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So what's Demi Moore going to do next? I can't wait to find out -- can you? And isn't it great that she's famous again, so that we can all switch that part of our brains that wasn't thinking about Demi Moore for the past six years back to thinking about Demi Moore? What were we thinking about before, anyway? Pets.com? The Y2K "virus"? Jennifer Love Hewitt? Really, was it anything that can't be supplanted happily by thoughts of that luscious, husky-voiced, suspiciously hard-breasted Demi Moore?
Truly, Demi Moore's quickstep march back into our collective consciousness has been fascinating to behold, much in the way that an extremely brutal and efficient military maneuver might be said to be "fascinating." Her return seems all the more remarkable when you consider that there's probably not a single person out there who, for even one moment in the past six years, has thought, "Boy, I sure do miss Demi Moore."
And yet, here she is. She's back. What's more, she's everywhere. This stunning comeback -- and really, you have to admire it -- has been the product of both brilliant strategic planning and remarkably fortuitous timing. Somewhere, Melanie Griffith right now is thinking, How... Why... Whaa--? (Actually, she's probably thinking that quite a lot of the time.) But only Demi -- furious Demi, purse-lipped Demi -- could have pulled off this caper.
The planning part involved the launching of a crafty campaign, a few years back, to remind us all that she still existed. She did this by planting stories about her new life in Idaho, raising her children out of the spotlight. In fact, I remember the first time we were reminded of Demi Moore's continued existence in the post-Striptease era. It was in People, where a photo appeared of Moore with her daughters backstage at a boy-band concert in Boise. The band was, I believe, 98 Degrees, though it might have been O-Town. I don't remember the band. I do remember Demi, standing there smiling, with a look that, at the time, seemed to communicate benign motherly regard, but which in hindsight can be interpreted as, "Oh, yes, you fuckers. Here I come again."
The fortuitous timing part is something she's had little control over, but which she's navigated expertly, much in the way a surfer rides am unexpected but spectacular wave. To whit: Had she tried her comeback in, say, 2000, all her machinations would probably have come to naught. What's the best she could have expected? A fond People cover story about her yeomen's years in Idaho, all of it tinged with a bit of 'where is she now' nostalgia? Maybe an exclusive sitdown on Entertainment Tonight with ET's own Mark Steines?
Instead, she's returned in 2003, when a certain segment of the media has become a superheated celebrity fawn-o-sphere, stoked primarily by Bonnie Fuller's Us Weekly. This has worked out well for her.
These days, several weekly magazines are busy scrapping and tearing at each other's hair for newsstand space, all of them shouting for your attention with screeching coverlines and fluorescent fonts. And part of Bonnie Fuller's black magic -- the spell that started all this squalling -- relies on creating the illusion that we're all on a first name basis with the stars. Jen and Ben! Britney and Justin! Cameron and Jared...er, Justin!
And who should come parachuting smack dab in the middle of all this? Why, it's Demi, one of the original one-name stars!
With her ready made backstory (comeback!) and newsstand-friendly pitch (hot bod at forty!), Demi's turned out to be the perfect freak for the current carnival-barker atmosphere. See Demi in a bikini! Fantastic at forty! Hear her tales of wandering for years in the wild!
Moore, however, wasn't content simply to ride back into our hearts on this cresting zeitgeist. She wanted to close the deal -- to ensure that she won't just be one of the people we're talking about, but the one person we're talking about. (Remember, this is the woman who wasn't content to appear on a magazine cover. She had to appear nude. Pregnant. She's smart, this one.)
Demi knows one-name celebs are hot, but one-name celebs coupled off are even hotter. So she welded another one-name celebrity to her arm. That way, once the comeback angle had run its course, we got a fresh new angle: Demi and Ashton! She's old and he's young! You could hear the squeak of filing cabinets as the nation's Style section editors frantically dug up and reworked all those old May-December romance stories they'd run last year, right after Tadpole came out.
Like we said: Devious. Brilliant. Fascinating.
We're curious, though, as to just where all this will lead. You might say, "Well, Demi Moore will once again be one of Hollywood's most beloved stars," to which we'd say, "Was she really ever one of Hollywood's most beloved stars?" And then we'd add, "Have you ever met anyone who really loves Demi Moore? Is there even such a thing as a Demi Moore fan?" Though we might first say, "Did you actually see Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle? And if so, weren't you reminded, there in the darkness of the theatre, away from the vibrant magazine covers and the echoing shouts of the paparazzi, just why you stopped caring about Demi Moore so many years ago?"
The Demi Moore lore was built around the fact that she became Hollywood's most highly paid actress after starring in several $100 million hits in a row, give or take a few Mortal Thoughts and Nothing But Troubles sprinkled in between. At the time, which was about 1994, the case was made that she was the female answer to Tom Hanks: a perpetual, take-it-to-the-bank hit machine. This case was built on the success of the following movies: Ghost, A Few Good Men, Indecent Proposal, and Disclosure.
But let's take a close look at these films. Would you describe any of them as "Demi Moore movies"? Put another way, did you even remember that she was in A Few Good Men? Did anyone ever say, "Hey, let's go catch that new Demi Moore flick, Ghost"?
It seems, instead, that Moore had the good fortune to star in a string of well-crafted Hollywood crowd-pleasers. Ghost was more Whoopi Goldberg's movie than it was Moore's, and A Few Good Men essentially starred Tom Cruise and Jack Nicholson and a bunch of other people wearing uniforms, of whom Moore happened to be one.
For its part, Indecent Proposal was one of those talk-about movies that occasionally hit the jackpot, stirring up some loud but quickly dissipating buzz, and are then forgotten by posterity. I'd contend that Indecent Proposal would have done just as well if the object of Robert Redford's million-dollar boner had been, say, Rene Russo or even Jeanne Tripplehorn -- two actresses who also starred in top-grossing hits of 1993 (In the Line of Fire and The Firm, respectively). Come to think of it, The Firm made a lot of money, too, but you never hear anyone calling it a Jeanne Tripplehorn movie.
But Moore, as we all remember, went crazy with her newfound clout. Suddenly, the theatres were littered with Demi Moore Projects. Sadly, she found producers willing to indulge her, no matter her whim. Want to go capital-S serious? How about The Scarlet Letter? Want to be an action star? How about G.I. Jane? Want to show off your new breast implants? How about Striptease?
Of course, these actual Demi Moore movies were all failures, artistically and otherwise. Which sort of puts the lie to the whole "America's love affair with Demi Moore" theory. We imagine (and, yes, hope) that the relatively disappointing box office for Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle will put the lie to the "America's renewed love affair with Demi Moore" theory as well.
Moore now seems kind of like that slightly crazy girlfriend (or boyfriend) from your past who reappears one day and who, it quickly becomes apparent, remembers your relationship very differently than you do. To him/her, it was a life-altering, near-marriage experience; to you, he/she was a vaguely interesting attachment who became irritating very, very quickly.
Well, Demi's back, and she wants us to know that, yes, she'll allow us to love her once again. Sadly, we can't remember loving her the first time around.
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