- Ben, Matt, & Chris Rock are all featured in the “Frat Pack”, an article from an earlier Entertainment Weekly issue…
They’re young! They’re handsome! They’re the toast of Hollywood! How a new generation hit the big time — and why their hearts belong to indie. Introducing the …
BY STEVE DALY
If Hollywood had its own version of Mount Rushmore for male movie stars, there’d be granite shards all over the foothills right now. Not to mention a big sign that reads Pardon Our Appearance While We Remodel. Why? Because the great stone faces who’ve anchored the biggest action flicks and epic dramas of the past decade — among them Bruce Willis, Mel Gibson, Arnold Schwarzenegger, and Kevin Costner — seem to be eroding. Audiences stamped Costner’s The Postman “Return to sender.” Willis’ Mercury Rising is falling fast at theaters. Warner Bros. has recruited the younger, hipper Chris Rock, 32, to prop up the conceptually wheezy prospect of Gibson’s Lethal Weapon 4. And since collecting what turned out to be an overly generous $20 million up-front paycheck (plus a merchandise cut) for last summer’s Batman & Robin, Schwarzenegger weathered heart surgery and has taken his time getting another of his $100 million behemoths off the ground.
Of course, a junior group of leading men including Tom Cruise, 35, Brad Pitt, 34, and Will Smith, 29 — have been chipping away at the old blocks for years. Lately, though, they’ve been joined by an even more precocious generation of talents who look eminently monument-worthy.
Call this crop of largely up-from-the-indies actors the Frat Pack. Almost none of them will reach their 30th birthday by the millennium, and almost all are products of postfeminist times — many were raised primarily by a divorced or remarried mom. Typically jut-jawed (what was in that infant formula anyway?) and equally chic in scruffy duds or designer suits, they’re emotional instead of stoic on screen, and far more likely to stroke the neck of a woman than squeeze the trigger of a gun.
Poster Boys
In addition to first-rank poster boys Leonardo DiCaprio, 23, Matt Damon, 27, and Ben Affleck, 25, this new youth corps includes Edward Norton, 28, who first made his mark as a nutcase in Primal Fear, and Ryan Phillippe, 22, who appeared in I Know What You Did Last Summer and will spend this one in the highly anticipated Studio 54.
Having done their homework in small, low-budget films (like Chris Tucker in Friday, or Affleck’s star-making internship in Chasing Amy), or majored in TV drama (Mod Squad’s Omar Epps sharpened his skills on ER and Scott Wolf continues to on Party of Five), these actors are as hip to Hollywood ways as a teen in one of Kevin Williamson’s movie scripts. Instead of starring in shoot-’em-ups or silly, Brat Pack-style teen comedies, they prefer dramatic roles in which they — brace yourself, Ah-nuld — project vulnerability as much as strength. As pop psychologist Dr. Joyce Brothers explains: “They’re not macho-type men; they’re softer. Women respond to that because they don’t feel they could interest a guy like Stallone, who’s more interested in tackling the world than falling into your arms.”
While spreading the post-pumpitude gospel of sexual healing, DiCaprio, Affleck, and Damon have helped scare up nearly $800 million at the box office since November (if you tally up The Rainmaker, Titanic, Good Will Hunting, and The Man in the Iron Mask), and since Hollywood always follows the money, execs and producers are falling all over themselves to hand hot scripts to these boys — or, when they’re unavailable, their Frat Pack peers (along with a host of rising actresses; see The Chick Clique).
The result? A changing of the Hollywood guard as radical as the one Marlon Brando, James Dean, and Montgomery Clift ushered in when they became the reigning revolutionary idols four decades ago. “What we’re seeing is a generational shift,” says ICM agent Robert Newman. “It’s a cycle…[like in] the ’70s, when there were new stars both in front of and behind the camera. All of a sudden the Burt Lancasters of that generation were not as vital…. People always hunger for things that are fresh.”
The Teen Beat
Just how thoroughly moviemakers had neglected that appetite first became starkly evident in December 1996. Producer Lynda Obst, for one, remembers the month, because that’s when her old-fashioned romantic comedy One Fine Day — which test-screened well on the strength of stars George Clooney and Michelle Pfeiffer — got blindsided by Scream. “All of a sudden, this movie that wasn’t on the radar of any of the dinosaurs around, myself included, opened really big,” says Obst. “It showed there was a new teen market that would go to the movies in droves on Friday night. And they weren’t necessarily going to the movies of the blockbuster stars. They heard Scream coming like a tom-tom beat.”
The horror movie brought in teen-to-twentysomething crowds that skewed far more female than those for ’80s slasher flicks of the Friday the 13th variety. From that instant, the axiom that teen males were invariably the key to box office hits was up for debate.
The fact is, guys are now tougher to woo. According to Paul Dergarabedian, executive vice president of the box office tracking firm Exhibitor Relations, young men in high school, college, and in entry-level jobs are spending more time on the Internet and with computer games and less time going to the movies: “Their choices tend to be technology driven, and their options are multiplying the fastest.”
Meanwhile, their female peers are increasingly doing their bonding over popcorn at the multiplex. “Young women are traveling to the movies in packs now,” says Dergarabedian. “They don’t wait to go with a boyfriend, and they don’t mind seeing the same movie over and over.”
Among the movies that benefited from this rerun-infatuated new brand of movie consumer: Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery, I Know What You Did Last Summer, Good Will Hunting, and — duh — Titanic, which has a hold on teenage girls that’s just short of mass hypnosis. Just this spring, female audiences had a surprisingly strong hand in making Adam Sandler the world’s most successful Wedding Singer and helped give the romantic City of Angels a heavenly opening weekend.
Now that the guys who once lined up repeatedly to see Schwarzenegger and Stallone can ogle Internet “babes” via websites and E-mail, Hollywood is suddenly more interested in catering to the fairer sex. Of course, that was the case after such chick-flick hits as Thelma & Louise and Fried Green Tomatoes as well, but this time there’s a stronger financial incentive for movies to get sensitive. In a freak convergence of demographics and economics, the studios have discovered this youth audience just as the established salary system for older stars — who now routinely command $20 million plus perks — is driving them desperately to find cheaper talent.
In other words, the genesis of the Frat Pack is a supply-and-demand phenomenon. “It’s not that so many great young actors happened to emerge all of a sudden,” producer Denise DiNovi insists. “They’ve always been around. It’s just that movies are suddenly being made that have roles for them.”
The Shape of Things to Come
Now that studios have a green light to hire younger faces, what sorts of vehicles will they be putting them in? Oddly, for a generation to which the draft is practically science fiction, they’ll be showing up in period war movies, including Terrence Malick’s The Thin Red Line, a WWII opus that stars, in addition to Jared Leto, promising newcomers like Adrien Brody, 24, and Jim Caviezel, 29. There’s also director Ang Lee’s Civil War drama Ride With the Devil, in which Caviezel (again) costars with Tobey Maguire and Skeet Ulrich, as well as Steven Spielberg’s Saving Private Ryan, whose titular character is played by Damon. (In the wake of his sudden popularity, DreamWorks reps have been careful to emphasize that his screen time in the film is minimal.)
Perhaps the most crucial Frat Pack foray on the horizon, however, will be Affleck’s turn as Willis’ son-in-law-to-be — talk about a seismic shift — in the Jerry Bruckheimer careering-asteroid extravaganza Armageddon. Judging from early footage, you can count on a kinder, gentler sort of action hero from Affleck, who plays an oil-rig worker romancing the Willis character’s daughter (Liv Tyler). Perhaps to keep things female friendly, screenwriters added more romantic interludes for the pair as shooting progressed.
Not that anybody should expect tougher, more macho stars like Willis — who plays belligerent, taciturn daddy to Affleck’s sensitive young stud — to hang up their Uzis anytime soon. Cautions Patrick Whitesell, the CAA agent who handles both Affleck and Damon: “Action movies are not going away. It’s only about staying fresh.”
Mark Gill, de facto Frat Pack godfather and Los Angeles president of Miramax (home of Scream and Good Will), seconds that: “Both Stallone and Schwarzenegger internationally are very strong…. Both of them are still bankable.” Even Gill concedes, however, these guys aren’t exactly 21st-century fare. “In another 10 years, they’ll be 60, so it will end.”
Lessons Learned
For the frat pack, it’s only just begun. Right now, momentum is what this group has in abundance. A Ben, a Leo, or a Matt — or a suitable surrogate — is enough to get production money flowing and attract a flurry of press attention. But will they shape the movies of the next decade? Or will they wind up spindled rejects by the millennium? “It’s great that you can take five of these kids and put them in a slasher movie and it will work,” says producer Scott Rudin. “But no one should [assume] that they can carry a film. The interesting thing will be how many, and which ones, have longevity. Let us not forget, God forbid, the Brat Pack.”
The Frat Packers seem well aware not only of what became of Emilio Estevez and Ally Sheedy but of what’s happened to contemporary brethren: Of late, Matthew McConaughey has had trouble looking credible in serious adult roles, and Chris O’Donnell, who for years got the roles that Damon lusted after, seems to have lost his preferential status. A more likely role model might be Damon and Affleck’s School Ties costar Brendan Fraser, who scored a major hit with Disney’s dopey George of the Jungle, then jumped directly into the modest, interesting indie project Gods and Monsters, about Frankenstein movie director James Whale.
Unlike O’Donnell and McConaughey, the Frat Packers are cautiously stepping into stardom while still keeping a toehold in the indie scene. Consider Affleck’s tenacious commitment to Dogma, the new movie from Chasing Amy director Kevin Smith. “Before we even did Amy, Ben read it and loved it,” Smith recalls. “He kept saying ‘This is a tremendous film. We have to make this movie.’ And on down days, I was saying ‘Well, I don’t know if I want to make this movie.’ It’s very complicated technically, much more than my earlier films. But even in days of doubt like that, Affleck was the one that kept me chugging forward.” DiCaprio’s handlers, too, have spoken about the young actor’s dedication to doing alternative films between movies like Sony’s high-profile All the Pretty Horses.
James Schamus, who’s working with director Ang Lee as scriptwriter and coproducer on Ride With the Devil, believes there’s more early Brando than empty braggadocio in this new wave of leading men — and that is what ultimately will sustain them. According to Schamus, “We looked at everybody for these roles,” including Joaquin Phoenix and Damon, who instead chose to star in director Anthony Minghella’s The Talented Mr. Ripley, and was replaced by Ulrich. “What we discovered was that somehow, at ages 22, 23, whatever, these guys have made themselves professionals. They work all day, then they go home to study their lines, and the next day they’re at it again at dawn. Very few of these kids are just good-looking party animals.”
Of course, the beer, the money, and the perks have only begun to flow at Hollywood’s latest keg party. “I’m very conscious of the fact that a lot of people have gone through it and gotten carried away,” Affleck told EW before the Oscars. “I don’t want to name names, but now they’re delivering pizza.” Perhaps as much as talent, it’s this properly wary attitude that will help the Frat Packers deliver themselves from the dreaded Domino’s syndrome. And just maybe carve their careers in stone.
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