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Superstar Sex

[whitespace] How do the stars view superstar sex?

By Jon Roemer

It's weird, because even though I'm not particularly turned on by watching Yale-educated actors having fake sex, I guess it's a little more complicated for the stars themselves. Or so some say. Take Jodie Foster. She seems as likely a star as any other to offer an interesting and convoluted response to the question of superstar sex. In the October issue of Mirabella, headlining the editors' picks of the "25 smartest women," Jodie claims she was shocked at walking into a Planet Hollywood and seeing a video compilation of female stars taking it all off--little racy snippets culled from mainstream films and set to the tune of Duran Duran's classic anthem Girls on Film.

Now, we can only speculate about what led Ms. Foster into Planet Hollywood in the first place. Her shock at seeing the out-of-context flesh fest suggests a soul that is not entirely media-mediated, which is a good thing. One also might consider wagering a dollar or two on her unarticulated arousal--the private thrill a girl like Jodie gets watching girls get naked to a song like Girls on Film. But quite possibly, you'll lose that bet.

Jodie then goes on to say what exactly she had expected: "I'm like, OK, women in film, they're going to show Sophie's Choice, and I thought, it's going to be Norma Rae and The Piano." That's right. Norma Rae--that's what she stood there expecting.

This reaction exposes a truth more naked than Jodie could ever consciously aspire to. Did she really expect some middlebrow mush instead of a best-of Booty Call? Or am I out of line in thinking Jodie Foster (who is rather naive to expect high-brow film fare at a low-brow establishment) ought to readjust her expectations of what goes on inside Planet Hollywood?

Consider a few other superstar examples. Jane Fonda showed up last month in a rerun of Barbarella on TNT. The sexy 1968 sci-fi epic, originally shot by her then-husband, director Roger Vadim, was scrupulously re-edited by her now-husband, distributor Ted Turner. According to Electronic Media, Mr. Turner had all the fleshy parts of Mrs. Turner carefully edited out.

Also, last month, lawyers for Scientologist/actor Tom Cruise tried to squelch rumors of his nonheterosexuality--again. Open Secrets, a book that, according to its publishers, does nothing to promote those rumors, is under attack by Cruise's lawyers, suggesting that the book does indeed promote those rumors, even though the lawyers hadn't actually read the book.

We can all go out to our local video store and rent the original, unexpurgated version of Barbarella. And no lawyer is going to stop us from telling the same old stories over and over again, the ones told to us by Mr. Cruise's former hairdresser, who told a friend of ours how another friend of his did more than Mr. Cruise's hair.

Ted, Tom, Jane and Jodie--they all seem to have a truly twisted and paranoid image of themselves. Which is something we would commonly expect from the likes of Jodie Foster. Will Hollywood ever cease to delight and amaze?

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From the September 21-October 4, 1998 issue of the Metropolitan.

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