Boy Movies #83

We're in an actor crisis

And I have to say something about it. You’re reading Boy Movies — a newsletter, if you can believe it.

If you run in the same internet circles that I do (aka the circles that are full of losers who spend too much time online and too much time thinking about movies), you’ve probably also spent the week being inundated with Oscar predictions. We’re in the home stretch; Timothée Chalamet waited until voting was over to give a speech that upset (?) people (?) (are you guys okay, just wondering) and now, would you look at that, the ceremony is on Sunday. Thank god for that: I don’t want to hear about “Anora” again for as long as I live.

In the interest of transparency, Austin Butler losing Best Actor a few years ago irreparably broke my spirit in such a significant way that I now cannot bring myself to give, like, half a shit who wins Oscars anymore. Not in the “there are more important things going on in the world, why does anyone care about these frivolous awards” way — I’m annoying, but I’m not annoying like that. No, this shit is still very much my culture, my beat, my Super Bowl. I actually mean it in the sense that it solidified for me the fact that we are in a profound actor crisis. And, brother, there’s no end in sight.

I write about TV at my day job, which means that I’m painfully aware of how quickly entertainment comes and goes. Streaming TV has made everything so fleeting, COVID made it worse. Hundreds of inconsequential television shows come and go every year. Do you remember Presumed Innocent? Or Disclaimer? How about the American Gigolo show? I sure don’t, and I watched every episode of all three. Like, I dare you to guess which one Cate Blanchett starred in. I could even be making any or all of those up and any normal person would probably be like, “Okay,” and keep reading without a second thought. I wouldn’t blame them. We live in an increasingly transient time. Mass amounts of money are blown on shows that nobody watches, or that a few thousand people watch a few episodes of while eating dinner and never think about again. Those who spend all their time online think that The White Lotus and Severance are the most popular shows on TV right now, but episodes of Chicago Med are watched by more people and cost significantly less to make. It’s all so goofy.

And it’s not as if the state of movies is any better. I don’t know a single person who saw Mufasa: The Lion King, but it made hundreds of millions of dollars. In that vein, I’m hesitant to make any hard and fast Oscar predictions aside from the obvious ones, but the one thing I’m pretty certain about is that I don’t think Oscar voters are going to give a shit about Karla Sofia Gascón’s clinically insane racist tweets. Emilia Pérez won’t be shut out of the awards as a result. I think it will win what it was always going to win (it was never going to win Best Picture and we all need to be serious for a minute), and pundits will attempt to spin a story out of those wins and losses one way or the other. But Oscar voters didn’t give it the most nominations of any movie this year as, like, a joke. Yeah, it’s weird and French-made and kind of offensive and way too long, but people liked it because it was relatively easy to watch — aka on Netflix, the one streaming service that everybody subscribes to, despite how much rancor the older branch of the Academy has for it — and because it probably made a certain subsection of voters feel good about themselves in a “that’s enough activism for today” way. You watch one movie starring a trans woman and there’s your good deed done for the year, baby.

So, anyway, what happens in a time of empty oversaturation? Brendan Fraser wins an Oscar for a dogshit movie that, barely three years after its release, I challenge you to recall even one single detail about¹. He wins, along with three people from the Daniels’ live-action Rick and Morty episode. One year later, Robert Downey Jr. wins an Oscar for giving, like, the twelfth best performance in Oppenheimer. I’m not going to sit here and argue about how “good” any of these people were in these films; if you liked what they were doing, good for you! This isn’t even about that. It’s about our ongoing acting crisis, which stems partially from the fact that all it really takes to win an award in the 2020s is making enough people sad about your lack of career. Do you sincerely believe Demi Moore gave an Oscar-worthy performance in The Substance or do you just feel bad for her because women turning 60 bums you out?

Look, I’m not dumb — this isn’t new. Establishing a compelling narrative is the most crucial element of campaigning, which is the only way to win anything. Nobody has a better story this awards season than Demi Moore, and that’s why she will, in all likelihood, bring it all home on Sunday night. Meanwhile, Timothée’s SAGs speech made a lot of people angry because… well, I still don’t really know. Because he likes his job and wants to be good at it? It’s the same reason people get mad every time Jeremy Strong opens his mouth, and the same reason people spent an entire award season making fun of Austin Butler. I famously like all of these guys and find them compelling on screen, but irrelevant to my point. What they all have in common is that they take risks on screen and have been incredibly earnest about what went into taking those risks off-screen. But risks aren’t cool, earnestness even less so. Earnestness is only cool if you earn the right to be earnest by going through a ton of strife first. Ke Huy Quan was allowed to be eager and exuberant on the campaign trail because his whole thing was that the industry treated him badly for like twenty years.

[NBA ad voice] this is why we watch

The fact is that the year’s best film performance, given by Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor in Nickel Boys, didn’t get nominated for an Oscar, meanwhile I’m still waiting for even one single person to explain to me what it is exactly about Monica Barbaro’s performance in A Complete Unknown that’s bewitched so many people. The widely popular opinion seems to be that she “blows Chalamet out of the water” — not true, but again, I’m not here to argue — which is obviously a narrative in itself. It creates an underdog, even in the real absence of one. She won’t win on Sunday, but she’ll still get the utterly hollow “Well, you have to admit she was amazing” treatment. (I don’t have to and won’t be admitting that, thank you.) I’m speaking from the perspective of someone who still, perhaps stupidly, believes that “winning an Oscar” still means anything, despite the fact that Joaquin Phoenix won one for Joker, a movie that made me wish my eyeballs and eardrums would explode just to free me from the agony of watching even another second of it. It probably doesn’t, but how am I not supposed to see this goofy ass award show that declines in relevance with each passing year as a reflection of where our culture is at?

On Sunday, Kieran Culkin will win an Oscar for playing Kieran Culkin. You can yell about category fraud all you want, but baby, nobody cares. That’s his narrative. He sold it and it’s working. I say this as someone who liked A Real Pain a lot and will consider Kieran Culkin a member of my family for life. Do I remember more about Jesse Eisenberg’s performance in that film than I do about Kieran’s? Sure, but, again, nobody cares. (Talk about family member for life…) I’m just one idiot who writes a semi-regular Substack. It’s hard to discuss this stuff without sounding petty, harder still not to veer into the dreaded “don’t pit two divas against each other” territory that people are so sensitive about. Ultimately, it’s all so subjective. But I can’t help dwelling on it. I can’t help how cynical it’s made me feel. At the risk of sounding corny, I do sincerely believe that a meaningful performance has the power to stick with you forever. And in a time where more is very much more, so often to the detriment of the culture, I think we have the right to demand a little more from all this excess.

• My review of the new season of The White Lotus, which absolutely sucks

• I briefly interviewed Christopher Walken about last week’s Severance… lol!

• I interviewed Jessica Lee Gagné about this week’s Severance

1. Actually, I do remember one thing: There’s a scene where the girl from Stranger Things calls Brendan Fraser a gay slur.