{"id":25514,"date":"2014-09-12T13:03:12","date_gmt":"2014-09-12T05:03:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/?p=25514"},"modified":"2014-09-12T00:36:58","modified_gmt":"2014-09-11T16:36:58","slug":"john-cusack-laments-madness-of-celebrity-culture-points-to-bieber-coverage","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/2014\/09\/12\/john-cusack-laments-madness-of-celebrity-culture-points-to-bieber-coverage\/","title":{"rendered":"John Cusack laments \u2018madness\u2019 of celebrity culture; points to Bieber coverage"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"John<\/a>
John Cusack. Photo by s_bukley \/ Shutterstock.com.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

TORONTO\u2014John Cusack says he doesn\u2019t enjoy \u201cthe madness\u201d of celebrity-obsessed culture these days and he worries about some young actors who have to deal with it.<\/p>\n

The big-screen veteran is at the Toronto International Film Festival with two projects\u2014\u201dMaps to the Stars,\u201d in which he plays a self-help guru whose son is a child actor, and \u201cLove & Mercy,\u201d in which he plays Brian Wilson of the Beach Boys.<\/p>\n

In an interview to discuss director David Cronenberg\u2019s \u201cMaps to the Stars\u201d and its exploration of Hollywood life and the pitfalls of fame, Cusack lamented extensive media coverage of Canadian pop star Justin Bieber\u2019s presence in the city during the festival.<\/p>\n

He said he caught the Bieber coverage in his hotel room Monday night while scanning TV channels after the \u201cLove & Mercy\u201d\u00a0world\u00a0premiere.<\/p>\n

\u201cI stopped at the TIFF programming and they had like a Wolf Blitzer \u2018Situation Room\u2019 and all these people talking and I was like, \u2018OK, there must be a big event, maybe they\u2019re going to talk about seeing Brian here,\u201d\u2018 recalled the Golden Globe-nominated \u201cHigh Fidelity\u201d star, who first gained fame in the mid-1980s.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat is it? It was two stages and it was \u2018Justin Bieber is here and we\u2019re going to go to the big map,\u2019 and they had a … lunatic going\u2014like it was CNN\u2014and they had this interactive map and he was going, \u2018And he\u2019s been on this street,\u2019 and they were following a … dot where he was going,\u201d continued Cusack, peppering his thoughts with an unprintable expletive in a downtown hotel room.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd then they were like, \u2018And he\u2019s in this mall and he\u2019s about this product, and then here we can see him kissing\u2019\u2014I don\u2019t know whose girlfriend is his, someone named Selena\u2014and these were … adults! You know, they\u2019re … adult people and this is a film festival that\u2019s awesome that actually likes films. But this is the culture, right? This is the … culture.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t know who I feel more sorry for\u2014the people who actually would be shameless enough to put that as a 25-minute segment in the middle of their coverage?\u201d<\/p>\n

Cusack said such aspects of contemporary fame have him feeling bad for emerging actors in North America, including his \u201cMaps to the Stars\u201d fellow cast member Evan Bird of Vancouver.<\/p>\n

\u201cI would worry about Evan and some of these other kids with the compulsion or the pressure that adults or people in the industry would put on you to just … chop you up into hamburger and start … selling you on the streets,\u201d said the 48-year-old whose extensive list of credits also includes \u201cSixteen Candles,\u201d \u201cSay Anything,\u201d \u201cGrosse Pointe Blank\u201d and \u201cBeing John Malkovich.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI mean, like, what the (hell) is that? It\u2019s just madness. The ship has sailed on me believing in any of that.\u201d<\/p>\n

Bird plays the actor-son of Cusack\u2019s character in the Bruce Wagner-written \u201cMaps to the Stars.\u201d The star-packed ensemble cast also includes Julianne Moore as an insecure middle-aged actress, Mia Wasikowska as her pyromaniac assistant, and Robert Pattinson as a struggling actor working as a limo driver.<\/p>\n

The Toronto International Film Festival runs through Sunday.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

TORONTO\u2014John Cusack says he doesn\u2019t enjoy \u201cthe madness\u201d of celebrity-obsessed culture these days and he worries about some young actors …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":44,"featured_media":25515,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[106],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-25514","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-hollywood","mauthors-victoria-ahearn","mauthors-the-canadian-press"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25514","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/44"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=25514"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25514\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/25515"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=25514"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=25514"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=25514"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}