Shooting Stardom

>> Denys Arcand on fleeting fame, mid-life crises and Jessica Paré

by JOANNE LATIMER

Denys Arcand didn't think it would be hard to find a beautiful girl who can act. He needed one for his latest English-language film, Stardom, and an international cattle call left him stumped for a leading lady.

"You have Cameron Diaz at $17-million, then you have Charlize Theron and Natalie Portman at $10-million, then Liv Tyler at $1-million," said Arcand, who looked tanned and rested at a beach-side patio during the Cannes Film Festival. "I couldn't afford Liv Tyler."

Instead, he cast a virtual unknown. After two fruitless searches in L.A. and New York, he found his star in NDG. Her name is Jessica Paré and she certainly is beautiful. Surrounded by press at Cannes, Arcand and Paré seemed to be acting in a real-life post-script to their film about notoriety.

Arcand's Stardom is a satire on the kind of lives visited upon celebrities who earn their fame through beauty. Paré plays a cliché of a supermodel. She destroys the lives of men who prostrate themselves for her company and she's content to leave events largely unexamined. Tubby old Dan Aykroyd plays one of Paré's ageing boyfriends, as does Frank Langella. They're fabulous as mid-life crisis cases.

Girls on film

Arcand tells his story through a running montage of TV interviews and footage from a factious documentary filmmaker (Robert Lepage). The idea of a completely mediated experience isn't so fresh, yet Arcand keeps it fast-paced and fun. The idiotic VJs and talk-show hosts on television will cringe when they recognize themselves. Co-writer Jacob Postashnik knows how to send up superficiality.

But isn't Stardom too late--critiquing fame and beauty in the year 2000? It has been done. And it has been done with more depth.

"Celebrity isn't worth a tragedy," explained Arcand, who thought up the project close to 10 years ago. "What are we talking about? TV! Underlying this whole thing is the immense importance of the TV screen in our lives. I prefer to take a light approach."

He also took the personal approach. Arcand remembers being what he calls a "minor celebrity" after Jesus of Montreal and The Decline of the American Empire, which both garnered Oscar nominations. And he remembers his fame fading away.

"You see, I'm the world's slowest writer. I didn't make another film for a long time, so everyone forgot about me. The celebrity just passed," he explained, bemused. "Suddenly you don't have to change your phone number every six months. The party invitations stop arriving. It's a strange phenomenon. It happened to me when I was 45 years old and I knew who I was by then, so it didn't hurt me. But then I got to thinking, what if I'd been 22 and beautiful and it all just disappeared? I'm sure it would be crushing. It has crushed a lot of people."

The power of beauty

Arcand describes himself as "absolutely defenseless in front of a beautiful woman," and has always been fascinated by the power of sexuality and aesthetics--something represented very frankly in the fashion industry.

"When I got to know some models, I got to see how much fun they have. We always hear how tough it is, but I think that's the bias of the media. The girls I met were having a ball. Of course, there is a downside, but that is lived by those who don't succeed. There's a graveyard out there of girls who are abused and end up as junkies."

Making Stardom presented some logistical problems for Arcand, who produced the film with Alliance Atlantis. Trying to film a real fashion show was a budgeting nightmare for Robert Altman (who directed Ready to Wear), and Arcand had been warned by Altman to stay clear of the runway.

"Altman told me that a fashion show lasts 15 minutes and costs several million dollars. The budget for my film was only $11-million, Canadian. So, in my film, you never see a dress or a catwalk. It's all behind the scenes with the beautiful girls."

Could Stardom be Arcand's own mid-life crisis movie? No, he insists, laughing at the suggestion. "Absolutely not. We're only giving the waiting public what they want."

Stardom opens Friday, Oct. 27.