Monday, December 9, 2013

The Fandom Tollbooth

TCM showed The Phantom Tollbooth, the Chuck Jones live action/animated movie based on the children’s book, recently, and the name made me think of “The Fandom Tollbooth”. And ‘The Fandom Tollbooth’ is when celebrities have to tolerate fans and paparazzi intruding into their lives due to their popularity. They can never live a normal life once they become stars, and they should just accept it. So whenever I see someone like Alec Baldwin assaulting a photographer or screaming at a journalist, from now on I’ll think: “He should just pay the toll and forget it: it’s ‘The Fandom Tollbooth’, and there’s no avoiding paying the toll for a celebrity with many fans, for it will surely take a toll on their lives, and sanity.”

Hey, maybe there could be a movie starring Alec Baldwin called The Fandom Tollbooth, and he could go through a magical tollbooth where everybody always chases him around with cameras and stuff, writes scandalous articles about him, etc. Oh, sorry: that’s his real life, isn’t it? Well, maybe the tollbooth can make him into an anonymous everyman nobody who is not famous nor successful, and he can live a normal life. Oh, but you know he’s probably addicted to the attention and fame and all that cash, so he’d inevitably go back through the Fandom Tollbooth again just to get his adoring crowds back, even if it means some pesky paparazzi, scandal rag hatch-job journalists, and lawsuits for assault and battery.

Hmm, I’m beginning to think this Fandom Tollbooth movie would work better on an aspiring actor and hopeful celebrity, and this person goes through the Fandom Tollbooth to get their fame and fortune, but they have to pay a toll at the tollbooth, and the toll is losing their privacy and removing the possibility of a normal life. And the moral of the story is: there is a price to pay for success and fame, and those unable to pay it should remain anonymous.