comment #1

NotImpressedYet says ...

There might be ample evidence out there that Dunst is an idiot, but not knowing the captain of the enterprise is hardly that.

All I'm saying is that if you grew up without a TV (maybe she did, I don't know), your grasp of the Enterprise might be shaky enough to miss this question when put on the spot in front of a camera.

If it makes Wells feel any better, I think she's weird looking and has an irritating way about her.

comment #2

JoeGreenia says ...

It's generational though. Kids now don't know who William Holden is. I was killing time before a movie with some freinds of a freind a few years ago, just a few years younger, and none of them knew who Lee Marvin was. I thought they were shitting me at first, but they didn't know.

I don't who the kids on MTV are. The blonde girls? Is that called "The Hills"? I'm guessing. It's generational.

comment #3

arturobandini2 says ...

At my last job, I was instructed to remove a written reference to Holden Caulfield because my supervisor (a major network executive) didn't know who that was. So I changed the reference to "the hero of Catcher in the Rye" ... and, well, I bet you can guess. She'd never heard of that book, or J.D. Salinger, either. So the entire paragraph had to come out.

A very good friend worked at VH-1 a few years back, and his boss thought Lindsey Buckingham was a girl and Steve Nicks was a boy. Swear to God.

comment #4

The InSneider says ...

I'm 24 and I think most normal people my age have no fucking idea who Capt. Kirk was, who played him, or what the name of the ship was. You'd be lucky if they could even identify the logo from Star Trek. Also, I couldn't pick William Holden or Lee Marvin out of a lineup and I work at Variety. Sad, isn't it? On the flip side, I deserve credit for not watching the Hills or knowing what Audrina looks like.

comment #5

Jay T. says ...

Or you can just watch Dunst here and it gives you a pretty good idea: http://www.funnyhub.com/videos/pages/kirsten-dunst-helmut.html

comment #6

btwnproductions says ...

I was 24 in 1989. I was pretty up on things that were going on in the culture in 1949, 40 years before. I would think that a 24-year-old working at Variety would have some cultural literacy of what was happening in the late 60s, when Star Trek went off the air, or have some nodding acquaintance with the TV offshoots or film series, which would give you that very basic info. I thought that kind of awareness was essential to working at Variety, but perhaps I overvalue Variety.

comment #7

MDOC says ...

Can I vote for Captain Kirk in November, or am I just stuck praying to him?

comment #8

lazespud says ...

Congrats Jeff on showing everyone how old you are getting in such a public way.

Dunst might be as stupid as a box of rocks, but not knowing that kirk was the captain is not proof of anything. In fact I'd bet that reasonably high percentage of mid-20s Rhodes Scholars might have the same amount of trouble.

Zeitgeist and pop references evolve. They move on.

I'm really good at this stuff and am pretty quick with even really obscure pop culture references. But about 10 years ago one of my staff members where I worked used "Lions, and Tigers, and bears, oh my" once. I looked at her like she was a moron... "where did that come from?"

She looked at me like I was the moron, a moron to be pitied. "You've never seen the Wizard of Oz?"

And I hadn't. I've got a DVD collection of about 1,400 movies and have seen thousands more, but just never got interested in the Wizard of Oz and never watched it when it was on TV.

She told me that it was "like one of the most famous quotes ever". I told her she was crazy.

Of course there is hardly a week that goes by now where I don't see some reference to the quote, usually in the form of "Thing 1, Thing 2, Thing 3, oh my!". Clearly there had been just as many references out there before my learning about the Oz connection, but I just never noticed. Didn't make me an idiot. and neither does not knowing about Kirk mean that you should assume that Dunst is an idiot either.

comment #9

Chapman Carruthers says ...

My respect for Kirsten Dunst is higher now than it was before I read this article.

comment #10

frankbooth says ...

You're talking to a special kind of moron, btwnproductions. Every time I think I might be going too hard on him, he proves me wrong. He continually shocks and amazes be, to be honest.

Ps -- when I was 24 or 18 or even 16, I knew who The Marx Brothers were, and I sure as hell didn't grow up in the Thirties or Forties.

comment #11

Carl LaFong says ...

I guess it's my sad duty as a closet Trekkie to note that one of the earliest things I saw Dunst do was a STAR TREK episode, "Dark Page", back about 15 years ago. So I'm surprised she didn't say Picard, instead of Spock or Kirk.

I'll now crawl back into my parent's basement and play fizzbin with my inflatable "companion"...

comment #12

GeeseOPlenty says ...

I wrote a joke on my blog a while back, saying that I liked signing the invoices that the nice Gen-Y girl in my company gives to me because it makes me feel like Captain Kirk. (At the end of some episodes, he sits in his big chair while some mini-skirted ensign brings him something to sign.) I ended the entry saying, "The problem is, the nice Gen-Y girl probably has no idea who Captain Kirk is."

Later, she came up to me, having read the blog entry and said "Thanks for mentioning me." I said, "So, did you know who Captain Kirk is?" She said, "I had absolutely no idea."

comment #13

buck.swope says ...

i can beat that joegreenia. i was at best buy the other day trying to pick up a double disc of citizen kane on sale for $10 and couldn't find it. i asked the girl in the department for help and she had never heard of citizen kane OR orson welles. i wept openly and instead asked her to just point me to the latest kate hudson crapfest. for the record i am 39 and she was 24 (i almost asked her if she was retarded).

comment #14

JoeGreenia says ...

And we have it all at our fingertips. How many mouse clicks would it take to get Citizen Kane, or anything else, rolling on this thing? A dozen? Maybe two dozen and some light typing?

comment #15

Craptastic says ...

Jeeze, even the biggest web jockey geeks over at AICN would've forgiven her for something like that. (insert because they need to get laid joke)

comment #16

DarthCorleone says ...

James Tiberius Kirk is god, but I'll still cut the adorable Kirsten Dunst plenty of slack.

The sad truth is that we're just getting old. My roommate has a much younger girlfriend, and it's become a regular ritual that when she is at our house she'll shock us with her ignorance of some standard of my generation's pop culture.

comment #17

gruver1 says ...

Wells to Lazespud: Claiming that people who don't know who Captain Kirk are clueless ages me? If Captain Kirk is such a mystery among younger GenX and GenYers, how come JJ Abrams and the Paramount guys are betting $150 million plus marketing on next summer's Star Trek. You're telling me they committed that kind of money to a movie with the presumption that many if not most under 30s have even heard of Captain Kirk? You;re not thinking this through. Kirsten Dunst may not be dumb as a box of rocks, but one measure of rank stupidity is someone who lives in his/her own world to the extent that even basic cultural information doesn't get through.

comment #18

Cadavra says ...

A couple of years ago, I was in line at the Grove waiting to get my ticket torn. The woman ahead of me asked her companion, "What's FREEDOM WRITERS about?" I cheekily leaned forward and said, "It's DANGEROUS MINDS with Hilary Swank instead of Michelle Pfeiffer." The kid tearing tickets looked at me and said, "Who's Michelle Pfeiffer?"

And about 20 feet behind him was a huge display for HAIRSPRAY!

comment #19

Mr. Muckle says ...

gruver, a primary sign of intelligence is not how many nuggets of useless trivia one has on the tip of the tongue, it is an understanding of the essence of knowledge itself. What you don't know is infinite, what you do know is a drop in the bucket. Only a supremely unintelligent person would dis someone as seemingly decent (and, yes, attractive) as Kirsten Dunst for blowing (metaphorically) Jim Kirk, and try to blow that up as friggin' meaningful cultural background. But, hey, I don't click on H-E to be challenged, either.

And back to poli-sci, Sarah Palin is not stupid because she doesn't know some things, she's stupid because she thinks she does.

comment #20

D.Z. says ...

Spock is pretty damn close for a girl of her generation. I'd still take Dunst over Palin for co-President, anyway.

arturo: "At my last job, I was instructed to remove a written reference to Holden Caulfield because my supervisor (a major network executive) didn't know who that was. So I changed the reference to "the hero of Catcher in the Rye" ... and, well, I bet you can guess. She'd never heard of that book, or J.D. Salinger, either."

Just tell her he's like the 40's equivalent to Tyler Durden.

Jeff: As Carl pointed out, there have been other Star Trek shows since the original, so you can be old enough to see those and still be familiar with the idea, if not the source material. It's part of why all these Marvel flicks do so well.

comment #21

Jack South P.I. says ...

I remember seeing Dunst on an edition of Celebrity Jeopardy when she was still a teenager and she didn't know who wrote Interview with a Vampire. I'm not kidding. She was in the movie and Anne Rice wrote the screenplay. (Or at least was credited with writing it.) Anne Rice's name was on the script that she spent months with and she didn't know who wrote it. She's and idiot. But she's a good actor when given the right material. Interesting how that works out sometimes.

comment #22

jesse says ...

Jack South hits upon a key point: since when would our default setting for actors be that they're especially smart and alert? Some seem that way, of course. But I dunno, I never think of acting as a profession that attracts our sharpest minds at least in the traditional sense.

Dunst doesn't really have an aura of exceptional intelligence.. but it doesn't really bother me, and not just because she's attractive (it certainly doesn't bother me the way it bothers most women my age -- I'm 28 and I'd say fully 90 percent of the women I know openly despise Dunst on just about every level). She's underrated as an actress, perhaps because she doesn't come off particularly smart. Then again, Jennifer Aniston, to me, is incapable of projecting real intelligence in any of her roles (even when she's passable, that element doesn't shine through), and I don't think there's as much hatred for her as there is for Dunst.

I was surprised to read a review for How to Lose Friends and Alienate People that said Dunst was disappointing because she doesn't have much facility with comedy. I find her funny, and not in a condescending "because she's so bad" way -- she's funny in Eternal Sunshine, Bring It On, and even has some funny line-readings in the Spider-Man pictures.

And Jeff, sorry, I think you're wrong about Captain Kirk being a particularly ingrained figure on the level with Superman or Lincoln. I know a lot of fairly intelligent people around Dunst's age who probably don't have much Star Trek awareness. Are they necessarily the type of people *I* would hang out with? Maybe not. But I don't think of them as buzzing dim bulbs, either. Paramount may be investing $150 mil, but the last Kirk-centric Trek movie came out in 1994, and the last Trek movie of any sort bombed at the box-office in 2002. Think of how old a twentysomething was at those times.

comment #23

Nicanor says ...

She should have said Pope Alexander.

comment #24

lazespud says ...

Lazespud to Wells --

Jeff, I didn't mean to make an "old" reference to you, even though I clearly did exactly that (sorry). I meant to say that time is marching on and cultural touchstones for people change... for all of us. It's hard to gauge what will stick around longer than it's initial fame...

I'm sure my great grandparents knew what the hell 23 skidoo meant, but I don't.

I remember going to see AC/DC and Judas Priest in the mid 80s, when I was a teen, and seeing a few old guys in their 30s and 40s at the show (and thinking they looked somewhat pathetic). Now when I take my niece to some of these shows I find that I'm that old pathetic guy. And the funny thing is, it's the same bands: I took her to see Black Sabbath and Iron Maiden, and next month we're going to see AC/DC.

What's interesting is that she can hold her own with certain music references from the 80s (she's 15), but I'll bet she doesn't know Captain Kirk. And I'm a web developer and spend 60+ hours on the web a week (WAY too much time on HE!), but I just don't go for the social network sites like myspace and facebook. When she starts talking about those sites I just begin to feel 100 year old.

But let's face it, we all agree that there are canonical pop culture references that we would expect the majority of young people to get; The Beatles, Elvis, the Kennedy Assassination, etc. You're saying that knowing who Kirk is should be on that list, and I'm not disagreeing with you. It SHOULD be on the list, but I'm not surprised that it possibly isn't.

The fact that she at least knew the name Spock showed at least a smidge of awareness.

comment #25

JoeGreenia says ...

A buddy of mine told me the other day he tried to introduce his eight-year-old to our beloved classic Trek, but the kid wouldn't give it the time of day.

Still, spending $150M trying to kick-start a franchise that has generated billions (merchandise inclusive) is pretty sensible. If the kids don't know who Kirk is, making the introduction is worth a try.

Star Trek has a hell of a lot more traction than Sherlock Holmes or Tarzan and they're trying to pimp those rides.

comment #26

Aris P says ...

Hey InSneider.... actually no, you don't get any credit for anything. No one is saying you need to know Holden's or Marvin's film biography, but you should know OF them. Why are you in this business? Business affairs hopeful? Right.

comment #27

frankbooth says ...

In other words, Mirajeff has never seen Sunset Boulevard, Stalag 17, Sabrina, Bridge on the River Kwai, The Wild Bunch (!) The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, Point Blank, The Dirty Dozen...

...oh, come ON.

Delta Force? Bet you saw that one on cable growing up. Damien: Omen 2? Simpsons parody of Paint Your Wagon?

Seriously? And you write about movies? Why do you come here to trumpet your ignorance? Honestly, why?

comment #28

KC says ...

Think there's a little more room to get swotty over Rockabilly Granpa Simpson not knowing what Revolutionary Road is about, all the while favoring genocide for anyone who has ever owned a pair of sweatpants, than there is with respect to Kristen Dunst not being able to reel off the name of the lead character from a shitty old people sci-fi show.

comment #29

RDP says ...

"Ps -- when I was 24 or 18 or even 16, I knew who The Marx Brothers were, and I sure as hell didn't grow up in the Thirties or Forties."

When I was a young teenager, I learned who Groucho was, at least, by watching Nickelodeon late at night (before they called that block of programming "Nick at NIte"). They played a lot of early television shows like The Dick Van Dyke Show, The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis, I Married Joan (with Jim Backus), Burns & Allen, The Life of Riley, and Groucho's You Bet Your Life.

Between that and the regular syndicated stuff on television in the afternoons after school (Leave it to Beaver, Gilligan's Island, The Brady Bunch, Star Trek, etc.), it wasn't too difficult to keep up with a good deal of pop culture references from 20 and 30 years earlier.

But I get that not a lot of kids are insomniac TV zombies like I was.

comment #30

Jimmycrackcorn says ...

"Also, I couldn't pick William Holden or Lee Marvin out of a lineup and I work at Variety. Sad, isn't it?"

Yes, it is.

comment #31

The InSneider says ...

Aris P, are you slow or something? Of course I know OF William Holden and Lee Marvin and can even tell you some of the movies they starred in but if you told me to pick them out of a lineup I couldn't do it with 100% certainty. I'm just saying that Dunst is not an idiot for not knowing the captain of the fucking Enterprise. she obviously knew OF the show star trek and she knew spock, so she passes the idiot test. if you worked in the entertainment biz for over 10 years like she has and hadn't even heard of star trek, then you might be retarded. but her knowledge of star trek is probably equal to if not a little bit less than mine. i know the basics of Star Trek but I can't tell you the ins and outs of the fucking show. Beyond Shatner and Nimoy, I don't think I can name anyone else off the top of my head. it doesn't make me retarded, nor does it date wells. p.s. i know abrams' star trek will do big biz because of all the trekkies out there and it's set in space and has jj's name on it and a cool young cast and neato effects and a big marketing campaign, but i seriously doubt it'll do as well as the studio hopes and even though i haven't seen a lick of footage from it. i doubt it'll be better than MI3. and yea, i thought that was the best one.

comment #32

PastePotPete says ...

It goes both ways really. I worked in a theater tearing tickets in Marina del Rey the weekend the first X-Men movie came out and got asked at least a dozen times by over-40s what the movie was about. They were usually going to see something else but wondered what the big draw was.

They did not know it was based on a comic book, that it was sort of sci-fi themed, who any of the actors were, what a mutant was, etc. Try explaining the plot without those factors to give a frame of reference.

And that comic was 36 years old at that point. I'm perfectly willing to bet a lot of people didn't know who Spider-Man was before the movie.

It makes me worried about the box office fate of Watchmen to a degree, although it's tempered by the fact that the commercials will have enough eye candy to get the dummies in.

comment #33

Rich S. says ...

The problem with today's kids is that they didn't grow up on all those Bugs Bunny cartoons that featured caricatures of the old Hollywood elite. I'm half serious. Now, Bing Crosby and Frank Sinatra I knew, but I probably wouldn't have learned who Eddie Cantor, Jimmy Durante and certainly Jerry Colonna were without them.

Captain Kirk is a cultural touchstone, but certainly not on the level of Superman, Lincoln or Jesus.

comment #34

JapAdapters says ...

Not knowing who Captain Kirk is would be a lot more understandable if William Shatner wasn't still in the mainstream, but he is. She works in his industry. His wife died famously. They're making a big budget Star Trek. And none of this should have led her to ask "Who is the Priceline guy?" or made the connection that he was famous for being a famous character? It's not like she's some kid off the street.

Then again, I managed a video store in the early-mid-90s and all the kids that came in hadn't seen Star Wars, didn't know what it was, and seemed entirely uninterested when I suggested it ... until Lucas re-released them on video, at which point that generation was in the know.

comment #35

dixiedugan says ...

I'd be more worried if she didn't know who wrote the Gettysburg Address.

comment #36

Pelham123 says ...

To PastePotPete -- Re: "Watchmen". I was at the Borders in Hollywood over the weekend and they had an entire endcap stocked floor to ceiling with "Watchmen" books. This book/movie seem to be slowly creeping into the general public's eye. It's the one book my non-comic book reading friends know and, if nothing else, bought & tried to read it. Whether or not that translates into box office I don't know.

comment #37

Rich S. says ...

Pre-existing knowledge of a property is not absolutely essential if it the film is marketed correctly. Iron Man has always been considered a "lesser" character in the Marvel pantheon (and certainly almost unknown outside comic book fans), but look how well that turned out.

comment #38

JapAdapters says ...

Iron Man is hardly a lesser Marvel character. He was one of the early Marvel characters, was/is in the Avengers, has had cartoons, etc. How much that translates to mainstream knowledge, I don't know, but he's a very well known and prominent Marvel character.

comment #39

Rich S. says ...

Within the Marvel Universe, I would agree with you. But Iron Man's not the "Big 3" (Captain America, Spider-Man, Hulk) and his popularity in the mainstream was minuscule compared to Batman, Superman and Wonder Woman.

Along with Thor and Silver Surfer, he was always my favorite comic book character. I just don't think he was well known outside comics circles.

Iron Man's very well adapted to a technological age and now the cat is out of the bag.

comment #40

vp19 says ...

It's generational though. Kids now don't know who William Holden is.

Agreed -- and I'm not going to knock Kirsten Dunst for not knowing Captain Kirk. Did you see "The Cat's Meow"? I think we can safely say Kirsten didn't grow up with any knowledge of Marion Davies, but she evidently did her homework and captured her essence brilliantly..

comment #41

RpD says ...

For 40 somethings to be asking what 'X-Men' is about, just proves that some cultural references are meaningless unless you live in circles that value them.
Being 50 and having read "comic books", it's a bit amazing to me that 40 somethings don't know the X-Men. I'm betting K. Dunst isn't SciFi oriented, and even if she is, she obviously found Spock interesting and Kirk not... Spock has permeated farther; Kirk... well, they do parodies of him... which just look like bad acting if you don't know Kirk (and no, I don't think he was a bad actor).
One really has to wonder about the 'insular' lives that some of the rich/famous lead... (besides our own, whether it be on a farm, in a ghetto, or an ethnic block, etc) ...many live in the 'Entertainment Tonight' world, others reject it completely and, in their off-time, get as far away from 'Hollywood' as they can.
Does Paris Hilton really have any concept of the many things that everyday people recognize? When you go from one 'event' to another... you don't live the life of the majority of 'consumers'. You may not watch 'network' tv or read newspapers... except for Variety. Paris may only know Wal-Mart because of her 'show'... which would seem to be to be fairly offensive in concept... ('slumming'), but...whatever.
If you work for Variety, you really should attempt to know the (fucking) business... from prior years, including picking Holden and Marvin out of a lineup... but I'm still learning too... names for character actors. Knowledge is power and promotion... hmmm. But these days, slimming the product (depth) and raising the price/style is how you increase revenue. Things aren't what they used to be.
The rich/famous lack of knowledge is as hard to fathom as our lack of knowing their constantly 'on' lifestyle... and why someone's life's minutiae matters to the lowest common denominator public, and the rest of us sometimes, I dunno. ;) But they keep getting asked these questions... they keep taking these inane meaningless photos... so I guess it starts to matter to $ome.
However, anyone having a cow about someone not knowing Kirk, even when they're in the entertainment business... needs a valium.
The pertinent reference for this topic is the Beloit College Mindset List (http://www.beloit.edu/mindset)... the world as it is now known to college 'first-years'... you can even choose the year (2004 might have been Dunst's entering year, born in '82).
Lastly... intelligence is measured in different ways. Making shallow assessments of others doesn't take much intelligence...oops, sorry. ;)

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