It’s fucking weird.”Ĭusack, born and raised in Evanston, Illinois, made his film debut at 16, was recognisable by 18 and a star by 22. They just want to open up another can of hot 22. “I have actress friends who are being put out to pasture at 29. Bruce’s thing about if you’re 26, you’re menopausal? It’s only absurd because it’s a little bit further than the truth.” “I got another 15, 20 years before they say I’m old. Which bits of the film reflect Cusack’s own experience? “Almost everything,” he says.
John Cusack with director David Cronenberg in Maps to the Stars. He has, he claims, heard every line of the script said in earnest. The film’s writer, Bruce Wagner, has dismissed the idea that Maps is satire. Havana Segrand is losing her mind because her credit’s running out. A 26-year-old actress is “menopausal” according to her teenage co-stars. Stafford’s 13-year-old actor son, Benji, holds a studio to ransom over the pay deal for the next instalment of his “Bad Babysitter” franchise. And there’s so much money – so of course all the predators come in.”Īge is currency in the Hollywood of Maps. People are looking to turn their pain into beautiful art, but they also want to be famous. “It just seems to be ripe with all these frontier crazies. “LA seems to be a place where a guy can say he’s a ‘life-coach-channeller-masseur’,” says Cusack. “You saw heavy combat as a child,” he tells Havana Segrand (Moore), a faded fortysomething star who weeps her mommy issues into a yoga mat. Stafford lays his hands on his followers and kneads out emotional pain. They want a quick fix for their deep insecurities. In Maps, Cusack plays Stafford Weiss, a therapist who got rich off a cocktail therapy (one part Freudian psychoanalysis, one part deep-tissue massage, a generous measure of bullshit) that’s guzzled by the showbiz elite. Instead this blue pipe waves around the eyeline, letting out tiny guffs of odour-free smoke. I had read Cusack liked a cigar, which would seem more fitting. The only anomaly – the detail the screenwriter would snip for being too out of character – is the e-cigarette. He sporadically breaks into a smile, which seems to surprise him as much as me. There’s an air of benign tolerance, just like in the movies. He wears a long black overcoat and black jeans with a rip in the knee. He’s hangdog but amiable, folded into the sofa with one leg propped on the coffee table. Photograph: Allstar Picture LibraryĪt 48, Cusack looks pretty much as he did onscreen in the 80s, or 90s, or any time since. Sometimes the parallels become so close the lines start to blur.Ĭusack’s breakthrough role in Say Anything. They promote the film as every other: by walking the carpet, smiling into flashbulbs and holing up in hotel suites to tell journalists about the real, fake Hollywood behind the fake, fake one. It’s also an ensemble drama parading some of the biggest names in Hollywood: Cusack, Robert Pattinson, Julianne Moore, Mia Wasikowska.
A savage Hollywood takedown that riles the studio system for its absurdity, then vilifies those obsessed with fame. David Cronenberg’s first film shot in the US, Maps is a fever dream of modern celebrity. The baseball scene is one that could have been plucked from Maps to the Stars, featuring Cusack as a millionaire self-help guru. They knew him from the iffy rom-coms, corny psychological thrillers – or simply because Mom was a big fan. Their daughters weren’t raised on Say Anything’s boombox scene. The twentysomethings crushing on Cusack in 1989 have become mothers. And she was, like: ‘I have to take a picture of you! You’re my mom’s favourite actor.”Īnd so it goes. I thought: ‘Ohhhh … she’s going to come and meet me and I’m gonna … you know …’ I was going to be really flattered. I went to go to the bathroom and I saw her get up.
“In the next box over there was a gorgeous girl – young, but she was looking right at me,” he says. A couple of summers ago, John Cusack was at a baseball game, watching the Chicago White Sox play.