GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #228: CLASSIC HOLLYWOOD AND SOCIAL MEDIA

I forgot who said it, but I remember hearing someone talking about the difference between contacting celebrities now and contacting them back in the classic Hollywood days. Way back when, you had to physically write a letter, be it by hand or typewriter, and you had to snail mail it to the studio. There a representative of the celebrity in question would type a phony letter, sign a picture for the celebrity and send the lot back to the fan. Now all you have to do is send them a tweet on Twitter. Sometimes you get ignored, but sometimes you get lucky and they respond.


Whoever mentioned this didn't take it to the next logical step: what if classic Hollywood had social media?


You fuckin' KNOW that Valentino would be sending out dick pics via DM. I would love to see Errol Flynn's drunken midnight tweets. I have a sneaking suspicion that the Duke would outrage millions by the far right things he'd post. Everyone else would probably be equally outraged by Bogie's views. I like to think that Rock Hudson would have been a gay rights activist. Perhaps someone would have been able to see Marilyn Monroe's problems and would have saved her life. Chaplin wouldn't be considered a genius today; he'd have been busted for his very active interest in underage girls instead.


Holy shit, could you imagine if Sinatra Periscoped his legendary parties? Jane Russell's Instagram would be on fucking fire. What if the Hollywood 10 protested on their Facebook pages? A lot of those guys were talented, and I'm pretty sure they could come up with just the perfect barb to hurl in McCarthy's direction.


Extend it to musicians. Images of John Bonham trashing hotel rooms would be all over the internet. Jimi's sex tape would be all over Pornhub (like it is today!). John Lennon and Paul McCartney sniping each other on Facebook. (And I'd bet even money that there would have been a Lennon/Ono sex tape. Maybe there is, but it hasn't surfaced yet.)


How about writers? Am I the only one who would have loved Jack Kerouac's blog? Or how about F. Scott Fitzgerald's? I can see Hunter S. Thompson posting videos of him shooting at high grade explosives on YouTube. Could you imagine the wonderfully depressing and soul-bearing posts Sylvia Plath would have sent out into the world? Shit, I know it's earlier than everyone else I've listed, but goddammit! I think Mark Twain would have been the Patton Oswalt of his time.


Presidents! Do you think JFK would be able to control himself with Snapchat nudes? Nixon wouldn't have needed Watergate to destroy him; he'd just need to do drunken live posts on Facebook. Everyone would have known about FDR's disability. Everyone would follow Teddy Roosevelt in much the same way everyone follows Sir Patrick Stewart and Sir Ian McKellan when they're hanging out together, doing knight shit.


If you don't think all of this would be crazy, let me remind you that this happened recently. Yes, Charlie Sheen, star of MAJOR LEAGUE, is saying that he'd pitch for the Indians if they asked him to. Shit doesn't get more surreal than that.


Unless you give social media to classic Hollywood. Let's build a time machine, shall we?