First of all, look how slim Zach Galifianakis is these days!! Wow. He’s lost a lot of weight over the past year. I’m bad at determining the actual amount of weight loss for anyone, so I’ll just say my guesstimate is… maybe something like 50 lbs over the past year? He looks really good. These photos are from the New York Film Festival premiere of Birdman on Sunday. Zach is in it, as is Emma Stone, Michael Keaton, Edward Norton, Naomi Watts and many more.
While doing press for Birdman on Sunday, Zach sort of went off about being a celebrity and how celebrities get treated differently in our society, I guess? Honestly, I think he seemed sort of bratty in the first part:
Hours before the New York Film Festival’s closing-night premiere, director Alejandro G. Inarritu and the cast of Birdman posed for photos and answered questions after a Saturday afternoon press screening, held at New York City’s AMC Lincoln Square — to the dismay of some of the actors.
“Being a celebrity is sh-t — it’s dumb and I’m not interested in it,” said Zach Galifianakis, noting that he’s not a fan of all the “picture-taking” and that the cast generally feels the same way. “I like to be an actor, and that’s it. The blurred lines are, I think manmade. I think celebrity is a manmade thing, it’s not innate in us, we have people telling us, ‘We should pay attention to these people,” for all the wrong reasons, their personal lives and whatnot. … I’d rather just do my work and go home and watch Lifetime.”
To be fair, he was asked specifically about where to draw the line between “actor” and “celebrity” and Zach was explaining that he likes being an actor but hates this idea of being a celebrity. While he does seem to practice what he preaches (when is the last time Zach got pap’d with a lady friend, you know?), it does seem like… there’s a trade-off. Zach gets to be a comedic leading man and people write down what he says in interviews and press conferences. It seems odd to complain about it while actively participating in the press for one’s film. Then on the NYFF red carpet, THR asked him for clarification and this is what he said:
“It’s confusing to me — all of this is confusing to me. They oversell it like we’re curing cancer, you know what I mean?” he told The Hollywood Reporter at the New York Film Festival’s closing-night premiere on Saturday, held at Lincoln Center’s Alice Tully Hall. “I just think it can be gross sometimes, the way Hollywood congratulates itself all the time.”
“I agree with what this movie says. I read it, and I’m like, ‘Boy, he’s taking swipes at everybody, but he’s right.’ So the truth trumps everything else,” he said of the Alejandro G. Inarritu dramedy. “It’s gotten a little out of hand — there’s no culture in it. If people were writing about poets, mathematicians and all that, that would just move us forward quicker.”
I understand why someone within the Hollywood machinery would be like, “Whoa, this is crazy, this is way too much,” and I agree. In a perfect society, we would honor teachers not athletes, scientists not actors, doctors not musicians. And in a perfect society, vapid famewhores woudln’t be famous for being famous. So on that alone, I agree with Zach. But I do think perhaps this is the wrong messenger and the wrong time for this particular message. When in doubt, feign humility and just promote your film, you know?
Photos courtesy of WENN.
Special thanks Cele Bitch
