To steal a line from Homer Simpson: "Movie stars - is there nothing they can't do?". When they're not playing the hero on screen, it seems, they're playing the hero in the real world. Over recent years the Hollywood PR machine has churned out so many Superman stories that you'd be forgiven for wondering if every fireman, mechanic and law enforcer in the Los Angeles region has gone out of business. Now it appears that directors have got in on the act as well. When Joaquin Phoenix foolishly flipped his car near Sunset Boulevard earlier this week he was not rescued by the emergency services, nor even by the Green Lantern. Instead, the man who whipped him out of the wreckage was none other than Werner Herzog.
Cynics might wonder if all this is good to be true. How convenient that the story occurs on the same week that Phoenix is nominated for an Oscar and Herzog has a new film (Grizzly Man) out. By the same token, there is something just a shade too cartoonish about the off-screen exploits of some of our more high-profile actors. Take McConnaughey, who reportedly saved a damsel from a ravening coyote. Or Hanks who just happened to be jogging on the beach when he heard the screams of a drowning man, then promptly dived into the ocean to fish him out. Harrison Ford once swooped down in his helicopter to rescue a boy scout who had become lost in Yellowstone National Park.
It is the logic of Hollywood that nothing succeeds like excess. So it follows that the bigger the star, the bolder the acts. Who cares if Vin Diesel once spirited an entire family from a car that had somehow combusted on the LA freeway? That's a mere trifle to a truly A-list movie star. Why, Tom Cruise has been variously reported to have saved a woman involved in a hit and run accident, plucked two suffocating children out of a crowd and rescued a party of revellers from aboard a burning boat. One assumes that these adventures did not all occur on the same day. But with a man of Cruise's calibre you wouldn't bet against it.
Personally I hope these stories are true. They tap into my innately childish view of Hollywood. They make it sound like a place where cars and boats are forever blowing up, where little kids get lost in the woods and beautiful women are menaced by ravenous beasts but where help is always at hand and where the heroes are not harrassed, underpaid jobsworths but perma-tanned demigods who wade into the fire with grins on their faces and not a hair out of place.
In the meantime, full marks to Herzog for grabbing himself a piece of the action. Whether or not he is able to kick-start a trend - the director as hero - seems open to question. But on a day when fellow film-maker Lee Tamahori faced charges for allegedly dressing himself as a woman to work as a prostitute Herzog's profession obviously needs all the good PR it can get.
