Boredom Kicks in When Abstinence Itself Becomes a Habit
“So you’re
not having sex anymore, so what?” Redsome, the banker’s son, asked his best
friend, Salavatore, as the two sat in Redsome’s father’s home office and helped
themselves to his brandy and cigars.
Feel free to picture to scene between James Spader and Andrew McCarthy
in Pretty in Pink (or was it Sixteen Candles?) if it will help you
out with your visualization as you read.
It’s funny,
isn’t it, how Spader had the longer-lived career. Between the two of them I would have picked
McCarthy had you asked me at the time all those movies came out. Of course, I was a teenager and not that
knowledgeable about the way things really work.
But Spader was such a shit back then.
All those smug, rich boy roles.
And McCarthy—God, who would have expected him to just disappear? Of course, looking back, you can see that he
was just milquetoast. What was he ever
going to do really? In a way Spader’s
lucky he went bald. It gave him a
gravitas that that leonine mop never would have.
Also,
Spader got that role in Stargate. That, more than anything else, gave his
career longevity. All those creepy roles
like Crash and Sex, Lies, and Videotape made him a critical darling, but that’s
not how you keep the money coming in.
Speaking of his role in Stargate,
that scene where he offers the candy bar to the old dude: if you were from another
planet and somebody gave you a Baby Ruth, wouldn’t you assume it was a turd?
More about Stargate: the movie was OK, but the TV
show, Stargate: SG-1, was great. It was like Star Trek, only it was much, much better. And it never really got the respect it
deserved.
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