Gwyneth Paltrow shares very reasonable takes on superhero movies, dill
The Goop founder also killed a bug and revealed a secret about Bill Clinton during her recent Hot Ones appearance
Aux News Gwyneth Paltrow
In many ways, Gwyneth Paltrow’s Hot Ones appearance was exactly what you might expect. She said she thought host Sean Evans might “groom her into the experience” of eating spicy wings. She announced that “heteros are so funny!” and used the word “tensegrity” to describe her business. She revealed that Bill Clinton fell asleep during a White House screening of Emma and jokingly proclaimed, “Fuck you, Bill Clinton!” Later, mid-answer, she killed a bug that had gotten into the studio and shouted, “Die, bitch!” You get the picture.
But when it came to the real meat of it (the content, not the chicken wings), the Goop founder had some measured and reasonable things to say. Citing American Fiction director Cord Jefferson’s suggestion that Hollywood should make “twenty $10 million movies” instead of “one $200 million movie,” Evans asked Paltrow how she feels about the ways Hollywood has changed since the beginning of her career.
“I absolutely understand where he’s coming from,” she responded. “You want to have the best chance of having a strong ROI. People put a lot of money into these things and they want them to be profitable. But I think if I look at the industry as a whole the sort of big push into superhero movies… I mean you can only make so many good ones that feel truly original and yet they are still always trying to reach as many people as possible which sometimes hinders quality or specificity or a real point of view.”
“I sometimes lament the fact, like, I look back at some of the movies that I made in the ‘90s and think, ‘that just wouldn’t get made now,’” she continued. “I do think that you get more diversity of art when there is less at stake and people can sort of express their true voice and make a film the way they want to make it. I think those are generally the more resonant ones.”
While Paltrow never critiqued her Marvel days to the same extent as, say, Dakota Johnson (she might have just forgotten the bad parts), the Madame Web actress did make a very similar point recently when she suggested that “art does not do well when it’s made by committee.” Maybe the tide is finally starting to turn.
In the meantime, Paltrow also offered another controversial but brave and perhaps objectively correct take on a different hot-button issue: herbs. “I love all herbs except for dill, which should be illegal,” she said. “It’s so gross. It ruins everything and anything it touches.” “I know it’s boring, but basil is my favorite,” she continued. If someone wants to make a $10 million movie about Gwyneth Paltrow going head-to-head with Alison Roman over their respective herb preferences, we would be there opening night.
25 Comments
I agree that art does not do well when made by committee, if that committee does not care about the art and only cares about about ROI. I dislike how the sneering at “made by committee” devalues collaborative work and plays too hard into auteur theory and all the ancillary problems that come with it.
I think the word “committee” implies a group that includes stakeholders with little-to-no artistic vision or creativity. Professional movies and TV shows are already collaborations, so I don’t think sneering at “made by committee” devalues collaborative work at all. Rather, it recognizes that the starting point, the story, is usually best when there are fewer cooks in the kitchen writing it, and the true collaboration starts when people start executing the story.
Except I think it is trotted out in favor of auteur theory and “great man” fallacies. Maybe some of the time it’s implied that you mean the faceless, unartistic suits, but it’s also trotted out to squelch any feedback that the “auteur” might not want to hear, no matter what the source.
Every time I see criticism of auteur theory trotted out online, I can’t help but think it’s just a dog-whistle for “THIS GUY RUINED STAR WARS”.
LOL, not in this case, but fair enough.
Exactly. There’s a very notable difference between two, say, authors who are on the same wavelength coming together to co-writing a book, and a bunch of coked-up MBAs with zero artistic ability or creativity or respect for any of that going “Bro, GM’s gonna give us $500,000 if we can get the protagonist driving a Corvette- I don’t fucking care if he’s a quadriplegic. Make it happen.”
Counterpoint: Dill is wonderful and people probably shouldn’t take life advice from the founder of a new-age, snake oil company with a corporate ethos that essentially boils down to: “If you want a good life, then make sure you’re born wealthy.”
dill works really well on a rack of ribs actually. And I otherwise dislike dill.
I also don’t care for Gwyneth outside of specific roles/projects, and I despise everything Goop, but I agree that dill is disgusting outside of pickling cucumbers. And basil is a perfectly cromulent favorite herb.
Same. She’s a loon, but dill is poison.
Broken clocks and all that.
Maybe it’s like cilantro where it tastes completely awful to a lot of people, but I can’t imagine disliking dill. Salmon, potato salad, not to mention nearly the entirety of both Greek and Polish cuisine.
Yes salmon! Chicken salad too.
Right? TIL that apparently some people have a passionate hatred of *checks notes* dill.
I wouldn’t call dill the dominate herb in Greek food – that’s gotta be oregano, surely?
You take fresh tomato, basil and olive oil, add it to virtually anything, and you have deliciousness.
Dill is perfect in potato salad!
Wait until you see how Gwyneth makes pickles:
I have a weird affection for GP but her take on dill is garbage. Team Roman on this one.
Did she eat the wings, or just shove them up her baby hatch?
Mrs F77 has been retching at the word dill, never mind the herb itself, for several decades now.
Paltrow is just like the AV Club commentariat: she has strong opinions about herbs.
Sure, except her take sucks – dill is a great herb. The gaping asshole Jim Spanfeller is a toxic herb.
She was in Hook and her mom is an actress. There’s a lot of fun questions I’d ask her. HECK! Great Expectations was Alfonso Cauron, that’s off the top of my head without looking at her IMDB Page. “So was Eathan Hawk stunt drawing? Like Leo DeCaprio? Or is it really cringe art he made of you?”
I’m looking at the list of movies at the theater near our apartment:GhostbustersLate Night with the DevilLimboLove Lies Bleeding (saw it last week)Much Ado About DyingThe PeasantsProblemistaSleeping Dogs (looks pretty cool)The Taste of ThingsZone of InterestYes, Ghostbusters is a zillion dollar franchise movie, but the rest aren’t. Someone is still making smaller movies. And, yes, I live in a big city and I understand that I’m fortunate from a movie going standpoint because some of these films won’t get the same wide release as Madame Web. But they are out there.