24 | JUNE 4 - 10, 2021 | WORCESTERMAGAZINE.COM
SCREEN TIME
Hammer shows how to destroy your Hollywood career in simple steps Jim Keogh Special to Worcester Magazine USA TODAY NETWORK
There are many ways to cripple your professional future. Badmouth your boss. Tweet an ethnic joke. Or partake in the Louis C.K. courting ritual of masturbating in front of a horrifi ed woman. All should do the trick. Another consideration is the Armie Hammer strategy. The tall handsome actor who made his name playing the aggrieved Winklevoss twins in “The Social Network” has done a fi ne job of promoting his own career-icide by allegedly expressing cannibalistic desires with his lovers, even supposedly biting one of them in in a way that was not love-hungry, just hungry. (He has also been accused of sexual violence and degradation toward women, and has denied the most serious of the charges.) True or not, once the cannibalism stuff began to seep into the media, Hammer was fi nished. He stepped away from a rom-com he was set to fi lm with Jennifer Lopez; he was dropped by his agency and publicist; his wife fi led for divorce. Last week when channel surfi ng I came upon “Call Me by Your Name,” in which Hammer plays a graduate student who romances a younger man during a summer in Italy. I stuck around for a few minutes, but given what I’d learned about Hammer’s alleged chewy proclivities, watching him playfully fl irt onscreen now just felt, as a trained clinical psychologist might describe it — icky. According to his IMDB page, Hammer has two fi lms in the can: “Crisis,” a collection of stories detailing the corrosive im-
Armie Hammer, shown here in “The Man From U.N.C.L.E.,” may well be driving his career off a cliff. WARNER BROS. ENTERTAINMENT
pact of opioids, and “Next Goal Wins,” which chronicles the American Samoa soccer team’s legendary 31-0 loss to Australia in the 2001 World Cup. I expect
“Crisis” to slip unnoticed into the sea, but “Next Goal Wins,” because it’s directed by supernova-hot director Taika Waititi (“Jojo Rabbit”), surely will get a
full theatrical run in 2022. I can’t predict Hammer’s destiny. Does his comeback clock start ticking after a period of exile? Does he ever recover?
Other actors have overcome heinous behavior. Who could have expected we’d see Mel Gibson’s face on a screen again after his anti-Semitic torrent during an OUI arrest in 2006, or following the threatening phone calls he made to his former girlfriend that were leaked in 2010? (Give them a listen and ponder whether you’d want this guy within 500 yards of your daughter.) But Gibson’s dance card has fi lled up with comedies (“Daddy’s Home 2”), action pictures (“Expendables 3), and historical dramas (“The Professor and the Madman”), largely because he was unafraid to indulge his unhinged reputation. The passage of time and the fraying of attention spans can help scandal-dinged actors weather almost any storm. Robert Downey Jr.’s stint in jail on drug charges has not handicapped his career. Paul Reubens’ arrest on exposure charges in a Florida movie theater did not permanently bury his Pee Wee Herman character, and actually may have added to his legend. Hugh Grant seems to be doing just fi ne years after police nabbed him in his car with a prostitute. Still, the court of public opinion is a fi ckle thing. Silent screen comedian Fatty Arbuckle was acquitted of the manslaughter of starlet Virginia Rappe, yet was deemed so toxic that he was forced to cobble together a directing career under a pseudonym. This was well before social media gave eternal life to every transgression, whether earned or not. In this overheated atmosphere, a successful Hammer comeback will require delicacy, repentance, and, one would hope, a change of diet.
