Kristen Stewart has had enough ... of fame, fortune and Hollywood success, apparently.
The "Twilight" alum parlayed that teen franchise into an extensive Hollywood career. Not all of her co-stars were so fortunate.
She's starred in dozens of films post-"Twilight," directed one herself ("The Chronology of Water") and is firmly in the Hollywood ecosystem. She even snagged an Oscar nomination for 2021's "Diana" biopic.
Hurrah! She's living the dream many actors have but never achieve.
So why is she so angry at the system?
Stewart teed off on said system during a new Cannes Film Festival interview. She's hardly alone here, since the annual gala has been nothing but an excuse for stars to get on their soapboxes and, in between, promote their new films.
For Stewart, the microphone access allowed her to trash Tinsel Town and warn she might be done with it sooner than later. She teed off on her business via Variety, in an interview that could very well do some damage to her career prospects.
Hollywood, she said, "is not designed for artists to express themselves." It's The Man, Man, that's holding true artists like herself down.
I just don’t think that it’s possible to create sort of radical, vital work under capitalistic parameters ... Especially like, most of the people in charge are a bunch of bros that have come up under a bunch of other bros and those people don’t really identify with the type of things that I personally want to say, that the people I align with want to say.
Let's assume she doesn't binge watch "The Joe Rogan Experience" or "KIll Tony" podcasts.
She acknowledged her "film priivilege" while lashing out at the way Hollywood works.
There needs to be more work, more output, more connection and less fear and less f***king bureaucracy and also less making billionaires more f***ing billionaires.
Is this Kristen Stewart or AOC? Is she preparing to play the socialist Representive in a future film? She also blasted the fact that shooting a film or TV show in Los Angeles is darn near impossible now, ignoring the Democratic policies responsible for that sorry state of affairs.
Let it be said that the Hollywood system can be maddening. A project can be thisclose to getting greenlit before a minor change behind the scenes ruins everything. And, yes, you have to make profitable movies to ensure your next films are good to go.
That's capitalism AND Hollywood. And Stewart brought home $20 million for the final "Twilight" film. So there's that.
And, just when you've established yourself as a top-tier talent, along comes a star who may be younger, prettier and, gasp, more talented.
Yet Stewart got to the top of an impossibly tall mountain thanks to those evil billionaires. She must realize the delicate dance involved with every project, large or small. Still, she thinks she has the solution.
YouTube.
But my goal is to make something for really nothing with my friends before the end of the year and put it on f***ing YouTube,...I want to make weird s***. And I’m fully OK doing that in a kind of insulated, bizarre way. But I don’t want to do the thing where I wait five years for someone to give me $1 million to make something. I’m going to make it f***ing tomorrow.
Good luck.
Stewart is free to do that at any point, but she'll learn some hard lessons along the way. One, if you don't have a budget you'll struggle to hire the best and brightest to make your film shine. Funding your own projects is often a disastrous choice. Just ask Kevin Costner or Francis Ford Coppola.
Two, she won't end up at the Cannes Film Festival for her "radical, vital work" where Legacy Media journalists will be dying to record your everycomment.
She'll be ignored, most likely.
Nor will she have access to a studio's marketing department to help spread the word about the film in question.
After a few YouTube movies, she might be begging for a billionaire to fund her next project.
