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Yes, we know: why pick on Stephen Dorff? Isn't the fact that he's starring in a movie called FearDotCom just about bad enough? A movie that apparently went into development in, oh, 1999 or thereabouts? And the plot of which apparently revolves around a website that kills anyone who looks at it, and Dorff is the investigating officer (you know, one of those patented movies-only cops who wear leather blazers and make homicide detective by age twenty-eight) and his partner -- the eerily Meryl Streep-like Natascha McElhone -- begs him, begs him, not to look at the site, but what can he do? He's a good cop, and a good man, and dammit, he's got to look at the site...the web site that kills people!
Oh, Stephen Dorff -- you were so good in that one movie once.
You know -- Backbeat, the one about the Beatles, in which you played Stuart Sutcliffe, and that guy who looked a lot like John Lennon played John Lennon, and that other guy who looked strikingly like Paul McCartney played Paul McCartney. We have no idea how much you, Stephen Dorff, do or do not look like Stuart Sutcliffe, though we expect you do not. But you were great! You were talented! You were intense!
Sure, we heard stories that you were a wee bit difficult to work with and, you know, a little bit full of yourself. But we cared not. We didn't have to work with you. And in a world full of Skeet Ulriches (though, it should be noted, the current world seems entirely devoid of Skeet Ulrich), you had real talent. And intensity. Oh, the intensity!
Then you did a bunch of indie-ish films like I Shot Andy Warhol and S.F.W. (Note to up-and-coming intense actors: try to avoid indie-ish films in which the primary note of interest is the fact that the title alludes impishly to a naughty cuss word.)
Then, uh, well -- what happened? We kind of lost track of you, and next thing we knew you were hanging out at fashion shows and serial-dating models and generally training to be the ward of Kyle MacLachlan. And we thought, Hmmm, Backbeat was good, but it wasn't that good. Not so good, at least, that its young, intense star could afford to go into early, model-dating retirement.
And then you resurfaced, this time as the villain in Blade. And we thought, Okay, good: well done, Dorff. Get back on the radar screen, shake off the hangover, pile up a little bank in the...uh, bank. Then you can get back to being talented and intense. You know, like you were in that one movie once.
And then, unexpectedly, you turned into Craig Sheffer.
Because that's the direction you're now headed, Stephen Dorff. It's straight to straight-to-video land for you, if you don't pull out of this death spiral soon. We don't even know if it can be called a death spiral at this point, ten years into the career immolation. More like a death amble. You've taken your time. You're in no hurry to flush your career down the toilet -- you're doing it nice and slow. Date a model, film Deuces Wild: what's the big rush?
And don't let yourself be fooled by the theatrical release of the clearly putrid Fear Dot Com. First of all, August has become the toxic-waste barge for movie releases -- the month when studios clean out their closets and dump whatever nominally finished product they have left on a blockbuster-battered and air-condition-addicted public.
Secondly, what possible good can come of this film? What's the best-case scenario? A Fear Dot Com franchise? Coming in summer, 2004, Fear Dot Org: This time, death is not-for-profit!
Hey, we know actors gotta work, and we begrudge no man his paycheque. But remember that one movie once? That one you were good in? We do too, which is what makes us so sad. Okay, not that sad, but still.
We do, however, feel you deserve a slight fame bump-up, if only to temporarily prevent you from slipping into the abyss of movies like Final Breakdown and Merlin: The Return and Turbulence 3: Heavy Metal -- in other words, into the Sheffer Zone. Just enough fame, perhaps, to bump you to the level of a fellow intense actor who also showed early promise, then fell on hard times, and who's thinning a bit on the ol' pate.
In fact, Dorff could do worse than follow the Christian Slater Career Rehabilitation Plan -- a few bit parts here, a few called-in favours there. Just skip the biting-someone part.
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