Borders Line: Lots Of Pearl Clutching At Cannes For THE PAPERBOY
It's been all over my RSS and Twitter feeds - "Nicole Kidman gives Zac Efron a golden shower!" This is, apparently, big news. It certainly should be big news if Nicole Kidman, the married actress, gave Zac Efron, the single actor, a golden shower. The reality, however, is that Kidman's character in Lee Daniels' Cannes release The Paperboy pees on Zac Efron's chest after he sustains a jellyfish sting.
The fact that this is news sort of baffles me. Tons of different articles use language like this one: "Lee Daniels had some explaining to do." and "Director Comes Clean On Nicole Kidman Pee Scene" like he has to justify his decision to include such shameful tawdriness in the film. We're talking about a plot point so innocuous that Friends did it in 1997 and no one blinked an eye. Of course, in that episode, Joey pees on Monica's leg. Perhaps all the pearl-clutching and monocle-dropping is due to the fact that a 46-year-old actress plays an "oversexed Barbie doll" (another line quoted incessantly today) peeing on the chest of a 20-year-old formal teen idol.
I haven't seen The Paperboy - obviously, I'm not at Cannes since I'm not very important. The reviews have been mixed and I have no idea if it will be good or not, but I do know that I'm looking forward to giving it a shot. I've really enjoyed McConaughey lately (in Killer Joe and The Lincoln Lawyer), I keep waiting for Efron to be kind of great, and of course I'm eager to see Daniels' follow-up to Precious. But I'm also eager to see Kidman's performance because she's given several interviews lately about how proud she is of it. Say what you will about Kidman - she's never allowed herself to be typecast, and she takes on a lot of risky low-budg movies in order to give herself room to experiment. Those risks don't always (or lately, often) pay off, but I admire her enterprise anyway. And I'm sure she can nail the trashy bombshell type. I love her in To Die For, after all.
I'm just incredibly annoyed that all of the dialogue about her participation in this film has been related to her looks, her sex scenes with Efron and this stupid, fake golden shower story. I've honestly been stymied trying to find even one article that talks about her performance. The woman's been nominated for three Oscars and all we can talk about is her appearance and her pee?
