Hollywood Career At Crossroads

Question: now that Michael Richards has resorted to drastic measures to jumpstart his flagging career, will he be rewarded as other Hollywood stars have been? A confessional mea culpa to Oprah or Diane Sawyer? A heavily promoted movie distributed by Disney? A recording contract? Or merely a talk show on HBO or MSNBC?

While past performance is no guarantee of future results, based on seemingly accepted Hollywood standards, the (show business) world is his oyster.

Update: Career resuscitation begins–and as The Malcontent writes:

And then, shortly after the interview, I saw an ad for Mel Gibson’s Apocalypto on television for the first time.

Well played, Gibson. Very well played, indeed.

Apropos of nothing, for someone who is apparently as damaged goods as Gibson is these days, I spotted numerous billboards for Apocalypto driving through Philadelphia yesterday.

Another Update: Ann Althouse writes:

Coincidentally, just last night I happened to catch the scene from the movie “Lenny” where Lenny Bruce (played by Dustin Hoffman) spouts racist epithets directly at people in his audience before mellowing into an explanation about how if we’d only use these words all the time they’d lose their force. Richards, however, never mellows… and Bruce’s theory was a new theory when he tested it out, not a long-argued, tried, and failed one.

Ann adds that “The stupidest part of Richards’ performance” on Letterman “was when he shifted from admitting to his own rage to talking about needing to get to the bottom of rage generally, including the rage that takes nations to war”.

Read the whole thing, as they say in Tom’s Diner.