At 10:55 AM this morning, I opened a press release from Gucci. The subject line read as follows: PHOEBE TONKIN, OLIVIA COOKE AND JARED LETO WEARING GUCCI. Sounds normal, right? Hahahaha. Just wait.
After opening the email, the first thing I saw was a photo of Australian actress Phoebe Tonkin in a black leather bustier dress with floral appliqués and rhinestone embellishments at Entertainment Weekly’s Annual Comic-Con Party 2017. Cool! Great. Normal. A human wearing beautiful clothes. Moving on.
The second thing I saw was a photo of English actress Olivia Cooke in an ivory silk floral ruffle blouse and cream tweed skirt to the Ready Player One press line during Comic-Con International. Cool! Great. Normal. Another human wearing beautiful clothes. Moving on.
The third thing I saw was a photo of a virtual hologram of American actor Jared Leto speaking onstage at the Warner Bros. Pictures Blade Runner 2049 presentation during Comic-Con International 2017, in a blue silk shirt with pink wool trousers and silver metallic leather ace sneakers. Cool! Great. Normal Another hu…
Wait a second. I reread the description three more times. My eyes were not deceiving me. VIRTUAL HOLOGRAM?!?!?!
Monday July 24, 2017 will go down in history as the first day I’ve ever wanted to borrow a hologram’s outfit. I already kind of have the hot pink pants, but I 100% need that blue silk shirt and some silver sneakers. I started to wonder what my hair would look like if I cut it short and flipped it out at the ends, but I realized I was getting ahead of myself.
I asked my executive assistant to cancel all my appointments for the rest of the day and hold all incoming calls (thanks, Siri!). I drank another cup of coffee plus a shot of blue Gatorade, cracked my knuckles and Googled “Jared Leto hologram.”
The most information I could find on this matter came courtesy of celebrity gossip website Just Jared: “Jared Leto wasn’t able to make it to the event, so he appeared via hologram!”
Sure, that’s one explanation. But Jared Leto is famous for being a method actor. When he was filming Suicide Squad, he was so in character the whole time he didn’t have a single off-camera conversation with his fellow cast members. When he was filming Requiem for a Dream, he gave up sex and lived on the streets for two weeks. When we was filming Chapter 27, he gained 62 pounds and gave himself gout. Gout!!
Needless to say, he clearly takes the concept of “commitment” very seriously, and given that Blade Runner 2049 depicts a futuristic world in which holograms have replaced screens, I wouldn’t be surprised if Leto is planning to make all of his appearances via three-dimensional light beams until the film’s release.
What does surprise (and delight) me is how nonchalantly Gucci disseminated this information via a typical press release, as if a hologram dressed in ready-to-wear was the most regular, “whatever!” thing in the world.
I’m still emotionally processing it. This is the future. Thank goodness the rest of today is cancelled.
