I might sound like a bit of a hypocrite when I write this, because I have a bugbear with well-known box office stars doing voice work in animation films, when there are immensely talented voice actors who need the work. Sometimes I wonder if they get the work because they are a drawcard. Think Ray Ramone who voiced that mammoth in the Ice Age movies. He has a very distinctive voice. Not a nice voice at all, but rather an adenoidal whiny droning. And although known for comedy, he's not what I would call a particularly funny man. That show Everybody Loves Raymond is the stupidest dross to crawl across my television screen EVER!
Now, why I might sound hypocritical is because I'm going to have a go at the people who are complaining about the actor Bryan Cranston being cast as a quadriplegic billionaire in the new movie The Upside. The movie is an American re-working of the French movie The Intouchables. It's about the relationship forged between a rich quadriplegic man, and the ne'er-do-well who is hired as his carer.
What has people's ire aroused regarding the casting of Cranston is that he is an able-bodied actor playing a person with disability. I know, right? How dare an actor do his job, which is to ACT! He's playing a man in a wheelchair. The monster!
Cranston also played a character in the series Breaking Bad. Do you think the producers should have cast an actual teacher-turned-amphetamine cook, instead of an actor? Do you think the producers should have hired actual Nazis to play the stalag commandants in Hogan's Heroes, instead of hiring actual ACTORS? As an interesting side note, the actors who played Klink and Schultz were Jewish.
'They' are upset that genuine actors with disability miss out on roles which are taken by able-bodied actors. I do see this point. I also see the point of the production company in hiring an actor who is a drawcard, which Cranston will be. The funny thing about actors is this: they ACT! They play people they're not. Why the fuck SHOULDN'T Cranston take the role if it's offered to him? I bet he does a great job with it.
Years ago, I read a review for a newly opened movie called My Left Foot, a biopic on the Irish writer Christie Brown, who had cerebral palsy. The reviewer was entranced with the performance of Daniel Day Lewis, and wrote words to the effect: 'You forget you're watching an actor'. Intrigued by this, I decided to go to the Dendy and watch the movie for myself. Before I left my digs, a friend dropped by, and I invited him along.
So, we went to Martin Place and watched My Left Foot. I'm not going to rhapsodise about the movie, suffice to say it totally blew me out of the water, and Daniel Day-Lewis's performance was like watching poetry in motion. I had the same feeling watching Brando in The Godfather. When we left the cinema, my friend said to me, 'Is that guy really disabled?' I replied, 'No, he's as able-bodied as you or me!' My friend just stood there, shaking his head in amazement at the performance we had just watched. Daniel Day-Lewis won an Oscar for this performance, and deservedly so.
Right now, I'm feeling nostalgic for a simpler time when actors played roles without a whole heap of woke as fuck types losing their shit over it.
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