Robin Williams did it in “One Hour Photo.” Bill Murray did it in “Lost in Translation.” Now Steve Carell does it in “Foxcatcher.”
What am I talking about? A typically comedic actor playing a dramatic role. And I ?love it.
We tend to think of these three actors as lovable idiots, whether it be Williams in “Mork and Mindy,” Carell in “The Office” or Murray in “Stripes.”
This is called typecasting, and though it is helpful in the movie industry, when it comes to making that green, it can also hold actors back by forcing them to play the same roles again and again.
But every once in a while, we get a producer or director who thinks differently, who sees the bumbling dunce as capable of doing something greater than smashing the proverbial coconut upon his head.
Then, when the movie comes out, audiences are in shock. “Who knew Bill Murray could play a character with an IQ greater than his age?”
“I did,” Sofia Coppola said, eyeing her Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay for “Lost in Translation.”
It’s really impossible for actors to not be typecast. Even when an actor does break out of the pigeonhole, it’s unlikely that this is for long. And the reason is money.
Pleasure is in the familiar. Mainstream audiences want to see comedic actors cast in comedies and dramatic actors cast in dramas.
There exists a clear divide between the two in the audience members’ minds. Any crossing of that threshold is jarring. Thus, it is also financially risky.
There’s no guarantee that audiences are going to react positively — that is, shell out beaucoup bucks — when they see somebody like Carell playing a mysterious benefactor/totalitarian wrestling coach.
But when they see him in, let’s say, a sequel to “The 40 Year Old Virgin,” they hand their money over faster than they can shout “Kelly ?Clarkson!”
So what I’ve noticed studios doing is, sure, making a couple movies like “Foxcatcher” or “One Hour Photo” to keep audiences intrigued, to get some indie cred, but then, after these movies perform fairly disappointingly at the box office, they turn around and make “RV” or “Night at the Museum” to make back the money they lost.
This isn’t always true. In the case of Bill Murray, for example, movies like “Lost in Translation” and “The Royal Tenenbaums” kind of shifted his typecast, which is now the old, depressed, funny-in-a-really-pathetic-way ?curmudgeon.
I’m not necessarily criticizing Hollywood’s typecasting. I love “The Office” and “The 40 Year Old Virgin.”
What I don’t love is when actors are forced into roles that don’t necessarily showcase the full extent of their talents.
zipperr@umail.iu.edu
