Acting awards and Biopics

[Ipickthiswhiterose]

I hope this is worthy of its own thread.

 

I thought I would write a post about a deep personal bugbear of mine. I should probably preface this that I am an acting coach at a drama school as well as director and producer in the commercial (immersive thatre) sector and have trained actors for over a decade. You are more than welcome to dismiss this, but I hope it contextualises that even if you disagree with my assertions here, I do at least vaguely know what I am talking about.

 

Since 2000, of the 38 Academy Awards handed for Best Actor or Actress, NINETEEN have gone to PURE facsimile biopic roles. To be clear, this doesn't even include somewhat expressionist renderings of characters (Olivia Coleman as Queen Anne), unknown people who have had their lives exposed (Dallas Buyers, the Revenant) or interpretations of real people into fictional equivalents (Jeff Bridges in Crazy Heart). Just facsimile, tell-a-basic-story-about-a-notable-person biopics. 

 

So thats half of the greatest performances of each year being straight up impressions of other real people.

 

In that time, ONE performance from a horror film has been nominated (Two if one is super generous and includes Sweeney Todd),  and THREE performances from pure comedies (Bridget Jones, Depp for Pirates, O Toole for Venus) have been nominated (yes, there are loads more for Dramedies - but there is enormous difference beteween the demands of a comedy intended entirely to make people laugh and a dramedy where laughter is a bonus.).

 

Over 4 times more biopic performances have WON Oscars than horror and comedy combined have even been nominated.

 

And the thing is....A biopic performance mostly is just a copy of another personas behaviour. In terms of the order of skills to ask actor to engage in its literally the easiest. There are very, very few examples of biopics critically failing, and even fewer where the 'star turn' has been panned.

 

Compare that to the number of times where true greats have fallen flat on their face doing comedy or horror.  Comedy and horror are REALLY hard to act in. The skills demanded are immense.

 

So I ask.....Is this okay? Am I the only person bothered with this pattern? Did you realise the trend was this extreme? Why do you think this is the case (if people care about this thread Ill shade my own thoughts later)? And is there any way or chance it will change?

 

Show 100 people Requiem For a Dream (not a horror film, but one that demanded similar performance demands and techniques) and Erin Brockovich and I challenge ONE to genuinely claim Julia Roberts' performance has the demands of Ellen Burstyn. They arent even in the same ionosphere of difficulty and at least in this case it tends to be universally accepted that Burstyn was screwed by the desperation to hand a megastar a big award. I would have thought the lunacy of the Roberts win would have started a backlash against the biopic, but if anything it has become turbocharged this century. Why has this genre, so insignificant at the box office, come to so dominate awards season above its station?

Edited January 10, 2020 by Ipickthiswhiterose

[CoolioD1]

i don't like it either. biography films can get a little boring. i just saw bombshell the other day and yes, charlize's awards buzz is based entirely around her looking exactly like megyn kelly. there's nothing interesting there otherwise.

 

I think part of it is it's sort of hard to really quantify what makes the best acting so it just becomes easy to just fall back on "i know this guy's doing a good job because he's playing a guy i've heard of and looks and sounds just like him". 

[Barnack]

16 minutes ago, Ipickthiswhiterose said:

There are very, very few examples of biopics critically failing, and even dpfewer where the 'star turn' has been panned.

 

That sound hyperbolic, from Gotti to hundreds of others in the 2000s have been panned by critics (not including the hundreds of panned that end up has tv movie):

https://www.imdb.com/search/title/?title_type=feature&release_date=2000-01-01,2019-12-31&num_votes=1000,&genres=biography&sort=user_rating,asc&ref_=adv_prv

 

Even Denzel Washington with a upcoming director kind of failed at it, same for Mara-Joaquin Phoenix Mary Magdalene, even Streep Iron Lady wasn't particularly well received by the critics.

 

It is a genre that goes down quite quietly usually when it is not acclaimed.

 

16 minutes ago, Ipickthiswhiterose said:

Why has this genre, so insignificant at ten box office, come to so undeservedly dominate awards season?

 

I think for one side of it, it can make it much easier to judge the performance in the how similar it is to the real person when that is attempted, specially if a la Capote the acting while in imitation is quite good, the other aspect is the talent that it tend to attract (maybe in a circular way), if you do MLK you can usually get some of the best people behind and in front of the camera.

Edited January 10, 2020 by Barnack

[titanic2187]

I have a friend worked as an actress , she once said she think actor/actress playing famous people is easier to be noticed because there are real figure act as a base reference for people to judge their performance.

 

It is like answering questions in the quiz or exam and how much you got it correct.  

 

If i were the voters, probably the only biopics performance i will vote for is marion cortillard, maybe DDL in lincoln. That is about it. 

 

By the way, I completely disagree that biopics is easier because they were "mirroring" people. Just you notice how much they "copied" doesn't mean the actress/actor who play non-biopics never copied other real-life person.

Edited January 10, 2020 by titanic2187

[Barnack]

3 minutes ago, titanic2187 said:

If i were the voters, probably the only biopics performance i will vote for is marion cortillard, maybe DDL in lincoln. That is about it. 

 

No George C Scott Patton, De Niro Raging Bull, Tom Hanks Captain Philipps, Day Lewis My Left Foot, Offman Capote, not even Denzel Malcom-X ? 12 year's a slave, Schindler List, Lawrence of Arabia.....

 

There is a long list of great performance in there.

[titanic2187]

Just now, Barnack said:

No George C Scott Patton, De Niro Raging Bull, Tom Hanks Captain Philipps, Day Lewis My Left Foot, Offman Capote, not even Denzel Malcom-X ? 12 year's a slave, Schindler List, Lawrence of Arabia.....

 

There is a long list of great performance in there.

I probably won't group them as straight biopics since many of the people they played aren't famous figure. They were playing real-life person but I doubt they actually "copied" the person they were playing. There were still some significant  room for those actor to interpret and finding the best way to act, instead of just straight out copying . 

 

  

[Barnack]

For many of those yes, but say Denzel doing Malcom-X ?

[Ipickthiswhiterose]

3 hours ago, titanic2187 said:

 

By the way, I completely disagree that biopics is easier because they were "mirroring" people. Just you notice how much they "copied" doesn't mean the actress/actor who play non-biopics never copied other real-life person.

I would argue getting a script, evaluating it, determining that a real life person can be used to map it, then replicating that behaviour and incorporating it where possible matched against the given circumstances into your performance is a much higher order skill set than knowing from the start to replicate a performance. 

 

 

[Ipickthiswhiterose]

3 hours ago, Barnack said:

No George C Scott Patton, De Niro Raging Bull, Tom Hanks Captain Philipps, Day Lewis My Left Foot, Offman Capote, not even Denzel Malcom-X ? 12 year's a slave, Schindler List, Lawrence of Arabia.....

 

There is a long list of great performance in there.

LaMotta, My Left Foot and Lawrence OA are not really facsimile biopics I would argue, much more of the Revenant/DallasBC category. Older Hollywood pictures are far more epic/classical in scope and as such don't have the pure-naturalistic copying style that is mostly the case post 2000.

 

As for the others...no I dont think any of those deserved awards. I sure as heck dont think DDL deserved an Oscar for a Lincoln impression over Phoenix in The Master given that I think that's probably the best performance of this century.

 

I'd also ask why Hoffman's performance as Capote is any better than Toby Jones' from literally the same year, because Ive worked at critiquing acting performances as my livelihood and I can't discern any difference in quality between those perfomances.

 

And yes, copying IS simplifying it, I dont argue that- but as a way of comparing biopics to the treatment of horror and comedy films - and their relative much harder and riskier performances to give - I think the point stands. Helen Mirren, DeNiro, Pacino AND Nicholson have all fallen flat on their backsides multiple times doing horror or comedy, and in DeNiro's case, both.

 

And yes, I do think the uniformity "anti-expert" tendency go go with performances that "anyone" can see are good because they're "just like Freddie/Elton/Judy" has a big impact on voting tendencies. Which is a massive shame. I also think that as seen with the Hoffman example the awards do often to great actors, giving the veneer of credibility- when in actuality Helen Mirren in the Queen, Meryle Streep in Iron Lady, Hoffman in Capote and Oldman in Darkest Hour are all undoubtedly oscar worthy actors,  but giving performances that arent even in their personal Top 25.

 

 

Edited January 10, 2020 by Ipickthiswhiterose

[Tower]

Just want to say that I completely agree with the OP. I didn't even think Malek did a good job last year, to me it came off as a weird parody impersonation of Mercury.

15 hours ago, Barnack said:

 

Even Denzel Washington with a upcoming director kind of failed at it, same for Mara-Joaquin Phoenix Mary Magdalene, even Streep Iron Lady wasn't particularly well received by the critics.

But this is kind of the point. Even though these films were not well liked, Streep still won the Oscar and Denzel was still nominated.

 

 

[filmlover]

Meryl won because she was crazy overdue for another Oscar after nearly 30 years and a dozen nominations later (and would've won two years prior had Bullock not had The Best Year Ever). If I had to guess Viola Davis was a close runner-up with that SAG win but they probably wanted to spread the wealth a bit and didn't want to give The Help more than one acting Oscar.

Edited January 11, 2020 by filmlover

[RealLyre]

my favorite biopic actor/actress Oscar win is Marion Cotillard in La Vie en rose for playing Edith Piaf. I think doing biopics is an easy Oscar bait way of getting noticed but there are some standout performances every once in a while.