Without discipline, there's no life at all.
-- Katharine Hepburn
---
Great quote when taken seriously.
And also when not... I wouldn't have minded disciplining her a bit myself!
But really, I never fall hopelessly in love, but I could have with her: gorgeous, unique, intelligent, powerful, headstrong.
This picture is from 1993. She would have been 86 years old!
"I wouldn't have minded disciplining her a bit myself!"
ReplyDeleteI think you've made the mistake many observers of popular culture make, of thinking the character regularly (and well) portrayed by the actor equates to the real person's real-life character.
I know a lot of women who would have wanted to date Tom Cruise, because he's boyish with a manly edge, charming but bumbling but confident all at once. But then they heard all about his weird membership in a cult, and how he manipulated his fiancee while she was pregnant, and they got a different idea.
I like the personae that the Misses Hepburn (Audrey and Katharine) both portrayed. I wonder what they were like in real life? I understand Geena Davis never bathes, and Steve Martin is utterly friendly and gorgeous in person, and Jim Carrey is annoyingly self-involved while William Shatner is endearingly self-involved, and Rodney Dangerfield is totally arrogantly dismissive of all people who are not powerful and have a gig to offer, and Julia Roberts is not very bright and is much larger in thigh and arm-wattle than you would have expected, and Drew Barrymore is actcually incredibly intelligent but her voice is grating, and Emilio Estevez and Charlie Sheen and Martin Sheen and Kirk Douglas and Michael Douglas are "great guys" but cliquish, and Sean Penn is quite smart and friendly (except to papparazzi), and Tom Hanks doesn't HAVE a character because (just like Sir Olivier) he BECOMES the theatrical character instead. So I understand.
I have never met any of these people, but that's the report from my friends who work in the movie industry. I sometimes fall into the stupid trap, of believing I'd like to "date" one of the super-hotties whom I see on the silver screen, and it hits me in my self-esteem. After all, I've never dated anyone as physically attractive as Cameron Diaz or Winona Ryder or Uma Thurman or (pick your starlet) or even anyone on DOMAI or any other "ephebos," and certainly not anyone as charming as any of those actresses' on-screen characters. So I sit there and think I'm a loser and can't ever be fulfilled because I want a gorgeous girlfriend. Then I remind myself that they're actors.
It doesn't usually help. But I'm trying. :(
Of course you're right.
ReplyDeleteBut I heard Kate was a bit like her character in Philadelphia Story, who is what I really wanted.
And she is dead anyway, so I'm permitting myself to dream a little. (Man, she was almost a hundred.)
Eolake,
ReplyDeleteYou wouldn't have minded disciplining an 80-something woman? Dang! You really ARE a dirty old man...
You're my kind of guy! :-D
"Frankly, my dear, I DO give a damn good flogging!"
Final,
(You don't mind if I just call you Final, do you?)
I understood a good while ago, precisely from those discrepancies you mention, that actors in truth have one specific talent : the ability to convincingly become/interpret a scripted persona. I myself admire a notorious actor who's not afraid to play a bad guy on occasions. But since this talent is based on illusion (like for magicians), it can easily become hard to separate facts from convincing fiction. "Movie magic"...
So, über-cute Drew Barrymore is also intelligent? NOW I know for sure I want to marry her. Or at least get jailed for stalking her. ;-)
No, seriously, she makes me melt (like many Domai models), but I know I'll only marry a woman I really know and love for herself. Inner beauty is PARAMOUNT. (Pun intended.) Besides, marrying a celebrity actress is notoriously hazardous for those seeking long-term relationships. I just hate the idea of a bumpy love life with lots of potholes and several broken axles!
I want to admit something.
ReplyDeleteI've never really cared about inner beauty.
I know, I know, this makes me shallow weak male and all sorts of other evil things. But it just doesn't work for me.
I've dated all sorts of very nice girls. They were metabolically happy, kind to small animals, sweet, or whatever else. And I just said, ho hum. I needed at least one of them to be physically more appealing than any woman I've ever dated. If only one or another had bothered to be physically beautiful, too, then I'd have deigned to keep her.
Each his own taste, man. At least, YOU are honest enough to say physical beauty also counts for you. So you're normal AND honest. That puts you quite above the average "okay" guy. I believe you'll only remain alone if you choose to. Keep seeking.
ReplyDeleteI was half-serious about Drew Barrymore : ideally, I'd love a woman who's appealing in personnality AND cute-faced, if possible. Hey, who wouldn't?
Unfortunately, these always seem to be already taken! How odd, hunh? Perhaps I'm wrong in waiting to know them before I can feel truly attracted. But it can't be helped: a gorgeous airhead says nothing to me...
Still, I'm not complaining: I once fell for the wrong kind of girl (no offense, I just mean I wouldn't have been happy with her), and SHE didn't want me. So in the end, I got lucky!
And in the process I grew up. Talk about getting disciplined! ;-)
Remember this, everybody : better be bored alone than miserable in the wrong company. Being (reasonably) picky may save your future. Specially if you want children : you owe them a loving home. Really.
Not giving love to a child is perhaps the most terrible sin of all.
It's tough.
ReplyDeleteTwo girls fell for me last year. One a lot older and a born-again Christian. One a lot younger, nice figure and a doctor.
... Both great gals, but I had to turn them both away because I didn't feel I could give them what they deserved.
ReplyDeleteSay, I'd be willing to comfort the pretty young doctor.
ReplyDeleteI mean, you know, just to do you a favor, of course! Always ready to help. ;-)
Can't share, I'm sorry.
ReplyDeleteThe young female doctor looked stunning in an evening dress, though, I have to say.
I know one of you will ask "and out of it?", but I am not one to kiss and tell.
"Eolake and two girls, sitting in a tree..."
ReplyDeleteC'mon, buddy, we're your pals, you can tell us. Did you kiss, hunh, hunh? Did you? What's it feel like?
:-P~~~ (drools)
Aw, you NEVER share! You're just no fun!
And to think I was about to lend you a nekkid magazine I found under my big brother's mattress... With REAL babes wearing NOTHING, wow!
There's even one that looks like Kate Hepburn. Kinda. When you squint just the right way.
Well, the doctor seemed promising for a while there, seeing as how she had a thing for middle aged, slightly overweight intellectuals, and I have a thing for slender young blondes at 26.
ReplyDeleteHow did you two meet? I'm always interested in the METHODS by which other people have accomplished something I have yet to manage.
ReplyDeleteAnd by the way, I didn't mean to suggest that a gorgeous airhead was interesting to me. Sure, I'd give her a roll in the hay, let her have the PRIVILEGE of riding this ride as long as she was as tall as the line on the bear character ... but I'm often surprised by people who understand, from my quite clear language otherwise, that intellect isn't interesting to me.
I said I wanted a woman who was beautiful. I didn't say I wanted a woman who was ONLY beautiful.
PS. Drew Barrymore really annoys me. She seems somehow self-indulgently anti-intellectual. The accent is suburban and childish, that sort of constipated whine of the Beverly Hills set. The body is bloated, no muscle tone at all, as though she thinks shopping is her cardio for the week. I don't actually know her, never met her, and I suspect I'd find her remarkably fit looking in real life, and probably also really on the ball, given that she's managed to become a rather successful person at a pretty young age. But the persona by which she transmits herself, in or out of a movie, really annoys me.
This may come as a surprise, but I understand you. ;-)
ReplyDeleteYou know, I feel weird confessing this (which should tell a lot about today's society!), but I never pass judgement on age-different love. Who am I to declare they "just cannot be sincere"?
(Answer : Probably a bigoted jerk.)
"Judge not lest you be judged too"? Well, the French version seems more to the point : "the way you judge, you shall be judged".
We met via a common friend on the Net.
ReplyDeleteDidn't work out though. I think I hurt her a lot, I didn't care for that part at all.
Yes, probably my main beef with humans are how spectacularly judgemental we are. If we would knock off just that thing, the planet would be much closer to liveable in a jiffy.
ReplyDeleteSay, Final, make up your mind. One moment you warn us about mistaking Kate Hepburn with the characters this actress portrays, the next you dislike Drew Barrymore based on "the persona by which she transmits herself, in or out of a movie".
ReplyDeleteTell you what, let's settle this the simplest way : you leave me Drew Barrymore, and I'll leave you your pretty-yet-not-necessarily-airheaded high-riding she-bear. This way everybody's satisfied. Deal?
Hey, to each his own taste, I always sez.
How did I end up with the hairy one? :P
ReplyDeleteDoes "as long as she was as tall as the line on the bear character" ring a bell?
ReplyDeleteNo? Well then, you need to swing the hammer harder, sonny.
The hairy one? That's what you get from picking your dates at county fairs!
Get on this ride as long as you're as tall as THIS line, then ...
ReplyDeleteTwo girls fell for you last year? Heck, nobody ever fell for me. I was 40 years old before I accepted that nobody ever would.
ReplyDeleteLife is unfair, and the best thing I ever did was stop expecting it to be otherwise.
Eh, I was 42 before it happened to me first time!!
ReplyDelete(At least that I'm aware.)