Word: stardom
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Hollywood, having served teenage boys with decades' worth of action movies, is now making something of a play for their sisters. It has been, sort of, the summer of the girls, with pictures ranging from Bend It Like Beckham (Indian girl in London satisfies her dream of soccer stardom) to Whale Rider (Maori girl becomes the spiritual leader of her tribe) to I Capture the Castle (British teen comes to grips with her emerging sexuality). All these movies have hung on for weeks in theaters, attracting not just young girls but their parents...
These lightning bolts of product stardom have led some manufacturers to push their wares on production and costume designers--outside the channels of paid product placement. "Companies send me all kinds of stuff," says Ritchie Kremer, a Hollywood prop master. Last summer a manufacturer offered Kremer a cool-looking pen, which the company hoped he would place in the hands of George Clooney, the star of Intolerable Cruelty, due in theaters in October. But the prototype didn't work, and the maker didn't have one that did. So Kremer used a pen from his prop stash instead...
...hears the whispers of career mortality. "You almost feel obligated to get depressed," he says. "What nags at you is becoming warehoused--having your soul and your ambition put in cold storage." Your ego too: it's tough to fade gracefully to character-actor status after 25 years of stardom...
...late 80s, he formed the Buena Vista Social Club with a gaggle of other aging all-stars. The eponymous album and motion picture reintroduced much of the world to Cuban music and made the charismatic Segundo perhaps the most recognizable beardless Cuban alive. The gregarious nonagenarian reveled in his stardom: he played for the Pope, surrounded himself with women and transported millions of listeners to a simpler, more romantic era with his rich baritone. He was, as Buena Vista Social Club collaborator Ry Cooder put it, "the last of the best." --By Nathan Thornburgh
Beyonce is not a syntactic moron, just a 21-year-old with some miles to go on the journey to womanhood. That she is simultaneously on the road to one-name multimedia stardom might explain some of the giggling. After selling 11.7 million albums (according to Nielsen SoundScan) with girl group Destiny's Child and scooping up the only bits of critical praise thrown near last summer's dreadful Austin Powers in Goldmember, Beyonce is right now making her move from ensemble player to center stage. Her first solo album, Dangerously in Love, arrives June 24 with enormous commercial expectations...