The movies Rupert Everett called “a cancer to world culture”
National treasure and Queen of Mean, Rupert Everett is renowned just as much for his catty attitude, hilariously biting insults and scandalous gossip as he is for his acting career and Hollywood roles.
It’s not surprising that the same man who complimented Madonna by calling her a “whiny old barmaid” has had a few things to say about the state of Hollywood over the years. Despite not necessarily being the most critically acclaimed actor in the world — many would claim due to self-sabotage, he claims due to his sexuality — Everett still believes he is right to dish out his opinion on the matter.
And in his opinion, there is one specific film franchise that he believes is a “cancer to world culture”: the much-beloved Ocean’s films. In a controversial interview with The Independent several years ago, he was prompted into a rant about how Hollywood has devalued the currency of acting and somehow poor George Clooney ended up right at the centre of it.
“Clooney thinks that, provided he does films which are politically committed, he’s allowed to do Ocean’s Eleven, Twelve and Thirteen,” he told the interviewer, “But the Oceans movies are a cancer to world culture. They’re destroying us.” This might seem like an overstatement during our current moment. The sequel slop and AI mush we’re currently being faced with makes Ocean’s Eleven seem like some sort of niche arthouse movie.
But at the time, Everett truly believed that Clooney’s turn in this acclaimed heist caper was yet more evidence of Hollywood and the world being more interested in “Jennifer Lopez’s bottom” than political issues like Iraq.
Out of all of the salacious gossip and slightly out-of-pocket political opinions Everett has espoused, it seems that his evaluation of Clooney and Soderbergh is simply going too far. After all, what right does the actor starring in such political films as St. Trinian’s and Shrek have to criticise titans like those two?
Not only that, but he had the audacity to bring legends like Diane Keaton, Robert De Niro and Al Pacino into his judgmental tirade too. He couldn’t believe that such stars would dare to become parodies of themselves in the more well-paying, family-friendly films that they all seemed to pivot towards in their later years.
He claimed Keaton was “debasing” herself with Because I Said So and Al Pacino was a “mad old freak now”. But let’s be honest, while these criticisms might be a little hypocritical coming from someone who just got fired from the culture destroyer that is Emily in Paris, they aren’t completely unfounded.
The greats of the past have now lived and worked long enough to see themselves become the villains they once would have condemned. Including the gay-champagne-socialist-turned-anti-immigrant Everett. But as with many of the wild things he’s said over the years, he seems to be well aware of his own role in all of this, continually using the pronoun ‘We’, when denouncing the killers of culture
But with all of this horrible truth and the current death of culture, art and talent happening in our world, It’s honestly wonderful that we live in a world where someone other than myself believes that St. Trinian’s did more for cinema than Ocean’s Eleven did, because let’s be real, it’s true (at least if you are a woman who grew up on ’00s coming of age films).
