Owen Wilson’s Dark Side

Posted by Maggie Van Ostrand (maggie@filmschoolrejects.com) on August 29, 2007

Owen Cunningham Wilson’s suicide attempt of August 26th has been confirmed by TMZ and Extra, who accessed the 911 call allegedly made by Wilson’s younger brother, Luke.

Wilson, through his rep, has released a statement, “I respectfully ask that the media allow me to receive care and heal in private during this difficult time.” That means we shouldn’t ask if his wrists are healing or how many pills he actually took and how long had it taken for him to build up an immunization to them. We’re probably not entitled to ask him why he chose such a girly method.

Nonetheless, there’s something disarmingly honest about Owen’s outright attempt to plug himself, which tells the entire world the true meaning of low self esteem.

We wonder why he’s playing girly games like Lindsay, Britney, Paris, and Nicole, who appear to flaunt the “almost suicidal but not quite decided” act.

If you really want to whack yourself, why not do it in a dramatic way, one that attracts attention, like 40’s movie siren Lupe Valez who was found dead having drowned herself in the toilet.

You’ve gotta admit, when it comes to suicide, the stars of yesteryear knew how to do it and make it last. The big sleep for the big stars.

They say women rarely do themselves in the same way preferred by men, and generally choos a method that will leave their looks in tact. For instance, famed photog Diane Arbus seems to have used both favored female methods. She not only took pills, but also slashed her wrists, leaving her face in tact. Cheyenne Brando, on the other hand, did it the man’s way: she hanged herself, but only after several attempts to off herself the woman’s way: pills.

Carol Landis, another 40’s star, overdosed on sleeping pills when Rex Harrison dumped her; Peggy Entwistle who in 1932, jumped to her death from the H in the Hollywood sign; Capucine who starred with Peter Sellers in The Pink Panther jumped from her 8th floor Swiss apartment window leaving her estate to three cats; Kurt Cobain who left nothing to chance, blew his brains out, as did two of film and recording star Bing Crosby’s four sons; Spalding Gray who jumped off the Staten Island Ferry into the East River, notably influenced by his favorite film, Tim Burton’s Big Fish; Lois (”Three’s Company”) Hamilton who not only took pills but tied a plastic bag over her head in case she changed her mind; and inventive Poet Vachel Lindsay who simply drank a bottle of Lysol.

An imaginative female suicide was that of Virginia Woolf, who filled her pockets full of stones and walked into a river.

Not to mention “suicides” possibly unintentional; i.e., Elvis and Marilyn.

Here’s Owen, with The Darjeeling Limited coming out in a month, and Drillbit Taylor, Outsourced, and Marley and Me all coming out in 2008, surviving a romantic fling with Kate Hudson, and able to perform equally well in dramatic as well as comedic roles. What do you think he really wants out of life?

Someone who had influence over Wilson could have made an appointment for him with the greatest psychiatrist of them all, Sigmund Freud, except Freud succeeded in achieving the big sleep like the psycho star he was. Morphine. And that was before it became fashionable. We cannot imagine the advice he gave his patients.

Read more articles by Maggie Van Ostrand