Community members also sometimes participate for fun in their colleagues’
projects, even if they are competitive with their own. Consider, for example, the willingness of Steven Spielberg, Gwyneth Paltrow, and Tom Cruise to play cameo roles in New Line’s 2002 film Goldmember, a spoof of the James Bond film Goldfinger, starring Mike Myers as Austin Powers. Even though the film would directly compete for box-office share with two of his own films—Jurassic Park III and Minority Report—Spielberg had no compunctions about appearing (unpaid) in Goldmember. The only compensation he got was the gratification of playing himself, Oscar in hand, and being called by Austin Powers (Mike Myers) “the grooviest filmmaker in the history of cinema.”
Spielberg said he agreed to appear in the movie gratis after reading the
“hysterical” script. “I normally wouldn’t say yes, but Mike [Myers] is a very close friend of mine, and the scene was really funny,” he explained in an interview. “He also had written a part for Gwyneth Paltrow, who’s like one of my kids. I knew Gwynnie before she was born, actually . . . I sent the pages to Tom [Cruise] and Gwynnie, and they both agreed to do it.”
Paltrow’s unpaid role involved getting off a motorcycle wearing a skintight leather suit, introducing herself as “Dixie Normous” to a character played by Tom Cruise, and passionately kissing him. “It was so much fun,” she later explained. “I never get to do stuff like that. Mike Myers and his wife, Robin, are good friends of mine. When they asked me to do it, I was like, ‘Of course! I’ll do whatever you want me to do.’ Then the costume designer came over for a fitting, and she was like, ‘Now, you’re going to be in a leather catsuit,’ and I was like, ‘Whoa, okay. This is not my normal Wednesday afternoon,’ but it was so much fun. I couldn’t believe that everybody said that they would do it. It was just a great day, you know, making out with Tom Cruise.”
Tom Cruise, who ordinarily makes well in excess of $20 million for lending his name to a movie, also participated gratis, playing an actor. “It was a blast,” he said, “and really fun.”
These psychic incentives—having “a blast,” “making out” with a star, wearing a cat suit, pleasing a close friend, acting in a “really funny” scene, and being flattered on-screen by being called “the grooviest filmmaker in history”—can offset financial considerations for star actors and directors. Cruise and Spielberg, for example, each had a share of the gross revenues of Minority Report, a movie that, as previously mentioned, would compete for audiences with Goldmember. The success of Goldmember could conceivably cost each of them substantial sums of money. Yet they evidently believed such a monetary risk was outweighed by the fun and gratification they would enjoy on the set of a friend’s film.
----The big picture the new logic of money and power in Hollywood (Epstein, Edward Jay)
