Three Reasons to Like Justin Theroux That Have Nothing To Do With You Know Who And Everything To Do With #Writing @Ellemagazine

I’ve always liked Justin Theroux as an actor, but I had no idea he was an accomplished writer until I read a profile of the actor in a recent issue of Elle. Now I like him as a writer because you know, being one myself, we are often partial to one another. So without further ado, three reasons to like Justin Theroux that have nothing to do with his famous girlfriend, who shall remain nameless out of sympathy for him constantly being attached to her and cheated of his separate identity like he had no career or life before her. Yes *gasp* I know that sentence was way too long.

One, he can successfully write funny. According to the Elle piece: Theroux cowrote 2008’s action comedyTropic Thunder, which made $188 million worldwide and earned Robert Downey Jr. an Oscar nomination. He also wrote 2010’s Iron Man 2, which took in $624 million, and cowrote Tom Cruise’s 2012 big-budget hair-metal spoof, Rock of Ages. I can’t vouch for Tropic Thunder or Rock of Ages. I refuse to see the first because Robert D’s in blackface, and I rebuke that bullshit on principle. I haven’t seen the latter because bad hair and that kind of rock music make me want to throw myself headfirst into an Erykah Badu CD.

Two, he’s a rebel at heart. “Acting,” Theroux says, in the Elle piece, “is a job of permission. Someone has to give you permission to do it. But I have started to be like, ‘I only want to do things that I want to do,’ and writing has afforded me the luxury. Being handed a well-thought-out, beautifully written piece of material that I don’t have to affect at all, except for performing it.… It’s a joy to read something I have no desire whatsoever to change.” Writing, on the other hand? “Writing is hard.” Anyone who wants to make it on their own terms, I salute you, support you and am watching you closely for tips and tricks so I can do the same damn thing.

And, he’s got some balls, you know, beyond the obvious ones. I may think white people in blackface is by and large completely fucking ignorant and repulsive, but it took guts to put it out there. “There’s a certain point where political correctness becomes extremely conservative and it skews to a point where it becomes humorless,” he says, in the profile. “Instead, he cares that the point is incisive, the joke is funny, the words precise. “You have to be sure of what your target is, who the joke is on…I remember being so bummed out. They literally picketed us. It was like, ‘Really? Satire is allowed to do this!’”

And three, like any good writer, bad writing gives him the scratch, metaphorically speaking. “As befits a writer, Theroux’s biggest beef with the celebrity press is the paucity of their storytelling skills. “I can’t get over how terrible the narrative is, just how poorly written it is,” he says, in the profile. “It’s worse than a telenovela. It’s so dramatic. Like, ‘They’re broken up, they’re together, they’re storming out, storming in, rushing out, rushing in.’ They make every celebrity look like a schizophrenic.” Um, Justin? No, no, I won’t go there, it’s too easy. LOL

If that’s not enough for you: he’s uber fit, wears a ton of black, is not a pretty boy, can grow a full beard and rides a motorcycle. Oh, and he can act.