Yeah, this is supposed to be his "Mickey Rourke
The Wrestler role/comeback, from all I've read and am hearing. Be out of the public eye for years, keep your nose clean/free from scandal/bad behavior and transform yourself to star in a tear-jerking Oscar-bait project by a
serious director, and suddenly you're in everyone's good graces again and everyone's rooting for you to sweep the awards.
Get fat, go bald, get super-skinny, go against type, play a gay character, play a straight character who wishes they were gay, etc. are all sure-fire ways to get yourself nominated. No, Fraser didn't make himself 600+ lbs. for this role, so, naturally, actual fat actors have been raising a fuss about his casting and wearing a fat suit, prosthetics, etc. Okay, it's show "business". Point out any known-name 600lbs. gay actor who could've properly checked all the required boxes for this role and get back to me. I don't give a shit if there's some beloved, known-only-in-his-hometown stage actor in Baltimore who fits the bill. He's not gonna put butts in seats like a Brendan Fraser or some other
known name will, for the movie to even stand a chance at being seen outside the art house and award circuit screenings. Hey, he wasn't wearing black-face, so STFU already. Don Cheadle or Forest Whitaker didn't get cheated out of role. Naive me, thinking "acting" is a performer portraying something he actually isn't. Last I checked, that's the very
definition of the word/occupation. Sorry, but I'm pretty sure Christopher Reeve couldn't really fly or lift a bus or train, and Harrison Ford probably doesn't know jack about archeology. Were real-life superheroes or archeologists raising hell 40 years ago over the casting of Reeve and Ford in their iconic roles. I somehow doubt it. This whole "roles can only be inhabited by people who are truly that in real life - fat, gay, deaf, trans, wizard, starship captain, dyslexic, etc. - is a recent thing, stemming from various put-upon groups always kvetching over "lack of representation", "the wrong kind of representation" or any number of other things. Maybe just shut up and be glad that a top director and studio took on the grim tale of a grotesquely fat gay man who's alienated his daughter and others. Isn't exactly summer popcorn fare and if it makes any profit at all, it'll be a small miracle. By all means, stand outside the multiplex with placards protesting the casting and existence of a movie that you should be fall-on-your-knees thankful ever got made. Because it would not have, 15 years ago, guaranteed. And, if so, it would've starred a complete cast of unknowns and would've raked in about $9.75 total box office over 4-5 months (if that), and likely be seen/treated as a grim, dark cult comedy over all else. A point-and-laugh spectacle vs. "oh, that Mummy guy actually can act!" thing it's become.
People are just ridiculous (and impossible to please). Granted, I don't follow movies/acting circles as I once did, but I certainly don't know any openly gay 600+-lb. actors the director/studio
could've gone with to help draw in the other cast/talent. Sometimes you sign on a Fraser, De Niro, Pacino or Willis to help lure the Nortons, Spaceys, Harris, Kilmers, Rickmans and the rest of the participants/cast?
It is, above all else, a
business. Not a virtue-signaling, box-checking orgy (that comes
after the Oscars at one of L.A.'s more debauched, coke- and jizz-riddled hotels everyone there pretends to not know about but wind up spending more time at than their own house.
PS - Nicolas Cage has fully entered that Christopher Walken/Robin Williams zone for me, to where they're kinda in on the joke and it just makes me nervous/uncomfortable to sit and watch them in anything anymore (well, not Williams, I suppose) because they're playing it up and going "full Walken/Cage" and over-delivering the product. Cage has been a weirdo for years, but it didn't bother me in
Raising Arizona and the like. Now it/he does. There's no way I could watch such a movie now and not want to jump out of my own skin after about 15-20 minutes.
