Josh Brolin – everyone’s newest favourite star of movies that people don’t actually watch – has plenty of cause to celebrate.
Why? Because he’s not going to jail. Not that Josh Brolin was ever going to go to jail in the first place or anything, but it might have been a possibility after he was arrested and charged with interfering with a police officer during a barroom brawl in Louisiana last summer.
But now prosecutors have dropped the charges against Josh Brolin, so this entire story is basically pointless. Josh Brolin didn’t do something and he won’t be punished for it. Hooray.
Josh Brolin and Vinnie Jones have got a lot in common. It might not seem it – one’s a critically-lauded actor who many claim is among the finest of his generation and the other one’s only allowed in films if he promises to shut up and punch as much stuff as he can in them – but they are.
They’re both enjoying second flushes of fame, for a start – Josh Brolin was originally a child star and Vinnie Jones used to kick footballers for a living – and they both seem pretty handy and allegedly being involved in bar fights and then getting away without charge.
Vinnie Jones, you’ll remember, was arrested last month after allegedly charging at a bloke and hitting him in the face with a glass before getting off without charge, and now Josh Brolin seems to be enjoying a similar – if less terrifyingly berserk-sounding – fate.
Back in the summer Josh Brolin, his W castmate Jeffrey Wright and five members of the movie’s crew were arrested in a Louisiana bar after allegedly being involved in some sort of fracas. During the chaos both Brolin and Wright apparently had pepper spray squirted into their eyes, with Wright also ending up on the wrong side of a police taser.
Now, however, prosecutors have decided to drop the charges against Josh Brolin, Jeffrey Wright and the crewmembers within 60 days, meaning that everyone’s in the clear and Wright gets to release a statement about it all. People reports:
“These arrests should never have happened. Thankfully the prosecution was able to see that and dismiss all charges. Unfortunately, there are no winners here, but I remain hopeful that Shreveport officials will be encouraged to dig at the root causes of certain police incidents down there. An old-fashioned refusal of service led to our arrest that night, and there’s no room for that in America in 2009.”
Looks like this is a happy ending all round, then – not only have Josh Brolin’s charges been dropped but all this publicity has probably made W a lot more money, too. Maybe getting tasered in the street by overzealous policemen is an effective new way to market your movie – if so, someone should probably pass the memo to Tom Cruise. But, you know, give us time to get through police school first.
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