Set in Hollywood, in a candy-colored casting loft that once housed a CBS studio, the 20th season of The Real World is the realest Real World yet. There are no passably attractive med students or newly minted accountants here; the aggressively telegenic guppies striking poses in this fishbowl all aspire to careers in the entertainment industry. Which, of course, makes The Real World just like the real world, where, these days, it seems, even med students and accountants yearn to be infotainment correspondents and soap-opera utility players.
Ironically, however, just when it seems as if every other person on MySpace has appropriated the props and poses of celebrity so deftly you can’t be sure if they’re some CW demi-star or just a manager at the local Jiffy Lube or Manic Panic, Hollywood movie stars are beginning to look a lot like regular people. Or at least how regular people used to look, before they started looking like movie stars.
Mind you, this is a distinctly male phenomenon. In Hollywood, A-list average Janes remain as rare and carefully concealed as a pimple on Jessica Alba’s ass. If you’re a guy, though, there has never been a better time to be a Zach Braff type, or a Seth Rogen type, or a John Krasinski type.
In the same way that the actress who plays Lonelygirl15 isn’t actually lonely or 15, these actors aren’t actually regular guys. They’re smarter and wittier than that personable stoner who lives across the hall from you and spends every weekend staging elaborate “tribute” videos to the Jonas Brothers in search of YouTube fame. They’re better-looking than the low-key prankster who makes your time at the office a little more bearable. And yet amongst Hollywood’s pretty boys and touchy artistes, they’re average Joes.
With the exception of the unusually dewy Braff, it’s hard to imagine them obsessing over skincare routines. It’s hard to picture them exiling themselves to Paris, à la Johnny Depp, or going on fact-finding missions to Iraq, à la Sean Penn. Perhaps one day Rogen or Krasinski will manically extol the virtues of Scientology on Oprah in an effort to infuse humanity with more pizazz, but that doesn’t seem likely. A decade from now, Harold & Kumar regular dudes Kal Penn and John Cho may be Hardball regulars discussing presidential politics and the economics of biofuel; for now, one imagines they’re more into March Madness and the economics of their next bong hit.
In reality, these actors are all hard-working and ambitious and talented, with many of them writing, directing and starring in movies at an age when more traditional leading men like Brad Pitt and George Clooney were still taking bit parts in sitcoms and Return of the Killer Tomatoes! But they don’t play hard-working and ambitious types. They play low-key neo-slackers content to take life one marathon video-game session at a time. (Again, Braff is the exception, leaning more toward angsty ambivalence than well-adjusted suburban complacency.) They set the bar low, and this is their great appeal.
Movie stars have always served as idealized, aspirational figures, the people we dream of being. In recent years, that dream has consisted largely of pure, uncut glamour, partying till dawn in VIP lounges, projecting a sense of effortless magnificence in tailored Tom Ford suits, holding court for an endless procession of potential conquests, paparazzi and wannabes in every Travel + Leisure-approved hot spot across the globe. Oh, to live the life of Leo, George, Brad or, hell, even Skeet!
Now, however, after so many have mastered the art of the washboard stomach, the museum-quality Maori back-piece, the Prada cell phone programmed with bespoke ringtones crafted by Timbaland himself, the dream is shifting. Secretly, it seems, we long for the relaxed-fit approach to life this new wave of Hollywood average Joes embodies, the sense of liberation and serenity they project. Spending $495 on sandblasted medium-wash denim? That’s no longer necessary when Seth Rogen is your lifestyle mentor. (And you don’t have to call your pants “denim” anymore either; you can just say “blue jeans.”) Slaving away as a club promoter when you’d really just like a steady, mission-trivial job in cubeland? Let John Krasinski point the way toward redemption.
Somewhere in Santa Monica, Judge Reinhold is envisioning a late-career renaissance. And abs-machine manufacturers the world over are nervously anticipating the box-office performance of Forgetting Sarah Marshall: If it and its husky, regular-guy star Jason Segel crack $100 million, a very lean sales year lies ahead.