Leonardo DiCaprio’s spirit age

As noted in the open about Emma Stone’s Vogue cover profile and also a couple of weeks ago in my essay about the 20th anniversary of Jennifer Aniston’s Vanity Fair cover story in September 2005 and how we will never see an interview like that again, the cultural value of magazine cover features with A-list celebrities has plummeted. And here we have another example – Leonardo DiCaprio in Esquire interviewed and photographed by Paul Thomas Anderson. 

They are promoting their upcoming film, One Battle After Another, which is coming out on September 26th and since it’s PTA and Leo, plus Benicio del Toro and Sean Penn, it could be in conversation at the Oscars. It’ll be interesting to see how Leo approaches the campaign, if the film is a contender. During the last campaign, for Killers of the Flower Moon, his energy was focused less on himself and more in support of Lily Gladstone, which was a good look for him. Curious to see if he cares to go for another one for himself this time, or if he’s not all that interested since he’s already won and decides to push in favour of the film and his director instead. Campaigning for an acting award would require him to get out there and hustle in the spotlight in a way that he’s never enjoyed. 

Which brings us back to the promotional efforts for One Battle After Another and this Esquire interview. He would have been much more amenable to it because PTA was doing it and not a journalist. So the result is a conversation about craft and industry, and I’m sure cinephiles will be into it, but you can’t tell me that this is entertaining. And I’ll fight you if you insist that it doesn’t have to be entertaining. Why are we here, why are THEY here, if not to entertain. Reading about a director and their actor while they’re promoting their movie in fashion and lifestyle should be entertaining. This is the f-cking business. 

PTA is given a few suggested questions by the magazine. He chooses not to ask probably most of them. The one he does ask is the one that’s getting the most attention – it’s about Leo’s age:

Anderson: I’m going to ask you a question, and you’re going to answer as quickly as you can. If you didn’t know how old you are, how old are you right now?

DiCaprio: Thirty-two.

Anderson: Good answer. What you’ll have to do is investigate what happened when you were thirty-two, and then you’re going to discover and uncover why that was your answer. Here’s how that relates to your character in the film: He fell in love with a woman named Perfidia. She broke his heart into a million pieces, put it back together, smashed it again, put it back together, and smashed it once more for good measure. She left him stuck in time, unable to move forward. What’s inevitable with that broken heart is to sit around with it for a long time and stew in it. All you do is stay in one place. By the way, my answer was twenty-seven.

The first question is a good one, the problem is that there’s no follow-up! Yes, it’s funny that we are now reading headlines and tweets about how Leo justifies never dating anyone who’s out of her 20s but an actual reporter would not have given him an out and related to his character in the film and then just let the subject drop. 

They do talk about age again when PTA throws an Esquire question out there about whether or not Leo turning 50 brought about a natural time for reflection. It’s a well-designed question, from proper journalists, to better understand how one of Hollywood’s Peter Pans, whose image from youth has been preserved in technicolour, is experiencing maturity and middle age. The question was an attempt to open that door. PTA is not interested in that door because he does not engage in that part of the discussion. Leo talks about his mother giving no f-cks as she ages and that he wants to be the same – and then PTA basically just goes, “yeah”, and they move on. Which makes it that much funnier that the cover of the magazine is “Leo unfiltered” when, well, this sh-t is very much filtered.