{"id":6809,"date":"2022-06-10T13:00:00","date_gmt":"2022-06-10T12:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/jerichowriters.com\/townhouse\/articles\/the-curse-of-cool\/"},"modified":"2022-06-10T13:00:00","modified_gmt":"2022-06-10T12:00:00","slug":"the-curse-of-cool","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jerichowriters.com\/the-curse-of-cool\/","title":{"rendered":"The Curse of Cool"},"content":{"rendered":"

Ah, Top Gun<\/em>. A film so shimmering with a certain kind of macho cool that a studio can successfully bring its star back to reprise the role, even though he\u2019s in touching distance of collecting his pension.<\/p>\n

And \u2013 that star is good at flying. He looks cool on a motorbike and, well, just looks cool. He walks with swagger, talks with attitude. Women love him. Men have bro-crushes.<\/p>\n

And with a character like this, you already know a lot. They won\u2019t walk smack into a glass door when they\u2019re leaving an office. They won\u2019t get ketchup on that gleamingly white T-shirt. They\u2019ll wear the right sort of watch but won\u2019t bore you stupid telling you about it.<\/p>\n

They might or might not have a preference between a \u201955 Petrus and a \u201953 Petrus, but \u2013 if they were less James Bond and more Die Hard<\/em>\u2019s John McClane \u2013 you know they\u2019d order a cold beer from a fancy wine waiter and somehow end up looking confident and right. They\u2019d make it look like ordering beer in a fancy restaurant was the coolest, smartest thing to do, like anything else was somehow missing a trick.<\/p>\n

And there\u2019s the physical prowess, of course.<\/p>\n

This hero doesn\u2019t merely ride a motorbike; he rides it fast and has perfect control of the machine at all times. The same with the plane. Those flying scenes might look tough, but you know that, in the end, you\u2019d rather have the 59-year-old Cruise flying for your life than any number of beautiful 20- and 30-something hotshots.<\/p>\n

The moral of these thoughts? Presumably that Cool Works. Cool, in this case, has already gathered $600 million at the box office. That\u2019s good, right? You wouldn\u2019t mind too much if your current Work In Progress gathered, oooh, even one tenth of that sum on publication.<\/p>\n

But, oh my friends, Cool is Bad. Cool is Boring.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

It\u2019s not in film, of course, where there\u2019s a pleasure in seeing Cool on the big screen. It\u2019s just damn sexy. Tom Cruise has got his smoking hot brand of sex appeal, but all those big stars \u2013 male and female \u2013 bring their A-list charisma to their parts. We just don\u2019t ask too much by way of character or story from a Tom Cruise film. We just want him to be the fullest possible, most daydreamy version of Tom Cruise for the film\u2019s two-hour running time.<\/p>\n

But in books? Well, Cool is just dull.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s actively hard to think of a really successful hero who\u2019s as cool as Cruise \u2013 or, really, anything like. Just to take a few names from crime thrillers:<\/p>\n