
When I first read the title of this article from Fox New Pop Tarts – “Harrison Ford Opens Up About the Decline of Good Hollywood Roles” – my immediate thought was “Harrison Ford pulls a Jessica Biel, whines about there being ‘no material’.” So imagine my surprise and delight when Pop Tarts even puts a f-cking Biel quote in the article! This seriously made my day. So, anyway, Harrison is bitching about what Hollywood was like back in the good ol’ days when “the studios spent a lot of money on the development of stories and ideas and bought books and they really developed the scripts. That doesn’t happen anymore.” While I will agree that overall, the story-telling aspect of Hollywood films has declined over the years, I do think there is a more particular reason in Harrison Ford’s case.
Veteran actor Harrison Ford has only made a handful of movies over the last few years, and it’s not because he no longer loves acting – it’s just that according to him – Hollywood isn’t producing any quality material.
“I grew up in a system where the studios spent a lot of money on the development of stories and ideas and bought books and they really developed the scripts. That doesn’t happen anymore,” Ford told Tarts. “Now, if you want good material you have to develop it for yourself or have a hand in the process. I have been determined to do that over the past few years.”
Ford took matters into his own hands by signing on as executive producer for the new fact-based drama “Extraordinary Measures,” where he plays an unconventional scientist that sets out to develop a cure for Pompe disease alongside John and Aileen Crowley (Brendan Fraser and Keri Russell), whose young children are inflicted with the rare degenerative disorder.
“I was looking to develop material for myself,” Ford added. “I saw an opportunity to tell a very positive human story and the opportunity to craft for myself a part different to what I’ve normally done and a different genre.”
However the 67-year-old “Indiana Jones” star certainly isn’t the first to be dismayed by the caliber of Hollywood roles these days. In fact, it seems to be quite a hot topic, among both male and female actors.
“Where are the roles for the female experience from that (strong, admirable) point of view for the young college girls, mothers and grandmothers? A lot of actresses I speak to find the same thing,” actress Jessica Biel recently told us. “We’re all scrambling for it when something good comes out that actually has a good female character.”
[From Fox News Pop Tarts]
Now, I love Harrison. He’s made so many good movies, he’s a friggin’ icon, I still have sexual fantasies about his character Jack in Working Girl, and, you know, bless his heart. But he’s old. And I’m not saying old people can’t make movies or that old people can’t make good movies (I’m seriously not saying that), but that Harrison seems to think he should still be making the same kind of films he was making 25 years ago, and no one wants to see him in those roles anymore. Could it be, much like in Biel’s case, Harrison simply isn’t getting the great scripts because those films are going to other (better/younger) actors? With Biel, she lusts after the parts going to Natalie Portman or Anne Hathaway or Scarlett Johansson. With Harrison, I get the feeling he’s lusting after parts going to people like George Clooney or Matt Damon. Why couldn’t Harrison reinvent himself into some Tom Wilkinson-type actor? You know, a stellar character actor and sometime leading man. Because I do miss seeing Harrison. I especially miss him acting in good movies that I want to see.
Oh, and take out the earring. I know he’s had it for a decade or whatever and I should be over it, but the thing still makes me chuckle sadly.
Harrison and girlfriend Calista Flockhart at the ‘Extreme Measures’ premiere in LA on January 19, 2010. Credit: Apega/WENN.com.
