Where would The Corsair be without Hello!Magazine and their fabulous pictures from eccentric European variety shows? Fuck if I know, but, damn, doesn't Angelina Jolie look positively "fucky"? Today the British magazine/website writes:
"In her latest big screen blockbuster Angelina Jolie plays a scheming matriarch with a penchant for snakes. But in real life the actress has no great affection for the creatures, so it must have come as something of a shock when she was presented with a huge boa constrictor on the set of a German talk show. Angelina, who was appearing with her Alexander costar Colin Farrell, was handed the serpent by host Thomas Gottschalk. But, although she gamely petted the boa, the Oscar-winner - whose Alexander character Olympias carries a snake with her at all times - says she prefers pets of the four-legged variety. And she admitted to finding her role in the flick rather nerve-wracking. 'Of course I was scared,' she revealed. 'I repeatedly asked the snake keeper, 'please feed the snakes well'. But one day he just poured a whole container full of snakes onto my head, saying I should get used to them. Now, I understand them, though I don�t love them.'"
Which is odd, as, if The Corsair remembers his Plutarch's Life of Alexander from ye olde college days (The Corsair licks his finger and turns the aged yellowing ancient page), the ancient biographer-philosopher wrote:
"(Philip of Macedon) had a stormy home life with Alexander's mother, Olympias. Philip had spied on her once and seen a snake in her bed, and ever since then they had been estranged. Philip's new marriages enraged Olympias, who was a violent, jealous, and unforgiving woman. The trouble in the women's chambers spread to the whole kingdom. Olympias even managed to turn Alexander against his father."
Single mother Angelina Jolie explained Alexander director and vulgarian Oliver Stone's reaction to her fears:
"'On our first day it was getting really late and I had to switch snakes and pull the other ones out and they were getting kind of wild ... The trainers said, It's night time and they think it's time to feed. And I said, Oliver, it's night time and apparently it's feeding time. He was like, Oh, just get in there'."
Maybe she should have taken ancient historical novelist Gore Vidal's advice, who, according to Liz Smith, said to Stone after he was asked for some writerly input on Philip of Macedon's godlike son, "I'd never work for you. You distorted Kennedy, you distorted Nixon, and you lack the one quality a director needs most -- talent."
And, may we add, compassion.
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