I finally got around to reading - okay, skimming - Tom Junod's Esquire profile of Angelina Jolie, which Ron Rosenbaum famously called "the worst celebrity profile ever written." Junod's campaign for Angelina's canonization provides plenty of ammunition for this judgment, in a certain way, but I would submit that Rosenbaum is missing the point: Given that it is self-evidently impossible to write a good celebrity profile, the only thing that a talented writer can strive for in such circumstances is the sort of maximal absurdity that's calculated to, well, drive a Ron Rosenbaum around the bend. Insofar as Junod achieved this with his self-evidently ridiculous "this is a 9/11 story" story about Jolie, he should be applauded, rather than condemned.
Or put another way - given a choice between reading Junod's ludicrous, pretentious, wildly over-the-top Jolie profile and a typically dreadful, "I spent thirty minutes with a star and I'm being paid to make her seem sexually attainable to my readers" celebrity piece like, say, GQ's cover story this month on "The Summer of Jessica Biel," I'll take Junod every day of the week.
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In the "maximal absurdity" category, this August 2005 profile of Katie Holmes in W was really something else.
Posted by Maureen | June 28, 2007 11:32 AM