House of Eratosthenes

Alden Ehrenreich is the actor who played young Han Solo. He didn’t do a bad job. Being unfamiliar with his work, and having been tipped off that he performed to great acclaim in Hail Caesar!, which I have not seen, I don’t want to single him out for criticism. It wouldn’t be fair and it wouldn’t be accurate either. But, he did fail in this role, and his failure is an important one because it highlights something we’re losing. This is going to become clear when the Star Wars franchise is wiped clear of everything touched by Kathleen Kennedy, who excels at making beautiful, expensive movies that have no point.

Ehrenreich never had a chance because he was born in 1989. He is missing something. I’m not sure I have it myself but Harrison Ford had it in 1977. His movie-daddy Sean Connery had it in 1962. There’s a certain swaggering confidence men had. It’s not discipline and it’s not charm. It isn’t wildness and it isn’t tameness either. It’s a certain ease, a harmony of sorts with chaotic things.

I think riding a motorcycle gets you closer to it, but that’s not all of it. Lots of guys do that and they still don’t have it. And I have seen this problem come up before throughout Hollywood’s remake fever. Even remakes of silly things that weren’t all that successful, or if they were successful, would not & could not have been taken too seriously. Dukes of Hazzard remakes, Knight Rider remakes, Judge Dread remakes, Robocop. The later version of the male action hero has this “bobblehead” look he can’t quite shake. So now they want a younger Indiana Jones? He’s going to be another bobblehead actor in an Indiana Jones outfit, and he’ll look like that.

Being young right now makes it likely you’ll miss out on it. These boys have been told just about everything they do is “toxic masculinity,” and it really shows. They’re more ready to genuflect before a disapproving mother figure than Indiana Jones or James Bond ever were. They can’t hide it.

I hasten to add that I am not singling out these lads for a lack of balls or toughness. Some of them might have gone over to Iraq and killed people, for all I know. I’m sure a lot of them can bench press more than I can and last longer in a gym than my pot-belly, code-writing ass. The nagging fear is that what I’m describing is a permanent disability, a wound that can never be closed, on one or several generations. The irreconcilable consequence of boys having been raised into men as second class citizens. I look at these bobbleheads struggling to swagger around the way Bo and Luke Duke used to do it, and there’s something that isn’t there. It’s not the “Who the Hell is this guy?” shock we got back in the olden days with replacement actors. There’s something else that has been stripped away.

Some of the young people I talk to, at least the males among them, show some timidness about odd things. Walking with a chin held high, like you belong in the world, is something that seems to have gone away thanks to the text messaging technology. Offering a firm handshake. Even making some money. I’ve heard it said that that’s “selfish.” Perhaps what they mean to say is, someone else might conceivably construe it as selfish to make your own money, and keep it. Maybe that’s the problem. “If someone could possibly interpret it as a bad thing, then you’re guilty until proven innocent.” My generation wasn’t raised that way. We had to respect authority, but the rules were firm and, if we were expected to follow them, always explained.

Young men are intimidated from doing such basic things, and they don’t think about the intimidation. I guess they think these are good manners? It seems like they’ve been bullied away from doing things we did, without preoccupation or deep thought. Speak in a voice below middle-C. Make that money. Look at a girl in a bikini. Change a tire, or if you can’t, learn how. Measure something without using the Metric System.

Stand your ground in an argument with a girl, or a woman, who happens to be wrong. Unthinkable!

Fire a gun. Tie a knot. Identify tasks and chores that have to be done…and do them. Unhooka bra. Spot a contradiction. Start a conversation.

Maybe that last one is the crux of the matter? “Don’t speak until you’re spoken to first.” Otherwise it’s date-rape?

Smoke a cigar. Light a fire. Grill a steak. Argue about politics. Grow a chest hair. Pee on a leaf floating in a creek.

Offer to hold a door open, or retrieve something from a high shelf for a lady.

Now I’m sure here & there, there are some guys born after Perestroika who can do, and often do, a few of these things. But there are also a few who are afraid to do a few of them, and some who won’t do them. “Better to play it safe” seems to be the operative guidance. Well, when you live life that way, I think what we’re seeing here is that it shows. Even if you’re a talented, professional actor, it shows in how you walk and how you talk. When you step into the shoes of someone from a prior generation, especially someone like Harrison Ford, Steve McQueen or Sean Connery, all of whom held a variety of weird, humble, odd jobs before acting…it shows even more.

I know it isn’t a matter of simply being young and having youthful features. Try this: Look up a male actor from back in those olden days. John Wayne, perhaps. Do some research. Everyone has at least an approximate birth date that is a matter of public knowledge. Add exactly thirty years to that, and go find a movie in which that guy plays a prominent role, and is thirty. Watch him walk. Watch him talk. Now watch one of the recent movies with a male lead, who is somewhere around thirty.

See it?

We can’t have another lovable rogue in our movies until this is fixed. Ever. Anywhere.

They all have that bobble-head look.

Kids these days… they don’t even know that they don’t know. I saw something making the rounds, about “Die Hard.” Millennial asserts that Bruce Willis had a “dad bod” in that film.

*That’s* their frame of reference. Either a ‘roided up hulk, or “dad bod.” No sense of “average fitness” – as in, Willis was in shape, and quite muscular, but in a way a normal human who actually USES his muscles would be. So… you know… like a street cop, ie the John McClane character.

I can’t tell if that’s pathetic, scary, or both.
- Severian | 12/22/2020 @ 16:23
“There was this alien from Star Trek…you know…the OLD series.”

“Oh you mean the one with the bald captain?”
- mkfreeberg | 12/23/2020 @ 05:38
Should have found a way to work “James Bond is a flat out rapist” into this…
- mkfreeberg | 12/23/2020 @ 05:42
Shoot…I need to go back and add some links. Aaron Clarey‘s observations from years and years ago, should have been given credit somewhere.
- mkfreeberg | 12/23/2020 @ 05:46
It still surprises me a bit to see how muscular Shatner was back in the days. He’s got 20 lbs., easy, on Nimoy, who is ripped compared to McCoy. Late 60s Shatner was practically Stallone compared to the average actor of his day (and Brando was Schwarzenegger. See “A Streetcar Named Desire.” He looks big by modern standards; he was impossibly huge next to the other actors from his day).

That must be a huge problem in casting these “reboots,” come to think of it. How do you find someone skinny enough? Harrison Ford was “normal-guy fit” in the 1970s. Today’s actors are all hulking steroid monkeys. I didn’t see the recent “A Team,” for example, but the only guy who would’ve been easy to cast was BA. Anyone with a REAL “dad bod” ala Faceman would be too homely a character actor to be believable in an action movie. How do you find the A Team? Easy. Look for the impossibly handsome bodybuilders pretending to be mechanics or something.
- Severian | 12/23/2020 @ 09:36
PS I thought Ehrenreich did fine. He doesn’t look much like Ford, which is disconcerting at first but not a deal breaker. His biggest problem – apart from a stupid, incoherent script that fails every single basic element of storytelling, that is – was Ford himself. Ford’s recent performances weren’t “Han Solo;” they were “2010s Harrison Ford playing 1970s Harrison Ford playing Han Solo.” Ehrenreich had to play a guy playing himself… poorly. I don’t think Olivier himself could’ve pulled that off.
- Severian | 12/23/2020 @ 09:50
This is fascinating stuff. I looked at Clary’s list. Ugh. Thor comes off as a frat bro, but at least he has visible muscles. The rest? Soy is BAD for you, gang.

Someone ought to embed some pictures, or ideally some video clips. It’s quite striking how even actors with muscles don’t come off manly. Ever seen “American History X?” Ed Norton really did put on the beef, and he’s a legit actor, but he never comes off menacing – he’s obviously a guy who put in major gym time to achieve a look. He’s A great actor, but it’s like he’s acting inside someone else’s body.

Which actually works with Matt Damon in “Bourne Identity.” He too looks like a meat puppet – A guy with gym muscles who got taught a specific series of moves, like dance steps. He’d be ridiculous playing, say, a Green Beret, but the character specifically calls for a guy who doesn’t know how he’s doing the things he does. I imagine his performance was much better than the Richard Chamberlain version for that reason.

The last beefy actor I can recall who really looks like he can handle himself is Russell Crowe. Maybe Christian Bale. Keanu Reeves does great as John Wick, but he uses guns… and Reeves very obviously built down even from “The Matrix,” which was a far cry from the ‘roid monkey Keanu of “Point Break.”

Finally, contrast real life badasses, Special Forces types. I’ve met a few. They’re obviously in shape but aren’t overly muscular. I doubt they’re ever the biggest guy in the bar. But they all carry themselves with a certain unmistakable ease….

I guess if I were an acting coach and had to train guys for those types of roles, I’d tell them to get punched in the face a few times. Before we choreograph the fight scenes, you need to spar at least a dozen rounds in a real, full contact gym…
- Severian | 12/23/2020 @ 10:15
Now do actors in contemporary advertising scenarios.
- CaptDMO | 12/24/2020 @ 04:43
I guess if I were an acting coach and had to train guys for those types of roles, I’d tell them to get punched in the face a few times. Before we choreograph the fight scenes, you need to spar at least a dozen rounds in a real, full contact gym…

You know, maybe that’s it. A fist to the nose has a jarring effect when your momma never even bothered to slap you for using potty mouth language. That’s the whole point of training, all about the muscle memory, and not getting disoriented in a fight-or-flight situation. “Not afraid of being punched in the face” is a more precise description than “swagger.”

I was thinking subsequently Vin Diesel kind of has the old-school swagger about him. Dwayne Johnson too.
- mkfreeberg | 12/24/2020 @ 08:24
I forgot about Vin Diesel, but he talks about having been in fights in high school. Wrestling is fake, but the pain is real, plus Dwayne Johnson played college football — he’s seen the color of his own blood. That’s why Liam Neeson is such an effective action star despite being old and not particularly physically intimidating anymore — his wiki entry just says he was an amateur boxer but I recall reading he really was a Gold Gloves contender. He’s been punched in the face more than a few times.

Take a look at old school actors. Jimmy Stewart was initially rejected from the Air Corps for being too scrawny. Charles Bronson was so small he was (I’m pretty sure) a ball-turret gunner on a B-24. Both of those guys had the swagger, though, and Bronson made a living off tough-guy roles despite being 5’4″ or whatever. They’d seen some real action. Paul Newman was too handsome to live, and didn’t do a lot of “tough guy” roles, but despite being such a pretty, pretty man still carried himself like a macho man — he was a tail gunner on a dive bomber in WW2 (and later a race car driver). I could probably bench press any of those guys at their absolute heaviest. Hell, I could probably bench Stewart and Bronson combined, but I wouldn’t want to take either one of them on in a fistfight.
- Severian | 12/24/2020 @ 09:25
We were watching this one, which is highly recommendable if you want to see Trish Van Devere strutting her stuff, and acting her little heart out too…there is this verbal altercation between James Coburn, and the young guy from “They Shoot Horses, Don’t They?” Youngster takes a step toward Coburn, who is seated, and just leans slightly forward saying something like “You swing at me and I’ll kill you.”

The entire movie hangs on this one scene and the entire scene depends on that one instant. The whole point to it is that Coburn’s character is not kidding, and not exaggerating, and the other fellow knows all of this without a doubt in the world. And Coburn knows he knows.

And that right there is what we can’t put in movies today anymore. It takes a very special actor to make that work.
- mkfreeberg | 12/24/2020 @ 10:45

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Ehrenreich Never Had a ChanceMonday, December 21st, 2020

Ehrenreich Never Had a Chance
Monday, December 21st, 2020