Tag Archives: A Philadelphia Story

Box Office Poison: A Continuing Legacy

Katherine Hepburn was introduced to us as box office poison before anything else, including the stipulation that she is not actually related to Audrey Hepburn, which is kind of a letdown. But I digress, box office poison. It’s a term given to actors whose movies tend to flop over and over again,, no matter how much talent they have or how good the movies are. I wanted to google around and see if box office poison still existed. I mean, there are a ton of actors in the world, and if one of them consistently brings down the movies that they star in, they would be dropped from the acting business, right?

Wrong.

This article, which is kind of annoying because it uses a slideshow format, talks about actors who tend to star in movies that make less than is invested in them. And the names on there are surprising to say the least. First of all Michael Cera is on that list. Odd indie music experiments aside (not kidding), who doesn’t love Michael Cera? Like Katherine Hepburn he doesn’t really have the star quality, and his acting/personality is a little niche at times, but unlike her, he doesn’t really star in major films.  Even so, the small budgets of the movies he’s in are only matched by even smaller returns.

Also on that list is Vince Vaughn, which makes sense, because who ever goes to see Vince Vaughn movies? He was good in True Detective though. Colin Farrel is on this list too, and he was also in True Detective. Same goes for Taylor Kitsch. I feel like the author of this article just didn’t like True Detective season 2.

An important inclusion on that list is Mel Gibson. Because for most of these actors, they just star in movies that no one wants to see. On the other hand, Mel Gibson kind of vanished from acting after the whole voicemail incident. That led me to look around for other box office poisons that came around after some sort of incident. I found this article on Breitbart (a Donald Trump-worshiping online “news” site) that claims that of all people, George Clooney is box office poison. George Clooney. Because of his left-wing stances on things. The article is trying to prove a stupid point, but it does bring across one good point: Even George Clooney is susceptible to not doing so well in the box office.

Maybe we should stop caring about revenues brought in and just enjoy actors, because clearly they’re here to stay regardless of how much money they make.

 

Side Note: I would actually recommend listening to the Michael Cera stuff if you like the music that Professor Jordan plays before class. Songs like Too Much are very similar.