I haven't seen the T.H.S. with SS in it (serves me right for never getting a TV Guide), but it strikes me, from what I have read elsewhere, that he's been on the defensive in Hollywood since Above the Law was made. That can make someone pretty cranky, after 15+ years of being on the receiving end of all that s**t.
He strikes me as someone who is really uncomfortable with certain aspects of fame, and (warning: speculation coming up) what may come across as arrogance may actually be his own discomfort expressed as arrogance because he hasn't figured out any better way to deal with it. And, as with any person in that position, he's probably surrounded by sychophants who wouldn't *dare* tell him he's misbehaving because they want to keep their jobs (/end speculation).
How he deals with his family is his business. We're on the outside; we don't know what went on inside.
Plugging his products? Hey, he's got six kids to support.
When I was browsing through the gallery, I came across a magazine clipping whose caption said that the accompanying photograph was taken at his 50th birthday party. He had invited people he knew in Hollywood, presumably people he had worked with, people who likely had made money off him from being in his films - and no one came.
That had to hurt.
I actually feel sorry for the guy - his personal life, his professional life, his spiritual life - none of it seems to be giving him any joy (this is the view from outside, I hasten to add, since all I have to go on is a paucity of interviews and a plethora of photographs), except from time to time when that famous smile suddenly erupts. I'm certainly not qualified to sit in judgement of his moral character. I can wonder, "what was he thinking?" when he took up with the family nanny, a girl barely out of her teens and 24 years younger than he was (he's not the only one to do that - Robin Williams did the same thing, and he's not being slagged, well, any more). But I wasn't there - and he isn't talking (unless he said something on T.H.S.). And what business is it of mine anyway, if in the end *he's* found some happiness in one corner of his life?
I can speculate about his character all I want - I study character and observe behaviour, it's part of what I do as a writer, and I can draw this or that conclusion from the outside, from what I see, but would it be accurate? For example, I notice that he did not have a weight problem before taking up with Arissa, but since becoming involved with her he's ballooned. As I writer, I can speculate as to why that is - but it'll be a fiction, as I suspect it is with a lot of other people's conclusions, regarding his character, or behaviour, and what we end up seeing printed in the paper as gospel truth - from the point of view of the writer, on the outside, and not Steven himself.
The trouble is, we have a certain expectation of how we think he - and people in his position - should behave, and when he doesn't live up to that expectation, it's somehow *his* fault, forgetting, of course, he had *no* idea we were expecting something else other than what he gave us.
It's easy to sit on the outside and make judgements from the safety of our own lives. Not so easy to be *in* the life and have to live it under a microscope, where every bad act is exaggerated to prove the theory and good acts ignored and hidden from view.
Whew.
He is a special man, we all know it...
