Thursday, February 28, 2013

Alexandra Petri's New Oscar Categories (Taken More Seriously Than She Intended) (Part Five)

(Let's stagger on home to the end of the least read series in Mythical Monkey history.)

Best Appearance in Movie Where the Dog Dies
I'm sure she means best appearance by an actor in a movie where the dog dies—like, say, the kid in Old Yeller or something—but I'm more interested in the dog itself, which means I get to write about my favorite movie dog of all time, "Dog" in John Wayne's Big Jake.

In case you've never seen Big Jake—and unless you're a John Wayne fan of a certain age, there's no real reason to think you would have—the Duke's Jacob McCandles has the best trained dog in history. He says "Dog!" and that means maul the bad guy with the machete, and then he says "Dog!" and that means knock the hostage off the horse before the sniper can shoot him, and sometimes he says "Dog!" and that means "heel" or "sit" or pretty much whatever else Big Jake might be thinking at the moment. Very impressive. John Wayne makes Cesar Millan look like a crazy cat lady.

Best Making Way Too Big a Deal About Playing a Gay Character
Generally speaking, gays have not fared well on the big screen. For the first fifty years of movie history, they were comic relief; in the fifty that followed, tragic figures. Perhaps in the next fifty, the movies will depict them as they are—everyday people who just happen to be attracted to the same rather than opposite sex.

Well, maybe when society itself views the matter that way.

In the meantime, to answer the question, I'm going with Tom Hanks in Philadelphia. The performance won him an Oscar but, to my mind anyway, it has not aged well. If the film had been made in, say, 1983, at a time when seemingly respectable people were still saying out loud that AIDS was a "gay problem" and thus of no concern to the "rest of us," perhaps righteous anger alone might still carry the otherwise hackneyed storyline. But by 1993, the year of Philadelphia's release, we had all pretty much agreed—at least as a matter of public policy—both that AIDS was a national problem and that gays were people, too (well, you know, as long as they didn't want to marry or serve in the military or take part in any of the many other workaday activities that heterosexuals take for granted and gays couldn't and in many places still can't). Instead what seemed at the time brave and heart-rending has been revealed as what it always was: timid and cliched.
Unfortunately, that's almost always the case when Hollywood tackles anything even remotely controversial. Mainstream movies cost so much to make that no one is willing is write a check without at least some hope that they'll get their investment back, and to make something truly controversial is to run the risk of whittling your potential audience down to the point where a profit is no longer possible. And if there's one thing Hollywood is not, it's a philanthropic enterprise. So the people in charge wait until it's clear which way the wind is blowing, and then serve up a product, like Philadelphia, that is so bland and smugly certain of itself that what you hear at the end is not applause but the audience patting itself on the back.

There's more emotional power in one AIDS quilt than in this entire movie.

Best Acting on a Boat
If you've never seen Buster Keaton in The Navigator, you're in for a real treat. Released the same year as the better-known Sherlock, Jr., I think The Navigator is the funnier movie, one of Keaton's best.

Best Acting in Sandals
I assume this doesn't mean Katharine Hepburn in a pair of high heel sandals, but instead "sword and sandals" or "Shakespeare" or "Spartacus" or anything with men in togas. Now, I'm not 100% sure what he had on his feet during the "Toga Party" sequence, but I am sure that I'd rather watch John Belushi in Animal House than Marlon Brando in Julius Caesar, Laurence Olivier in Spartacus or Russell Crowe in Gladiator.

Best Performance in a Movie Parents Liked
I can't speak for parents in general, but the people who conceived, birthed and raised me were big fans of the movies and believed that there were certain films you had to see in order to be considered literate. Thus, they introduced me not just to Disney and the usual child-friendly suspects but to the Marx Brothers, Cary Grant, Gone with the Wind and a lot of other stuff, too. The best performance in a movie my parents liked enough to make me see? Jeepers. Let's go with the aforementioned Cary Grant in His Girl Friday, one of the funniest movies he ever did and one of the few movies of its era to suggest that a woman's place is not in the kitchen but in the office, if it turns out that's the work she was born for.

That's it. We're done. Be sure to come back Sunday morning to start voting in the Favorite Classic Movie Actress Tournament.

3 comments:

mister muleboy said...

I am sure that I'd rather watch John Belushi in Animal House than Marlon Brando in Julius Caesar, Laurence Olivier in Spartacus or Russell Crowe in Gladiator.

Certainly the ladder scene. . . .

Let's go with the aforementioned Cary Grant in His Girl Friday, one of the funniest movies he ever did


That dumb immigrant is sure to flop on me. . .


Or, as performed [even better] by Bellotoot:

"That dumb immigrant will flop on you sure as you're born. . . ."

Who Am Us Anyway? said...

Mainstream movies cost so much to make that no one is willing is write a check without at least some hope that they'll get their investment back, and to make something truly controversial is to run the risk of whittling your potential audience down to the point where a profit is no longer possible.

Re being too expensive to be experimental, I was reading the same analysis re the Great American Hamburger, but alas i forget where. But the guy's point was: McDonald's is so huge, that any mistakes they make are exponentially more expensive than they would be if they were smaller. Thus they can't introduce new menu items without 10 years of study, and so on.

Meanwhile smaller, more nimble burger stands can try out a new kind of sandwich every 6 months and if it doesn't work, no big deal, try something else.

Likewise, I'm skeptical that the fear of being "controversial" is a real detriment to Hollywood innovation. I think it's more a question of Big Hollywood productions being too big to respond to controversy in a timely manner. As you note, by the time they could swing into action on AIDS, the "controversy" part was over. It was like coming out as anti-smoking in 2013: How courageous!

Also, also, of course, to flog that poor horse that died through no fault of my own, that noble beast was just old I tell you, we, Ms. Who and I, the overworked representatives of the cheapskate movie going public, have become keenly aware that so very many Movies With A Message tend to be tendentious and boring -- and then they want to charge us money for it. Lots of times, we'd rather go to the rock show.

So, my theory is, Hollywood desperately WANTED to make "controversial" anti-war movies. They didn't fear it, they pursued it like the Holy Grail. But by the time they could swing into action with their big time actors and big time scripts and big time directors, all the controversial aspects of the Iraq War had resolved into Gloomy Conventional Wisdom: The War Was Idiocy. Also: War is Hell. And the Ms. Who and I said, We know that already.

Mythical Monkey said...

I think it's more a question of Big Hollywood productions being too big to respond to controversy in a timely manner.

That's a great analysis. Big Hollywood productions -- especially these days when it takes half a dozen production companies to scrap together the money -- take years to get anything off the ground.

Contrast this with World War II when it basically took one man at any given studio to greenlight a film, and you could crank out dozens of timely films evey year. (I say this as I'm watching Bogart's Sahara with my brother).

Movies With A Message tend to be tendentious and boring

Amen amen amen. It's hard to grind an ax and be entertaining smultaneously.