January 29, 2003

He looks a lot more like Elijah Wood’s older brother than a 500-plus year old Hobbit made Gollum-like by his precious and his lust for it…

Andy Serkis had crisp blue eyes and a ready smile.  He sounds nothing like Lord of The Rings’ Gollum when he speaks.  His skin isn’t gray.  But you can see Smeagal/Gollum right there. 

The irony is that I saw more Gollum in the face of Andy Serkis than I did Martin Hannett, the real-life person he played in Michael Winterbottom’s American-box-office-flop-sure-to-become-cult-hit, 24 Hour Party People.   I could place Serkis’ face behind the big hair and the brown-tinted sunglasses and what seemed like an extra 20 pounds of Andy.  But it wasn’t easy.

But the question of Andy Serkis is wider than either of these movies, and I get the feeling that it reaches beyond any one role.  Serkis embodies the movie star potential of a young Dustin Hoffman and the indie star potential of Steve Buscemi and takes both ideals somewhere else altogether.  Maybe it’s the combination of the shredded-throated Gollum and baritone voice of his Hannett that makes me think of him as a camera friendly Mel Blanc, a man of 1000 disguises.  It’s not so much the method acting idea of truly being lost in character -  talking to Serkis, one gets the feeling that he could take a script and create something unique and special for his director any time he was put to the task. 

Serkis is a walking wet dream for a guy like Jerry Bruckheimer, who makes the same cookie every time, but with different flavored chips.  Serkis is a chip that could change flavors from film to film, becoming a staple while remaining unique.  It’s also easy to imagine him joining the P.T. Anderson ensemble family, a consummation he devoutly wishes for.  Working with Anderson is at the top of his post-Rings wishlist.

But back to The Rings…

After winning the role of Gollum in Rings, Serkis not only made the 18-month move to New Zealand with the cast, but also obligated himself for longer than any other actor, as he would have to reproduce his on-location performances during the post-production process year after year after year.  (All the more ironic, as when he first auditioned, Peter Jackson sad that it would be a three-week-long voice over job.)  You see, while principle photography blended the films so that they could be shooting sequences from all three in the same day on the same set, post-production has been done in order and separately for each film.  As the primary CG actor in the film, Serkis is a key part of each film’s post process. 

When he first arrived in New Zealand, his children were just 3 months old and 2 years old.    By the time The Return of the King hits theaters, Serkis’ older child, Ruby, will be preparing to start grade school.

In the meanwhile, Serkis has managed to do three major projects of great diversity.  He did 24-Hour Party People as a hard-rocking record producer, Deathwatch as a WWI private in the midst of trench warfare and, on stage, he played Iago in a revival of Othello.  Take a look at the pictures on Serkis’ personal website and see if these characters all look like the same actor.

Serkis just ended a run of L.A. publicity, presumably in search of an Academy Award nomination.  Of course, Serkis himself gets a little shy when the topic comes up.  He does, however, tell a very funny story about waking down the street in L.A. and having someone yell at him, “Yo, Andy!  Good luck with the Oscar thing!!!” 

The reality of the matter is that any chance Serkis has for an Oscar nomination as Best Supporting Actor will likely come next year.  For now, he and New Line have a full year to enlighten the people who assume that Serkis’ work is straight voice over or that he was doing a Jar Jar Binks and just walking round the set in a funny costume or that the computer could do the acting for Serkis.  Like Peter Jackson, Ang Lee is ahead of the joke, spending months at ILM, actively participating in the creation of his Hulk.  They know how critical the feed and caring of a CG character can be.

But the future looks even brighter for Serkis than a transformation into Smeagal in the upcoming Rings film.  He has the skill to transform himself utterly and to make movie magic. 

It’s odd, because I never expected to feel this way about Serkis.  But he seems to be one of the movie world’s still untapped resources.  But not for much longer I suspect.  His daughter is ready for grade school… are those applications for a Santa Monica private school far off?  Serkis is quite willing to come to America and to bask in the massive amount of opportunity, even if he still intends to be quite selective about his film choices. The British film industry is not in great shape. 

There is something singular about this compressed coil of an actor.  He doesn’t have the languor of Tim Roth or the nice boy looks of Edward Norton or the movie star angst of a Mark Ruffalo.  But Serkis seems capable of anything.  And I suspect, a year from now, that will include being the first actor nominated for an Oscar for performing a CG character. 

Room at the Four Seasons -$287

Bottled Water Andy Gave Me - $4.50.

Meeting A Star Of A Massive Hit And Feeling Like He’s Only Just Beginning To Reach His Potential – Preciousssss.

READER OF THE DAY:  NZ LEA writes:  “no way will andy get nominated, the academy is way too uptight and lacking in innovation for that, even tho gollum was my choice by far for best supporting actor for the year, followed by chris cooper, who will win.  i don't know about nominations for the big awards for ttt (i think both pj and ttt should win, but i'm just a stupid movie-lover; i do know the kiwis won't win anything big, because the academy is a bunch of smug americans who would sooner hand over their first-born sons than give the best directing award or picture award to new zealanders living at the bottom of the world making a 'fantasy' picture, even though the film(s) feel more like historical epic and kick ass on both 'gladiator' and 'braveheart', both of which won best pic oscars.... pahleeze.”

REESE’S PIECES writes: “Andy Serkis has as much chance as getting nominated as Martin Short does for his work in "Treasure Planet." It doesn't fit the traditional understanding of an "acting" category, like it or not. It needs its own category, such as "Best Vocal Performance" or something.

Sure, he had dodads attached to him that captured his movements and he was there on set...but don't animators draw characters based on an actor's actual facial movements and mannerisms? Aren't they "capturing" an actor's performance in a lower-tech way? I grant Serkis deserves an award for his work, but if he can do it at the Oscars, then so can someone else in a traditional animated film.”

And this from  NOT THE CHEF:  “It will be interesting to see what happens with Serkis and Oscar. If it doesn't happen this year, it will soon. In the future people will "lease" their image to a production company and that image will be mapped onto another actor, who can remember their lines, hit their marks, won't throw tantrums that hold up production, and don't need huge trailers for them and their entourage.

There are two things momentarily keeping this from happening: technology and money.

Pasting a gray-skinned fantasy creature onto Serkis' body is one thing-- doing that with a recognizable human face being projected 20 feet tall is another. People are very aware when it comes to images of their own species. However the technology is just around the corner (Vin D's head was plastered over those doing his stunts in XXX, but it was just a head, for brief moments, during intense action) -- it is only a matter of finessing a few more algorithms.

Secondly, it is still MUCH cheaper to place a prosthetic nose on Nicole than to digitally alter each frame. And if you don't think today's producers want to spend as little as possible you haven't been paying very close attention. But as the technology becomes more ubiquitous, the price will drop, giving more and more productions access to it.

It is going to get messy . . .”

NOT MELBOURNE MIKE writes:  “A failure by the Academy to nominate Andy Serkis's superb performance as Gollum will only accent, yet again, their continued long slide toward total irrelevance.  Serkis embodied Gollum, as the excellent behind-the-scenes featurette on lordoftherings.net clearly illustrates, and all the digital artists in the world could not have made him the breakthrough he was without his skills as an actor.  Technological barriers will continue to fall in filmmaking and the AMPAS pretends that they don't happen or somehow exist 'apart' from film art as a whole.  You can practically hear their minds working:  'We've got a visual effects category, but the LORD OF THE RINGS films are Fantasy pictures that just *happen* to have excellent performances, and besides, they weren't made here.'  When RETURN OF THE KING comes out at the end of this year and knocks everyone on their collective asses, the Oscars will be practically obligated to hand over nearly every award they have.  But in the end, it really doesn't matter, because decades from now these will be the films people remember--not THE HOURS, not GANGS OF NEW YORK and most *definitely* not A BEAUTIFUL MIND.”

Finally, BUFFALO TOM writes:  “Absolutely Andy Serkis should be nominated for BSA. Not only does he richly deserve it, but a nom for Gollum would justify (finally) sitting through a predictable Awards show with fewer moments of sizzle and excitement than "The Price Is Right" re-runs. Sadly, given that most Academy voters are geriatrics who don't watch movies longer than 2 hours lest they soil themselves, and actors who think CGI will kill their careers, they'll pass over Serkis and predictably default the nom to a usual suspect. Tom Hanks, come on down!!”

E ME:  What roles would you expect to see Andy Serkis in next?