Going for the Gold

I want to take a break from my theatrical reflective to something that's being plaguing my mind for the past couple of days. This past week has been my spring break and since A)My family doesn't travel and B)I still don't drive, I have been spending the time watching some of this year's Oscar contenders. I watched Inglourious Basterds, The Hurt Locker, and Up in the Air. I also found these really well made videos on youtube with all the Oscar winners in the major categories (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SoTEWhXOjLs) I would definitely check them out. If you haven't guessed, I'm short of on an Oscar binge. I know that it's cliche, presumptuous, idealistic, and all those other adjectives, but I would like to someday win an Oscar. *cue the eyerolls and groans from a couple of my readers*

I mean think about it, there are some of the greatest screen actors ever honored with that gold statuette and are sometimes forever remembered...or in a great deal of cases lost to time. From Spencer Tracy to Tom Hanks, from Jack Lemmon to Kevin Spacey. Actors who I admire and on day aspire to be like in terms of talent. Now, I'm not saying my acting career and my life would be a failure without an Oscar, believe it or not, I am not that petty. There are several great actors who have come and gone who have never received recognition let alone a nomination or an Oscar win. I simply aspire to one day reach that level, as most actors do.

This type of aspiration gets me to wonder, "What would I win for?" Would it be for a character who is mentally disabled: Dustin Hoffman for Rain Man, Tom Hanks for Forrest Gump, Daniel Day-Lewis for My Left Foot? Or would it be for playing a classic villian: Michael Douglas for Wall Street, Anthony Hopkins for The Silence of the Lambs, Heath Ledger for The Dark Knight, Christoph Waltz Inglourious Basterds. I have played roles of that kind with Georgie from Over the Tavern and Claudius in The Hamlet Project. Granted my performances are eons away from that level of commitment, talent, and skill.

Yet, Oscars sometimes will honor an a great actor, but often for a role that most people will forget in favor of a more memorable performance. Recent example, Jeff Bridges to me, is and probably will always be the Dude from The Big Lebowski, even though he just won an Oscar for Crazy Heart. Jimmy Stewart, who has given some truly great screen performances both under the direction of Frank Capra and Alfred Hitchcock won his Oscar not for his fantastic dramatic turns in Mr. Smith Goes to Washington or Rear Window but for The Philadelphia Story. It may be a great comedic performance, I wouldn't know, I slept through most of the movie, but it isn't Stewart's finest performance. Sometimes the Oscar is should just come with a note saying, "We're sorry for overlooking you before."

Even if by some small chance, I do make it to the big leagues, would I become one of those actors who has a great body of work but is never even recognized with a nomination, let alone a win. My first example being Gary Oldman, who has given some great work including recent work as Sirius Black in the Harry Potter movies and Commissioner Gordon in the Batman movies as well as great Oscar bait performances as Rozencrantz in Rozencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead, Lee Harvey Oswald in JFK, and Sid Vicious in Sid and Nancy. However, he has not been nominated a single time by the Academy. Granted I haven't seen his portrayal of Sid Vicious so I cannot say if he truly deserves the praise he gets for the role. Yet still, a lot of actors cite Gary Oldman as an influence in their acting careers; actors such as Brad Pitt, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, and Johnny Depp all cite Oldman as one of their favorite actors.


Or perhaps one of my favorite character actors, John Turturro, who has on average been in at least two films a year since 1980. A lot of non-theatre folk may know him as annoying FBI agent in the Transformers movies or as Ambrose Monk on Monk, but his career also includes several Oscar-worthy roles and films. He has done films with Spike Lee in Do the Right Thing and the Coen Brothers in The Big Lebowski. Recently, I saw the movie Quiz Show, a fantastic film by Robert Redford, where he plays Herb Stempel and it is nothing like any of his other roles. In most of his other movies, Turturro is a deep-voiced Southern/Brooklyn American who is easily becomes a shouty mad-fucker.

In Quiz Show, Turturro played Herb Stempel, who is a fast-talking, squeeky-voiced, walking encyclopedia who is a rather desperate man but you can't help but like him for some reason. Quiz Show did receive a nomination for Best Supporting Actor, only it went to the veteran Paul Scofield. Granted a nomination that year would not have guaranteed a win as Turturro would have been up against Martin Landau for Ed Wood, Samuel L. Jackson for Pulp Fiction, and Gary Sinise for Forrest Gump, each of which are truly memorable performances. In the end, some actors just get ignored by the Academy entirely.

I know that having the dream of one day winning an Oscar is a pipe dream and it is a one-in-a-million shot especially when you're a pasty ginger kid from Cincinnati. Yet there is some part of me, that despite this fact, still holds out hope and still in the back of my mind, slowly crafts an acceptance speech with a list of every person I would thank. I know that there is a long, long, long way to go but I still hear that voice in the back of my head, "And the Oscar goes to...Nate Netzley, or John Michael Romero, or Nathaniel Beckett." I still haven't decided on a stage name.

*Unfortunately, I can't really control the size of the pictures, so John Turturro will more than likely take up half the page, just be glad it's not his ass like in Transformers 2.