Hey, Why Are You Still Famous, Renee Zellweger?

Hey!

It’s the weirdest thing, Renee.  Remember when Jerry Maguire came out?  Aw, come on!  Sure you do!

Look at you!

You were this young, fresh-faced blondish brownish haired little thing that we all liked because you were cute, but not cute enough that it made us feel competitive or jealous.  So we were into you then, and liked that you went with Tom Cruise when he left the soulless sports agency that prized evil and hated good.  [Aside: I was just reflecting upon it and it seems like practically everyone involved with this movie has had serious career/life weirdness: Ren-Zeg, Tom Cruise, Kelly “Scientology Weirdo” Preston, and Cuba “Boat Trip” Gooding Jr. Fucking eerie, no?]

We even liked it when you guys made out to that horrifically corny Paul McCartney song that this dude I hooked up with once told me he “adored”, because it made us feel happy for you and, again, not jealous or threatened.  So I think back then your chief marketable quality was that you were cute enough for dudes to think about banging after they had had a few, but also regular-faced-looking enough for women to feel that you were relatable. So Basically, you were the perfect “kind of woman I would marry if I wanted to get married, which I don’t” /fallback wingwoman and that was fine….for a while.

But then something happened Renee, and you got kinda, well…weird looking.

See?

Yeah.. not so good.  It kinda looks like maybe you….I don’t know, slept in a car or something before coming to this nice event?  Did you?  Did you sleep in a car Renee?  You can tell me, we’ve known each other since forever.
Remember this?

[Note: I spent far too long trying to edit and upload a video of JUST Renee-as-Gina’s part but it took hours of my life and I got so mad that  I gave up. Just forward to the 1:39 minute mark. Sorry]

Yeah, me too. But then…

Even Jerry looks a little uncomfortable with the way things are shaking out here. Okay, Tabloid photographers and other media image-purveyors have NOT begin kind to you. Folks have suggested both booze and bulimia as possibly being responsible for your increasingly bobbleheaded appearance. I sincerely hope that the latter is not the case, -the former’s really no big deal, right? – but perhaps involuntarily, it is.  Can I posit a theory here?  Perhaps, years of  hearing that Bruce Springsteen song from Jerry Maguire played over and over ad naseum with audio from the movie edited in !!! made it physically impossible for you to keep food down.   I know that it took all the strength and resolve I had to keep that English muffin in my stomach when I heard it playing practically every single day on the radio while I sat buckled firmly in the backseat of my mother’s Volvo on the way to school.

Would it be insane to suggest that the eventual ennui as a result of waking up, getting dressed, getting into your car and knowing, knowing, that as soon as you  turned on the car radio you were moments from hearing your own voice screeching “Laurel…!!! I’m getting married!!” over and over and over while The Boss gruffly crooned in the background gave you a Sartrean nausea so powerful that you couldn’t help but vomit profusely, until you just gave up on solids altogether because what’s the point?

Perhaps I’m being needlessly cruel.  If so I apologize; nitpicking at your appearance and personal problems isn’t why I’m here. What I am here however, is to sort something out.  I would like to know, if it’s quite all right with you, why in God’s name Hollywood seems to think that they can still package you up and sell you to us as the same girl who carried a goldfish in a plastic bag into an elevator with a tense, jaw-muscle flexing Tom Cruise.

Prime example: Leatherheads.  George Clooney dressed in dapper Jazz Age clothing, that kinda-cute kinda-annoying guy from The Office and probably a cute, spunky little jazz soundtrack?  Sounds like money in the fucking bank to me.  But then, somehow, shit went off the  rails. What could have happened in Hollywoodland between the conception and the release of this movie that made this seemingly bankable film go to complete shit?  I imagine it went a little something like this:

Studio Guy 1: Well, this will make a lot of money. Guys will go because it’s about football and has that guy from The Office that they all think would be their friend in real life, and women will go because George Clooney is retardedly handsome and was born to wear well-tailored suits.

Studio Guy 2: Yeah…I agree. But I don’t know…we should probably get a really hot, glamorous, old Hollywood type to be the female lead.

Studio Guy 1: Why? that costs money. who cares? Guys don’t care about seeing hot women, they care about sports and old-time football padding, and that guy from The Offce.

Studio Guy 2: I don’t know…I think they might enjoy-

Studio Guy 1: Okay, okay….what about someone who was kind of sort of possibly considered hot for about 11 seconds but now resembles nothing so much as an apple on a stick left to dry in the sun for an entire hot, dry summer?

Studio Guy 2: Okay… I see where you’re going

Studio Guy 1: Yeah…someone with no discernible acting talent…who kind of plays the same exact role in every single movie and has a really annoying voice?

Studio Guy 2: Oh man, I know just who we need.

And….Scene…

Since, then You’ve ruined been in a bunch of other stuff and I haven’t seen it, and I bet no one has seen it, because you are neither hot and sexy enough to make people want to pay to look at you for two hours, nor talented enough to make looking at you worthwhile.  Yet your fame persists.  It seems like every damn time I open a magazine I see Renee Zellweger at the Oscars, or the groundbreaking news that Renee Zellweger is dating some guy with two last names, or that Renee Zellweger is on vacation and it’s like, I have to ask myself who is interested in this information?

Sometimes I wonder if, perhaps you made a deal with the devil, like that song about the young  guitar player who…well, makes a deal with the devil.  Did you trade your immortal soul and your skin’s elastic properties for the rare ability to continue to get work in Hollywood even long past your erection-inducing days?  It would certainly explain the hollow, vacant look in your eyes.

Love,

Ashley