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Aug. 21st, 2004 03:18 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kribbanThis is amusing. I'm quoting an interview with actor Johnny Messner (who?) and it amuses me to no end. What does he have against Orlando Bloom??
http://www.canada.com/saskatoon/starphoenix/news/story.html?id=8b9969ca-f310-465d-8444-6c074410ba0c
Johnny Messner is making like the quintessential macho male this morning as he arrives to discuss his starring role as the loner skipper of a Borneo river boat in the new popcorn adventure, Anacondas: The Hunt For The Blood Orchid. The image is clearly calculated. The message he's sending out is that he's all man -- unlike the wimps who currently litter the screen in the guise of "leading men."
Messner, 33, has only been doing feature films for a few years -- most prominently with his pal Bruce Willis in vehicles like The Whole Ten Yards, Tears Of The Sun and the upcoming Hostage -- but he wants to become a star and he thinks the industry is begging for someone like him to come along because it's in desperate need of some "real men."
An actor like Orlando Bloom -- who plays the elvish Legolas in The Lord Of The Rings -- gives him the shudders. An actor like Willis, much as Messner likes him, is getting old. Even Vin Diesel, who continues to pursue macho stardom, fails to make the grade as far as Messner is concerned.
"I'm trying to bring a real man back to Hollywood," Messner says without the slightest trace of self-consciousness. And as far he's concerned, he fits the bill. He wants to give the big screen a new Steve McQueen -- "that whole thing. There hasn't been that for a long time."
Messner is funny, profane and outspoken. But like all real men, he's prepared to show courtesy: for example, the cigarette is extinguished as soon as he learns that one reporter is allergic to smoke. But he does sound like a man on a mission. He wants to restore the macho male to his rightful place on the movie screen.
"Orlando Bloom's a hermaphrodite," he declares. He's appalled that Ridley Scott, a director he respects, has let him down by casting the fine-featured Bloom in an historical epic like Tripoli. "I want to work with Ridley but. . . ." His voice trails off despondently.
Mind you he's not really suggesting that Bloom has both male and female body parts. "But I don't want to be prettier than the woman I'm walking with. How's that? I want people to look at me and say: 'Now, there's a guy that can go to her car and fix her transmission and ride a horse and take a motorcycle apart, and when you're with him, you feel that he's a MAN.' Right now, what I feel in Hollywood is that they're so pretty and dainty and so metro that it's repulsive to me!"
So to Messner, a guy who's embarrassed to admit he once acted on Guiding Light, Hollywood's macho landscape looks bleak.
"The Harrison Fords and the Bruce Willises and all these guys -- they're older now and that whole generation's gone."
What about Russell Crowe? "He's a tough guy to work with. Wesley Snipes is a real man, but that's the same generation. I'm talking about mine now. If you think about the whole realm now, who is the real man?"
http://www.canada.com/saskatoon/starphoenix/news/story.html?id=8b9969ca-f310-465d-8444-6c074410ba0c
Johnny Messner is making like the quintessential macho male this morning as he arrives to discuss his starring role as the loner skipper of a Borneo river boat in the new popcorn adventure, Anacondas: The Hunt For The Blood Orchid. The image is clearly calculated. The message he's sending out is that he's all man -- unlike the wimps who currently litter the screen in the guise of "leading men."
Messner, 33, has only been doing feature films for a few years -- most prominently with his pal Bruce Willis in vehicles like The Whole Ten Yards, Tears Of The Sun and the upcoming Hostage -- but he wants to become a star and he thinks the industry is begging for someone like him to come along because it's in desperate need of some "real men."
An actor like Orlando Bloom -- who plays the elvish Legolas in The Lord Of The Rings -- gives him the shudders. An actor like Willis, much as Messner likes him, is getting old. Even Vin Diesel, who continues to pursue macho stardom, fails to make the grade as far as Messner is concerned.
"I'm trying to bring a real man back to Hollywood," Messner says without the slightest trace of self-consciousness. And as far he's concerned, he fits the bill. He wants to give the big screen a new Steve McQueen -- "that whole thing. There hasn't been that for a long time."
Messner is funny, profane and outspoken. But like all real men, he's prepared to show courtesy: for example, the cigarette is extinguished as soon as he learns that one reporter is allergic to smoke. But he does sound like a man on a mission. He wants to restore the macho male to his rightful place on the movie screen.
"Orlando Bloom's a hermaphrodite," he declares. He's appalled that Ridley Scott, a director he respects, has let him down by casting the fine-featured Bloom in an historical epic like Tripoli. "I want to work with Ridley but. . . ." His voice trails off despondently.
Mind you he's not really suggesting that Bloom has both male and female body parts. "But I don't want to be prettier than the woman I'm walking with. How's that? I want people to look at me and say: 'Now, there's a guy that can go to her car and fix her transmission and ride a horse and take a motorcycle apart, and when you're with him, you feel that he's a MAN.' Right now, what I feel in Hollywood is that they're so pretty and dainty and so metro that it's repulsive to me!"
So to Messner, a guy who's embarrassed to admit he once acted on Guiding Light, Hollywood's macho landscape looks bleak.
"The Harrison Fords and the Bruce Willises and all these guys -- they're older now and that whole generation's gone."
What about Russell Crowe? "He's a tough guy to work with. Wesley Snipes is a real man, but that's the same generation. I'm talking about mine now. If you think about the whole realm now, who is the real man?"
