There was a night last month where I couldn’t sleep. I had to be up early for another full day of screenings and filing at the Toronto International Film Festival, but my mind was cycling through a generic course of memories and misgivings. It was a restlessness fueled partly by a badly timed fistful of jujubes, partly by the rude, stamping heifer in the back quadrant of my brain who loves both simple sugars and leveling with me about what it is I think I’m doing with my life.
That morning I had caught a screening that featured an actor—Justin Long—whom I had written a couple of unkind things about two weeks earlier, when I was assigned to review his last film, Going the Distance. This new one was a historical film, and I winced at the sight of him in Confederate garb, his life ebbing on a battlefield. It was a little like glimpsing a guy you’d just dumped in traffic and hoping to God he wouldn’t look your way. I shriveled a bit, despite myself. Did he see me?
Going the Distance was not a good movie, but it pricked me in the way that separates bad movies from actively bad movies. I was irritated by the self-satisfaction with which the film presented its take on the dilemma of long-distance relationships: unconcerned with being thoughtful or even entertaining, it pushed all its chips onto the relatability of its concept. “Relatability” may not be a proper word—yet—but it is increasingly legitimate as a standard by which things—from TV to books to politicians to romantic comedies—are valued. The more main the stream, the more relatable a thing must be to get over.
Blame Oprah if you want to, but relatability has been fermenting as both a cultural phenomenon and evaluative rubric since the 1970s, when a combination of factors moved the social concept of the self to the front of the culture. The mainstreaming of therapy and therapized language, the platonic “we’re all the same” rhetoric of the civil rights and equality movements, the merging of high and low culture, and rampant individualism conspired to form a kind of cultural currency, a new dialect that had the ear of the country.
As a concept it grew valuable, and could be attached to modes of engagement–whether artistic, socio-cultural, or political–that were previously uninterested in relating to their audience in any conscious way. The memoir boom was built on this idea, as is much of chick lit, reality TV and of course the blogoscenti. With the dawn of the internet and its attendant traffic in user-generated, confessional minutiae—and I’ll comment on yours if you comment on mine—an ascendant cultural irregularity found the medium to turn its message into a malignancy. Romantic comedies often engender the worst of the phenomenon: Instead of telling a story, in the name of relatability they hit notes, make references, and present punchline-based characters in the effort to elicit one of our laziest, sub-trash responses, which in full goes something like this: I was exposed to something, and it reminded me of me.
The most dangerous thing about relatability is the way it is often presented (and accepted) as a reasonable facsimile of or substitute for truth. This, I worry, may handicap our culture so violently that recovery, if it comes at all, will be generations in the reckoning; if in the meantime we lose our appetite for the real thing we are pretty much doomed. The pursuit of truth is a basic human instinct, and guides our engagement with ourselves, with art, and with other human beings; the scourge of relatability—and its sweetheart deal with another basic instinct, adaptation—puts all three relationships at risk.
When one writes a review of a film like Going the Distance, these are not the exact thoughts one has, especially if one has to file within 18 hours of seeing it. But there is a sort of inkling that demands further attention. The above is as close to a full articulation of it as I can manage. At the time I just knew the movie was bad, and bad in a way that particularly galled me. We don’t need characters, it seemed to say, we don’t need an interesting script—we’ll just present our concept, make some glib gestures towards plot, smear some wing sauce on Barrymore’s face, and roll credits.
Although Barrymore can coast in as the assumed heroine—she has managed to merge relatability and dream girlishness into a one-woman, moveable franchise—the equally undeveloped character played by Justin Long was doubly handicapped. Long, whom I have liked since I first saw him on Ed ten years ago, sheds almost everything that is appealing about his persona in the role, and it’s a disaster. Beside Barrymore, who at last has acquired the face of a gorgeous grown woman, he seems especially wan. What I might have said in articulating that particular complaint was that he read too immature, or boyish, but I… I went another way.
There is a paragraph about Long’s character that I wrote and re-wrote. I scaled back one sentence in particular, turning a smackdown into a more general statement—an ad hominem exit clause that was supposed to help me sleep at night. This is the sentence: “How a milky, affectless mook with half-formed features and a first day of kindergarten haircut might punch several classes above his weight is a mystery, as my colleague pointed out in her review of Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World, we are increasingly asked to accept on screen.”
Now, I know that doesn’t look good, and I guess I’m trying to rough out here—if not justify—how pans studded with snarky jibes get written, in part because I am alternately mystified and troubled by it myself. Part of it, surely, is the fact that I don’t really imagine the person I am writing about seeking out and lingering on my words, despite the fact that I have sought out and lingered on every word and review pertaining to my work that I have been able to get my hands on.
After filing the review my editor replied immediately, singling out that line for some editorial snaps. This had the opposite of its intended effect, and sent me wobbling. I lay awake that night, not wondering so much if I had been fair but if I could have found a way to be less glancing and harsh, or alternately if I have the stomach to be as unsparing as someone who considers themselves first and foremost a critic must be. Maybe if I’d had more time; maybe if I didn’t have to watch so many of these godawful movies; maybe if I hadn’t had to look at the Mac guy’s overdeveloped bare ass not once but twice. I mean my god.
I am aware it sounds silly—agonizing over a few spilled words into the seething trough of the internet—but I have several guilt wounds when it comes to film criticism, and this instance merely refreshed one of them with a little salt.
Background hit: I came to New York to study film more to come to New York than to study film; I had already been writing for several years—fiction, humor, essays, travel narrative—before I wrote my first film review, and it all happened by a kind of accident. God knows it’s a happy accident—it has kept me afloat—but I do tend to think of it as Justin Long might think, perhaps, of his mid-career stint in the advertising world. Most of my colleagues grew up dreaming of being a film critic, and yet as lucky as I am I habitually correct friends of mine who introduce me to third parties as such, and then can’t seem to stop myself from reprimanding them in private. They are bewildered by this, and to some extent I am too. It’s certainly not that I don’t believe in criticism, and what it does; if anything my main objection to the cultural scourge of “relatability” is the deadening effect it has on our collective—and vital—critical mechanism. What I object to, on an increasingly regular basis, is what criticism does to me.
I am acutely aware that, as recovering internet mean person Emily Gould recently put it, “it often feels as though whatever writing spotlight still exists belongs to whoever can be the most abrasive or pandering.” For working critics, it can seem like the ebbing tide has lowered all boats; there’s an option available now that wasn’t there before, and no one’s going to stop you from using it—if anything it’s encouraged; in some fields it’s the competitive option, a way to attract attention and keep the vicious commentariat appeased—or sliding inexorably toward it. That’s on you, and vigilance is required if you want to maintain a sense of identity and purpose uninfected by the internet’s constitutional grammar of incivility.
During that sleepless night in Toronto last month, my worry came down to what every writer’s should: words and the way I use them. I’m not built for film festivals, for watching six films a day and cranking out responses in the grim race to be the first to ding the bell. It’s not that I don’t care (although I don’t care), it’s that that kind of scribbling, insensible mania brings to the fore all my fears about writing for a living, which is a privilege with perilous side effects. Strange but true: Being a working writer is one of the most dangerous things a writer can be.
I often think with a shudder of Renata Adler’s savage 1980 takedown of Pauline Kael in the pages of the New York Review of Books. Both women had worked as film critics—Adler for several years, Kael several decades. The gist of Adler’s attack was that no critic could work for more than a few years (more than she did, in other words) without turning what acumen they brought to the craft inside out. After that the writer’s output is indelibly marked by a grotesque aesthetic inversion, a fate that led Adler to call Kael’s previous five years of work “piece by piece, line by line, and without interruption, worthless.”
Adler had especial wrath for Kael’s halogenic style, and the ecstasies of contempt she was capable of when she really hated a movie, or a performer. Her early work had “liveliness,” “energy,” and “good sense.” Her later work was “hysterical,” “shrill,” and “strident.” Kael was being irresponsible with words, and Adler took exception. “Stunned” is the word invariably used to describe Kael’s response to the piece, and much of the literary world agreed, though they would have probably added “giddy” if they were honest. It just wasn’t something you saw that often, particularly given that the crank call came from within Kael’s house at The New Yorker, where Adler had been an editor for years.
It’s fascinating to watch Adler parse her own aesthetic mortification over Kael’s miscegenetic prose, which proved an unstoppable match for her hydraulic responsiveness to movie art. In his excellent study in contrasts, Sontag and Kael: Opposites Attract Me, Craig Seligman redressed each of Adler’s points of attack. He also defended Kael’s right to be what some people might call cruel: “Niceness, in criticism, is a form of bad faith,” he writes. “Nature is red in tooth and claw, and distinguishing those who can from those who can’t is the first thing a critic has to do.”
Well, I mean, now he tells me. But then I never saw my work in criticism that formally, not because I didn’t take it seriously but because I didn’t see it as a serious, career-defining focus. Kael’s own take speaks more directly to me: “I think the sense of feeling qualified to praise and complain in the same breath is part of our feeling that movies belong to us. Going to the movies was more satisfying than what schools had taught us was art. We responded totally—which often meant contemptuously, wanting more, wanting movies to be better.”
The thing is, I don’t think anybody—whether they write professionally or snark for sport; whether they agonize over their takedowns or proudly make their name on them—expects the target of their criticism to say their name on national television. Kael never said a public word about Adler’s review; Justin Long took me to task on Late Night With Jimmy Fallon.
That night, last month, when I couldn’t sleep—I finally did, but only briefly, and was up an hour before I needed to be, checking my email. In my email was news of Twitter followers I had acquired overnight, so I checked them too. Here was the last thing the first one had written: “Up way too late, watching Justin Long call out Michelle Orange from Movie Line about her Going The Distance review on Jimmy Fallon.”
After a few moments staring at the screen I tapped NBC.com into a tab, finding two short clips of Long from the previous night’s show. I watched one—nothing—and then the other, and just when I was sure there had been a mistake, Long began roll calling his films, reaping applause after each one. He checks himself for pandering, and Jimmy Fallon cracks, “Wait until Michelle Orange sees this and writes about it.” A big laugh goes up, as if the joke is understood. I sat suspended for a few seconds and then closed the tab in horror, put my clothes on and ran out the door, as though my laptop had been compromised and was about to detonate. Eight hours and three films later it was easy to convince myself that what I saw was actually a fragment of the dream I thought I had foregone between 6 and 7 am.
People began writing to congratulate me, though, which was as alarming as anything else, and Movieline wrote up the incident, helpfully transcribing it in full so I wouldn’t have to watch it myself. Long details his policy about not reading reviews, then how he broke it with Going the Distance only to find one that “was so bad it set the bar […] for insults.”
When Renata Adler was forced out of the New Yorker after her unsparing 2000 memoir of her years there set a new bar for workplace recrimination, she began teaching at Boston University. Her axiom about working critics is very similar to the one I have heard many of my writers friends apply to the teaching racket: after a few years there’s simply nothing left to give, and then the students start to take, often in the form of writing mean shit about your freeloading, bird-dogging ass on RateMyProfessor.com. But we all have to make a living, don’t we, and then find a way to live with it; short stories, travel essays, and even book contracts stopped paying the bills about 20 years ago. When my writer friends call me a film critic I ask them how they would feel if I introduced them as a copy editor, or an SAT tutor, or whatever they do to make ends meet. Sometimes they get it, sometimes they look at me like I’m even crazier than they had already confirmed me to be, but God help me I just can’t relate to that characterization.
Constitutionally I resist categories of every sort—they make it easier for other people to turn away from you, to not face you in full. The bigger problem is that I am feeling weary and a little afraid, because there was no point when I actually decided that this was going to be how I spent a serious portion of my time, and while I know very well how lucky I am to be watching movies and writing for a living, I am also stubborn and procedural enough to object to the situation on those grounds alone. A tension builds up between responsibility and the fear of professional (or, horrors, creative) drift.
When it’s not making me feel like a baby that tension seems like a distinctly adult affliction, and not limited to any one ambition: How much control can we reasonably expect to exert over our lives, or the way our actions affect other lives? Can you practice criticism and still shy away from being defined by it? Ms. Sontag, take it away: Seligman said Sontag only wrote about art she intended to praise or elevate, and hated being called a critic. Kael, on the other hand, embraced the title, and “was happy in the role of evaluator, and evaluation is how she got to insight.” At the risk of aligning myself with greatness (polite pause), I tend to alternate between the two sensibilities. Given my head and a sizable annuity, I would only turn from my own ideas when someone else’s commanded me to; that said it would be an impulse I couldn’t ignore.
Then again, the task-oriented, deeply professional part of me is fulfilled by nailing my response to a film or book to the table. In the moment I feel no compunction about anything but getting it right, which is its own satisfaction. The second part is finite and expendable, I am finding, while the first will go only when I do. Am I a critic? Certainty #1: I am a writer who needs to make a living and is allergic to half-assing, which means if I have to write about your bad movie, you better duck and cover. Certainty #2: I worry more about what I do than how I do it. I don’t know if I’m really that busted up about hurting an actor’s feelings, although, as my colleague Stephanie Zacharek pointed out when I whinged to her about the incident, it can be helpful to remember that they have them.
Before he recited from memory the very sentence that I dithered and fretted over as an example of the way he internalizes negative criticism, Justin Long set the stage: “I actually kind of appreciate this woman—Michelle Orange, wherever you are, at Movieline. I remember it. I remember the quote, and this is word for word.”
I mean, I remember it too, Justin. I do.
***
Rumpus original art by Walter Green.
31 responses
I’ve never read your writing before, but it’s incisiveness, bravery and insight already make me feel clearer-headed and better informed. I relate to your quandary about criticism (haha), but in my everyday life. What do we owe people? Do we owe them the truth? And isn’t it something we owe ourselves, to be able and willing to tell the truth?
The truth you told in that one line about Justin Long’s character (and it was about his character as written, not about him as a person or an actor) was refreshing and culturally important. In this cultural moment, fictional men are given a free pass to be as infantile and subpar as they would often like to be in real life, and fictional women of objectively higher quality in appearance and abilities are required to find this irresistible. It’s sickening, boring, and I’m glad you called it out. Maybe it’s not the most important truth of our time, but you were hired to review a film and you reviewed it honestly. I mean this from the depth of my heart – who cares how Justin Long feels about it? He got paid, right? He chose to appear in a formulaic, lazily-written movie, didn’t he?
Brave piece, Michelle. By the way, I would never introduce you as a film critic, just my friend.
First, thanks for summing up so perfectly what I like to call The Democrazation of Everything, which holds that we are all special, unique creatures with something worthwhile to add. I’d never considered how much the a certain brand of Hollywood romcom was a product of this. To paraphrase A. Whitney Brown, there are 7 billion people in the world, so even if you’re a one-in-a-million kind of guy, there are still 7,000 more just you like you. It’s not in anyone commercial interest these days to espouse this belief.
Second, I hate to say it, but after my last week, I can relate to your Justin Long experience. For what it’s worth, his calling you out on TV is nothing more than an actor’s equivalent to you’re hilarious, mean description of his surely banal (haven’t seen the movie; jealous?) character. In other words, he puts his work out there and it’s fair game. You put yours out there and it’s the same deal.
As to the things writers must do to be writers and not starve, did you read Stephen Elliott’s piece last week in 7×7? Worth the read: http://tiny.cc/5abe3
Anyway, nice work on this piece.
Michelle. Wonderful piece. Brilliant and truthful insight around the newest flimsy mode of being in the world (relateability). It is the latest bad faith persona inflicted on us by the “for profit” pseudo art movement (bowelderdash).
As usual your work is deep and rich in insights.
Bravo!
Michelle, since stumbling onto your article during a narcissistic and regrettable search, I’ve been following and really enjoying your articles (and not to worry, not only the film-oriented ones – I now know better than to categorize you that way). Of course it’s difficult to read hurtful things about yourself (though my skin is getting thicker by the movie), it makes it a lot easier when the article is so eloquently composed and genuinely insightful. And there’s also considerable truth in what Vivien and Larry wrote (again, as damaging to the ego as it may be) – I did choose to put myself in that position, therefore relinquishing any immunity to attack – whether it’s about my acting or my face. I brought it up on Jimmy’s show because I thought it was somewhat amusing just HOW harsh it was (again, in a very well-articulated way) – and I meant what I said, it really did set the bar. I’ve heard a lot of negative things about myself over the years but rarely are they said with such a thoughtful and insightful tongue. Now I’ll be able to withstand more slings and arrows thanks to the armor of humility you’ve forged for me. Please know too, I’m in no way being sarcastic – the fact that I read this piece should be testament to that. Michelle, I never in my wildest dreams thought I’d get to be in one movie, let alone several over the course of the last ten years – never had any delusions of grandeur. I always wanted to be a theatre actor like my mom, always assuming the movie roles were relegated to the good looking people. Which is not to say my Mom’s not good looking – she’s beautiful (though clearly it’s all subjective – you are not a fan of our gene pool so you might not agree) – she just had kids and never got that “lucky break”. Then I started idolizing guys like Dustin Hoffman, Gene Hackman, Sam Rockwell, Woody Allen, and Philip Seymour Hoffman – I found myself relating (I hope you’re not wincing at my use of that word now) to them and formulating some wild fantasy of one day pursuing a career in movie acting – if guys that looked like that could do it, I thought, maybe this milky mook could role the dice. So while there’s no defense for my performance in the movie (everyone is obviously entitled to their opinion), I have to say, I’m surprised by the amount of stock you seem to invest in my looks. I absolutely agree with you too, I’d be hard-pressed to hold a candle to even a fraction of Drew’s beauty – in my humble opinion, she’s the most beautiful girl in the world. Is that a message you want to proliferate though? That people of higher aesthetic echelons should stick to their own? Maybe you’re frustrated because it so rarely works the other way – I don’t remember the last time I was asked to accept a female romantic lead who was “punching above her weight class” – though it does happen (I just don’t want to name names at the risk of offending – I leave that to the experts). I suppose if it were more commonplace though you, as a woman, wouldn’t be so offended and might have taken it a bit easier in pointing out the disparity of our looks in “going the distance”. Regardless, I really meant what I said about your writing – I love film too and I love reading about it – so keep up the good work and I’ll try to pick better projects (though I did love filming that one) but short of some reconstructive surgery, unfortunately there’s nothing I can do about my mug (blame god and/or my parents on that one). Take care and hopefully one day our paths will cross so I can compliment you in person. Until then, best wishes and be proud and confident in your role as a film critic – you’re a damn good one.
-Justin Long
ps I swear to god it’s me and I swear (as emphatically) that I’m not being sarcastic.
If you’re trying to make my buy a Mac, Long, it worked.
What a fantastic essay, Michelle. Intelligent and beautifully articulate.
And Justin Long: you’re a good man.
In all seriousness — not kidding here — am I the only one here who thinks Justin is a good-looking man? Heck, I’m a guy, but I think I can still fairly judge that.
I for one think that Mr. Long (which sounds awesome when said like that by the way), should indeed have delusions of grandeur. Dream big Mr. long!! You’re a great comedic talent and have a long (hehe) career ahead of you.
Being an actor is about the most vulnerable profession out there, and I’m glad this experience has made this very talented man stronger. Keep up the good work!
I agree with James. Justin is a good looking man.
What struck me wasn’t so much the cheap cruelty of the line but how backwards it was. I realize I’m probably off point but really it’s Barrymore who I’d describe as “milky”, or “half-formed”. If you look at her with fresh eyes and not as a Barrymore, and ignore her saccharine almost squealing demeanor, she looks like any semi-attractive girl you’d see walking down the street. In profile she’s almost a bit odd. Hardly out of Long’s class.
Justin looks just like how I imagine the son I gave up for adoption would look.
I’d fuck Justin Long until he was screaming his pretty mama’s name.
To borrow a dehumanizing rating system from a bad Bo Derek movie I’d say Barrymore is a 7, Long is about a 7, and this comment is a 3.
Well, Justin, if you’ve got Sugar singing your praises, then you’re doing all right.
I didn’t think Justin Long was all that unappealing before, but I have to say he comes of as even hotter now that I know he can write articulately and take criticism with this much grace. Yowza.
Michelle, you’re in a position that the vast majority of people would shy away from, one that requires you to unabashedly tell the truth. The fact that you can keep doing it even after being taken to task on national television is pretty damn impressive. Keep up the ballsy work!
So funny. So true. That is why it is all so great.
I have to say that I’m puzzled by Ms. Orange’s assumption that her friends would be embarrassed to be introduced as copy editors. Her foot-in-mouth problem seems to go far beyond Justin Long and the question of how attractive he may be.
I’m a gay man and I’ve always had a crush on you, Justin. I think you are beautiful. And now after reading what you had to say to Michelle, I admire you even more.
Why the Long face?
I used to write for a “snarky” TV site. My one rule was never to hate on actors for things they couldn’t (easily) change, like their faces. Or their breasts, or the hairiness of their arms, or their heights.
It’s one thing to criticize the casting and suitability of the actors, and another to detail why you find their faces unattractive. Michelle, you wrote all these long, beautiful paragraphs about what you do, but you never said why you felt the need to criticize a person’s face in such detail. Were you scared that if you didn’t back it up, we wouldn’t accept your opinion as fact? 😉
Seriously, let’s be realistic. Justin Long is obviously cute in a stocky, little Italian man sort of way, and Drew Barrymore has a face like Eric Stoltz in Mask. Drew Barrymore attractive? Maybe to a plastic surgeon or an anthropologist. If you want to attack someone in this film for looking freakish, your aim is a bit off.
That was a commendable reply, Justin. Me thinks the humility in your words has added even more to your charisma.
As for Michelle, I find your take on writing critiques somewhat poignant and enlightening…keep up the good work (“,)
I don’t know if you’re still reading comments on this article, Justin, but (while I entirely support your POV) I wonder if perhaps you and your very powerful actress/producer girlfriend might consider what you can do to help balance out the situation you describe by developing projects in which it’s the female romantic lead who is fighting above her weight class? And have that difference go unremarked, i.e., not a movie “about a fat chick who…” blah blah blah. There are plenty of actresses only slightly above “Hollywood fat” who are gorgeous, are about the same size as the average American woman, and who date and fuck just the same.
I’m not talking some Mike & Molly type thing (though bless their hearts, I wish them well). I’m talking about a fluffy woman (say 5’5, 170 lbs) with a non-fluffy man (let’s say Jon Hamm – oh wait, that’s my personal fantasy, sorry) like say…you. And Drew could play *her* best friend, for box office drawing power.
Be the change, baby. I have a feeling Drew is sympathetic to this POV. You both seem like good people, and Drew can make things happen. Just at least consider it?
jeez, i thought justin looked better than drew in that movie. “no homo” as they say. but i’d like to have abs like that.
I think you both (Justin and Michelle) have made excellent use of this incident. While everyone IS entitled to their opinion, it’s nice to see that there is professional yet entertaining dialogue being communicated. I admit I am a fan of Justin’s so I’m not surprised that he was charmingly articulate in his response (not defense). Sorry, I do have to say though; I have seen Justin in better films. I have never seen him do bad acting – something you can see and feel when the actor is not quite there in character… Justin never fades in and out.
Some of his better films are little gems that are unfortunately not so well known. A film from his earlier years, Raising Genius, and the recent After.Life show some good moments of versatility in his acting. I think he is slowly but surely finding better roles and will not only be able to withstand more slings and arrows but will now be taking further leaps and bounds.
I know I should be more open-minded to this writer but I honestly feel she is so off! Justin Long is an awesome actor. And very,very attractive. I’ve always thought that. Even when I first heard about him and Drew dating I thought they were perfect for eachother. Both of them are beautiful inside and out with exceptional charisma.I think people are drawn to them both. It’s sad to me someone could be so harsh.
I also love his above comment. Very kind and not the kill you with kindness sort of response but very realistic, mature reaction to such a uncouth and crass comment. Which really I hope he knows is so far from the truth. He really is a very realistic actor and good-looking MAN.I would drop my husband in a heartbeat;) I myself can think of 10 actors right now that are considered HOT that I find repulsive. Does that mean I think they should’nt be paired with someone I find personally attractive? Uhhh NO! because there are far more favorable qualities than appearances. Looks fade. But obviously he is well-rounded thoughtful guy that will grow from this experience and be the better man for it.
As poignant as this little sparring session was, and as well as Justin’s response was put together, I still feel like we’re all over-thinking it a little bit. The bottom line is that while Michelle wields a scalpel of a pen, and Justin was beyond gentlemanly in his reply, she was just doing her job, and so was he. I think it speaks to each party’s character that Justin’s response came off as genuine (which I think he is and always has been, not taking himself too seriously), and that Michelle’s conscience literally kept her up at night, reavealing a heart beneath her surgical garb. Michelle writes for her audience, as should every author who expects to make it anywhere. Ergo, the folks who tune in to see what she has to say expect this tone and language in a review. Just my 2 cents.
While I’m probably not adding anything new to the string of very astute comments here, I think it speaks to the inner makeup of people who share themselves through actions like writing and acting (I try to do both, but neither as well as you, Michelle and Justin)that this little event has left me wrestling with myself for days in an effort not to comment. Both have a difficult and vulnerable job to do, and you both have the guts to do it publicly.
Justin, your grace under fire astounds me nearly as much as your talent and the soft, strking beauty of your ‘milky, half-formed features’ always has – and hell, that over developed ass too – and you can pass that self-same sentiment on to Drew. As with this entire affair, such things are subjective and I’ve always enjoyed the beauty inside-and-out of the two of you and wished you both well.
Michelle, you do a job that isn’t always – in fact is possibly never – easy, and to wield words in a manner that grabs enough to be remembered and quoted is an accomplishment. I don’t have a taste for ‘mean’ but I think it’s a reality of the world the internet operates in today, that I may not be the majority and if such things are Darwinian…you see where I’m going with this. You certainly have ‘honest’ and ‘eloqouent’ down pat. Kudos due to both of you, and to all the intellect drawn out by you, above.
OK, I am officially mystified. The idea of accepting the possibility that someone who looks like Justin Long might be romantically involved with someone who looks like Drew Barrymore seems to be settled by the fact that the two actual actors are (or were) precisely romantically involved. Q.E.D. I have not viewed the movie so possibly that would clarify what I find so puzzling. But I don’t see how.
I’ve had a huge crush on Justin Long since I was 11 or 12 and saw him in Jeepers Creepers when it came out. I honestly think he is one of the most gorgeous guys in movies. I’m a guy whose younger then him. He’s not a ‘milky affectless mook with half formed features and a first day of kindergarten haircut’ he’s a bronzen youth with the face of Ganymede and the body of Apollo. I can’t tell you how much of middle school I spent jacking off thinking about Justin Long.
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