ChristineCB

Folks, I'm sure this isn't a new record in the 21st Century, but I voluntarily watched HOLLYWOODLAND a second time. Perhaps I've re-watched another film released since 2000 - I just can't think of it off the top of my head (which says a LOT about recent film releases, or else everything else that's going on my life... hmmm).

Over the years, I've been relatively unpersuaded by whines of typecasting by actors, but HOLLYWOODLAND does present one scene where I can see the awful consequences of it. Superm, er, Clark K - er, George Reeves is in a preview showing of FROM HERE TO ETERNITY, and when he appears on-screen with Burt Lancaster, there are several cat-calls and snide comments about "Superman, etc." on the screen. "George" (Ben Affleck) flinches and shudders, taking each one as intended insults.

And the studio execs are looking at each other, making scissor-cutting motions with their fingers, "Chop Reeves out of the movie..."

A very minor role that is further diminished and then destroyed.

That's a real cost of typecasting, I believe.

I suffered from typecasting in my prior life, I know, and I knew I had to find the right next role for me. If I wasn't going to be offered anything but Their (the conspiratorily infamous "They") roles, then I had to find my own way.

Maybe that's why I've tended to discount Typecast Whines by actors. "Find the right role. Make your own way."

I'm impressed that Sean Connery - who is forever cemented as the legendary standard of James Bond - has done so many other roles. Pierce Brosnan, even while wearing a James Bond cape - er, contract - did other roles, some quite similar.

But that one scene in HOLLYWOODLAND impressed me with the machinations of typecasting. I still wish that George would have found the right people (if he needed them) to help spring him from his trap. Or maybe he was the real trap.

Do you think actors end up making their own careers or are most of them little more than billiard balls, going exactly where they're hit?

And do you think this has changed over time?

Steve Crook

So given your subject line, typecast can never be a good thing.
What about all the people who are quite happy to be typecast as it often means continuing work, albeit in a narrow range of roles. Or all the people that used a typecast role to gain a bit of fame and then broke away from the typecasting.

Steve

ChristineCB

I don't know if typecasting is good or bad, actually.

Or if it's changed - if the casting process is any more willing to accept a substantially different characterization from an actor, or if the actor will go for different characters and roles.

Bruce Willis' character in DEATH BECOMES HER was so far removed from just about any other role he played, and I enjoyed that film because of it. Yet his follow-up choices haven't left his general character's outline since then.

Jack Nicholson doesn't seem to stretch at all - a sneer, raised eyebrows and an evil grin. That's about his whole career. But he's been well-cast in some films (Witches Of Eastwick) with that character.

In some ways, I'd think the opportunities to escape typecasting should be greater because there should be more media outlets. But there are more actors, too.

Then there's a supposition that actors may typecast themselves as often as anyone else does.

Has this changed over time?

smudge

I think typecasting has changed over time, particularly in the upper echelon, where the 'name' actors have got more clout, are producing their own films (etc.)

Another factor has to be the plethora of 'talent' on the books, whereby if a casting director can't get exactly what he wants, then he can pick a 'type' from the middle tier of the thespian fratenity who will - more or less - suit his needs. Many a time of late I have sat and watched a modern film and turned round to Mrs. Smudge and said, "You can see that they wanted a 'Kate Twinset' type for that part," and so on.

What does really annoy me in the modern era is when they cast actors to 'go retro' and refer back to the Hollywood greats - such as Nicolas Cage and his awful sub-James Stewart deliveries. Irritating in the extreme.

And as Steve said, there is a whole stratum of actors who have never minded being 'typed' ; this very much brings me back to British films of the 40s/50s/60s and that bank of ever-reliable character actors. This sort of 'contented' player gave not so much an impression of the restraints of typecasting, but more the feeling of a happy little band of repertory players.

SMUDGE

Welcome to my house. Enter freely, and of your own will...

Sgt Dudfoot

A flippant aside to an interesting subject, but this talk about about typecasting reminds me of watching a short from from the 50's called Murder At The Grange. Supposedly a whodunnit, the butler was played by Tod Slaughter and as soon as he appeared we knew he was the killer, there was no question. But he would have been the greatest red herring ever!

Steve Crook

I have long (and vocally) disliked all of Bruce Willis' action roles like the Die Hard series. I use them as an example of all that's wrong with most recent Hollywood films. But then he did Twelve Monkeys which, while it was still an action role, was quite different and very well made. And there's also Pulp Fiction and Moonlighting to consider.

Jack Nicholson isn't so much an actor as a force of nature that directors try to capture on film! Have you seen him in The Departed?

Steve

ChristineCB

Yes, we saw DEPARTED but haven't talked about seeing it again. I agree that it may be my favorite Scorcese work since GOODFELLAS but that may not be saying a lot. Strangely, this may be a "too many stars" film and the top-heavy cast may have skewed my expectations beyond repair. This is worth seeing again. But probably over time and, unfortunately, it won't be on the big screen that long. Maybe in a month it still will be, so...

In TWELVE, I mostly admire the Brad Pitt work. THAT was a pretty different performance, but it's a film in my favored END OF WORLD AS WE KNOW IT genre, so I'm always going to give those films a few extra bumps.

MOONLIGHTING is (er, was) an interesting series, especially juxtaposed against REMINGTON STEELE, where both battling couples avoided consumation and when it occurred, the series ended.

I constantly hear that consumation is the kiss of death in series like that, although I think that's a cop-out by burned-out, tired old writers who no longer have any interest or reason to be creative.

But it's a convenient excuse to wave around.

As I'm getting away from the TYPECAST subject, however...

I read that George Lazenby didn't accept/chase any more James Bond films was because he had some fear of being typecast.

In retrospect, of all the Legendary Characters in movies, "James Bond" is one that typecasting hasn't seem to hurt any of its actors in - Connery's found one or two roles since then. Roger Moore, well, not as many. Pierce was doing them before, during and after - often as a secret agent in thriller-type roles.

Lazenby - for as much as I liked his MAJESTY'S performance - is the one that has done very little.

That makes me think it wasn't so much George Fears Typecasting but that other factors are at play. Emmanuelle TV, no less... he should try to replace Wilfrid in STEPonTOES & SON.

MarkG

However, from what I understand he had a hard time doing so. I was listening to the DVD commentary on 'Zardoz' a while back, and from what I remember Boorman said that one of the reasons why he got Connery for the movie was that he was eager to do anything to get away from Bond typecasting.

I did like him in 'Tailor of Panama'... pretty much the anti-Bond. I particularly liked the alternate ending.

Moor Larkin

!! YOU CAN'T HANDLE THE TRUTH !!


It's curious that as late as the early-mid Seventies Patrick McGoohan was still referred to as the Danger Man. It is only much later that he starts becoming the Prisoner.

I wonder if type-casting is much more of a televisual problem than a film one nowadays. TV characters do seem to become imprinted on me more so than movie ones.

It's interesting that someone as odd as Ernest Borgnine was playing 'heroes' in the mid-fifties and Sterling Hayden is referred to as the most handsome man in movies.......

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ChristineCB

Also, I think of Borgnine playing the cabbie in ESCAPE FROM NY. And Sterling Haydn, I'd have a hard time thinking he's the most anything anywhere. Howver, he has been perfect in a few of his films - Asphalt Jungle, The Killing, Suddenly.

I don't think any of those top his General Jack T. Ripper, though. Even the East German judge gives him a "10".

"Mandrake, have you ever heard of fluoridation?"

ChristineCB

I could see the argument that TV creates a more indelible typecasting stain because of numeric occurrences.

And is that the story's writing or the actor's abilities that then limits him - or lets him overcome?

Fourteen SHERLOCK appearances by Basil, yet he's the perfect bad guy to Errol Flynn in Sherwood Forest. And is quite the dashing French pirate in Captain Blood. I never once wonder those characters will tap his pipe and say, "Elementary, my dear..."

Is that because his films give him a chance to overcome my Sherlock images of him? Or are his characters that strong? (Or that minor?)

The Clean Grandfather and Steptoe aren't ever compared by me. I think Grandfather is a fairly minor role in HARD DAYS, and maybe that's why. They both share many common motions and expressions. Maybe I need to see more of Wilfrid's other works.

And probably for the vast number of character actors, they are all but required toi deliver their singular character for great stretches of time - or their whole career. Victor McLaglen is always that one character, but like he says in FORT APACHE, "Lads, tis a man's work before us..." A great scene, drinking up all that bad liquor to 'dispose of it'. I haven't seen all of Una O'Connor's work, but I suspect she's always played the shrill woman in all of them, and perfectly.

Moor Larkin

He's an earnest veterinarian assistant to Patrick McGoohan in "3 Lives of Thomasina"....... its not exactly a big role for Wilf but at least you get to see him in Technicolor. I didn't think "Steptoe" other than that he is so distinctive-looking you inevitably see the same face, and it does seem odd at first when he is so well-spoken and virtuous.

Wilf and Pat may have been work buddies, they played together in theatre in the early Fifties and were both in a TV episode of a now obscure series called "The Adventures of Aggie" in the late Fifties.

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Simon Bermuda

I still tend to think of McGoohan as DANGER MAN. In fact, when I was a kid I was sort of under the impression that John Drake decided to quit the service after shooting the wrong bloke on that Ice Station Zebra mission, but was then abducted and sent to the Village...

ChristineCB

This isn't what happened?!! WHAT? Are you telling me something ELSE happened?!!

smudge

And how terribly raw and gauche McGoohan looked in Aggie ; worlds away from the assured performances of Danger Man (etc). It was quite painful to watch when I saw it, redeemed only by the prescence of (Sir) Alfred Burke...

SMUDGE

Welcome to my house. Enter freely, and of your own will...