Caffeinated Clint
Is Oscar a curse?
Does winning a Golden boy signal the start of the end?
I know it’s not always the case, but look at folks like Cuba Gooding Jr, Gwyneth Paltrow, Hilary Swank, Reese Witherspoon, Roberto Bengini… all Oscar winners whose careers near fizzled after walking home with something shiny from the Kodak theatre. Why is that? Poor management, swollen ego’s or just sheer bad luck?
But it’s not just the careers of the winners that sometimes suffer, it’s their personal lives too – look at what happened to poor Sandra Bullock, Hilary Swank, Reese Witherspoon and Charlize Theron post Oscar win? Their guys seemingly couldn’t handle being upstaged and walked out. Okay, there’s probably nothing to that, that’s probably just coincedental (and after all, how many Hollywood marriages do survive?), but the career thing? A bit alarming – Berry follows up her Oscar Win with one of the biggest turkeys of all time, “Catwoman”; Swank wins her second Oscar and then succumbs to “The Reaping” and “The Resident” (among other R-r-r-r-r-eally poor films), Witherspoon goes from “Walk the Line” to being pigeonholed in stinky rom-coms like “Just Like Heaven” and “How do You Know?”. And don’t even get me started on Renee Zellweger or Cuba Gooding Jr – wowzers!
Berry is an interesting one though. She had always – like many of her peers – floated between blockbusters and meaty art fare but after her win with “Monsters Ball” she seemingly couldn’t even find a decent bit of studio fluff to do. Was she too picky; did she hold out too long for something bigger-and-better (that never came)? Hard to say… but I do know that “Perfect Stranger”, “Frankie & Alice”, “Their Eyes Were Watching God” and “Gothika” weren’t the right choices for her – not coming off something so strong as “Monster’s Ball”, anyway. I enjoyed her work in “Things We Lost in the Fire” – in fact, that was a terrific movie – but again, nobody was ever going to see it…if only because of that silly title.
No surprise then to read over at Deadline that Halle Berry is headed to TV. The “X-Men” actress is attached to a project called “Higher Learning” (nothing to do with the John Singelton flick) which is currently being shopped around.
TV industry people are buzzing this afternoon about a hot drama spec that has Halle Berry attached to star. Word is the spec, titled Higher Learning, was sent out today to pay cable networks, with HBO and Showtime among those targeted. I hear that the project, from DreamWorks TV, is eying a quick turnaround, and a decision could come as early as tomorrow. The script, which I hear would have the Oscar winner starring as a college professor, was written by 30-year industry veteran Lee Rose. A queen of TV movies in their heyday during the 1990s, Rose segued to episodic directing over the past 10 years. She also co-ran with Martha Kauffman the WB series Related.
What do you think? Good idea.. or should Berry continue on her plight of finding the next ‘Monster’s Ball’?
