need the loo and you're forever barefoot on a road of upturned plugs.
The true 'hellraisers' in our society are the people out there doing small, mean, petty things. Liza Minnelli telling the world that David Gest had a hair transplant. Princess Anne sneering at a wellwisher's flowers. Bryan Adams finding his popular local pub too noisy, buying it up and closing it down.
If Colin Farrell really wants to raise hell, he should have a look at Celebrity Big Brother and learn from its miniature tactics. John McCririck was happy to be locked up, happy to perform arduous tasks, happy to live in a cramped mass environment. But when did he go mad? When they took his Diet-Coke away.
Another self-wrecker, but presumably had a helluva good time doing it.
So he ain't getting in then Krizon? What about if he brandishes a nice cold bottle of Asti on his arrival and 2 glasses. On reflection, best make that one bottle and ONE straw! B)