Remember when Brandon Routh tried to make a comeback in Hollywood after basically disappearing after Superman

Brandon sooooo Hot and Pretty!!

I wanted to swallow his babies-suck on his nipples'

I watched an episode of a horrible NBC show a couple of weeks ago just because he was on it. He looked good. Unfortunately he didn't take his shirt off.

I think Brandon Routh and Christopher Reeve are the most gorgeous Superman.

I wanted to like his short-lived comedy Partners, but he was the only one in the show I liked.

No OP I don't remember. Never saw him in anything.

WHET him?

He should have done porn.

A very talented and handsome actor.

WTF?? He's been married to a WOMAN since 2007?

I genuinely thought he was gay and out.

I want to know all the dirty details on what he did for the superman role. Did he top? Bottom? Vers? Oral?

Did he go back to fucking people once his career stalled to try to become a star again? Or did he think he was too good to do that again even though he's a nobody in the industry?

The post-Superman blackballing was just so odd given that he doesn’t seem like a troublemaker. I wonder if he secretly became an addict and was not employable (missed auditions, meetings, need to pass physicals, etc.). Hollywood tends to invest on people whom it has already seen thru one big movie. For example, Armie Hammer got Man from UNCLE lined up right after he did Lone Ranger even though the prerelease consensus was that that film was going to be one of the biggest flops in history (it was.)

Anyway, there’s always some idiot on here who doesn’t understand that BRYAN SINGER ONLY WANTS TO HAVE SEX WITH TEENAGERS and Routh would not have only been too old at time of Superman’s casting, but at 6’3 with a muscular build, completely undesirable to Singer’s sexual tastes.

I have termed people like R10 “Neurotypical Caucasian-Biased Gay Bottom Projection Syndrome”, who basically operate under the presumption that everyone has under the same mainstream, Caucasian-centric sexual tastes and that a physically impressive, dominating Caucasian male is the ideal for everybody.

I'd suck on them Caucasoid titties until there was not a drop of milk left. What beauties they are, and of course totally wasted on a frau.

He's no Klinton Spilsbury.

One of the hottest guys in Hollywood. A shame his career didn't take off like it should have. Wish we could have gotten a proper sex scene in an R rated film where he shows his ass.

Sexy guy

[quote]Neurotypical Caucasian-Biased Gay Bottom Projection Syndrome

Brilliant! Ought to be an instant DL classic.

Ugh so hot. His personality doesn't know it though, like Ryan Reynolds.

[...]

He did look great shirtless, I'll give him that. But his face/head have always looked artificial to me. Plastic, or something.

Plastic in what way, R19?

I love white guys with black hair.

Hollywood rarely makes stars out of fair skinned men with black hair. I have no idea why. It was basically just Keanu for twenty years and then Adam Driver. Actors who fit the bill came along (Wes Bentley, Ben Barnes) but never caught on for various reasons (drug problems, no talent).

Anyway I do think his coloring and the fact that his hair is so thick is why he’s so mesmerizing.

Midjourney portrait by George Platt Lynes:

I say this every time there is a thread about him. What happened to him after Superman was wrong. There were many reasons why Superman failed and none of them were Brandon Routh.

Superman Returns did not actually fail at the box office, I believe it was even a top five movie that year. So again a total mystery why he disappeared, other than Routh saying he simply felt too good for the projects he was offered which were horror movies and his career stumbling because of that. I have no idea who was his agent at the time but I assume he wasn’t picked up by CAA or WM and that may have hurt his career getting airborne.

Yeah, he got a raw deal over Superman. It was not a flop at all. With all the money they wasted over the 19 years in between movies trying to bring Superman back, they wanted all that debt to be erased with this movie, which it did, but didn't leave a ton of "new" money left over. They made it a continuation of the original films but with a new actor, when they should have positioned him as a new story arc with an origin story, which is exactly what they ended up doing with Henry Cavill. Plus, Disney's Pirates 2 came out that same summer and made a billion dollars which made the superman box office take look bad in comparison. But those weren't his problems and if they would have made the sequel like they should have it probably would have made a ton of money and gotten everything back on track.

[...]

I’d eat his ass.

R26 nailed it.

Hollywood still punishes them because of Rock Hudson, R22.

An odd actor. He was actually perfect for the role of Superman (he's basically a tall, well built Midwestern boy with a Boy Scout attitude; but he seemed so much like Christopher Reeve he seemed like an Uncanny Valley re-creation of Reeve. He took a while to land on his feet, but I was impressed with him as ray Palmer/the Atom on "Legends of Tomorrow"--he was charming in the role. But what to cast him as now?

R22 Hat AI pic. Looks like Dan Cortese

Hot, that is…

I love Brandon Routh, he's basically my perfect man. He looks as beautifully fuckable now as he did back then. Don't know what is the best possible outcome for him right now, I guess a recurring part on a popular show or landing a main cast role on a new show that becomes a hit but I wish him the best!

He needs to be cast as a hero battling his brother who is also his dad who would be played by James Franco.

I’m seeing it as a 1980s Miami drug trade thriller.

I mean...he was decent but doesn't come close to Cavill. Cavill is better than Reeve and Routh rolled into one.

For a plucked from obscurity actor like Brandon, you are only as good as your team (whose own self-interest is guiding them) makes you, I wonder if post-Superman there was some disconnect between what his expectation was and what his team understood he could do as he is a limited actor. It may have been a delusion of grandeur thing which does happen (Alex Pettyfer, John Boyega, oddly Christopher Reeve who turned down EVERYTHING including Raiders…) And those actors actually have off-screen charisma, where Routh seems kind of boring.

Christopher Reeve is actually responsible for Richard Gere’s career, having turned down American Gigolo and Pretty Woman.

R37, Richard Gere’s career was well on its way before those movies were made, especially “Pretty Woman”.

I think that gif is from "Enlisted," a one-season military sitcom starring hotties Geoff Stults, Parker Young, and a third brother all stationed at the same Army base.

Brandon plays the ex-husband of the girl the third (middle) brother is dating.

I vaguely remember "Partners." Michael Urie is exhausting.

I haven't seen a more handsome man.

[quote]Nobody blamed him for Superman Returns. Nobody owed him an A-list career after that, either. The exposure alone was enough to propel him to heights most actors could only dream of, and where he landed was entirely up to him and his agent.

I don't agree. I think he was blamed for Superman Returns. When that should have fallen to Bryan Singer and the story, which wasn't very good, and casting.

But you are right, no one owed him an A-list career. Like Christopher Reeve, his biggest credit was a soap. My guess is he didn't have really good representation and after Superman Returns failed to blow him up, none of the big agencies wanted him.

And quite frankly, the trouble with the Superman story in current times is that he's a boy scout and people don't want that in superheroes any longer. They dirtied him up in the Cavill version, but even Cavill's version wasn't all that great. Maybe the upcoming reset will be watchable.

I remember when he debuted that I actually thought at the time that he had very bad publicity.

A few years later I found out something very peculiar.

Apparently Simon Halls of all people , out of alllll the publicists in Hollywood, was his publicist. Simon Halls whose own boyfriend at the time would have been Matt Bomer who lost the Superman role a few years before. (Halls was friendly socially with Singer, attended his infamous parties, so Singer probably hooked him up with Routh.). So it’s kind of an odd coincidence that Halls becomes Brandon Routh’s publicist, and the publicity is bad. I mean it’s probably nothing and overlooks the fact that Halls is kind of a shitty publicist for male stars, but I just found the coincidence interesting.

R42, can you give an example of the bad publicity?

This clip from Michael Rosenbaum’s podcast details what happened from Routh’s perspective.

I can’t give you an example of bad publicity but I can give up you an example of good publicity, and that was Chris Pine’s rollout in 2009 for Star Trek. Pine was like Routh basically unknown and plucked and elevated for an enormous franchise, but he was everywhere. He even got the GQ Cover. So why wasn’t Routh getting the same love?

I mean Routh does admit his failures, but at the same time, there seems to have been almost no attempt to prop him up. I mean it’s entirely possible that he was so intransigent that nobody was willing to work with him, I wasn’t there. However, he would have had to been either totally deluded (Clinton Spillsbury) or walking-into-doors retarded for Hollywood to just toss him in the bin like that after spending hundreds of millions on promoting Superman. Even though Routh talks about how he struggled nailing auditions, publicity doesn’t require auditioning, you just say, “Yes, I am willing to take my shirt off” (which Ruth obviously had no problems with) and everyone is your friend.

I respect Brandon taking responsibility for his immaturity at the time, but I could also see this as he learned how to play the game. Meaning, he's taking on all the blame for even some of the things that were out of his control. He got the lead in a Superman franchise, of course he should have thought that was the beginning of big things for his career. That's how it works.

Re: Klinton Spillsbury, what basically ruined his reputation was actually not the diva behavior but the fact that another actor had to redub all his lines.

Anyway back to Routh, I remember his publicity just being real unimaginative and boring. He did not seem like an interesting personality but to quote the Golden Girls a good publicity campaign “can create the illusion that you’re interesting!”

…and speaking of intransigent actors, Jonathan Majors was AWFUL to work with and dull in interviews but was still primed for A-listing.

But, Jonathan Majors was also willing to pose like this and that got him very far.

So either Routh was getting very bad PR advice or simply ignoring good PR advice.

Another difficult actor who was actually a Halls client was Alex Pettyfer, and in that situation, despite Pettyfer’s all-around obnoxious behavior, he at least did the necessary PR work. So it’s not like Halls didn’t know how to do what was needed PR-wise, it’s just that it was done poorly, in this very specific instance.

In all likelihood it was probably some combination of the two, Routh being Hollywood-retarded and Halls purposely giving bad advice.

The Brandon Routh of the 90s?

So he actually did do GQ and Vanity Fair that year and the GQ feature shot by Mark Seliger was extremely hot…

[quote] He got the lead in a Superman franchise, of course he should have thought that was the beginning of big things for his career. That's how it works.

Not a single one of the men who have played Supermen went on to big things afterwards. A few of them got OK work (like Christopher Reeve and Henry Cavill), but there were no "big things" for any of them after playing that part.

…but the Jonas Karlsson photos in Vanity Fair are possibly the worst photos I have ever seen of a good-looking man in Vanity Fair and Halls would have absolutely been 100% responsible for making sure they got good shots for these

He looks dead inside.

He reminds me of Alexander Koch from Under the Dome. Too bad their careers stalled.

The thing with Jonas Karlsson is that he is NEVER used for hot young actors. Never at all. Like seriously no one would suggest it. He’s very postmodern and is primarily used for portraiture that references the artificiality of its own portraiture. The subjects tend to look bored and divorced from their own surroundings. If he’s chosen to photograph actors is usually because they’re doing a play and want to look serious.

So, that’s something to consider. Either everybody else in the entire universe who could have done this shoot better was busy, or the publicist was not doing his literal job of gatekeeping his client’s image. Sending Jonas Karlsson to photograph a hot young stud would be like sending Bruce Weber to photograph a graveyard.

[quote]Not a single one of the men who have played Supermen went on to big things afterwards. A few of them got OK work (like Christopher Reeve and Henry Cavill), but there were no "big things" for any of them after playing that part.

Perhaps, but I'm sure Brandon thought he'd at least get a sequel out of the deal. And I believe they had signed him for 3 movies, which is probably standard.

He has nice pits.

Midjourney actually created a better “Brandon Routh standing next to a backyard pool in Los Angeles” photo than the one Vanity Fair actually printed

The Nine Lives of Christmas made Routh my pretend bf for life.

Midjourney Brandon is creepy.

He was set up. Simon Halls did the PR equivalent of the beads scene from Showgirls to impress his new boyfriend who had lost the role. That’s why Bomer refuses to say how long he’s been with his husband.

That would also explain how this happened

[quote]The Brandon Routh of the 90s?

The 90s? Matt McCoy's smoldering dark good looks have been igniting our screens since he appeared in the '80s teen sex comedy classic FRATERNITY VACATION.

McCoy of course worked regularly in the 80s but then he got Hand That Rocks the Cradle, a big role in a studio film, in 1992 and then promptly disappeared

From there my metaphor germinates

Oooh I should Midjourney with with Matt McCoy’s beard

McCoy didn't have a big film career, but he appears to have been steadily working and still is. If you can't have a big film career or get a series regular gig in primetime or streaming, I would think most actors would be quite happy with the kind of career McCoy has.

It’s not even the point of a big career, Rebecca DeMornay and Annabellla Sciorra didn’t have big careers either, but they didn’t get punted to one episode guest spots after the movie either

R22, don't forget Matt Dillon!

Now that you mentioned him Matt Dillon should have been a lot more famous

Matt McCoy telling Vanessa "I WON'T get out of here" in the Hartford Insurance commercial is the stuff of legend.

To R59, But he is my "pretend BF" every Christmas season.

What I love about Midjourney is that it actually knows better than you. I told them to make the shirt black, but it made it yellow. Now the fake-Brandon and the car are both the color of a banana, and that makes you think of penises. The association is augmented by the penis-shaped cactus branches in the background.

Looks more like an non-dwarf Zac Efron than Brandon Routh.

In many ways, that’s exactly what BR is r74.

Miami

Palm Springs

Beverly Hills

Fire Island

A 1960s beach movie

Fiji

Inspired by John Gavin in Psycho

He photographs well but something lacking in his personality

R83 Dude, he's an anomaly. He's a 6 ft plus gorgeous NERD. His personality's fine. But he's an actual nerd. Cavill claims to be but that's bullshit. He's just a vapid pretty boy. I would also add Jamie Dornan to the gorgeous nerd category.

Cavill - definite Autism Spectrum

Jamie Dornan - strongly suspect Autism Spectrum

Brandon Routh - no particular reason to believe Autism Spectrum. Could be. Not enough evidence. But would not have affected his Hollywood career if other people decided he was worth lifting up.

Never mind, I watched the video on mute at 2x speed, he does have it. Telltale signs: unstable body language when speaking, hesitant eye contact, unusual focusing when he is making eye contact, heavy grasping of the hands. He does have incredibly beautiful hands.

It shouldn’t have affected his career though, half the Chrises are on the Spectrum. You just have to sort of have to get the right people who will tell you everything you have to do, submit to them and let them use you as a puppet.

I would use Brandon Routh& Henry Cavill as puppets!!Sex

Perfect description of him and Cavill, R84.

I want Routh in my mouth

Remember Josh Hartnett? Absolutely perfect puppet in his early years. Spectrum.

Does he not seem asexual? He had a World of Warcraft addiction.

I didn’t realize this. Jeez, this is extremely Spectrum.

WB begged Josh Hartnett to take the role ($20 million in early ‘00s money), then ended up going with Brandon Routh and then Henry Cavill. I guess Hollywood has decided Superman is on the Spectrum.

Given that Cavill is also into gaming, is he asexual too?

I think being asexual is really the only indicator of asexuality. Gaming for ASD people is more about having these intense little fantasy worlds.

Jeez Hartnett would pose for anything. The photographers must have loved him.

Hartnett has an unsightly mole. Certainly unsuitable to be Superman.

Nice bush on Hartnett.

In the interview he actually comes to the same conclusion I came to, that you need to surrender yourself to the behind the scenes people if you want to get anywhere in Hollywood.

The thing that surprises me is, that he had to come to this conclusion himself after his career had already faltered. Typically this is drilled into all newcomers. Bojack Horseman got it perfectly. Well, almost perfectly. In real life he would have slapped Sarah Lynn at the end of the speech.

Wait..Is "On the spectrum" a new way of saying dull and boring? That seems to be the latest pop psychology to make people more...interesting. What happened to being moody or introverted or not particularly talkative at the moment?

I see these guys as being more smug than Autistic.

God, I wish we had an edit function...

ESPECIALLY, the Chrises. Hemsworth can barely hide his disdain while promoting something and Pratt is a clown who can't keep still.

Can't people be relatively normal without psychoanalysis?

Of course you can be dull and boring without being on the Spectrum. I simply assumed Routh was dull and boring until I watched the video and saw his mannerisms. Poor eye contact, unstable posture, excessive hand wringing. Think of those as the holy trinity.

Easiest thing in the world, watch on mute at 2x speed.

Other things to look for

Are they unusually softspoken despite having many advantages in life? Do they speak in monotone voice? Do they bring up terms like “imposter syndrome”? “I don’t feel like myself, I feel alone?”

Does the person space out in interviews and let their face fall into what can only be described as “sublime ennui”?

R101 Y'know, that's kinda interesting. I'm gonna take a look at that.

I don't know if he's autistic but he definitely comes across he would rather be doing accounting or something.

Now compare to Christopher Reeves who I never thought had a huge personality but he definitely has much more charisma.

^It’s REEVE. There is no S.

Sally FieldS.

Is Brandon cut or uncut?

[quote] ^It’s REEVE. There is no S.

The fuck it is.

That’s nice, Keanu, but Chris did not have an S at the end of his surname.

R102 Oh, shut the ENTIRE fuck up, David Gandy. I CAN-NOT with people who've gotten rich off of their looks bitching about it. Sorry. I know everybody's human and has insecurities blah blah Blahhhhhhhhh,

Go practice looking pensive.

OK listen to this

There are two theories on Superman’s duality

#1 Superman is real, Clark Kent is the mask

#2 Clark Kent is real, Superman is the mask

Christopher Reeve, obviously neurotypical, was cast upon the basis of the first theory, he was cast for Superman. Chris Reeve played that character so well, no one wanted to replicate the performance because it would always be compared in the inferior. So in the Aughts by the time it came to reinterpret the character, the only way to go about it would be in the opposite direction. They began to cast for Clark Kent.

Enter Josh Hartnett. I have no idea if he ever actually screentested, but its open knowledge that he was offered an insane, $100 million three picture deal. Now, Josh Hartnett doesn’t look annnnnnything like Superman. But they are not casting Superman. They are casting Clark Kent. This is especially evident of you read the JJ Abrams script for Flyby.

Clark Kent has long been theorized to be an autistic coded character. Josh Hartnett is likely on the Spectrum.

Josh Hartnett turns them down. (That’s #1).

So they go through this huge search for actors and production is getting way behind and the studio is very unhappy with director Brett Ratner. It’s finally whittled down to two actors:

-Brendan Fraser. Probably on the Spectrum.

-Matthew Bomer. Also probably on the Spectrum.

(That’s three actors.)

The movie is canned over casting and director difficulties but a new Superman film comes into being because Bryan Singer, at the time a generally well-regarded director of two successful comic book film, agrees to write and direct. Bryan Singer chooses an unknown, Brandon Routh. Brandon Routh’s casting is so shocking and out of the blue many struggled to explain it. (Unfortunately for Brandon, the default suspicion was it was casting couch, as most people knew Bryan Singer was gay but many did not know how specific his tastes were.) However, Singer explicitly says that when he met Routh for the role at a restaurant, Routh knocked over something on the table, became flustered, it reminded Singer of Reeve’s Clark Kent and he was cast off of that. But Reeve’s Clark Kent was a Juilliard-trained actor’s creation. Routh was just being himself.

Routh is probably on the Spectrum. That’s four actors.

So the film is generally successful but does not have a lot of enthusiasm, so Warner hesitates on sequel. But Christopher Nolan comes along and has an idea for a new film and because Nolan is God at Warner, he gets to reboot. Nolan does not write or direct it, but the movie is basically his idea.

“Man of Steel” features the most heavily autistic coded Clark Kent that has ever been depicted onscreen. People noticed it right away, even when it was just the trailers. There are many writeups online about this if you choose to Google it.

Henry Cavill is cast as Clark Kent. That’s five. Five Spectrum actors, in sequence, across three different Superman scripts, four different directors, several changes in studio regime and a span of a decade. Because they decided to cast for Clark Kent.

I think someone else is on the spectrum...

I didn’t even get to the best part yet.

Who did Marvel cast for their version of Clark Kent?

Acoustics do have to mask for normalcy. Clark Kent is the mask.

Acoustics depend on the theater.

R113 Nicolas Cage was also in talks

Brandon is going to be at Rhode Island Comic Con as part of Superman's 85th Anniversary. Tyler, Tom and Dean are attending as well.

Dean can go fly off somewhere to the nearest MAGA rally.

R120 be interesting to see how he does compared to the other Superman actors.

I met Dean at a convention once and he was super (no pun intended) nice. I knew he was conservative, but I had no idea at the time that he was a hardcore Trumper.

R122 well i'm glad Dean wasn't a dick to you. I don't think any of them have a terrible rep at conventions.