Hooray for Hollyweird

Will Smith and Jada Pinkett Smith are in the news: Some scandal rag has put out a story that their marriage is kaput, naming Another Man In The Wife's Boudoir as the cause. Said Man being Marc Anthony, the singer and actor, whose own marriage to Jennifer Lopez, the singer and actress, went down the tubes recently. Jada and Marc co-star on her show HawthoRNe, and play lovers who steam up the camera's lens. 


Life imitating art?


Rumor is that Will and Jada have an open marriage, both are on record talking about it, and you'd think that concept kinda makes the idea of cheating void, but there are rules there, too, and apparently being blindsided is one of them.


The press release the couple offers sounds like a non-denial denial. Their "marriage is intact," they say. 


"Intact?" Who says that when asked if they are getting a divorce? I mean, "No, we aren't." Or "That's bullshit!" Or even "None of your fucking business!" But "Our marriage is intact?" That sounds like a spindoc's phrase to me. 


In Hollywood, it seems to be a knee-jerk reflex in this kind of situation. A splitting couple absolutely-positively-categorically denies it. They are quickly seen holding hands, smooching, having a fine ole time in public ... and then a few weeks, a month, six months, divorce papers come to light. 


Somebody was, ah, well ... shading the truth ...


Why bother? Does it make some kind of business sense? Is there a deal that requires matrimonial stability? The children? You can't hide that from the kids, they know.


It's Hollywood, Jake ...


Yadda, yadda, yadda, BFD. Why do I even go here? 


Well, I feel a distant connection to Will Smith because I did the novelization for Men in Black. Somehow I wound up with a cardboard bookstore display that now sits on the roll-top in my office, so I see Will and Tommy Lee every morning when I come to work. And it was one of my favorite summer movies, my connection notwithstanding. Couldn't help but like the kid in that one. 


Rich Hollywood celebs don't do the same dance the rest of us do; they are always in the public eye, can't step out onto a sidewalk without cameras going off in their faces, and they get hit on by gorgeous people a lot more than most of us. (A whole lot more than, for instance, me.) Temptation falls down naked in front of these folks every time they turn around–sex? drugs? rock 'n' roll? Hey, come and get it!–and part of the mystique of a relatively-long lasting marriage in LaLaLand is that they managed to resist, or come to terms with, all that, and somehow, endure. Coming fourteen years for Will and Jada, and down there? That's like four decades in non-celebrity time. You hate to see it fail.


If indeed is has failed. Probably we'll see ...