Trying to come up with a measuring stick for “who is smartest” is like trying to objectively define “who is better looking”. You can’t really objectively do it… but you can give your opinion and demonstrate why you believe it. The other day, Entertainment Weekly put out their list of the 50 Smartest People In Hollywood, and I’ve got to tell you, I not only like their list, but also much of the reasoning behind their choices… including Ben Affleck’s selection at #50 (no… seriously).
Obviously I would make some changes to the list… but overall it’s a pretty solid one.
HERE ARE THE TOP 10
1) JUDD APATOW
WHY? – This year, he didn’t just bring the funny; he changed the whole funny business. On the heels of The 40 Year-Old Virgin, he hit the zeitgeist with two raunchy-yet-resonant laughfests — Knocked Up and Superbad — that mopped up a combined $270 million. Dramas are tanking, comedy is king, and Apatow is defining humor for this generation. His frank sex comedies have an innocent center: All that horniness aside, love, friendship, and commitment do matter.
2) STEVEN SPIELBERG (Well DUH!)
WHY? – No other filmmaker has a sharper understanding of how to arrange a story on a movie screen. Thirty-two years after inventing the Event Movie with Jaws, Spielberg isn’t just some Mt. Rushmore-like figure looming over Hollywood. He greenlit most of DreamWorks’ slate this year, handed to him by production head Adam Goodman. As a producer, he saw the blockbuster potential of Transformers when few others did and the star potential in Shia LaBeouf before the actor broke out in DreamWorks’ Disturbia. Not that he doesn’ t miss the mark sometimes. The public passed on Munich, and selling DreamWorks to Paramount turned out to have been a bad idea. But has any filmmaker in history shaped American culture more?
3) JAMES CAMERON
WHY? – He’s reinventing the technology of cinema and may alter the entire industry along with it. Ten years after Titanic made $1.8 billion worldwide, Cameron is at work on the futuristic Avatar, a top secret 3-D project involving a super-advanced stereoscopic technique (and a camera system he designed) that supposedly allows him to digitally manipulate actors into any shape he desires with even more startling realism than in Beowulf. Peter Jackson’ s effects team at Weta is involved, and Spielberg, Jackson, and a few others have popped in on Cameron to take a peek at the future.
4) ARI EMANUEL
WHY? – In just over a decade, he’s built Endeavor from the ground up, taken on the industry’s big four talent agencies, and made his the second-most powerful in town.
5) WILL SMITH (Don’t laugh, I think this is 100% bang on when you think about it)
WHY? – He has revitalized and redefined old-fashioned movie stardom in an era when movie stardom has become small and suspect. After hitting the scene in the mid-’80s as rapper Fresh Prince, then transitioning successfully to TV, Smith soon demonstrated surprising versatility and a knack for picking blockbusters that have given him license to do…well, anything, from Oscar-nominated drama (The Pursuit of Happyness) to event-film spectacle (I Am Legend).
6) MERYL STREEP
WHY? – She’s rewritten the rules. By age 50, actresses are supposed to be extinct. Even with 14 Oscar nominations, Streep should have been shuffled into granny roles by now. Instead, she’s blown the roof off ageism. The Devil Wears Prada grossed $125 million, making her more bankable at 57 than she was at 37. She’s doing some of her best work (Adaptation, The Hours) and redefining what middle age looks like. Most important, she’s opened the door for those behind her, giving Julia and Nicole and Reese a shot at careers beyond their first gray hairs.
7) TYLER PERRY
WHY? – When Hollywood studios passed on him, he decided to pass them by. For 10 years, Perry has built a dedicated black, pro-faith audience with his ”chitlin circuit” plays and parlayed himself into a powerful brand. Almost every movie he’s made — e.g., Diary of a Mad Black Woman, Why Did I Get Married? — has opened at No. 1, proving that his name above the title can generate millions. Now he’s using his clout to create a self-sustaining empire, including his own studio in Atlanta and a $200 million TV deal with TBS.
8) PETER RICE
WHY? – His impeccable taste and savvy business skills have transformed Fox Searchlight into the gold standard for studio specialty divisions. Together with distribution chief Stephen Gilula and marketing maven Nancy Utley, Rice sees the profit potential in unconventional films and turns low-budget indies into genre sensations (28 Days Later), culture-shifting comedies (Napoleon Dynamite), acting showcases (The Last King of Scotland), and Oscar bait (Sideways, this year’s Once and Juno).
9) DAVID HEYMAN
WHY? – As a Producer, he has expertly steered the highest-grossing global franchise in film history. Heyman secured the rights to the Harry Potter books in 1997 and has done just about everything right since, including bonding with author J.K. Rowling and wisely seeking her input. He helped find unexpected directors (e.g., Alfonso Cuarón, David Yates) who’ve kept things fresh. And he’s kept the cast intact through five films, without any of his three teenage stars succumbing to a Lohanesque episode.
10) JOHN KNOLL (I worship this guy)
WHY? – He designed some of the most groundbreaking computer-generated effects of this generation. In 1989 he helped conjure the morphing magic in James Cameron’s The Abyss, and he has overseen the effects on all three Star Wars prequels and the entire Pirates of the Caribbean franchise. Long after audiences forget that Orlando Bloom is even in Pirates, they’ll remember the startling octopus face of Davy Jones, a breakthrough in realistic animation. As studios increasingly depend on blockbusters to stay in the black, visual effects have become indispensable to their success. The industry has come to rely on ILM to blow audiences’ minds every time out of the gate. Thanks in large part to Knoll, it does.
SOME OTHER NOTABLES
13) GEORGE CLOONEY
14) JERRY BRUCKHEIMER
16) PETER JACKSON
17) WILL FERRELL
20) BEN STILLER
21) JOHNNY DEPP
27) MICHAEL MOORE
29) J.J. ABRAMS
33) ANGELINA JOLIE
34) SACHA BARON COHEN
37) GUILLERMO DEL TORO
45) CATE BLANCHETT
47) AMY POWELL (VP at Paramount who I dealt with when they shut down The Movie Blog )
50) BEN AFFLECK
WHY? – He learned from his mistakes. After bottoming out with his unholy trinity of Gigli, Jersey Girl, and Bennifer, Affleck did something few would dare: He disappeared. Two years later, he was a humble character actor in Hollywoodland; then he adapted and directed Gone Baby Gone with the assuredness of someone who’d been waiting for this shot his whole life.
So there you have it. It’s a very solid list if not perfect. If you’d like to read the whole list with all the explanations, head over to the EW article here.
