Stars’ salutations to arms
Killing citizens in New York, shooting innocents in Chicago, mass murders by firearms in California. And Hollywood keeps triggering movies that star guns.
“Django Unchained,” “Rambo,” “Brawl in Cell Block 99,” “A Nightmare on Elm Street.” Nice. “Evil Dead” was 2013. One massacre — which maybe got released on a Valentine’s Day — centered on killing missionaries. “Kill Bill” featured Uma Thurman beaten, shot, stabbed, accosted, buried alive. The p.r. team probably publicized this as a musical.
1961 Pacino arrested for carrying a concealed weapon . . . Tom Jones carries . . . Angelina Jolie, after playing Lara Croft in “Tomb Raider,” kept her character’s shooters . . . Word is Mel Gibson’s arsenal of revolvers and rifles have zip to do with reviewers of his films . . . Liz Hurley once went shooting at the Beverly Hills Gun Club.
Spielberg has a firearm collection. Learning to shoot from his father, he still pumps off rounds now and then at a private club . . . Ice-T plays a cop on “Law & Order.” Off TV he has the real equipment.
NRA spokesman Chuck Norris: “We don’t call 911” . . . Vince Vaughn supports carrying in public, not just keeping the “piece” — as pros call it — at home. Says it’s “resistance to a tyrannical state” . . . Bruce Willis, who doesn’t make films about singing and dancing, loves our Constitution’s Second Amendment . . . Tom Selleck, earning big as a law abider on “Magnum, P.I.,” was a one-time NRA board member . . . Brad Pitt of such lullabies as “Killing Them Softly”: “I feel better having a gun somewhere. I don’t feel safe if I don’t.”
And there’s accidentals. Like Kate Beckinsale in a no-pets rental and robbed by a night burglar in London’s Shepherd’s Bush section. When she was starting out, she heard a burglar. Thinking her landlady’s snooping to see if Kate housed animals, she feigned sleep. Her jewelry got stolen. “If I hadn’t worried about my cats, I’d have screamed from terror and probably got shot. There’d been break-ins in the area and people were hurt.”
Wyclef Jean, in martial arts since he’s a kid, supplemented early days driving a cab. “People tried things but I always had my gun with me. I just turned around and said, ‘Give me my money or I’ll kill you.’ ” He got his money.
Films sell kills & thrills
Early ’70s. Aidan Quinn, 15, a hippie with long hair and a fluorescent backpack, was nearly murdered by a street gang. A friendly driver on the expressway saved him. “Years later,” he says, “before my big break opposite Madonna in ‘Desperately Seeking Susan,’ my area was a war zone.”
Meanwhile, our entertainment industry rolls on. Nov. 29 comes the Gotham Awards for indies. Let’s have a 21-gun salute for our friendly movie industry: It’s psychological horror in “I Saw the Devil.” Forget any Viennese waltz in Marvel’s “Avengers: Infinity War.” How’s torture and terrifying nightmarish stuff in “The Suicide Squad.” “Cry Macho” has Clint Eastwood still punching and crunching. Chris Hemsworth stars in extremely violent/out-of-control/blood-pumping “Extraction.” Want “Total Recall” with Schwarzenegger? The governor’s total recall is not moon, spoon and June. It’s goon.
Charlize Theron leading assassins in “The Old Guard.” “Copshop” with Gerard Butler as a professional hit man. Brie Larson in backstabbing “Free Fire.” “Olympus Has Fallen” with then-unfallen Morgan Freeman and Angela Bassett.
Let’s all meet up at the popcorn stand.
But may locals always know: When feeling hostile toward a burglar, be aware that he’s the last man in this town who still makes house calls.
Only in New York, kids, only in New York.