Look, you guys: I’ve written hundreds of entertainment features, so I know it’s not easy to pull 1,000 interesting words out of a dry well. Sometimes, your subject just doesn’t open up or doesn’t say anything interesting. But even so, that’s no excuse for making out with a movie star and calling it a story.

It’s especially not an excuse for Entertainment Weekly. As you know, I love this magazine, and despite my occasional frustration, I still say it’s the only national publication that’s regularly blends sophisticated reporting with slangy, pop-culture humor. When it doesn’t get too breathlessly giddy about, oh, Twilight or Jennifer Aniston, it comes across as a magazine that loves entertainment without being beholden to the people who make it. But breathless giddiness would be an improvement for Clark Collis’ recent profile of Brendan Fraser. I read it a few days ago, and it bothered me so much that I have to write about it.

After the jump, I’ll break down why I’m practically breaking down about this puffiest of puffy, puffy puff pieces.

Let me acknowledge a few things up front: I’ve never met Clark Clollis, nor do I know anything about him, but I do have a friend who’s a staff writer for EW. Also, I’ve made it clear in the past that I’m not a Brendan Fraser fan. At all. That said, this story would have made me convulse if it were written about Kate Winslet and appeared in the OED.

The basic premise is fine: Fraser’s movies have made billions worldwide, so maybe he deserves more respect. But there are signs of doom in the opening paragraph, when Collis has to recount (on anecdotal evidence, I assume) a story from the set of Gods and Monsters. Apparently, Fraser was worried about showing too much flesh and hurting his image as a family star, and this is meant to set up the “good actor/popular actor” conflict of the piece. But Gods and Monsters came out in 1998. If you have to reach that far back, then the portrait of Fraser as a master thespian is already slipping out of its frame. Plus, the story is pegged to Fraser’s current movie Inkheart, which is about a girl who can pull characters out of books. And about which I’ve heard… less than nothing. That’s another sign that maybe Fraser isn’t such a huge star. Of course, Collis drops this dichotomy altogether when he… well, I’ll get to that.

At first, it seems like Collis is going to aim for revealing insights by asking Fraser to watch his own movies and comment on them. That could be interesting, since it could require Fraser to explain Encino Man to a still-wounded nation. But that never happens. After taking a few shots at Monkeybone, the story begins its slow-but-steady transformation into a press release. First, after noting the dismal failure that was Looney Tunes: Back in Action, Collis drops this on us:

Fraser was still a big enough name to help indie movie directors get financing. Paul Haggis secured the $7 million budget for Crash only after Fraser came on board: ”I said, I’ve got Don Cheadle, Matt Dillon, Thandie Newton, and Sandy Bullock. I should be able to get my $7 million, right? The money people said, No, you need a good name for this last role. When Brendan said yes, I went, Oh, my God, I’ve got a film.”

Again, Collis must reach back several years to prove his point about Fraser as a serious actor, and by including Haggis’s “I love Brendan” quote, he’s signalling his own disappearing objectivity. And then in the very same paragraph, he writes this (bold text mine):

Fraser resolved to take more of a hands-on role with his movies. When he was approached to star in Journey to the Center of the Earth, he insisted on helping develop the material. ”The script was about a deadbeat father and a son,” says Journey director Eric Brevig. ”Brendan read the Jules Verne novel and said, Look, it’s an uncle and his nephew in the book, let’s just do that. It was, like, of course! Because you want a sympathetic protagonist. Brendan’s a secret weapon. If you get him on your movie, and it is halfway decent, he’ll make it absolutely great.”

So… um… notice how nobody questions the wisdom of having Brendan Fraser, untrained writer, start tinkering with a script? Notice how Collis doesn’t mention how some people might find that frustrating, and that he doesn’t have a quote from the film’s actual screenwriter? Instead, we get a director who is less well-known than his star insisting that Fraser is behind his film’s success. Couldn’t there be other reasons for Brovig to say those things? Reasons that aren’t related to Fraser’s literary genius? Also, I didn’t see Journey to the Center of the Earth, but the reviews were decidedly mixed. For every critic praising the script and Fraser’s acting, there was another who was calling the whole affair ridiculous. I’m not saying we shouldn’t hear about Fraser’s positive contributions to his projects, but all the kudos become dubious without any kind of skepticism.

To be fair, there is an anonymous quote early in the story that disses Fraser, but it’s hard to remember it when, after the Journey to Center of the Earth section, Collis himself writes this (bold text mine):

The actor makes no such grand claims for himself. He says he simply follows a series of golden rules: ”Know the material. Don’t bump into the furniture, and have a good relationship with the people you work with.” Fraser’s congeniality, in fact, appears to be as legendary as his ability to act with CGI beasties (Looney Tunes director Joe Dante says working with special effects is as easy as ”falling off a log” for Fraser). Brevig contends that the actor is more than just the nicest man in Hollywood: ”He was also the nicest man in Montreal, where we shot the movie.”

Based on the quotes, it doesn’t seem like Fraser himself is trying to boost his own image. He’s not saying much of anything, really. It’s Collis who starts depicting his subject as a prince among men, a humble and charming artist who will charm the pants off everyone. And then there’s this paragraph, which is so remarkably blow-jobby that I’m posting it in it’s entirety. The bold text is mine, but the italicized text is from the actual story:

In person, Fraser is big featured, youthful-looking, and has something of The Boy Who Never Grew Up about him. (If you’re curious, his hair looks thicker today than it has sometimes appeared in photographs.) He comes across as a more intelligent, but just as affable, version of the well-meaning galoots he has played so often. Of course, this makes him the perfect person to play those roles. It also helps that he’s not likely to star in any personal scandals that would jeopardize his family-friendly image, especially since he lives in Connecticut. (The tabloids largely ignored the news, in December 2007, that Fraser and his wife were divorcing. The actor is quiet about his personal life, acknowledging only that he’s single.) Fraser’s amiability and enthusiasm also make him a good fit for physically tiring blockbusters. And he genuinely loves doing them and talks wistfully about the action-adventure epics that slipped through his fingers. Around 2003, for instance, he was in discussions to play Superman. J.J. Abrams’ script ”was f—ing awesome,” Fraser says. ”Shakespeare in space! But it never came to fruition.” There’s no bitterness in his voice as he says this. Brendan Fraser doesn’t really do bitter. And why should he? His movies have cashed in at the box office, and even his detractors may come around. ”There is a powerful dramatic actor waiting to emerge underneath those boyish features,” says Quiet American director Phillip Noyce. ”His best days are yet to come.”

In a single paragraph, Collis undoes the entire opening of his story and essentially crafts a release from Fraser’s estate. After praising the actor as a dreamy hunk, he eagerly reminds us that the guy loves making cheesy action movies — the very action movies this piece initially apologized for. And then comes the reiteration of the topic sentence, all about how Fraser’s movies make a lot of money, even though he has a lot of detractors. So… being in serious films doesn’t matter, then? Fraser’s done enough in The Mummy franchise to prove himself, even if not everyone sees it? Looks that way, since Collis continues his quest to make Fraser seem like the swellest guy ever:

He isn’t a guy who spends time worrying about whether Hollywood respects him. ”No, do you want me to?” he laughs. ”Please don’t feel sorry for me. I’m not a pariah, as far as I know.

In other words, Fraser himself doesn’t care about his Hollywood reputation. It seems like Collis invented this “good actor/popular actor” problem just to give himself something to talk about. In fact, considering how it all pans out, it’s like Collis was just looking for an excuse to praise Fraser. He asked a phony “investigative” question about the actor’s in order to justify three paragraphs of of cheering.

From Fraser’s perspective, this is the ideal situation: He gets to seem down-to-earth and secure, but he also gets a sidekick to brag about him. He doesn’t have to dirty his hands with blatant self-promotion, be he gets promoted all the same. And in case the story’s lack of restraint still isn’t clear, here’s how it ends:

Fraser strides out into the afternoon, pausing to help a woman with a broken leg get into her car. The nicest man in Hollywood and Montreal has just conquered New York.

At this point, Fraser has become Christ, and Collis is his happy apostle. Now even though I’ve never met him, I’m certain Collis didn’t intend to come off this way. My guess is that he got stuck with a lot of bland quotes and had to build a story around them, and I’ll wager his editors pulled a few teeth out of this piece along the way. And hell, maybe Brendan Fraser really is the greatest guy in Hollywood.

But even if he is, this type of story should never happen, especially not in a magazine that wants our respect. Someone should have killed this piece instead of letting it turn EW into In Touch Weekly.