Show Me The Money

My friend Sean once joked, shortly after Patrick Swayze was diagnosed with cancer, that the set of Road House was cursed. A couple of years later, we came to the synopsis about The Dark Knight after Heath Ledger died, Christian Bale found himself in legal trouble and Morgan Freeman was nearly killed in a car accident. However, I discovered a movie curse that might trump them both. While this movie isn't cursed in the tragic sense(i.e. nobody's dead or has acquired life-threatening diseases), it has claimed the careers of pretty much all of the major players. That movie, of course, is Jerry Maguire. Before I get into The Curse of Jerry Maguire, a quick side rant:

I watched Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory the other day and it occured to me that Gene Wilder as Willy Wonka should go down in history as one of the few roles in which no other person could play but the person who played it.....like Val Kilmer as Jim Morrison or DeNiro in Raging Bull. The movie industry tried to give us an updated Willy Wonka with Johnny Depp in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory(which was more an adaptation of the book than a re-make of Wilder's 1971 classic). Depp's interpretation of Wonka, in my eyes, was nothing short of horrible. It was dark and creepy, which is to be expected from a weirdo like Depp and an even bigger oddball like director Tim Burton. However, I tried thinking who would play Wonka if they ever remade the original movie and the only two names that popped up Jim Carrey and Steve Carell(Carell has some experience as Wonka, having played a mock version of him in an episode of The Office). While both are solid comic actors(though oversaturation has made both schticks kind of stale), neither could pull off the all-around performance that Wilder did nearly 40 years ago. In an movie era where new films are merely rehashes of the same tried and true formula over and over again, you wonder if there will ever be a role from today's actors that will resonate 40 years from now as a character that NOONE else could play? Now, for the reason we're here:

I restricted the Maguire Curse to mostly the main characters, so just know that before you write me about the amazing comedic career of Aries Spears or the eventual breakout of Lucy Liu. I took the top eight names from the cast off of IMDB and found the results, well.....you'll see(P.S. I put the role they played in parentheses, incase you didn't know):

1. Tom Cruise(Jerry Maguire) : People will be quick to mention that Cruise lit up the box office after Jerry Maguire with Mission Impossible 2 and 3, but I would replay that neither movie was very good(at least, when compared to the first one). There's also Cruise's solid role in Lions For Lambs, which was championed as a union of Hollywood's top greybeards with Cruise aligned next Robert Redford and Meryl Streep. Also, before you mention Collateral, remember that Cruise gets outshined through the entire movie by an up-and-coming Jamie Foxx. All those movies considered, you're still only talking about 4 movies in a 14 year span from the guy who dominated the 80's with movies like Top Gun, Risky Business, Cocktails, and Rain Man and went into the early 90's with Days of Thunder, Few Good Men and the first Mission Impossible. Then, of course, we'd be remissed if we didn't mention the fact that Cruise kicked off the new millenium by establishing a new kind of crazy. After splitting from Nicole Kidman and thus both destroying one of Hollywood's IT couple as well as starting a swarm of gay rumors, Cruise married young actress Katie Holmes and then preceded to fly off the deep end. As one of the more recognizable spokesman for Scientology, Cruise went on a nearly two-year long span and counting of everything from awkward interviews with Matt Lauer to jumping all over Oprah's couch, while dropping box office bombs like War of the Worlds and Valkyrie on us.

2. Cuba Gooding Jr.(Rod Tidwell) : Wow, where do we start? Cuba's star seemed on the rise after winning the Oscar for Best Supporting Actor in his role as flamboyant wide reciever Rod Tidwell, but I get the feeling the guy approving Gooding's scripts might be the same guy who managed MC Hammer's money. Let's read 'em off, shall we? Rat Race, Boat Trip, Snow Dogs, Norbit, Daddy Day Camp, The Fighting Temptations.....and that's just the ones you've heard of. What about Dirty, Shadowboxer, Linewatch, Hero Wanted, and last week's DVD new release The Devil's Tomb? Cuba's post-Maguire DVDs dominate the Wal-Mart $5 movie bin like Dwight Howard in the paint. Sure, he showed signs of life as Nicky Barnes in American Gangster, but he's listed as the 16th lead behind The RZA.....not exactly the what we expected from an Oscar winner. You think Jack Nicholson gets buried behind rappers on movie cast lists? Now, again, like Cruise, there's some good points: Men of Honor, Radio, Pearl Harbor....all solid, but roles that should be Gooding's have ended up in the hands of guys like Tyrese Gibson and Terrence Howard. When Howard priced himself out of Iron Man 2, the producers went straight to Don Cheadle(who, I'll admit, is probably a much better actor than Cuba, but that's just my personal preference). It's not unrealistic to think Cuba can make a Mickey Rourke-esque comeback, but considering he's picking his roles with all the self-respect of a 300 pound band geek with back acne, that seems unlikely.

3. Renee Zellweger(Dorothy Boyd): Like Gooding Jr, Zellweger showed promise following her role as loveable single mom Dorothy Boyd, and like the previous two, Zellweger had her moments. She was excellent in Cold Mountian alongside Jude Law and Nicole Kidman and was brilliant in Chicago opposite Catherine Zeta-Jones(both earned nods from the Academy). The Bridget Jones' movies have developed a cult following, but were nothing to write home about. Then, of course, there's Leatherheads. Now, Zellweger's career might not be as downtrodden as some of the people in this group, but it's just hard to omit the fact that an Academy Award winning-actress managed to attach herself to one of 10 worst movies ever made. Sure, Hilary Swank did Next Karate Kid before becoming one of Hollywood's top actresses and Paul Giamatti was in a slew of bad movies before Sideways(Big Fat Liar, anyone?), but Zellweger's role in Leatherheads is the kind of part you give to some no-talent pretty face like, say, Shannon Elizabeth. Zellweger followed Leatherheads with New In Town and My One And Only, movies you wouldn't even rent out of the Red Box at a grocery store. Although, she was a part of the successful kid flick Monsters and Aliens(5 years after starring in another kid flick, Shark Tale), so maybe she spends the rest of her career as the female version of Gilbert Gottfried.

4/5/6. Kelly Preston(Avery Bishop), Jerry O'Connell(Frank Cushman), Jay Mohr(Bob Sugar):
I grouped these three together because, quite frankly, they were never good enough actors prior or during Jerry Maguire to even be thought of as possible stars in the making following the 1996 sports classic. Preston continued to live up to the label of "Hot Chick In Random Movie" , appearing in everything from Nothing To Lose to Holy Man to For The Love of the Game to Broken Bridges(alongside country "star" Toby Keith, which should tell you everything you need to know). Of course, so long as Preston is attached to John Travolta(he, too, a person who never met a bad script he didn't like), she'll remain in some form of the limelight.....until her boobs sag and Big John leaves her for Scarlett Johanson. Speaking of marginal actors with hot trophy wives, O'Connell finally hit the big time by scoring John Stamos' sloppy seconds, Rebecca Romijn, who much like the rest of the people on this list cooled off around the start of the new millenium. Dating Rebecca Romijn in 2009 is like buying stock in Microsoft in 2009, it's not a bad thing to have but it's not as sexy as it once was. Mohr, on the other hand, has been consistant in maintaining his goal as white people's answer to Arsenio Hall. His TV shows tend to have the life expectancy of alcohol-abused infants from Mohr Sports to Fastlane to current cancellation waiting to happen, Gary Unmarried. On the bright side for Mohr, if Hollywood ever tries to re-create my life in film, he has the David Downey role sewn up.

7. Regina King(Marcee Tidwell): King spent all the momentum following her turn as Cuba Gooding Jr's wife, Marcee, accepting all the roles that Nia Long or Vivica A. Fox would turn down. There was How Stella Got Her Groove Back, the sequels to both Miss Congeniality AND Legally Blonde and, of course, Friday(which is one of my all-time favorite movies, but not because of the 10 minutes King is in it). It hasn't been all bad for King. She was 2004 Ray Charles biopic, Ray, where King held her own before being outshined by Jamie Foxx and Kerry Washington. She's one of the main voices in the TV cult favorite, The Boondocks(easily my favorite show) and now you can find her on NBC's Southland, which is still on the air despite the pressure of being in the slot once manned by peacock powerhouse E.R. All else fails, there's always the seemingly never-ending string of ridiculously horrible Tyler Perry movies.

So that's it, that's the list. If you're wondering why I didn't mention Bonnie Hunt(who played Zellweger's sister, Laurel) or Jonathan Lipnicki(who played Zellweger's adorable son, Ray), it's pretty simple. Hunt, much like Preston and O'Connell and Mohr, was a never was whose post-Maguire career registered even less of a blip than the afformentioned three and now has her own talk show that nobody cares about. Lipnicki, like most cute child actors, stopped being cute as he got older and found it hard to shake being pigeon-holed and, thus, fell off the face of the Earth. Maybe he rebounds like Tom Guiry(who played Smalls in The Sandlot) and resurfaces with a more edgy adult role like Guiry did in Mystic River.

However the next few years play out, there seems to be no contesting The Jerry Maguire Curse, which appears to have claimed more careers than The Swine Flu.

--Dave