Mid-life crisis: ‘Was Will Smith acting? Is Morgan Freeman actually God and Hollywood his joke?’

Brendan O'Connor

Will Smith hits Chris Rock on stage during the Oscars in Hollywood, Los Angeles, US, March 27, 2022. Picture by REUTERS/Brian Snyder

April 03 2022 02:30 AM

Don’t you find yourself thinking now and then that you just wish everyone would shut the f**k up about everything? It’s an impulse we all have sometimes, but you don’t generally see it mentioned in the media – for obvious reasons. Not only is it heretical of me to raise the subject here, but I am potentially doing myself out of my livelihood by even invoking the notion that a bit less chat, and fewer opinions, might be a good thing.

I think Will Smith tipped me over the edge when he was tipped over the edge by Chris Rock. Before I had even woken up the morning after Will Smith’s night before, I had texts from people sharing their thoughts and demanding to know my opinion. It was just the latest thing we all had to have an opinion on, and we had to know everyone else’s opinion on it too, whether we wanted to or not. Indeed, some of the opinions I was hit with very early on were opinions around why we all needed to have an opinion on this.

There was a fairly limited range of opinions we could have around what happened. Like everyone else I did wonder if this was really real. It was all so calm and clinical, almost surgical. It wasn’t the kind of mess you’d think would ensue if someone walked onstage and punched someone else at the Oscars. It was, ironically, lacking in drama. You’d be tempted to think that Will Smith seemed to be slightly acting, and not very well, which opens up a whole other wormhole.

If he was actually acting, did he even know he was acting, and can he actually act at all, apart from playing Will Smith? But maybe without a script he isn’t very good at acting the part of Will Smith. Is any of it real anyway? Is anything authentic anymore? Does Will Smith only think he’s Will Smith? Does he believe he has, no pun intended, free will? But is he in fact just an actor playing the part of an actor who doesn’t know he’s an actor, even though he thinks he’s an actor?

Is he some kind of Manchurian candidate? Are they all? Are they controlled by Morgan Freeman? Is Morgan Freeman called that as a kind of in-joke because he is actually the only one who has free will? Is Morgan Freeman actually God and is Hollywood his joke? And is him being the voice of God in films a little side joke?

Now I’m falling into the trap myself. So anyway, within a few hours I had heard every hot-take possible on Will Smith. I had watched him dancing the night away at the Vanity Fair party, I had seen him rapping along to Gettin’ Jiggy Wit It with the happy air of a man who hadn’t just perpetrated a one-punch assault on another guy in the middle of a big do, in front of the whole world. I knew who in my circle supported him and who didn’t, and on and on.

And so I went out and I ran without any headphones. And I noticed something between the traffic noises. And it was exquisite, and I gradually realised what it was. It was silence. It was punctuated by the odd birdsong and the occasional bin lorry. But it was there alright, unmistakable, the underlying sound was the sound of silence. And it struck me that silence is possibly the ultimate in luxury these days.

I am not a very Zen person, so instead of just being with the silence and revelling in it, I wondered if anyone had successfully marketed silence properly to the luxury-goods crowd. Think about it, the luxury-goods industry has debased and degraded the very notion of luxury. Most of their money is made from plastic sunglasses for 200 quid, and then overpriced “juice”, as they call their perfumes.

They hang on in there, waiting for the sky to fall in when people realise that the idea of mass-produced exclusivity is a contradiction in terms. Or else they get ever more expensive and “bespoke”, spinning yarns about the particular goats from whose bellies they get their cashmere, or telling tales of generations of leather-goods artisans to sell overpriced bags.

But the problem for rich people is that no matter how exclusive and handcrafted-by-virgin-artisans-in-an-atelier-in-a-tiny-village-in-the-mountains the goods they buy are, they will never be enough. Because there will always be someone with more stuff and better stuff.

Look at the superyacht gang. No matter how many gold taps you put on your superyacht, Vladimir Putin or someone will always come along and build a bigger, better one. No, the rich crowd can’t really win on stuff. The best they can hope for is to keep up with the Joneses a bit.

Which is why luxury has been pivoting from stuff to more experienced-based goods. So that rich people can at least feel they are getting to do unique stuff that someone else can’t do. They pay fortunes for authentic experiences, the kind of thing that most people get by backpacking, or turning off the main road and finding a nice simple restaurant not full of tourists.

Rich people live in a quieter world than the rest of us anyway. That’s what private jets and private islands are mainly for. So they don’t have to hear the rest of us wrangling our kids through airports or fighting at the beach. But there’s got to be a way to sell them the ultimate in silence. I call it ‘Complete Silence’. It’s cheap to produce, and no one can have a better version, because the version we are offering is complete. It’s the ultimate bespoke, personalised, total luxury experience.

Now I just need to figure out how to give it to them, but it’ll be some variation on locking them in a soundproofed room or bringing them somewhere remote. Either way, they will be guaranteed they won’t hear anyone’s opinion on Will Smith, or anything else.