E.C. Authors David Licata and Rolando Teco recently embarked on an extended conversation on the subject of fame. Here's part three of their exchange:
In the last post, Licata posed the following question to Teco:
DL: Your film, We Pedal Uphill, has many very fine theater actors in it, and all of them turn in very fine performances. But these are not people who show up in Us Magazine. Was this a “no stars, just talent” decision on your end? Do you think celebrity detracts from a film more than it adds to it, taking the viewer out of the film so that they’re aware they’re watching Jack Nicholson, instead of watching a character?
RT: The answer is "yes" and "no." Several of the stories in We Pedal Uphill were written specifically for actors I know and love, people I'd either worked with before or had always wanted to work with. Still, some of the other pieces, the ones which we cast with traditional auditions, there were some half-hearted efforts made by some of my producers to attract so-called "names" to the project. But it became clear fairly soon that because what we were trying to do was so unusual, it would be near impossible to attract celebs. Now, in retrospect, I look back and I can say that I am convinced that any efforts made to attract famous talent to our project was wasted time and energy that could have been better spent on prepping and raising funds.
Furthermore, now that I know what the film is (which I really didn't entirely when we began the process), I understand that to have had famous faces in the mix would have been very distracting. This is not to say that one should never cast famous people, it's just a very delicate balance because if you cast one leading role with a "name" you need the roles of equal size to be equally recognizable. For instance, in Defiance, I certainly don't think that Daniel Craig or Liev Schreiber are distracting us from the story being told by virtue of their fame. But this is in large part due to the fact that the overall fabric of the film is peopled with a lot of familiar faces from cinema today.
Now, there are a lot of Hollywood films that consciously play off the persona of a given star for their storytelling. You mentioned Jack Nicholson. He's a prime example of this. Known to be bit of a womanizer by the public, his appearance in roles that are in line with this persona is no accident. The baggage he carries with him helps propel the story and helps lend credibility to the character he's portraying. I don't think there's anything wrong with this, although, of course, after 12 similar roles, for the actor, it can begin to feel limiting, if not stifling.
I am always conscious of giving actors the opportunity to stretch themselves and play roles that are not what they're generally type cast in, but that's probably my own peculiarity. Anyway, we seem to have veered off-topic, so let me try to bring us back on track by posing a question to you.
As a viewer, do you find yourself propelled into big budget storytelling by the baggage carried by a given star? Can you think of examples of movies in which a big name was cast to play essentially the public's notion of him or her self where you were charmed and delighted rather than repulsed?
(to be continued...)
