John Cusack Tells Us What’s Wrong With Hollywood

Not content with being a damn fine actor, John Cusack is also a man who likes to tell it like it is. He’s currently doing publicity for David Cronenberg‘s Maps To The Stars, a biting Hollywood satire that holds a microscope up to everything wrong with L.A. (‘It’s a whorehouse and people go mad’). Cusack hasn’t just let the film do the talking, in an interview with The Guardian he let rip on a few home truths about the movie business (‘it sucks most of the time’). Here’s a few of the best quotes:

Hollywood’s obsession with youth:

“I got another 15, 20 years before they say I’m old. For women it’s brutal. Bruce’s thing about if you’re 26, you’re menopausal? It’s only absurd because it’s a little bit further than the truth.”

“I have actress friends who are being put out to pasture at 29. They just want to open up another can of hot 22. It’s becoming almost like kiddie porn. It’s fucking weird.”

How Hollywood treats young actors:

“People would look after you when I was a kid. There were good people in the business. When I came to LA Rob Reiner said: ‘Come stay at my house.’ He taught me. I worked with Pacino. Pacino would talk to you and mentor you. Now it’s different. The culture just eats young actors up and spits them out. It’s a hard thing to survive without finding safe harbour.”

How the system has changed:

“My friend Joe Roth ran Disney. He made things like The Rock and Con Air to make shareholders happy, but then he also gave six or seven slots to people he liked. I got to make High Fidelity and Grosse Point Blank. Spike Lee got to make Summer of Sam. Wes Anderson got to make Rushmore. I had that memory of film and that’s gone.”

“Now it’s six for them – with a committee cutting the film who weren’t part of making it – and maybe one for you. If I could do something like sell watches in China, then I would do that and just make movies like Maps.”

Source: The Guardian