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Whatever other talents he may have, Pedro Almodovar certainly has a skill for finding and unleashing blindingly beautiful people on the world. Penélope Cruz is only the latest in his line; ten years ago, he airmailed Antonio Banderas to America's doorstep with a starring role in Tie Me Up, Tie Me Down!, in which Banderas, all shorn hair and smoking Latin sex appeal, made a good contender for World's Most Stunning Person, male category. After that, he had no choice but to pack up and move west to Hollywood, a city which attracts beautiful people to its bosom much in the way that the cornfield baseball diamond drew dysfunctional dads at the end of Field of Dreams.
Soon, Banderas was lending his dependable beautosity to such films as The Mambo Kings, The House of the Spirits, Philadelphia, Interview with the Vampire, and Desperado. It was only a matter of time before some outside-the-box-thinking movie exec put together the words "hot Spanish guy" and "Zorro," and, lo and behold, there was Banderas starring in The Mask of Zorro in 1998.
Skip forward three years or so to, say, this week, and we catch up with Mr. Banderas in a new film, Original Sin, which is reportedly so bad that its release date has been bumped several times and review screenings were cancelled, despite the presence of (a) a semi-bankable male lead and (b) a very bankable, Oscar-winning female lead, in the person of Angelina Jolie. This kind of bad-film predicament has been an unfortunate trend in Mr. Banderas's career of late: in 1999, he starred in The 13th Warrior, a movie that, despite its Michael Crichton pedigree, was disappeared from the public consciousness with a Pinochetian efficiency. Banderas followed that up with The White River Kid, Play It To The Bone and The Body, a troika to which even the most attentive cinephile might reply, "White River Who?" "Play it to the What?" and "The Come Again?" True, Banderas scored an unexpected hit this year with Spy Kids, which is being rereleased (!) this week. But his very presence in a kiddie franchise -- like that of Charles Grodin in Beethoven or Geena Davis in Stuart Little -- suggests a certain irreversible career recession, much as that first merciless glimpse of pale scalp suggests the irreversible onslaught of male pattern baldness.
After close inspection, you may find that Mr. Banderas has -- with the exceptions of Desperado and Zorro -- played essentially two kinds of roles in his Hollywood career: relatively small supporting roles in high-profile films (like Philadelphia), and relatively supporting roles in high-profile flops (like The House of the Spirits). In a sense, he enjoys a kind of fame by proxy, for which we can't entirely blame him; it's obvious from his résumé that, since coming to Hollywood, he's been somewhat hamstrung by the fact that he's...well, Spanish, and as such is absolutely assured of getting offered a part in, say, Evita but also of being offered parts in precious little else -- an Edward James Olmos for the twenty-first century, but way prettier. (And yes, we know that Edward James Olmos is not Spanish. But you see our point.) Banderas's fame, under clinical scrutiny, is clearly overinflated, and when you search for the root cause of this overvaluation, you quickly come upon one obvious factor: the miracle of celebrity marriage.
In 1996, Banderas tied the knot with Melanie Griffith. To this day, both remain household-name celebrities, despite records that can be called spotty at best. Griffith's drought has been even more pronounced than her husband's; she's still coasting on one solid hit, Working Girl from 1988 (!!), a film that at the time was a big popular success -- and even sucked up a few Oscar nominations (including one for her)(!!!) -- but which in hindsight is notable for being the only non-porn film in recent memory to feature women who are top-level executives at large corporations and who also wear corsets and garters under their business suits. Whatever goodwill Griffith engendered with America has surely been frittered away in the ensuing thirteen years, thanks to such for-the-ages stinkers as Milk Money (in which pre-teen boys pool their money to buy a hooker for their lovelorn dad -- and guess who plays the ho!) and A Stranger Among Us, which is just like Witness, if you replace "Amish" with "Hasidic Jews," "Harrison Ford" with "Melanie Griffith," and "really good" with "holy shit."
We're often inclined to believe that celebrities interbreed because they feel that no one else can truly understand what it's like to be them. You know, the way the Hawaiian monarchy liked to have sex with each other to ensure that the bloodlines remained pure. But after considering the nuptials of Banderas and Griffith, we posit a new theory for the mating of stars: it's the kicking-in of an instinctual survival imperative, like shipwreck survivors huddling together in the water for warmth, and pooling their efforts to keep their heads above water. In short, these two are pooling their fame. They are fame-poolers. That is why it makes perfect sense to Fame Audit them as a couple, because they are now primarily famous for being married to each other. Surely both Griffith and Banderas are, at this time, more famous than either would be on their own -- if, say, Banderas were still married to Spanish actress Ana Leza and Griffith had dumped Don Johnson and married her cabana boy. We have to admit that this celebrity marriage idea is an ingenious way to keep fame alive. As ingenious as, say, finding you've run out of 100-watt bulbs and lighting the room with two 40-watts instead.
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