It’s a lovely pastiche of beautiful people, beautifully lit, beautifully styled. I wager quite a few people had jobs making sure everything is just so. I’m sure it took those people quite a lot of time to achieve the perfect shot of each person.
Everyone involved, from Makeup artists, hairdressers, wardrobe, designers location owners, drivers, lighting , caterers, assistants to the staff at Vanity Fair each of the 12 actors and Annie Leibovitz herself put time, focus, sweat and likely, blood , somebody always bleeds even if it’s just a paper cut .
All of this effort to celebrate the achievements of these 12 actors over the past year, by gifting them a golden statuette with their name engraved on it. What did they really achieve? Well, they’ve proven themselves to be very good at being at the right place at the right time and knowing the right people. Yes, they’re talented at making believe. They take a game of let’s pretend to an art form. And for this each one of the 12 pictured and many more like them, this is the dream. Millions of dollars, recognition, a platform, power to shift the ideas of the masses if they so choose. Have they not been rewarded enough? Must they also compete for a shiny object of little value, monitarily or otherwise , so we the salivating masses can see who they’re wearing?
I’d rather a cover shot celebrating the ,just guessing, 200 people who worked on this image . Because they don’t get rewarded enough.
I remember a line from a film – I can’t remember which one – where the female character said to her male counterpart:
” For a moment I forgot you’re an actor. You lie for a living.”
I watched Parkinson do an interview with John Cleese the other day on how he sort of drifted into acting, via Floodlights at university and then, later to the BBC etc etc.
He echoed what many so-called (his term) famous people have said, that while the initial recognition is nice – having one’s ego stroked and all that, after a while it becomes difficult to lead a truly normal life. He mentions the times when his secretary would phone him in the morning and warn him to be cautious as there were paparazzi sitting in a car outside his flat or office.
While I enjoy the idea of having a global community of friends via blogging I also value my privacy, which on the face of it seems a contradiction of terms theses days, for who truly has any privacy?
And we also have customers come to the property every day, as we run the business from home.
One cannot simply waltz around the ”yard” half-dressed appearing as if one has just fallen out of bed!
A price we pay for not entering the corporate world of commuting every day in miles of traffic or renting shop and office space.
Didn’t Warhol say something about everyone being famous for 15 minutes?
Well put.