As a Major Hollywood Star, I get paid millions every picture. I get why I have to do promotions; it’s in my contract. Interviews, festivals, red carpet events, ho hum.
But I refuse to pose in front of those damn Logo Walls! Who came up with that one? It’s demeaning! Humphrey Bogart never had to do that, Garbo, Gable, the Hepburns, heck even Michael J. Pollard would not have been subjected to such humiliation. Why should I?
Remember all those websites from 20 years ago, those cheap-looking splash pages where some bozo made a “wallpaper” background with a photo of his dog or his car or something, repeated over and over? That’s what this looks like! Cheesy, and twenty years from now people will look back on these Logo Walls and snicker at how anyone ever thought this was a good idea.
To put a fine point on it: I am not for sale! I mean, yes, I’m for sale, everybody has a price, that’s just how the world works, and if you want to take my picture, go ahead, I’ll smile and I’m glad to do it. But please don’t ask me to stand in front of a piece of cardboard with Nike or Lexus or Chik-Fil-A plastered all over it. (Well at least I should get a car out of it - is that too much to ask?)
When did these things first arrive? I assume large-scale digital printing is to blame. How long before they start tattooing brand names on people’s foreheads? Hopefully I’ll have made a pile and gotten out before that sad day.
You got Willem Dafoe right. Zoe Kravitz and Wes Anderson are also in there (Wes, we need to talk). The others, I don’t know. It’s insanely easy to find millions of these pictures on IMDb, everyone just gets herded into these situations, but we need to draw the line somewhere.
It’ll cross a line when stars wear clothes stamped with a prominent logo of whatever company’s financed or bought advertising rights for the movie or TV show, like prostathletes.
It’s not just a Hollywood thing. My company has those things in most locations, in case someone from the company is being interviewed. And if the network news is interviewing some professor from State University about COVID or whatever, he/she will be sitting in front of such a wall.
For those Hollywood events, some marketing accountant is assigning a value to every appearance of their logos against the cost of sponsoring the film festival or other event.
>Wait, that was you!? I loved you in that one role, you know, in that movie!
Thank you. Always nice to hear from a fan. Yes, that was one of my early ones, when I was lean and hungry, and I was thinking I’ll never go back to doing soaps. But you know, there’s always that cushion, and it keeps you humble. The stories one collects, my God.
In a world where advertisement is inescapable the OP seems oddly specific. Like looking at a teeming anthill and yelling, “That one ant, right there! Kill it, it’s EVIL!” specific.
Well I HATE these shots not for the logos (or even LEGOS) but for the fact they all use super wide-angle lenses close up, so the upper body and face look normal, but you can also see the tops of their feet. It’s weirdly disconcerting.
