Demi Moore on Not Keeping Up With the Joneses

Demi Moore and David Duchovny star as model parents in the new movie "The Joneses."

We’re bombarded daily with advertising urging us to buy things, and subtler but no less effective forms of marketing like product placement in movies and TV. But did you know that the beautiful people ordering a new brand of vodka at the bar might be on a company’s payroll, or that the couple serving you freshly baked cookies at the open house might be actors hired by the Realtor? What if your attractive new neighbors were really a marketing team, planted to shill for products they want you to covet and buy? That’s the premise of The Joneses, a new movie opening Friday starring Demi Moore and David Duchovny as a fake couple who take stealth marketing to a whole new level.

“From the moment I read the script I thought this was just smart and thought-provoking and relevant and entertaining,” says Moore, who, as an A-list celebrity given or lent items with the expectation she’ll be photographed wearing or using them, is certainly familiar with me-too marketing. “There’s nothing wrong with wanting or having nice things,” she says. “It’s when we place that as a measure of the value of ourselves that it goes askew, as in the case of the film, where it goes to the point of leveraging your entire life.”

When it comes to conspicuous consumption, Moore says she tries to keep a healthy perspective. “I feel like I have the fortune of privilege, but particularly as it relates to my children, I’ve always really tried to keep a positive perspective of what’s valuable and the importance of restricting that immediate gratification and that who you are isn’t the stuff you have.”

Moore has a similar philosophy when it comes to choosing movie projects. Having stepped away from films for a couple of years before going back to work on The Joneses, as well as the recent indie Happy Tears and upcoming action fantasy Bunraku, the mother of three daughters will next play Miley Cyrus’ mom in LOL: Laughing Out Loud. Her main criteria is the material, she says, but the on-set experience is important too, working “with people who you have a great time with, because at the end of our lives what we’re going to remember is the experiences we share with one another, not the stuff.”

All great points. But what we really want to know is how Moore, 47, stays so agelessly beautiful. “I don’t know if there is any particular secret,” she responds. “But I think that laughter and smiling are one of the best antidotes to aging. I pretty much think of myself as still being about 5. Maybe that’s why my Twitter picture is of me at 5, because that’s how I feel,” she says. “I’m just still trying to figure it all out myself.”

What’s the last thing that made you laugh out loud?

Photo credit: Gene Page

Tags: Bandslam, Bunraku, Cinema of the United States, comedy, David Duchovny, Demi Moore, Entertainment/Culture, Film, Gene Page, Happy Tears, Human Interest, model, Movie Release, The Joneses, Twitter Inc.