The star system

Today on Grantland, Bill Simmons' increasingly insufferable vanity project, Simmons himself posted an article about leading men in Hollywood. Simmons clearly has interest in a lot of things that aren't sports - he's taken plenty of heat over the years for the extent to which pop culture pervades his sports writing - and the formation of Grantland was no doubt at least partly intended to give him even freer rein to write about the topics he finds interesting. And what he found interesting today was a bunch of stuff about how Ryan Reynolds isn't a leading man and how he thinks there are 24 male movie stars currently in Hollywood. Too bad a lot of what he wrote was completely ridiculous.

Simmons' pitch begins this way: Hollywood "make[s] too many movies and do[es]n't have nearly enough stars." This leads him to the following:

That's how we arrived to a point in which the following two facts are indisputable.

Fact: People believe Will Smith is the world's biggest movie star (even though he doesn't make great movies).

Fact: People believe Ryan Reynolds is a movie star (even though he isn't).

Uh, okay. Isn't "movie star" kind of a subjective term? Isn't it determined by the audience to a large extent? Thus, if "people believe" that Ryan Reynolds is a movie star... doesn't that kind of make Ryan Reynolds a movie star?

Out of curiosity, what does Bill Simmons think makes someone a movie star? Good question, because he barely explains it. He spends most of the first part of the column talking about what actors aren't movie stars. The only time he even begins to explain is after giving his list of 24 guys he thinks are movie stars. Here it is: "All of them can open any movie in their wheelhouse that's half-decent; if it's a well-reviewed movie, even better."

That's it. Never mind the huge definition issue inside this definition (what exactly constitutes a given actor's "wheelhouse" and who determines that? And how much money qualifies as "opening" a movie?). What it basically boils down to is that Bill Simmons thinks that the following 24 guys are movie stars based on this loose definition.

"Smith and Leo; Depp and Cruise; Clooney, Damon and Pitt; Downey and Bale; Hanks and Denzel; Stiller and Sandler; Crowe and Bridges; Carell, Rogen, Ferrell and Galifianakis; Wahlberg and Affleck; Gyllenhall (it kills me to put him on here, but there's just no way to avoid it); Justin Timberlake (who became a movie star simply by being so famous that he brainwashed us); and amazingly, Kevin James."

The best part of this list is how quickly he goes away from his own definition and just picks guys he likes. Let's go through point-by-point.

1. Will Smith

Well, no argument here. He's been the lead or co-lead in sixteen movies since 1995 - only two (Ali and The Legend of Bagger Vance) failed to hit nine figures worldwide. Of the other fourteen, half topped $350 million worldwide. He hasn't starred in a film since 2008, but then he has been kind of busy engineering successful careers for his children. He's obviously a huge star.

2. Leonardo DiCaprio

DiCaprio has been the lead in ten films since 2000. Only half made $100 million domestically, but only Revolutionary Road had a particularly bad showing (making only half its budget back domestically) and it barely ever topped 1,000 screens. But he headlined Inception, a massive hit (though Christopher Nolan's name probably added value too), and of course there was Titanic, even if it made him as much or more than the reverse. It's also gotten hard to separate DiCaprio from Martin Scorsese - who gets more credit for the success of Gangs of New York, The Aviator, The Departed and Shutter Island? - but you could make a similar case for Jimmy Stewart and Hitchcock in the 1950s and no one would say Stewart wasn't a star. DiCaprio's a star.

3. Johnny Depp

Prior to the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise, Depp might have been more of a "people think he's a movie star" type (though again, doesn't that just mean he is?). Everyone knew who he was, but he didn't necessarily make a lot of big movies, appearing in weird bombs like Don Juan DeMarco, Nick of Time and The Astronaut's Wife. Sleepy Hollow was the only hit of his career - and then the first Pirates film made $300 million domestically. The question, though, is how much of Depp's movie stardom depends on him being Jack Sparrow specifically. For an answer, check out The Tourist, which only made $67 million in the US (though it went over $275 million overseas, a strong performance). You can't say this film wasn't in Depp's wheelhouse - it's (based on the trailer) an action film with some comedy and romance in which Depp gets to play a semi-bumbling hero. You could apply the exact same description to the Pirates films, couldn't you? (Okay, The Tourist isn't supposed to be very good, but since when does that stop people from seeing movies?) Depp's only other big hits in the post-Pirates world have been Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (movies based on established properties tend to do pretty well), Alice in Wonderland (which rather shockingly made over a billion dollars worldwide - but Depp isn't the lead, anyway) and Rango (kids' movies make money almost without exception).

So to what extent is Depp a movie star? Without Jack Sparrow I think it's pretty easy to argue he's just a solid B-list guy, since you'd think an A-lister could have opened The Tourist with $20 million on a December weekend, which Depp failed to do. On the other hand, is he the only one who could have made Jack Sparrow what he was? And if so, doesn't that make him an A-lister anyway since without him POTC could have just been another Cutthroat Island? I honestly don't know. I could listen to arguments either way. But let's leave him on the star list for now.

4. Tom Cruise

More of a slam dunk than Depp, certainly. For nearly two decades, Cruise has been arguably the biggest sure thing in Hollywood - he virtually guarantees $100 million domestically, the classic barometer of success. Here's his major-part resume from December 1992 until 2006, with domestic gross in the millions in parentheses: A Few Good Men (141), The Firm (158), Interview with the Vampire (105), Mission: Impossible (180), Jerry Maguire (153), Eyes Wide Shut (55), Magnolia (22), Mission: Impossible 2 (215), Vanilla Sky (100), Minority Report (132), The Last Samurai (111), Collateral (100), War of the Worlds (234), Mission: Impossible 3 (133). That's quite the streak of moneymakers, with only a slow-moving Kubrick dirge and a P.T. Anderson film in which Cruise was only an ensemble member anyway breaking it. The irony of Cruise's winning streak is that it actually disproves Simmons' star definition to some extent, or at least alters it. Interview with the Vampire, for instance, was completely out of Cruise's wheelhouse. Anne Rice herself was legendarily furious with the casting (though she did apparently recant after seeing the film). Likewise, Collateral is far from the typical Cruise role. Yet both those films still made over $100 million domestically! Cruise was such a big star he really could open anything - even Eyes Wide Shut opened at #1 with over $21 million until the moviegoing public realized even Tom Cruise couldn't make them sit through a two and a half hour rumination on fidelity. Cruise's last couple films (Valkyrie and Knight & Day) have not bombed but have not been giant hits, although Cruise's oddball public persona of the last few years may not have helped. Assuming Mission: Impossible: Ghost Protocol returns him to 100+ heights, it will be safe to say he's still a pretty big star.

5. George Clooney

And now we're already drifting pretty heavily into "I call BS" territory. George Clooney is absolutely the kind of guy who just seems like a movie star. People like him. But can he open any movie as long as it's not a total reach? The answer, looking over his history, is pretty clearly "no." To be fair, Clooney does not appear in a lot of films destined to be massive crowd-pleasers, and when he has - the Ocean's Eleven movies, in particular - he's done well. But aside from those films, The Perfect Storm, and the execrable Batman and Robin, Clooney has never starred in a film that made $100 million domestically or even had a $20 million opening weekend (both of which I think are pretty good "success" barometers for a film, along the lines of Simmons' "Let's get tickets, so-and-so's in town" test for what makes someone a first-ballot Hall of Famer - if you're hitting those numbers, people came to see you). Michael Clayton, a critically acclaimed movie that certainly fell within Clooney's wheelhouse, opened in over 2,500 theaters on October 12, 2007. It made just over $10 million, good for fourth behind Tyler Perry's Why Did I Get Married?, The Game Plan, and We Own the Night. I mean, really? George Clooney, huge movie star, can't even outgross We Own the Night, which opened in fewer theaters? Okay, it starred Joaquin Phoenix and Mark Wahlberg, not some bunch of nobodies, and it probably seemed more exciting than the story of a corporate lawyer. But then again, Tom Cruise took The Firm and made $158 million. Up in the Air was another Clooney movie that had critical acclaim - when it went wide to almost 1,900 theaters on Christmas Day 2009, it finished sixth with just over $11 million. I should note that given their budgets, both films were moderately successful. But unless he's robbing casinos, George Clooney does not seem to be a huge movie star. People are not amped to see him doing any old thing. And yet he pretty clearly is a huge movie star... right? Simmons' theory is beginning to show some serious cracks already.

6. Matt Damon

Damon has a stronger case than Clooney, although even he does not really live up to Simmons' definition. Can he open any movie in his wheelhouse? To answer, let me direct you to Green Zone, a Jason Bourne-like thriller set in Iraq. It opened in March 2010 in more than 3,000 theaters... finished second in its first week and was out of the top ten after just three. It grossed only $35 million domestically on a budget of $100 million. This despite having the star of the Bourne films and the director of two of them!

Now, I would say Matt Damon is obviously a movie star. But the point here is that Simmons' primary criterion is pretty much useless. A star will open any movie in their wheelhouse? Oh, it has to be half-decent. Well, Green Zone was 53% among the top critics at Rotten Tomatoes - rotten, but not by a whole lot, with more positive reviews than negative reviews. Yet Damon couldn't even will it to half its budget! What kind of movie star is that?

I might go so far as to argue that there are basically three movie stars of the last 20 years - Tom Cruise, Tom Hanks, and Will Smith - and then there's everyone else. At least, if you want to use Simmons' definition, which basically does not allow for a single misstep.

7. Brad Pitt

Pitt actually has by far the best case of his Ocean's co-stars. In addition to those films, Pitt has delivered either a $20 million opening weekend, $100 million domestically, or $300 million worldwide - or some combination of the three - on the following films since 1995: Seven, The Mexican, Spy Game, Troy, Mr. and Mrs. Smith, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, Inglourious Basterds, and Megamind (though this last was animated). For God's sake, Troy made $500 million worldwide, and that movie isn't even that great or particularly noteworthy! He had a $20 million opening weekend with Spy Game and The Mexican! Dude's a movie star.

8. Robert Downey, Jr.

At this point we have to stop and ask - what degree of longevity is necessary to make someone a movie star? Downey has successfully opened just four films as the primary lead - Iron Man, Iron Man 2, Sherlock Holmes, and Due Date - all of which came out in 2008 or later. As one of the three leads in Zodiac - a David Fincher movie widely acclaimed to be excellent - he saw it make less worldwide than it cost to produce. He was co-lead with Jamie Foxx in The Soloist, which bombed in spite of a fresh score from RT's top critics. And it seems ridiculous to suggest that the "wheelhouse" of Robert Downey, Jr. of all people is "action star," so there's really no reason The Soloist shouldn't have been successful, right? Yet it opened in fourth place on a thoroughly mediocre weekend in April won handily by Obsessed, a terrible movie without a big star. I don't think Downey's done enough yet for stardom by Simmons' definition, especially since two of his four successes were superhero movies, which typically do well. Yes, he added value, but he wasn't the sole reason they opened big.

9. Christian Bale

Another tricky one. Bale, as the star of Christopher Nolan's Batman films, obviously has two titanic successes to his name. But is that Bale? Or is it Batman? Or is it Nolan, for that matter? And Bale's only two other major successes are Terminator Salvation - in which he plays a character who already appeared in at least two other movies - and Public Enemies, in which he was co-lead with Johnny Depp (and even then, it was only a moderate success domestically, though it did open with $25 million). So is Bale really a huge star? Or is he a good actor who has managed to land some choice roles in films that probably would have done pretty well regardless? The only mild success (at best) of films like 3:10 to Yuma and The Prestige proves that Bale is, at the very least, nowhere near the Cruise or even Pitt level.

10. Tom Hanks

Back to an actual star. Hanks had a Cruise-like run in his heyday - between 1992 and 2002 he was good for nine figures domestically every time he played the lead or close to it: A League of Their Own (107), Sleepless in Seattle (126), Philadelphia (77), Forrest Gump (329), Apollo 13 (172), Toy Story (191), Saving Private Ryan (216), You've Got Mail (115), Toy Story 2 (245), The Green Mile (136), Cast Away (233), Road to Perdition (104), Catch Me If You Can (164). Like Cruise, he was able to drag Road to Perdition to $100 million despite being cast dramatically against type, and his only sub-$100 million performance was in Philadelphia... for which he won Best Actor. (So you know, not too bad.) Even Hanks has proven unable to drag every single movie to massive success - Charlie Wilson's War was good and also starred Julia Roberts, but was not a hit. But The Da Vinci Code and Angels and Demons were both big hits, as was Toy Story 3. Hanks is clearly one of our few nearly bulletproof stars and belongs on the top tier.

11. Denzel Washington

Since 2000, Washington has nearly always been good for $20 million or more on the opening weekend, though his films rarely rack up huge domestic grosses in total (only Remember the Titans and American Gangster crossed $100 million in the US). Star, although probably half a step down from Cruise, Hanks and Smith.

12-13. Ben Stiller and Adam Sandler

Since The Wedding Singer came out in 1998, Sandler has been good for either a $20 million+ opening or $100 million+ domestically with few exceptions, and most of those fall into the category of "outside the wheelhouse" - Punch Drunk Love, Spanglish, Reign Over Me - with the only exception being Little Nicky. Still, nine of his twelve starring roles since 2003 have made over $100 million. Obvious star, especially since he's a guy who is always clearly the principal draw in his films. Stiller isn't quite the slam dunk, but since Meet the Parents came out in October of 2000, he's done 17 movies where he was either the lead, played a major character who was featured in all the ads (such as in Dodgeball) or was a leading voice (the Madagascar films). Of those 17, nine grossed $100 million or more domestically and three of the remaining eight at least had $20 million or more opening weekends. He does have a couple wheelhouse bombs - both Duplex and Envy bombed in wide release - but you can easily argue that's the fault of the films for being awful. On the other hand, Sandler did huge business with widely panned movies like Grown Ups. So I'm willing to call Stiller a star, but he's at least half a step down from Sandler.

14. Russell Crowe

Crowe is definitely a guy everyone thinks of as a star. But if we're thinking of stars as guys who can reliably open decent movies... I'm sorry, he's just not. Not the average moviegoer. His only big hits are the following: Gladiator, A Beautiful Mind, American Gangster, and Robin Hood. Those are the only ones to cross $100 million domestically. Master and Commander opened with over $25 million and made it to $93 million domestically, but that's the only other one. His post-Gladiator disappointments include Proof of Life, Cinderella Man, A Good Year, 3:10 to Yuma, Body of Lies, State of Play, and The Next Three Days. All opened in at least 2,000 theaters; only two of them finished top two their first weekend. And this is in spite of the fact that I don't think any of them was reviewed particularly poorly. But what this tells me is that Russell Crowe has been in a few movies people wanted to see - not that people inherently want to see movies that star Russell Crowe. Under Simmons' definition he's out.

15. Jeff Bridges

I was a bit surprised to see Bridges on the list at all. He can be the top-billed guy in a movie - but honestly, I'd be worried about its prospects unless it has a lot else going for it. I love Bridges, but he's not that kind of guy. And the stats back it up. True Grit was a hit - but it also had Matt Damon and the Coen Brothers' name attached to it, in addition to being a remake of a known film. Tron: Legacy was a hit, but it was a sequel and he was only the co-lead. And beyond that... point me out another hit. Iron Man and Seabiscuit are basically the only two, and he wasn't the lead in either. He starred in plenty of films in the 1990s, but (a) that's more than a decade ago and (b) none of those were big successes anyway. Hey, remember White Squall? How about Arlington Road? Bridges can be the lead in a movie, but only if you value critical recognition over the big bucks. He cannot open your movie by himself, not without something else working in the movie's favor.

16-19. Steve Carell, Seth Rogen, Will Ferrell and Zach Galifianakis

What a bizarre hodgepodge for Simmons to group together. Yes, they're all comedians, but wow. I'll give you a hint: at least half of them don't belong here.

Let's tackle Carell first. His filmography is pretty short, but he's shown an ability to open a film and make a good deal of money - Dinner for Schmucks, Despicable Me, Date Night, Get Smart, Horton Hears a Who, Evan Almighty and The 40-Year-Old Virgin all had big openings, and most of them crossed $100 million. His one real misstep was the non-wheelhouse Dan in Real Life; even Evan Almighty, derided as an incredible bomb, still made $100 million (it's just that its budget, for some reason, was $175 million). You may not want Carell to carry your hugely expensive effects-laden movie, but he can carry your average comedy.

Ferrell is pretty reliable for a solid opening, though this doesn't always translate into huge grosses. Aside from Land of the Lost, Curious George and Semi-Pro, everything in his wheelhouse has opened well, even forgettable mediocrities like Kicking and Screaming and Bewitched.

I'm not sure what to make of Rogen. If you just look at the numbers, it's pretty impressive, at least until you realize that he's only been the lead in a few films. Those films: Knocked Up, Pineapple Express, Zack and Miri Make a Porno, Observe and Report, The Green Hornet, and Paul. He was also co-lead in Funny People, but Sandler's clearly the top star draw there. So of the other six... well, three opened well and three didn't. Paul was decently reviewed but basically tanked; Zack and Miri had Kevin Smith's name behind it as well as decent reviews but didn't do much (though the name probably didn't help). At any rate I think we'd have to say that the jury is still out on Rogen at best. Simmons mentions in the article that it's possible to be a movie star right now even if you're not one in a few years, but Rogen's last lead role tanked, so let's hold off.

Finally there's Galifianakis, the most egregious inclusion of the entire list, IMO. The problem? HE ISN'T A LEADING MAN!!!! I mean, you have to be kidding. He's clearly on here because Simmons thinks he was the best part of The Hangover films and then he also had Due Date - but he isn't the star of any of those. He's the comic relief. Downey is the star of Due Date - you can't possibly give two people credit for opening the same comedy - and Galifianakis is at best #2 in the Hangovers and probably #3. He's a superstar who guarantees a good opening weekend? Uh, I don't fucking think so. As soon as I saw that I started questioning the entire column, which I had been blithely reading up to that point.

20. Mark Wahlberg

This is just not correct. Wahlberg has had some successes, but his record is littered with "didn't quite get there" movies. The Lovely Bones, Max Payne, We Own the Night, Shooter, Invincible - none were terrible bombs, but none was a huge hit. Planet of the Apes was a success; Rock Star bombed. He's a guy like Crowe - we tend to think of him as a star, and certainly he gets cast in lead roles all the time. But is he a STAR in the sense that his presence in your film guarantees a big gross or even a big opening? Not really, no.

21. Ben Affleck

Even at the peak of Affleck's powers - whenever exactly that was - this really wasn't true. And again, he's a guy we think of as a star, he's well-known, all that - but his presence in your film does not guarantee big bucks. Between 2003 and 2004 he was in four straight bombs - and maybe that's the fault of the movies for being terrible, but you're never going to see Tom Cruise appearing in four straight bombs. And The Town is the first movie Affleck's carried to a big opening since Daredevil, way back in 2003 - if you even want to give him credit for that, since that was around the peak of the Marvel craze's first wave. This is straight-up Boston bias on Simmons' part, if you ask me.

22. Jake Gyllenhaal

Simmons says there was "no way to avoid" putting him on the list. Well, yeah, there kind of was, seeing as how Gyllenhaal has really opened only three movies in his entire career - The Day After Tomorrow (co-lead, more about Emmerich's CGI disasters), Jarhead, and Prince of Persia. Source Code was not a big hit. Love and Other Drugs went nowhere in the US. Brothers and Rendition didn't do much. Zodiac, as said before, was not a big hit, despite good reviews and TWO of Simmons' stars! If that's not damning I don't know what is. Anyway, Gyllenhaal is the "starry" type. Maybe he can open the right movie, but he cannot open any movie that fits him.

23. Justin Timberlake

Another ridiculous inclusion. Simmons states that Timberlake "became a movie star simply by being so famous that he brainwashed us." Yeah, except he's not a movie star. I mean, he's a STAR, and he APPEARS in movies. But I don't think that's what we were looking for. Timberlake's only major roles to date have been the following: The Love Guru (flop), The Social Network, Yogi Bear, and Bad Teacher. The last three all either opened well or got to $100 million. But he isn't the lead in any of them! You couldn't possibly argue that Timberlake was the one who successfully opened The Social Network. If Friends with Benefits, his first true starring role, is a big hit, get back to me.

24. Kevin James

I don't buy it. James has had some success, but he has precisely ONE hit to his own name: Paul Blart: Mall Cop. His other successes (Hitch, I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry, Grown Ups) all feature either Smith or Sandler, and The Dilemma was not a big hit. Zookeeper will probably do well because it's a movie pitched in the general direction of children released during the summer, but how much credit do you want to give James for that? Again, I would want to see more before I would elevate him to a list of gigantic movie stars.

The best part is at the end when Simmons lists some people who he likes but aren't movie stars. The list includes Jeremy Renner (who in God's name was arguing him as a movie star? Again, obvious The Town bias), Josh Brolin (similar profile to Bridges, really, just absent starring in Tron), James Franco (was the #2 guy in three Spider-Man movies, but again, no, I don't think anyone was really arguing for this), Jesse Eisenberg (has successfully opened three movies if you include the animated Rio, meaning he has at least as much business on this list as does Timberlake) and Ryan Reynolds, the guy who inspired the column in the first place, and with whom I'll end.

Simmons argues that Reynolds is not a movie star, and that therefore Green Lantern was doomed to fail. I would argue, instead, that Green Lantern was doomed to fail because it's a piece of shit, as seen by its 17% rating from the top critics at Rotten Tomatoes. It's possible that some of this can be laid at Reynolds' feet, but I doubt all of it can. Consider that two Fantastic Four movies did big business even though their biggest male star was Michael Chiklis. Superhero movies don't have to have big stars in them, because the characters themselves, coming in with some history behind them, are what intrigues audiences. People snickered when Jake Gyllenhaal was cast as the Prince of Persia - but the movie made money because people wanted to see a Prince of Persia movie. I think what it comes down to in this case is that the Green Lantern movie was particularly poorly done, and maybe that Green Lantern himself just isn't that interesting a character to people. I don't think it's that people were just rejecting Ryan Reynolds as a superhero. They were rejecting the movie.

Really, Simmons contradicts himself at almost every turn. He says that Tobey Maguire isn't a movie star because people won't go out of their way to see a film he's in unless it has Spider-Man in the title... then includes guys like Johnny Depp - no guarantee of anything unless he's Jack Sparrow - and George Clooney, who pretty much can't open a movie if he's not Danny Ocean. So what was the point, exactly? Jamie Foxx isn't a movie star because he's just a famous person who acts and sings... oh, like Justin Timberlake? And so forth.

In the second half of the column he talks about William Goldman's point that Smith is actually our only movie star because all of his movies make money. I would still add Cruise and Hanks - and you can't really argue that they don't count anymore when Smith himself hasn't put out a movie in three years - with a couple others (Washington, maybe Depp and DiCaprio, Pitt, and then Sandler) a rung down the ladder. Aside from that I think I'd pass on calling the rest stars. Or, at least, if you're going to call them stars there are others you probably have to include. Look at Vince Vaughn's history - he's a bigger star than a number of guys on the Simmons list. Liam Neeson's last three years are surely at least the equal of someone like Affleck or Gyllenhaal. And while I think his movies tend to make money in spite of and not because of him, Sam Worthington's essentially three-film career - Avatar, Terminator Salvation and Clash of the Titans - has been jaw-droppingly lucrative. At the very least, he belongs on the list before someone like Timberlake or Galifianakis, who don't even star in the films they're in, does.

Okay, I think that's plenty. Let this be a lesson to Bill Simmons: you can't just post a bunch of subjective crap about movie stars on the internet without some random guy spending hours writing a post that no one will ever read all of to take you to task.