Oscar Symposium Day 2: Invisible Art & Self Love
Thursday, February 2, 2012 at 10:00PM Previously on the Oscar Symposium... we discussed and defined the business of actors elevating their movies, spent time at "Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy"'s stale office party mingling with the nine Best Picture nominees (only one of which we all seem to love) and agreed that Brad Pitt deserves Best Actor. Eventually Nathaniel's second favorite movie of the year (The Artist) took quite a beating so he sulked off to lick his wounds.
And here we pick up for Day Two of our three day symposium...
MARK HARRIS: While we're waiting for our host... Nick raised a really interesting point yesterday in his persuasive case for Plummer, which is: Just what the hell is a supporting performance anyway? I like his definition (and Plummer would probably get my vote too, for showing amazing restraint in a part that could be played as one Big Moment after another). But I'm also drawn to performances like Jonah Hill's, in a role that exists purely to give Pitt's character a wittily contrasting somebody to bounce off of, and like Melissa McCarthy's (my favorite in that category, I'm not ashamed to admit), even though she's more a standout in an ensemble than a pure supporting actress. Do any of you feel that there are supporting performances this year that are miscategorized? The French clearly do, since when the Cesars nominated Berenice Bejo for The Artist, it was for Best Actress.
NATHANIEL ROGERS: I plead the fifth on category fraud. I've said too much over the years about that whole... nightmare.
KURT OSENLUND: I'm going to flip it on its head and go 'lead to supporting.' By which I mean, I think I'm one of the few who still believes Viola Davis belongs in the supporting category. I'll admit this is a complicated stance. I think it's the film/text that's guilty of cheaply attempting to make Aibileen a lead character, giving her a tacked-on coda of "closure" and trying to reduce the shame of taking a black women's story and still handing it, mainstream-style, to a white redhead. By extension, I think awards bodies are guilty for taking the bait. Ideally, I'd like to see Meryl walk away with Best Actress, Viola walk away with Supporting Actress, and Octavia sit comfortably with a nomination, for a performance that's highly enjoyable, but shrill and stereotypical and nowhere near as soulful as her co-star's.
My short answer to the 'supporting to lead' question would be that, this year, I actually think all of the supporting stars are placed where they belong.
NICK DAVIS: I don't think the ending of The Help feels tacked on. I don't even think it feels like closure: we have no way to predict Aibileen's next move, much less to presume its ease. And from those opening minutes with all of her backstory and daily routine, and through all of Davis's impeccable playing of heavily weighted scenes, I think she's definitely a lead. I know her screen time must be small compared to other leads, but at the very least, she falls squarely in that Marge Gunderson/Hannibal Lecter category where her charismatic impress is so profound from the lead/supporting borderline that it pushes her handily over. It helps that even the blocking and costuming and editing and lighting choices keep conspiring to shift focus from Skeeter to Aibileen whenever they share a scene. Emma Stone is just giving away those scenes, as markedly as Meryl all but erased herself in the Doubt standoff. I wouldn't want anyone watching me act opposite Viola Davis, either.
MARK: At last, a fight! I'm going to strongly disagree about Viola Davis, who not only carries the emotional weight of The Help, but has considerably more screen time than past lead-performance winners like Frances McDormand in Fargo. Kathryn Stockett's novel isn't Skeeter's story, even if Skeeter is a storyteller -- it's told from the first-person perspectives of Skeeter, Aibileen, and Minny. (So, if the movie were really true to the book, Octavia Spencer would probably have to be considered a third co-lead.) To me, Skeeter's "...and then I wrote the book" storyline feels as inorganic to what The Help is really about as the closure the movie gives Davis. The movie's emotional strength -- what there is of it -- lives in Aibileen's struggle; she's arguably even the title character. Yes, the movie is technically Skeeter's story, but only in the way that Training Day is technically Ethan Hawke's. So I'm happy Davis is where she is.
After the jump: The Help, Best Screenplay, and Masturbatory Movies
KURT: Well I certainly wasn't trying to imply that I don't think Viola's performance totally carries the movie's emotional weight, I just think she does it from the sidelines, regardless of the narration or the formal decisions that Nick astutely observed. (I see Nathaniel chiming in to join the opposing side but I'm still typing! Haha). I have also gathered through this season that had I read Stockett's novel, I would have approached the film differently, as Mark addressed. So maybe I shouldn't have included the word "text" in my last response. What ultimately matters in the film may belong to Davis, but in plain terms, the movie belongs to Stone.
ALI ARIKAN: J'ACCUSE! The last time I saw Kurt he was wearing a "Viola 4 Evah" t-shirt, and practicing his new signature, "Kurt Davis," on the margins of his notebook.
KURT: Hahaha!! And you know I wish I were the one who got to rub all that glitter all over her for SAG night. *snap*
NICK: I tend to think movies have more leads than we recognize. Lots of dramatic structures presume more than one character whom the film takes a rounded interest in, with generous screen time, in ways that serve that characterization for itself without just refracting onto somebody else's. The Help feels to me like a contrapuntal movement at all times between Skeeter's story and Aibileen's. It is very aware of what each enables for the other, but also of all the qualities that both women harbor as individuals. They are dual centers of different but compatible gravity.
NATHANIEL ROGERS: I've never had such trouble keeping up with a symposium before, I have to say! You are all such remarkably speedy typists. Did you take all the dictation for The Help once they had the maids in the room?
I was in the corner licking my wounds, my injuries are pride based so they heal quickly. When people got mean about The Artist last night, I just... well, to me it's like kicking that cute doggie that Mark didn't want humping his leg at the party.
MARK: Our conversation is reminding me of two important things:
1. How much harder it is to speak up for why you liked a movie, and contend with all those wrinkled noses and furrowed brows and pellets of "You LIKED that?" than it is to say what didn't work for you.
2. Emma Stone's remarkably horrible wig.
NATHANIEL: Ha! By the way, I love the image of Kurt in a "Viola 4 Evah" t-shirt rubbing glitter all over her. I only hope he'll gift it to me since he's a Streep man this year. He's only infiltrating the Viola camp to get info.
I don't love the image of anyone in Skeeter's wig, least of all the gorgeous Emma Stone.
I'm thinking of a new question. Give me a moment. This is a marathon and not a sprint.
NICK: I'm still curious if anyone thinks a multiple nominee got blanked in a category where it should have been an easy get.
KURT: I think Tinker Tailor's snubs were already referenced, at least as far as Art Direction. I'd add Cinematography, Art Direction, Editing and Directing to its deserved noms. I also think Drive absolutely belonged in Editing (but that wasn't a multiple nominee...) I think the Tree of Life should, duh, be in Editing. What an undertaking that must have been! I think The Descendants would have been a fine contender for Mark's imaginary music category, but that's neither here nor there.
I will say I'm thrilled that a snub I would have definitely thought I'd be mentioning here doesn't apply: A Separation for original screenplay. Easily my favorite surprise nod, maybe favorite nod in general.
MARK: For me the most notable omission for a multiple nominee is one that Nathaniel cited in his introductory post: Tinker, Tailor for Best Art Direction. And I think that if Moneyball hadn't come out, Brad Pitt would have been a sure nominee for The Tree of Life (although that might have been an instance where lead-vs.-supporting category confusion would have caused real problems).
And I agree with Kurt that the screenplay categories are so often the home of pleasant surprises -- for me, it was the inclusion of Margin Call.
NATHANIEL: Oh, Kurt, the editing category. To me it's nearly always an indecipherable nightmare. How did The Descendants get that nod?
As to your pleas for what belongs there I say Yay and Nay. Let's take the Nay first. The Tree of Life is a beautiful movie but I don't feel that editing is crucial to its success (though certainly fine work) because, honestly, couldn't you move any scene around, abbreviate any bit or extend any other and still come up with basically the same meditative poem? Or am I just missing something precise about The Tree of Life which I admired but never loved? Maybe I was just burnt by my experience with The New World which I loved far more but which kept changing even after release until I had no idea what movie I'd actually seen.
But a resounding yes on Drive which gets much of its intoxicating thrill from its unusual and autoerotic rhythms. It was so fixated on itself, pausing to admire its own imagery or sound and then revving back up again, like it was engaged in a really really long edging session. Was any movie more in love with itself this year?
And when a movie loves itself so much -- surely there are other examples among the nominees -- does this turn you on or off? Back it up with an example!
NICK: I think it's no secret that The Descendants crew wanted to avoid The Help's current predicament of looking like an actor-friendly vehicle with no voting hooks for other filmmakers. So, they put a heavy promotional push behind Kevin Tent's nomination, and voilà. I will avoid naming the same film in relation to your question, Nathaniel, about films that seem exorbitantly in love with themselves, as I am trying to say nice things. Mostly.
Instead, the other film that comes to mind in this respect is The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo. That's a little ironic, since David Fincher seems proud but a little lukewarm in his own press about the movie. As was true during his Social Network PR, you can sort of hear his telepathic emissions: "Okay, you guys, but really? More excited about this than Fight Club, or Zodiac? I thought those were pretty great." But if its scrupulous, consummately professional maker could at some level take or leave this franchise, the visual, rhythmic, and audio textures of Dragon Tattoo sure radiate a sensuous pleasure with itself, not unlike Drive's. Even the clothes in both films seem designed to make us drool (though I realize during Oscar season we are ONLY allowed to drool over period duds). I'm more seduced by the Refn film than the Fincher, even though my sympathies with those two generally run the other way. But with five nominations in wide-spread categories, the Tattoo crew obviously succeeded in making the self-love contagious to others.
The Driver. The Girl
MARK: I would like to come down squarely on both sides of the fence regarding what Nathaniel calls (perfectly) Drive's autoerotic quality. The first time I saw it, my reaction was: This is a series of self-conscious poses with an esthetic no deeper than an '80s album cover. The year's crappiest studio movie did not provide two more drab and thankless roles for women than the parts with which Carey Mulligan and Christina Hendricks are saddled here. As for Ryan Gosling, I wanted to channel my inner Bruce McGill-circa-The Insider and yell, "WIPE THAT SMIRK OFF YOUR FACE!" Then, the second time I saw it, I suspended all my umbrage and just gave in and felt, okay, this is a fun, well-sustained exercise in trash for boys.
I'm going on at length primarily to avoid the question of whether Drive deserved an editing nomination or not, because the invisible art is, as ever, a complete mystery to me. But, to Nathaniel's final question, I have noticed that it usually takes me a second viewing to warm up completely to movies that are smirkily referential or drenched in style gestures (Inglorious Basterds, Moulin Rouge!) and sometimes even a second viewing doesn't get me all the way there, which is why I guess I don't feel that Drive was robbed (although Brooks was).
KURT: I'm on my way to see Drew Barrymore (very convincingly) save the whales, so I can't offer much at the moment, but boy did you just open the flood gates, Nat. Before I toss out some titles guilty of highly detrimental self-love, I'm gonna say something for which I imagine many cinephiles will want to put a knife to my throat. Aside from Tomas Alfredson, I think Nic Refn had more stunning formal control over his baby than any other filmmaker whose work I saw last year, and I like to think I'm not quick to toss around such statements. I surrender to the notion that the film is shallow (and, indeed, gaga over itself), but mygod, the construction of that crazy/sexy/tacky/cool thing is just intoxicating. Like you Nat, I'm a proud fan. As for films whose self love makes me ill, they're gonna have to wait until I witness this Big Miracle.
NICK: It's gettin' hot in herre! I enjoy a good diatribe, and I've got Jodie's bucket and her blow-dryer, for when Kurt vomits on some Kokoschkas. And for the record, my hair is pulled back into the same tight ponytail, making every single one of my arteries pop. And also for the record, four leads.
NATHANIEL: I love you! And I'm so ready to love Jodie Foster again though that will have to wait for another film. Would that she would be interested in making them more often!
I wish other filmmakers and great actors would share Woody Allen and Clint Eastwood's work ethic... or at least Steven Spielberg's (nothing and then two at once). Although perhaps I shouldn't say "work ethic" in connection with such uneven filmographies. Showing up to work and totally working it being two totally different things. [I'll illustrate: Payne, showing up to work; Refn, totally working it.] Woody was embraced this year (we haven't much discussed Paris but I mostly love it) and Clint was entirely shunned (a rarity but thank God) but really in both cases I feel like their successes and failures are almost accidental. I picture them showing up, looking at the call sheets, grabbing the camera and shouting "Action!" Sometimes they get lucky but there's no time for second guessing or planning because by Thursday you need to be in post so you can start preproduction on the next one by Tuesday.
I'm really turned on by meticulously crafted movies which is why I'm nutso for the elaborate gags in The Artist, the astonishing layers of A Separation, anything Jane Eyre (though sadly it's only in the Costume mix), and it's why I'm relatively calm about The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo's fine showing even though I don't think it's anything like Fincher's best work and I remain perplexed at the world's fascination with that franchise.
[Kurt suddenly reappears post movie-screening]
KURT: Okay, so did I miss a talking point? I'm determined to, as promised, get all Best Picture 2000 and unleash a little hell up in this tiger-filled symposium. Just let me shake off Big Miracle's raping of every bit of newsreel footage it could get its blubbery hands on, and the memory of the guy across the subway car post-screening, whose glare at the gal next to me suggested a tad too much Shame training.
I'm gonna try to keep the self-love indictment in the realm of recent Oscar movies, and the first that's jumping to mind is Invictus, which was so damn proud of itself for simply being about Nelson Mandela that it didn't mind serving you third-rate takes and shameless, utterly tacky music cues (do you remember that helicopter scene?). Sticking to that same year, I had a lot of love for Precious amid Oscar season, particularly in regard Sidibe's transformation and Lee Daniels's talent for texture. But stepping away from that movie two years later helps to reveal how much false hope it's peddling, so pleased with the horrors it just drug you through that it feels an anticlimactic kiss-off of an ending will suffice given your need for any kind of oasis.
You know what? Let's just make it all about 2009, 'cuz I know Nathaniel will ride my hate train when it comes to The Lovely Bones, the movie I'll forever pretend was made by someone other than the director of The Lord of the Rings trilogy. Sadly for cherub-in-a-knit-hat Susie Salmon, the seatbacks in my theater didn't have Today's Missal, but they thankfully did have high-density plastic, to keep my furious feet from harming the folks in the next row. Naturally, that same year boasted The Blind Side, a film that pats itself on the back so hard you could see the lump in its throat go flying into the end zone.
NICK: But why take Oscar's bait and only confront the problems of the past - even the recent past? I assume this point came up because you have some beef with our current slate of contestants. The People want more blood, Maximus! (Or was it vomit I wanted? I'm still holding this blow-dryer.)
KURT: I'm sorry for winding the clock back to 2009! Guess I misread Nathaniel's question a bit. Nick, I hate to leave you with your blowdryer in your hands, but the main self-hugging 2011 film at which I'd spew venom/blood/vomit is Extremely Loud, and I think that poor thing's been beaten enough (I'd add Warrior and Albert Nobbs to the list, too).
ALI ARIKAN: Did you know that the driver in Drive does not have a name? You didn't, did you? It's hardly ever brought up in that film, which has its head so far up its own ass that it could give itself a tonsillectomy. I am not quite sure how that would work, but there we go.
I see a brief mention of Midnight in Paris and my ears are burning. It was an exceptionally good film, and Woody Allen's best since Bullets Over Broadway. There is an Erich Von Daeniken book called "Habe ich mich geirrt?" which translates as "Was I wrong?", and features the author re-examining his wacky paleo-contact hypotheses. Midnight in Paris is similar in the way it shows the auteur questioning his fascination with the past and reliance on nostalgia. The film floored me, but I was also very surprised to see how Allen came to the conclusion that not only is it futile to live in the past, but it is also unattractive.
Owen Wilson makes for a surprisingly perfect Allen surrogate, no? Some have denounced the film for what they claim is its sophomoric take on literary figures, but that is absolutely fitting to the way Wilson's character has always imagined them to be. Who knows if Corey Stoll comes even close to channeling the real Hemingway, but he channels the legendary Hemingway, as per Wilson's character's estimation. That's obviously but one part of a truly multi-faceted triumph.
NATHANIEL: Yes, Nick & Kurt, I did want to stick with this year's slate though if we've sufficiently name-checked all the movies with very high estimations of themselves -- though I'd heartily disagree about Albert Nobbs because I think it lacks too much confidence to be in love with itself -- we should move on. And Corey Stoll's Hemingway is a pitch perfect bridge in this regard. So thanks, Ali!
If you're a writer, declare yourself the best writer! But you're not as long as I'm around unless you want to put the gloves on and settle it."
-Ernest Hemingway via Woody Allen's Midnight in Paris
I'm curious if you all totally get me on the "showing up to work vs. totally working it" thang. I still can't totally decide if Woody was doing the former or the latter on Midnight in Paris but I do think the movie is much smarter about nostalgia, both revelling in it and suspicious of it (which is good balance) than the other nostalgia-fests of 2011.
Did anybody work their material as hard as Asghar Farhadi? A Separation being a miracle and all. If a screenwriter or director didn't... where did you wish they would work the material harder to justify their nomination(s)?
Or if that question doesn't suit you, do you have one of your own your dying to throw out to the group?
MARK: By bringing up Woody Allen and Asghar Farhadi, you've edged us toward a topic I've been wanting to talk about, which is screenwriting -- an area that perhaps rivals editing as the one in which it can sometimes be almost impossible to discern the artist's intent from the finished product. Farhadi and Allen, directors who write their own work (or in Allen's case, maybe calling him a writer who directs his own work is more accurate), are obviously exceptions. But in general, I think people who write about movies are more generous to powerhouse direction of thin scripts (like Drive) than to a beautifully crafted script like Win Win that is visually prosaic (though I'd argue that it's directed with a great feel for actors). I was wondering what pieces of writing wowed you this year. I'd put A Separation and Margin Call high on my own list, but maybe not as high as Kenneth Lonergan's Margaret, which I thought was a stunning piece of writing tip to toe, albeit one we could probably argue about all day.
ALI: Margaret has yet to open in Turkey, and I don't think it even has a release date yet. In fact, Fox Searchlight made it absolutely and utterly impossible to see the film outside of the US and the UK. There was an online screener, but I could never get the link. Needless to say, I am incredibly looking forward to seeing it.
Nuri Bilge Ceylan's Once Upon a Time in Anatolia (which they skipped for a foreign film nomination) was my favourite film of the year, and I love the subtleties of the script, too, though other factors (such as Ceylan's keen eye or Gokhan Tiryaki's compositions) might have been perhaps more influential to the film's eventual success.
Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy is an exceptionally well-written adaptation. The shooting script is quite different from the final film, but it's a finely crafted piece of writing on its own. I was also impressed by the scripts for Shame, Melancholia, and Martha Marcy May Marlene. Alas, I am not with you, Mark, on Margin Call.
KURT: I adore Midnight in Paris without reservation, and I hugely agree with Ali that the CliffsNotes versions of the icons reflected Owen Wilson's general perception of them. That reading gives the film a new kind of beauty, I think. One of the things I loved was how the film had this mixed reception among the unwashed masses and the culturati, but it got everyone talking about it together, largely with smiles, so, Cheers.
And Mark, I'm over the moon about Margaret. I saw that only recently at Cinema Village (it was a very scratched print, no less, which I swear lent itself to the greatness of the experience). That script is this beautiful behemoth, and that film just has so much room to breathe. And the ending -- I was texting folks in excitement when I left.
NICK: Can I hear the summary cases for and against Margin Call from the last two gentlemen? That was a movie I had a hard time getting worked up about in either direction, and a lot of the coverage it engendered was about its topicality and/or its innovative distribution model. I've been eager to hear people who really love it say why and detractors say why not. Especially while I tread water assembling my own thoughts about screenwriting. Aside from echoing the brilliance of Margaret's writing (the Lear scene, the visit to Ruffalo's home, the conference calls, the chats with dad, the eulogy, every scene with Jeannie Berlin...)
ALI: Margin Call does not seem to understand exactly what the deal is with toxic assets, leverages, swaps, futures and derivatives. Peppered into the narrative is a scene where a random character asks one of the hot shot analysts to explain the problem the investment house has found itself in like they would a child. At each and every occasion, the characters (and thus the film) fail to do so. This lack of specificity hinders the eventual effect -- since this is not really a morality tale a la Wall Street, it requires a much better understanding of the financial system. I understand that JC Chandor's father used to toil in Wall Street, and he has an ear for the sort of sales floor dialogue that one encounters at places like Citi or Goldman -- in fact, the one scene I DO like in the film is the huge sell-off near the end, where we see shots of salesmen try to unload anything and everything they can with Paul Bettany's voiceover providing a cool and calculated counterpoint (Bettany's mid-Atlantic accent is also pretty spot-on!). The authenticity of the dialogue makes the nescience of the rest of the script all the more obvious -- and, thus, problematic.
Also, what the hell is that last scene with Kevin Spacey and President Laura Roslin about? And why is she all dressed-up and ready to par-tay at three o'clock in the morning? These questions also linger.
MARK: The case I'd make for Margin Call doesn't particularly have to do with its topicality or with its ability to explain exactly what went wrong on Wall Street in 2008, which I think is a task to which I think journalists and historians are better suited than filmmakers. What I think it does beautifully is to bring the people involved down to human scale. They aren't great villains and what happened isn't Shakespearean, and I think Margin Call demonstrates that mediocrity can be as terrifying as malevolence. It depicts a group of people who did not think particularly hard about what they were doing, why they were doing it, or what effect it had. What they were thinking about was what so many people who work in offices like that think about--how to impress the boss, how to move one rung up the ladder, how to maneuver the givens so that you make a little more money. The big picture, let alone the moral consequences, never entered their minds--they were doing their jobs. And the story of the crash is, to me, much more the story of people like the mid-level guys in Margin Call than of the monsters at the top.
I felt that Chandor had a perfect ear for how the men (almost all men) who spend their days in those offices talk to and about one another. And talk about formal control--I haven't seen a movie in recent years that better captured the nighttime clammy fluorescence of New York (certainly not Shame, which felt to me tidy and overly art-directed at every turn), and I'm not sure I saw a movie this year that kept a cast as diverse as this one on exactly the same tonal wavelength. (Well, maybe Tinker, Tailor.)
NATHANIEL: I fall somewhere between the two of you in terms of Margin Call, right alongside the fence and I'm fine landing there. But landing where I landed with Margaret. That's a place I'm less comfortable.
We'll pick this back up tomorrow on the Symposium's final day and I'll explain why.
YOUR TURN, READERS...
- Who is really telling the story in The Help?
- Are self-loving movies a major turn on or a total turn off to you?
- Margin, Margaret, Midnight... What were your favorite screenplays this year?
Reader Comments (53)
@Goran: I don't think The Artist was message-driven, either. I had just read Nathaniel's earlier comment as arguing that we should go easy on movies that take Hollywood history seriously; I was just trying to make the point that the motivating sentiment should not in itself be a reason to reward a film, because once you start on that slippery slope, you wind up having to praise all kinds of bad movies with worthy messages. But he's already cleared that up.
@Jay: I see your point about spending undue time on a corporate product whose artistic, political, and intellectual edges are so inevitably dulled. But I don't think anyone is treating The Help as Dostoyevsky. And this is an Oscar discussion, where the reasons certain pop-skewing movies catch on with the public and with filmmaking peers while others do not is very much to the point. Plus, some pop movies, even The Help, have the power to show us something—if not about its subject, though I think Viola delivers in this department, then at least about how the culture finds it convenient or tempting to think about a (largely avoided) subject. That said, I'd love to have a three-day symposium about the films you mention. Name the time and place!
Category placement is almost always strategic. Take The Hours, for instance. Nicole Kidman actually had the least amount of screen time of the three central actresses, yet she was pushed for (and won) Best Actress while Julianne Moore was nominated for Supporting Actress. I think Streep was campaigned as a lead, although she didn't get nominated for this role. But really, there's no justifiable way to say that Kidman is a lead and Moore isn't. The only reason Moore was campaigned as a supporting actress was because she was already being pushed for lead in Far from Heaven, and for that matter, the only reason Streep was pushed as a lead was because she was already being pushed as a supporting actress for Adaptation. Kidman benefited from not having any other roles that year. But just as far as the movie is concerned, the only logical ways to categorize them would be to either say they're all co-leads since they have their own individual stories that are all within a few minutes of each other as far as screen time goes, or that it's an ensemble piece and that none of them could truly claim to be a lead. Either way, they should have all been placed in the same category, whether it was lead or supporting, and the only reason they were slit up is for strategic purposes.
The Help seems the same way. Emma Stone has significantly more screen time than her co-stars: about 20 minutes more than Spencer and about 25 minutes more than Davis. On paper, she's the lead. However, I did some math based on Leo's screen time calculations, and Emma Stone is still only on screen for about 44% of the movie. Spencer gets about 30%, and Davis gets only 27%. To me, this is an ensemble movie with one character (Stone's) that provides a sort of anchor, but ultimately I'm not even sure if she truly deserves to be called a lead. I think all three should have gone supporting, particularly Davis and Spencer, but like I said with The Hours, I think they're either all lead or they're all supporting.
To me, a true lead character should be on screen for at least half of the movie's running length. Anything less than that seems like automatic category fraud, no matter how important the character is to the movie's overall impact. By contrast, I find it unconvincing to think that any role that is featured in more than 75% of a movie's length could be considered a supporting role, so I still don't buy any argument that Ethan Hawke was a supporting actor in Training Day when he's on screen for well over that percentage.
An interesting article. I liked Kurt. In this scene he is an amazing character and in the same time funny. Thanks for this report.