Eight minutes into the Emmys, it hit me. This is what it looks like when a hundred celebrities are forced to do Cameos for free. After his monologue Sunday night, Jimmy Kimmel walked over to a Netflix lobby-sized wall of celebrity Zooms. Wow! It's an all-hands meeting for Hollywood! But instead of charisma Kimmel was greeted with silence and the strained smiles and awkward waves of obligation."We've installed cameras and microphones in their homes," Kimmel explained, turning to the celebs. "We've been watching you for weeks now!" Every joke has a grain of truth, and Tracee Ellis Ross, Sterling K. Brown and Anthony Anderson had to fake laughter at that one because they knew the joke's on them. They'd be even more relevant if they had installed cameras and microphones in their homes. The Emmys delivered the discomfort of celebrities reluctant to succumb to the total availability our cultural moment demands. And Cameo offers a competing vision of celebrity, one where they're all a bit more comfortable with the reality of their role in our lives now.
CameoA rich piece in The New Yorker by Naomi Fry last week made a compelling case for Cameo as the future of cultural production. Sonja Morgan, of "Real Housewives," and Ben Sinclair, of "High Maintenance," bask in the liberating shamelessness that allows them to make a few extra bucks doing Cameos. Availability is a luxury only savvy celebrities allow themselves. In exchange for ditching the illusion of a non-transactional relationship with a celebrity, we get the content we've always wanted. "On Cameo, performers can be straightforward about the fact that they are exchanging their attention for money," Fry writes. "And this frees them from the faux-authenticity of the Instagram influencer."
RamySome celebrities clung to their pre-pandemic distance and glamour at the Emmys by renting hotel rooms or studios, like Zendaya and the casts of "Watchmen," "Succession" and "Schitt's Creek." Their refusal to appear at home highlighted Ramy Youseff's willingness to appear especially available. Ramy, the star of "Ramy" on Hulu, looked actually at home as he waited for his category's envelope to be opened. That comfort made possible an expression of pure loserdom that almost definitely resonated with more people than anything actually broadcast on TV Sunday night. When he lost, he posted a video of someone from the Emmys loitering outside his house with a statuette in a hazmat suit. I bet Kimmel is jealous of the real, unforced laughter Ramy gets in that video.
The shorter stuff
Jared Kushner relied solely on unpaid interns to respond to the pandemic. (TNY)
Emily Ratajkowski: "I saw photos of men in profile, gripping beers and wearing hipster jackets, standing inches from my naked photos, their postures slumped and their silly fedoras cocked back as they absorbed the neatly framed images." (The Cut)
Chris Rock: "No one has less compassion for humans than a landlord." (NYT)
Inside Spotify's all-hands meetings over Joe Rogan transphobia allegations. (Motherboard)
Whitney Cummings has a podcast about Silvio Berlusconi for some reason and a minimal-effort social campaign to promote it. (Image)
πSpecial "Filthy Rich Boomer Moguls of Hollywood" Section
Lorne Michaels: "I don't think of them as celebrity cameos. I think that's the sort of New York Times approach to thinking about things." Huh? (Vulture)
An anonymous Hollywood producer on the Chateau Marmont: "If you were to say, 'It needs better HR...,' it loses its touch." (THR)
YoungBoy Never Broke Again has had three No. 1 albums this year. (NYT)
The octopus-man love story on Netflix is trending. (CNN)
Quibi is for sale. Please mentally prepare to continue to hear about Quibi. (WSJ)
Paramount Plus, named after an ancient Hollywood studio with zero name recognition among anyone younger than 60, is using the ballsy tag line "A Mountain of Entertainment." Robert Evans would be proud! (Variety)
Rumaan Alam didn't write "Leave The World Behind," the upcoming Netflix thriller about a white family in a Hamptons Airbnb who get startled when the black owners arrive, until age 40. Still hope for me? (Vulture)
Alexandra Schwartz gets novelist Ayad Akhtar to admit to his own "high-octane pretension." (TNY)