Word: hollywoodizing
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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First there are the blond-haired good looks: striking but somehow wholesome, more high school prom queen than Hollywood glamour puss. Then there's the rich, honeyed voice: husky and authoritative, but free of the severe tone affected by some females in TV news. As a reader of the news, she is masterly: businesslike but warm, her eyes now wide with the drama of the day, now crinkling ever so slightly with concern. Diane Sawyer doesn't just deliver the news, she performs...
...attachment is usually expressed as love. In a study sponsored by the National Institute of Justice and released this year, researchers analyzed 1,500 "inappropriate" letters sent to dozens of Hollywood celebrities. Only 5% of the writers cast themselves as enemies or would-be assassins. Others saw themselves as business associates, friends or religious saviors. But the rest acted like spouses or suitors. Says Park Dietz, a forensic psychiatrist in Newport Beach, Calif., who directed the project: "If you didn't know who the two people were, you would think it was a normal love letter." About...
...sometimes unwittingly, encourage overinvolvement by their fans. A sort of perverse symbiosis exists between star and votary. Many celebrities lack sturdy egos and are looking for unqualified adoration. Others think that their most emotional and devoted fans are integral to their success and must be cultivated. Dietz deplores the Hollywood routine of answering fan mail. And he is especially critical of the practice of sending out autographed publicity photos: "Sometimes mentally ill recipients interpret the signed photograph as a personal communication confirming, for example, that they are about to be married...
...want the folks to see me sitting in the same kind of seat they sit in," he says, "eating the same popcorn, peeing in the same urinal." So he is quite happy when fans chirp to him about the team's improved won-lost record. He saves his broadest, Hollywood-handsome grin for the occasional urging that he run for Governor...
...audiences used to neat Hollywood endings that tie up all the strings, offering lasting solutions to unsolvable dilemmas after two hours, Do the Right Thing will be shocking in its complex representation of real life, where things are not that simple...