The Oscar Volleys are back for some post-nomination talks. Today, Eric Blume and Nick Taylor discuss Best Supporting Actor...
A REAL PAIN | © Searchlight Pictures
ERIC: Nick, I'm lucky enough to be paired with you for two different Oscar volleys this year. Let's start with the easier, our dive into the five Best Supporting Actor nominees. Nathaniel has already written about the incredible strength of this year's nominees, and I agree with him that it's one of our best ever. These gents were all a part of my personal top ten in this category, and there's not a dud in the bunch, in my opinion. What are your thoughts on the group?
NICK: I’m less enthusiastic about this year’s contenders than you and Nathaniel are. No one’s doing bad work, but I wouldn’t have any of them in my lineup...
Kieran Culkin’s a real double-edged sword for me. I love him as an actor, as a gay awakening in Scott Pilgrim, and as a cool dude out there living his life. He’s probably my favorite performance in this category, but he’s so unambiguously a lead who’s stealing a slot that I can’t wholeheartedly root for him. There’s plenty to appreciate with Borisov and Pearce’s performances, but I’m even more bummed about there being no room at the inn for Clarence Maclin, or the way folks like Adam Pearson petered out once the televised awards started rolling out. Maybe we can start from the outside looking in - you said these five guys were all in your top ten, but who are your other five?
THE BRUTALIST | © A24
ERIC: I was also a fan of the work of Harris Dicknson in Babygirl; Mike Faist and Josh O'Connor in Challengers; Mark Eydelstein in Anora; and Missagh Zareh, the father who loses his way in The Seed of the Sacred Fig. And your faves Clarence Maclin and Adam Pearson are right at the end of that scale for me.
I think the four young guys I mention here do really intricate work that brings incredible substance and verve to their films. I guess an argument can be made that neither Dickinson, Faist, or O'Connor are supporting, which I get...although I would argue for Dickinson in this category for sure...the way he makes that character a full flesh-and-blood guy who is just starting his own sexual journey, rather than a Fifty Shades of Grey sex expert, was very touching to me. And he worked with Nicole beautifully. I'm surprised that Eydelstein didn't get any real attention this season. Taking nothing away from Borisov's melancholy, surprising performance at all...but Eydelstein is insanely funny...he walks funny, talks funny, slides funny, plays video games funny...he's remarkably inspired and in my eyes, one of the best things about Anora.
I do think Clarence Maclin has steely power in Sing Sing, and he's the best thing in the movie to me. But I found Sing Sing very heavy-handed and sentimental, and overall the film felt inauthentic to me (despite having many terrific qualities as well). I know the people who love the film talk about the "seamless blend" of actors and non-actors, but I couldn't disagree more. Colman Domingo and Sean San José were absolutely professional actors acting (sometimes beautifully), and everyone else seemed charmingly amateur. Adam Pearson's work is gloriously sly and droll...A Different Man is such a weird wonder.
Who were some of your favorites left out this year, and why?
SING SING | © A24
NICK: Clarence Maclin, much like Jack Haven and Missagh Zareh, are too close to the centers of their films for me to see them as supporting, but I see the argument and support any love these men get. The other twinks in your gallery all read as full-fledged leading men, so I’ll let you take care of them.
We’re 100% in sync on Mark Eydelshteyn, who’s my favorite part of Anora by a good mile. I love how fucking kooky he is, delightfully overplaying the moment-to-moment spontaneity of a boy so beholden to his appetites you’re a little unsure which impulse will sap his attention next. He’s rich, hedonistic, and okay at sex enough to be the perfect meal ticket for Ani while being a little too wild to trust anyone can control him. I even love how his downcast silences in the last act convey new info about this spoiled mama’s boy. Best of all, he never reveals how much his love for Ani was genuine versus being a petty gambit, or maybe he just doesn’t play these impulses as oppositional - I think Vanya will really miss Ani, especially if he stays sober long enough to think about it.
Adam Pearson’s just a dream as the most charming bad penny you’ve ever seen. The good-natured bravado does a lot to elevate someone who is, on paper, an absolute giga-Chad of charisma, uniqueness, nerve, and talent. Nic Cage’s bizarre serial killer in Longlegs is an inspired feat of black magic, stitching so many deranged affects together and making them cohere almost in spite of themselves. Craig Tate’s one scene walk-on in Nickel Boys conveys decades of mistreatment and wounded adulthood, an open wound that Daveed Diggs’s character has closed himself off from ever treating in his own soul. Nathan Faustyn wins the Ally of the Year award for The People’s Joker, and Jonathan Bailey gets runner-up prize for his unending charm, an ass that won’t quit, and for balancing a pretty-boy act with a moral clarity his fellow Ozians happily lack.
If you’re looking for whole ensembles of awards-worthy men in films that aren’t Sing Sing (whose cast I uniformly love), you’re in luck! The Piano Lesson has four superb, lived-in performances from Ray Fisher, Corey Hawkins, Samuel L. Jackson, and Michael Potts, all of whom play beautifully off each other and their leading lady, and articulate just as much detail opposite the charisma void that is their leading man. José Coronado, Mario Pardo, and Josep Maria Pau of Close Your Eyes offer richly layered turns premised on lives lived and lost, the memories that keep you going for a long as possible, the blankness of having no past to cherish or anguish over. Lastly, Scott Cohen’s blandly magnetic dom and Babak Tafti’s green, excitable new beau are fantastic bookends to The Feeling That the Time for Doing Something Has Passed, telling us a lot about Joanna Arnow’s lead while implying their own mysteries and desires.
THE PIANO LESSON | © Netflix
That’s a lot of effusion over men who are not nominated in this category! As you’re a bigger fan of this bunch than I am, where do you want to start? Shall we start with our nigh-inevitable winner and deal with the category fraud argument now, or do we save him for later?
ERIC: Nick, I think our biggest disagreement in this discussion will be your using "twinks" to describe Dickinson, Faist, and O'Connor. They are, at the very least, twunks.
And I think our biggest agreement will be that Jonathan Bailey's ass will, indeed, not quit.
Sure, let's get into the race itself. It would be the biggest shock of the night if Kieran Culkin didn't win. I went into details of his performance at length with Cláudio during our Split Decision on the film, so I won't belabor it here. While I would love to see Guy Pearce win, I am firmly in the camp of folks who will be very happy seeing Culkin win for his detailed, tetchy, enormously funny performance here.
I don't love category fraud, but I don't allow myself to get caught up in it. It's always frustrating when you see studios make these false category calls, but once they do, I fall in line with them as they are what they are, there's nothing you can do to change them, and it feels like unuseful energy to extensively mourn. As Streisand says in What's Up, Doc?, "You can't fight a tidal wave, kid!". Culkin has 58 minutes of screen time of a 90 minute movie. Clearly a lead, and yes, it's all very silly that we're pretending he isn't. But for what it's worth, Yuri Borsov has 53 minutes of time. Yes, Anora is a much longer movie, and Borisov is absolutely supporting...but for what it's worth, he has as much time as Culkin to create his character. I'm not advocating for anything, just mentioning the running time (Brad Pitt won for 55 minutes, and Ke Huy Quan won for 58 minutes). We all know time isn't everything of course, but I just think it's worth the discussion.
ANORA | © NEON Rated
NICK: The screen time bit is an interesting argument, though not one I’m ultimately persuaded by. Structurally, Benji doesn’t read as a supporting character to me. He’s the first and last face we see in A Real Pain, and every scene is devoted to Benji in one of two ways: either he’s leading the other characters in conversation and action or everyone starts talking about him in the rare moments he’s not in the room with Eisenberg’s David. Meanwhile, Borisov is introduced to Anora about 50 minutes in, and is frequently tasked with receding into the background of the action in a way Culkin never really is. Part of the charm with Igor is getting to gradually know this taciturn Russian whenever he bobs to the spotlight, which in turn helps us appreciate the work Borisov’s putting over in his silences when he’s not the focus of a scene or shot. That’s not a challenge Culkin can have when he’s front and center basically the whole movie.
Even if I strongly feel Culkin should not be nominated in this category, I like his performance a good deal. I love how he’s able to showboat and hold court scene after scene without smothering the other actors, all of whom are doing terrific work. He’s really good with tonal dexterity, and I like how he and Eisenberg both balance an earnest desire for the cousins to reconnect with the looming knowledge they probably won’t be spending a lot of time together after this. The obvious question of whether Benji will be in any place to take care of himself once they’re back home hangs just as heavy over these characters. Sometimes you worry for the guy and his mercurial moods, but Culkin plays it like Benji’s really trying to have a good vacation with his cousin no matter what may happen next, even when his demons get the best of him.
This category is such a done deal we could probably just wrap it up here, yeah? So let’s do a little thought experiment. If Culkin wasn’t steamrolling this year, who of these nominees do you think would be contending for the win? Borisov and Pearce make sense as shows of support for well-awarded movies without stabilized narratives, and Norton makes sense for a win in the same way most Supporting Actress winners do, to reward a film that’s largely blocked out from other awards by tough competition. Jeremy Strong’s the only one I think is just happy to be here, but maybe you think differently?
THE APPRENTICE | © Briarcliff Entertainment
ERIC: Nick, I love your words about Culkin's performance and agree wholeheartedly. It's a very sophisticated piece of acting, firing on a lot of different cylinders. As I mentioned in my discussion with Cláudio, Culkin *listens* with great intent to the other actors, and he plays in an orchestra along with them in addition to his fiery jazz solos. He's so deeply felt and complex here, and the win, regardless of category, will hold up very well in the decades to come.
Agreed too that we can wrap it up. Strong is just along for the ride, and I think Borisov couldn't pull ahead of Norton (as a career win) or Pearce (some career, some for the actual great performance) even if Culkin were out of the mix. Norton's performance is so minor that I think if Culkin weren't here, Guy Pearce would be winning the award, which would be glorious to see.
NICK: As a last note, let me say that I agree with your assessments about Norton and Pearce, likely being the frontrunners in a different race. Having recently caught up with A Complete Unknown, I’m surprised to find Norton’s sweetness so compelling. He or Pearce would make lovely winners if this category was interested in following its own mandate.
This has been a great conversation Eric, all the better for being short and sweet.
A COMPLETE UNKNOWN | © Searchlight Pictures
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