FYC: Josh Brolin in "Inherent Vice" for Best Supporting Actor
Sunday, December 21, 2014 at 4:01PM And so we come to the end of our individually chosen FYCs. Amir, our team coordinator, is off for a month long holiday (!) which leaves myself, Nathaniel, your immortal but ever running-late host to wrap things up. To recap: we asked each team member to write up a personal favorite longshot* from one specific category. Here's the final entry in the series, a performance I really love in a film I really don't.
Why highlight a film I don't care for? Because it's important to remember during all-or-nothing awards season that each individual element of a film is different than the big picture and ought to be treated as such for the purposes of awardage.
Which brings us to...
See, it wasn't just the eternal sunshine of California or the vast vistas of desert land and salt water. It wasn't even really the hazy hash-filled air that P.T. Anderson's troupe was breathing. But I was parched and hungry the whole time I was watching Inherent Vice. I needed a fresh water oasis in the salty Pynchonian desert and Josh Brolin came to my rescue as "Bigfoot". Repeatedly. Fortunately he was also hungry, orally fixated you might say, and an eager lunch companion.
Like many characters in the film he's introduced with wonderfully descriptive prose that one assumes is lifted from the novel for voiceover. Brolin's introduction is in glorious widescreen longshot. The V.O.:
Like a bad luck planet in today's horoscope, here's the ol' hippie-hating mad dog himself in the flesh, Lieutenant Detective Christian F. "Big Foot" Bjornsen, SAG member, John Wayne walk, flat top, of Flintstone proportions, and that little evil shit twinkle in his eyes that says 'civil rights violations'"
Brolin just owns this, presenting as a black & white Western rectangle stiffly inserting itself into the movie's otherwise geometrically ragged and fringed array of colorful people. Of course you can't see an evil shit twinkle in someone's eyes in long or medium shot but you can hear it in their voice.
Congratulations hippie scum! Welcome to a world of inconvenience"
Immediately we move to Bigfoot's office where the detective taunts Doc Sportello with carefully chosen words and obscene self-lubricated hand gestures; he's always shoving things into his mouth: frozen bananas, fingers, diner food. Brolin's line readings aren't just well delivered but perfectly balanced and heaped, as if he's collecting the best syllables on a fork, whichever wons have the most condescending flavor. The actor captures how natural all of this comes to Bigfoot now, that its both performative for Doc and completely innate in Bigfoot's character (we instantly register that the performance is now the reality after numerous pre-movie variations of these same conversations between the two detectives) since he's even doing the same things when he's out of view on the phone or half lost in his own strictly business thoughts when he's eating.
BigFoot's buzzkill nature would be suffocating if Brolin didn't find so many ways to play the notes. And though Bigfoot is mean to stand in opposition to the movie's other characters, he'd be totally at odds with the movie's loose hippie daze tone if he also weren't so damn funny. There are a great many people who think Inherent Vice is a good time movie in and of itself. Whether or not that proves to be your experience know this: it's a far greater party every single time Josh Brolin shows up to crash it.
Motto pankēki!"
*I selected Brolin before his BFCA nomination so perhaps he's not quite as improbable as expected in a low key supporting actor competition, so I'm crossing my fingers... or licking them in Bigfoot's honor.
RELATED
BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR CHART
Each Longshot FYCs In Case You Missed Any
Actor, Locke | Actress, Belle | Supp. Actress, Gone Girl | Supp. Actor, Inherent Vice
Picture, Obvious Child | Adapted Screenplay, A Most Wanted Man
Sound Mixing, Grand Budapest Hotel | Costume, The Boxtrolls
Cinematography, Homesman | Prod. Design, Enemy | Editing, Citizenfour
Short-Lived Longshot FYCs = Academy Thought Otherwise
Makeup, Only Lovers Left Alive (eliminated) | FX, Under the Skin (eliminated)
Screenplay, The Babadook (ineligible) | Score, The Immigrant (eliminated)
Reader Comments (12)
Amen on Brolin - absolutely the standout in Inherent Vice.
Why was the Babadook script ruled uneligible? Because it's on VOD?
That's it? That's all you have to say! Whatever (TM Meryl Streep).
He did sneak in for Milk, after all.
I haven't seen Inherent Vice yet, but in the trailer Brolin always reminds me of Mickey Rooney in Breakfast at Tiffany's.
I'm anxiously awaiting this movie, and I pretty much fell in love with Brolin in the trailer.
SORTA SPOILER ALERT:
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Nathaniel, isn't the introduction of "Bigfoot" that hysterical TV commercial? FWIW, I kinda dug the movie (more than The Master) and really want to watch it again ASAP...
Paul -- is it? I was kinda skimming the movie to write this. If so my bad.
Bigfoot and Sancho are among the best side characters in the book (along with Coy, Jade, Clancy Charlock, and Aunt Reet), but you can easily see Brolin nailing Bigfoot. It's a hard-ass role with a lot of humor and quick wit.
"I haven't seen Inherent Vice yet, but in the trailer Brolin always reminds me of Mickey Rooney in Breakfast at Tiffany's."
Because he was asking for Scandinavian pancake in some Southeast Asian language? That's.... not really yellowface. A character quirk at most.
Another year, another Kate Winslet film that's not going to earn her a nomination.
She'll be 40 next year but got her first nomination (out of 6) at the age of 20.
Not very Meryl Streep-ish.
So glad you put the link to the Locke longshot on this post. I must have missed it when it originally appeared because I thought it odd that no one at FTE mentioned Tom Hardy in Locke! It is really one of my fav performances of the year.
Fan of Josh Brolin. He has been the best thing in a number of films from the past decade. I'll wait for VOD on Inherent Vice though, only cuz I could barely get through the novel and so not super eager for the film.
Yavor??? i dont follow. kate has a movie out?
no nods for "Carnage" and "Labor Day" - despite directorial talent
and now "A Little Chaos" which was supposed to be a 2014 release was pushed to a spring 2015 release after a very lukewarm reception at the festivals.