In the old days, amFAR’s annual gala was filled with A list celebrities. Sharon Stone ran the show, and big stars who’d been in Cannes stayed just for the event.
Not so much anymore. Tonight, the big stars welcomed by the sketchy AIDS fundraiser were none other than Kevin Spacey and James Franco. Those are two names not on the top of any casting director’s list these days. They’ve each been canceled.
Spacey was given a Lifetime Achievement Award this week from another sketchy organization, the Better World Foundation. He read a manifesto claiming his blacklisting in Hollywood was similar to that of famed screenwriter Dalton Trumbo (which is utterly ridiculous). Spacey’s been mostly ostracized after surviving or settling many lawsuits concerning his sexual behavior with young men over the years. He’s managed to avoid conviction or jail one way or the other. But he was sued again, in February.
Franco is basically unhire-after settling a $2 million lawsuit with former female acting students who accused him of sexual malfeasance. He also hasn’t made a movie years. He supposedly plays Fidel Castro, of all people, in a film that’s been sitting on the shelf for a couple of years already.
But for amFAR, Spacey and Franco are a dynamic duo. This shouldn’t surprise anyone. amFAR has been through any number of financial scandals. Their CEO, Kevin Frost, earns a whopping $600,000 and they have many other execs with healthy six figure salaries.
This year, it’s mostly the B list with the exception of Mariska Hargitay, who came to Cannes with a documentary about her mother, Jayne Mansfield. But big movie stars like Natalie Portman or Nicole Kidman, each of whom had been in town, were invisible. Tom Cruise was long gone. Scarlett Johansson and Kristen Stewart? Absent.
Again, in the old days, rock star Bono of U2 — who’d also been in town for his own documentary — would have been persuaded to sing for the well heeled Eurotrash in the audience. But he’s too smart for that. ’80s artifacts Duran Duran performed along with “American Idol” star Adam Lambert, recently a substitute on Broadway in “Cabaret.”
Will appearing at amFAR help Spacey and Franco resurrect their careers? Probably not. But it says a lot about the charity that they were wanted at all. Sad, at this point. As for amFAR itself, their annual tax return is quite a document, as I’ve written in the past.
