Opinion — Casting One’s Characters More Fun than Casting Stones

A talk-radio blowhard accidentally opened up an interesting topic.  During all of Sony-Kim Jong Un silliness a secret was revealed. British actor Idris Elba was (is) under consideration to be the next actor to play James Bond in the incredibly popular franchise.  Not quite yet a household name, Elba has a growing list of successful small (“The Wire” and “Luther”) and big-screen (American Gangster and Thor) roles. He is at least as popular as Daniel Craig was when he was tapped for the sacred spot.

Anytime the role has been up for grabs, there has been debate. It’s all part of the 007 spectacle.  And years after one actor or another has landed the role, the debate raged anyway.  There are the Sean Connery purists.  He was good.  He was also the first and the one who established expectations. The fans who accepted Connery, eventually accepted Roger Moore, Pierce Brosnan and now Craig.  Each performed as Bond multiple times and has earned Bond producers a serious fortune.  But what about Bond’s creator?  Which one was the truest to 007 creator Ian Fleming’s vision?  And because Craig is bowing out after one more epic adventure, who should be anointed?

Idris Elba As Bond?

Any choice would have been challenged.  We have our favorite Bonds.  And if you are basing it on the books, who knows how you have imagined the icon — a hero of your own imagination.  In this case one of the objections is that Elba is Black.

One person argued that if Fleming had intended Bond to be Black he would have said so, alluded to it in one of his early 007 novels. I agree with that. Given that Bond was loosely and flatteringly based on the author himself, I suspect the Bond in Fleming’s eye was white.  In fact, if Fleming had his way, David Niven would have been James Bond. I would have liked that as well. I loved watching David Niven. He might not have been as gymnastic as the others, but he would have projected the most sophistication. As it is we’ve adjusted to the tough, serious Bond of Connery as well as the tongue-in-cheek Moore and the dour Craig.  So far, after a few moments of adjustment, I’ve liked them all, including Brosnan who seemed a blend of Connery and Moore.

More to the point, though, since when did we abide by the original creator’s suggestion in any movie based on a book or series?

Lucy Liu Is Watson

If any fictional, crime-fighting literary character could out-icon Bond, it would be Sherlock Holmes. What say ye about Benedict Cumberbatch’s modern take on the world’s most famous detective? From a pipe-smoking, bookish private eye, we have a wonderfully outlandish and flamboyant narcissus in current day London.  Or, we might look at his incarnation in the American TV version, where a less stylish but more annoying narcissus solves murders in New York with help of his best friend Watson who has become for this 21st Century series a lovely Chinese woman. Jack Reacher, the newest best-selling superhero in books, is described as being 6’5”, size being a factor of no little importance to his character’s tough-guy profile. Reacher is being played on screen by the diminutive Tom Cruise.  Reacher’s creator, Lee Child, has said publicly that he likes Cruise in the role. So?

So, Elba is a fine British actor, great looking, and he has proven his screen presence.  How can he not be a prime candidate?

But there is an interesting question here.  How faithful should (can) films be to the books on which they were based?  I imagine a number of writers have thought about who they would cast to play the characters in their novels.  Of those whose books (and heroes and heroine) went to Hollywood, how many authors were satisfied with the choice of actors and actresses?  Robert B. Parker was said to have been extremely unhappy with Robert Ulrich’s TV series portrayal of popular Boston private eye Spenser. I’ve done some fantasy casting for my Shanahan series.  For years I imagined Paul Newman in the role of the elderly semi-retired private eye. He did make a great film about an older P.I. (Twilight). Just not mine.  Clint Eastwood has also come to mind. Shanahan in the forthcoming Killing Frost is a somewhat disabled 72.  (Eastwood is 86). I’ve also imagined Ed Harris, who is only 64. That’s not a huge stretch for a talented actor and gifted make-up artist.  Throw Morgan Freeman into the mix and I would be hard pressed to choose which one I’d pick for the Shanahan role

P.S. Rumors are afoot suggesting Cumberbatch is in the Bond sweepstakes as well.

Opinion, Observation — Benedict Cumberbatch, Does Knighthood Await?

Cumberbatch on cover of The New York Times magazine

At the time I was considering a grand career on the stage — I was maybe 17 — my models were the four British sirs.  There was Ralph Richardson, Lawrence Olivier, John Gielgud and Alec Guinness.  I watched them closely over the years. They were all bigger than life.  Under closer scrutiny, I discovered, with the exception of Guinness, it was hard to separate the actor from the role.  We were always aware we were watching Gielgud perform.  It was marvelous, but not much different than the American actor as celebrity. The star, John Wayne, let’s say, seeped through any character he played. Some might blame typecasting, but I would suggest that there were limitations having to do with talent, dedication and range.  Of the big four, only Guinness was truly able to transcend personality. Currently, only a few of the big names can do it consistently. Daniel Day-Lewis is one. Cate Blanchett is another.  So is Meryl Streep. Joseph Gordon-Levitt seems to be on his way.

Benedict Cumberbatch is now revealing this range. He is the dazzling, eccentric flamboyant Sherlock on the BBC series.  Earlier he was almost invisible, certainly appropriately bland, as a second banana bureaucrat in John Le Carre’s Tinker, Tailor, Soldier. Spy, a fine 2011 remake of a highly regarded Guinness film.  He also had a low-key heroic role in a three-part period piece based on William Golding’s sea-trilogy To The Ends of the Earth. These were not remotely similar roles, and to each he gave individual life   He doesn’t so much inhabit the character as allow the character to inhabit him. Recently, he portrayed such distinctly different characters as physicist Stephen Hawking and political provocateur Julian Assange. He’s also opened up to roles in pop fantasy films and done voice-overs in animated productions. He is an original.  My guess is that some day he will be knighted. But that’s the least of it. He appears quite able to transcend the cult of personality and, despite an apparent finely developed sense of humor, join the ranks of very serious, very talented actors.

Film Pairing — Reinventing Sherlock For The Big Little Screen

Sherlock at the BBC — Nobody Does It Better

I can’t think of another series detective that has lasted longer or been the subject of so many recreations.  Seventy-six actors have played the character in stage plays, cartoons, TV shows and films.   They have included Basil Rathbone who did fifteen films as well as actors ranging from John Gielgud and Peter O’Toole to John Cleese and Charlton Heston.  Hollywood recently recreated Sherlock in the spirit of the blow-‘em up, big-budget superheroes.  Personally, that’s been a disappointment.  I would complain that they took what should have been a remarkable exercise of the mind to an exercise in special effects and demolition. But the current TV revivals have taken a few liberties as well.

Last year, the British had the gall to set Sherlock and his loyal companion down in the 21st Century.  During the initial promotional hoopla, I thought it all a cheap gimmick. I vowed not to care.  I was wrong.  It was and is sensational.  That is the correct word. It is sensational in nearly every meaning of the word and is sensational without blowing up half the world. In fact, much of the action is in the words, themselves. Benedict Cumberbatch brings a touch of vulnerability and immense amount of charm to the intended cold and calculating Sherlock.  Martin Freeman is a perfect get-the-job-done Watson to his eccentric and often flamboyant partner, which brings us to the “gay thing.”  As a viewer we do not know, but whatever the relationship is, it is a source of humor as others have their suspicions, as they say, and Watson frets about how it looks.  Sherlock, being the superior human he is, wonders why anyone would worry about what others think.  In its second season, the BBC version’s shock of the new has worn off.  But this Sherlock remains solid and lots of fun.

This fall, American network TV, trying hard to be original — which it rarely is — has come out with a modern day Sherlock of its own.  One of the big differences is that the first episode of the BBC series was big and shocking — pleasantly shocking.  It was bigger than life.  It also had a plot.  The first of the new CBS TV series was done professionally enough.  If the premiere episode is any indication, then what we have is a competent American network hour crime procedural that intends to safely capitalize on a trend. Okay, what’s done is done. We’ve got another Sherlock Holmes.  In the U.S. version we go to New York. Sherlock (Johnny Lee Miller) has a drug problem and Watson (Lucy Liu), his sidekick, is on hand to run interference for Sherlock’s anti-social behavior and prevent her charge’s potential backslide into drugs.

The New American Sherlock — Verdict Is Out

The producers of Elementary, like everyone else, are taking advantage of the copyright status of Sherlock Holmes and the characters associated with him, which is no status at all.  It is in the public domain. For me, the question is that despite the change in century, the BBC version incorporates a lot of the original Sherlock sensibility. The American version doesn’t.  Why did the characters in this show have to be Sherlock and Watson?  Couldn’t they have been Henry and Esmeralda?  Also, the strangely callous behavior of the British Sherlock is amusing.  In the American version, Sherlock’s lack of social skills borders on the irritating.  Maybe we’ll come to like these people.

In addition to these new incarnations of Sherlock Holmes, I think a case can be made that The Mentalist, which debuted a few years ago, has already brought Sherlock to American network TV. It is in the Sherlock tradition. They simply used the classic as an inspiration.  Now in its fifth season, Simon Baker plays Patrick Jane, a completely self-absorbed consultant to the police. Jane’s crime solving skills, like the Sherlock character, are based on his keen skills of observation.  But he too brings charm to a character that could be insufferable performed by someone else.

As far as the double feature is concerned, the idea is to pick an episode of the BBC version, available on disc and a new episode of CBS’s Elementary.  Watch them back to back.  Now, how should you enjoy your Sherlock Holmes episodes?  Absinthe.  There’s no way I’d recommend either morphine or cocaine, though they were likely Holmes’ recreational drugs of choice.  However, absinthe is legal again.  Incidentally, the colorful history of this most mystical, romantic and devilish drink, suggests that real absinthe was not as dangerous as it was portrayed.

Note:  Others who have played Sherlock include Robert Downey Jr., Roger Moore, Christopher Lee, Peter Lawford, Leonard Nimoy, Peter Cushing, Stewart Granger, Frank Langella and Jeremy Brett.