| By Christopher Piehler As summer brings its seasonal flood of CGI sequels and fast food tie-ins, it's easy to forget that filmmaking is, in some circles, considered an "Art Form." So to help us all remember, here's my highly cultured, wildly incomplete rundown of Best Performances by Actors Playing Practitioners of Other Art Forms. (Go ahead, Oscar, fit that on a statuette. I dare ya.) Best Actor
Actors love playing actors, so there's a wide field to choose from here. The old-school choice is, of course, the inimitable Donald O'Connor in Singin' in the Rain. (If you doubt me, check out "Make 'Em Laugh" on YouTube and try not to explode with joy.) I also liked Eddie Murphy in a double role in Bowfinger. But if you want the embodiment of the self-absorption, the florid kindness, the charisma and the plummy vowels that can only come with an English accent, it has to be Peter O'Toole in My Favorite Year. When he says, "I'm not an actor, I'm a movie star," it makes you laugh and cry at the same time, creating the facial equivalent of a rainbow. Best Dancer
There's certainly something to be said for the showdown between ballet jock Mikhail Baryshnikov and tap god Gregory Hines in the Cold War classic White Nights (especially the scene where Baryshnikov does a ridiculous 11 pirouettes), but the title has to go to Jennifer Beals in Flashdance: She's a dancer. She's a welder. She's a maniac. Best Playwright
As a writer for the stage myself, I'm always delighted to see powerhouse actors like Al Pacino (Author! Author!), John Cusack (Bullets Over Broadway) and Bill Murray (Tootsie) play playwrights who actually see sunlight and can get through a whole conversation without biting anyone. But the victor in this grandest of categories has to be Joseph Fiennes as the Bard in Shakespeare in Love. Not only does he compose beautiful poetry for the stage and make out with Gwyneth Paltrow, but he performs some truly explosive feats of sprinting while dressed head to toe in green leather. Best Novelist
Michael Douglas is twee-riffic as the pink-bathrobe-wearing, pot-smoking professor in Wonder Boys, and Emma Thompson is charmingly desperate in the underrated Stranger Than Fiction. (A writer who smokes! Shocking!) But Jack Nicholson snags the Lifetime Achievement Award here for having played two nutso novelists who come to very different ends in The Shining and As Good as It Gets. (Which begs the question: Where the heck is Helen Hunt?) Best Poet
Honorable mentions here go to Eminem in 8 Mile (who else can turn barf into poetry?) and Janet Jackson in Poetic Justice (see, her name is Justice and she writes poems...), but the winner must be Mike Myers portraying the free-verse spouting king of the coffee house in So I Married An Axe Murderer. It takes years of dedicated training to pull off the immortal couplet, "Woman/Whoa, man!" Best Singer
You want divas? How about Bette Midler in The Rose (or anything she's done, really) or Angela Bassett in What's Love Got to Do With It? (I'll even grant you a wooden but lush-voiced Whitney Houston in The Bodyguard.) You want an eerily accurate impersonation of a rock god? Try Val Kilmer in The Doors. Personal favorites include Adam Sandler in The Wedding Singer, the odd pairing of Michael J. Fox and Joan Jett in Light of Day (the title song is really catchy - really), the Jolie-lipped Michael Pare in Eddie and the Cruisers and Hugh Grant as a happy has-been in Music & Lyrics. But there must be a winner, and he is, of course, the man with the armadillo in his trousers: David St. Hubbins of Spinal Tap. Please insert your own "goes to 11" joke here. Best Screenwriter
Easy. Nicolas Cage berating, aiding and assassinating himself as both Charlie and Donald Kaufman in Adaptation. Best Painter
For attracting thespian firepower, Andy Warhol should emerge victorious, having been played by a cavalcade of luminaries who include Guy Pearce, Jared Harris, David Bowie, Crispin Glover and himself. But my personal Best Painter on Film is Julianne Moore as Maude Lebowski in The Big Lebowski. Why? Because her first entrance has her - naked - flying through the air, harnessed to a zip line, screaming and wildly flailing two paint brushes. That, my friends, is ART. |
