My Oscar Goes To The Funny One
February 27, 2011 7 Comments
I’m not a big believer in the idea that the Oscar is any genuine measure of a movie or an actor in the first place. But if we must take Oscar seriously, then I would point out what I think is its most glaring deficiency: the short shrift given to comedy.
Not an expert but I reckon that being funny on film has got to be one of the more difficult things to pull off in movies. It truly takes skill and talent. Lots of people can fake at being all pouty or sad that such and such Dramatic Thing happened. But not a lot of people, when you get right down to it, can actually be funny in a movie.
When they do, and are, I’d like to see them get Oscars. Why don’t they? Well because Oscars are too Serious and take themselves so Seriously that they’d be embarrassed to do it. At most they’ll give it to a comedy if the comedy gets all solemn and tear-jerky near the end (for example, Life Is Beautiful.) This is just one of many reasons that Oscars are meaningless, but it’s a big one.
Let’s look at 2004′s awards (honoring films from 2003). Here were the Best Actor nominees: Sean Penn for Mystic River, Ben Kingsley for House of Sand and Fog, Bill Murray for Lost In Translation (who got in via the ‘solemnness’ comedy exception), Jude Law for Cold Mountain, and Johnny Depp for Pirates (which, ok, fair enough). Sean Penn won for some movie you’re never going to watch again for like the 5th time and there you go. Whoop de doo. Raise your hands, how many of you want to go back and rewatch Mystic River because Sean Penn was so damn Oscary in it? (And how many of you even remember anything at all about Law in Cold Mountain?)
I submit that the winner should have been….Jack Black, for School of Rock (which I also think ought to have won Best Picture). The problem is that Black isn’t a Serious Actor, so he wasn’t considered. But he should have been. With all due respect to Mr. Kingsley who did well enough as that Iranian guy, no single actor that year stood out as much in a movie performance as Black.
Let’s go back and identify some other great comedy performances – and compare them to the actual Oscar winners:
2004 – Jon Heder, Napoleon Dynamite. (winner – Jamie Foxx for Ray)
2003 – Jack Black vs Sean Penn
1999 – Ron Livingston, Office Space. (winner – Kevin Spacey, American Beauty)
1998 – Jeff Bridges, Big Lebowski. (winner – Roberto Benigni, Life Is Beautiful)
1997 – Mike Myers, Austin Powers. (winner – Jack Nicholson, As Good as it Gets)
1990 – Macaulay Culkin, Home Alone. (winner – Jeremy Irons for Reversal of Fortune)
1988 – Leslie Nielsen, The Naked Gun. (winner – Dustin Hoffman for Rain Man)
1983 – Eddie Murphy, Trading Places. (winner – Robert Duvall for Tender Mercies)
1982 – Sean Penn, Fast Times at Ridgemont High. (supporting actor winner – Louis Gossett Jr)
1979 – Bill Murray, Meatballs. (winner – Dustin Hoffman for Kramer v Kramer)
1978 – John Belushi, Animal House. (supporting actor winner – Christopher Walken, The Deer Hunter)
Now, I don’t say that every guy on my Comedy List was better than the actual Oscar winner, and some of the matchups here are tricky. I’ll give my props to Walken and Duvall – those were their best performances after all. And choices like Culkin, or Nielsen, may seem downright stupid (though I can kinda defend them – they left their mark, didn’t they?).
But imagine that, for each pair, you had to go back and watch one of them again. Is it so much of a stretch to think you’d pick more from the comedy list? And mightn’t that say something? Which list contains more performances that stand out in your mind as distinctive, as good performances? I know my answer…
Comedy and sci-fi: the two genres on the eternal awards blacklist. Perhaps if Office Space had taken place in the third reich and the office building were burned down by Hitler instead of Stapler Guy, or if Napoleon Dynamite had discovered that his father was a visionary fighting against hunger in Africa…
It’s fucked up, because comedy really is the higher art form. Any loser can be emo, but that’s exactly what gets the award.
Interesting. I don’t really agree with the idea as a whole, but I do think Jack Black and Jon Heder do give great performances.
Eddie Murphy is also a very good actor.
Mike Myers is not a good actor, imo.
Neither was John Belushi.
Your pick of Sean Penn kind of demonstrates what I mean here. Think about it, when you first saw Sean Penn in Fast Times, did you not immediately recognize that person? Did you not think to yourself, I’ve met that guy and no one else has ever shown me that guy on film before? As in good writing, the art in film is in making character come alive.
Sean Penn does that. Jack Black does that. Jon Heder does that (I knew a guy in High School who was a lot like Napoleon Dynamite).
But Mike Myers doesn’t.
Mike Myers is funny. He is charming. He does pop off the screen with energy, but he is not convincing as a character.
Sean Penn, in Fast Times, had one truly great scene. Remember the scene where he said, “Mr. Hand, do you have a guy like me in class ever year …”
He showed, right there, what he could do as a serious actor.
Robin Williams had some such moments in Mork and Mindy, though, for the most part, his Mork from Ork character was just stupid comedy. But, I knew watching Mork and Mindy that I was watching a truly good actor. And that has been born out since.
Also, I think you and I would agree (though I have not heard anyone else comment on this) that Adam Sandler’s performance in Punch Drunk Love was absolutely incredible.
There’s a guy with real acting talent who has not been given the chance to do what he can do.
I tend to agree that neither Myers nor Belushi are ‘good actors’ in the sense you describe (inhabiting realistic characters). But that is not what was called for in those roles.
I don’t think you can argue that Mike Myers did a bad job of portraying Austin Powers and Dr. Evil. It’s more that, Austin Powers and Dr. Evil aren’t real people. But that wasn’t the intent of that movie. And so on its own terms, I think Mike Myers did an amazing job of creating and portraying, with full abandon and a lot of ingenuity and well-observed satiric humor, not merely one but two (I won’t say three b/c I wasn’t a fan of the fat Scottish guy) quite funny caricatures.
By the same token, what exactly did Jack Nicholson – the Oscar-winner that year – do in As Good As It Gets that was so great? He basically portrayed…the popular-imagination version of Jack Nicholson. (Interesting – I think we emailed about this, coincidentally
I did consider mentioning Punch Drunk Love (it does seem like Sandler belongs somewhere in a post like this, and it is Sandler’s best performance). I only left it off because I was afraid it would confuse the post, since PDL doesn’t quite seem like a ‘comedy’ per se. But, whatever it was, I did think Sandler was fantastic in it. It is my favorite Paul Thomas Anderson movie hands-down.
I also wanted to mention Jim Carrey and/or Will Ferrell, but couldn’t identify the right roles (maybe Ferrell in Old School comes the closest). I guess I see them as more consistently-good comedic performers than as having turned in any single ‘great’ performance per se.
Anyway, my hoped Oscar pick for tonite is Toy Story 3 for Best Picture (not just Best Animation). Obviously, I’ll never get my way on any of this stuff
You write: I think Mike Myers did an amazing job of creating and portraying, with full abandon and a lot of ingenuity and well-observed satiric humor, not merely one but two (I won’t say three b/c I wasn’t a fan of the fat Scottish guy) quite funny caricatures.
I respond: Yeah, I see your point.
I must be a snob. While I love love LOVE Austin Powers, I just don’t consider it to be worthy of such consideration.
But, if we were going to award Best Actor to a purely comedic performance, Austin Powers might be the best.
I’m not saying it’s “snobbish”. But it is odd. Comedy movies exist, they will need comedic actors in them, so comedic acting is a subset of acting. So, why wouldn’t or couldn’t we award best actor to a pure comedic performance? Why does it seem to require making a sort of ‘special exception’?
It’s very rare that the Clowns are more exciting than the High-Wire Act.
You send in the clowns to entertain when the guy on the high-wire falls and breaks his head open.
The tradition of Theater/Drama might have a dignified history with the Greeks. But, the reality of Theater/Drama in European history is, Actors were like Carnies, traveling from town to town, putting on shows, passing a hat, and acting like friggin’ idiots.
There wasn’t a huge distinction between “Theater” and the Circus, from what I understand.
And, from the behavior I have personally observed, there still is not much difference between Actors and Circus people.
Point is, maybe the disrespect afforded Comedians is inherently built into the way even Theater people think about themselves. At bottom, they know they are circus people, and the clowns are the people who entertain while they are cleaning up the Elephant shit.
See what I mean?
The reality of Comedy, however, is embodied in this statement,
(probably not quoted well)
Life is a Comedy for those who think, and a Tragedy to those who feel.
Interesting point there about the theater/circus/clowns and how actors see themselves. I think you may be on to something.