| |
The
ultimate guide to...
Marshall Bell
That Guy from... Twins, Total Recall
Bell is the go-to guy for casting directors looking for authoritarian types.
He's played hard-nosed coaches, fathers. sheriffs, military officers. gun-store
owners, and bartenders. If asked, I'm sure he could play a hard-nosed chifdren's
show host. But he showed in the short. lived series G vs E that he could be
funny, too, if he was allowed to be. Maybe he will be again sometime.
You've seen them, You've enjoyed their work. You just don't know their names.
Now we explain the awesome appeal of Hollywood's anonymous working class.
By Zac Crain
If I were in charge of casting a movie - and at this point in my life, it looks
as though that will never happen for me, much like playing professional basketball
or caring about soccer - my first four calls would he to the following actors:
Marshall Bell. James Hebhorn. Zach Grenier, and Bruee McGill. It wouldn't matter
what the plot was, or if it was a comedy or drama. It wouldn’t matter whom the
studio had attached to star or direct. If any or, with any luck, all of these
actors were involved, I'd know the movie would be, at the very least, entertaining.
I wouldn't be able to promise a sure-fire hit. but I could guarantee something
else. Once the nick hit the small screen, a generation of moviewatchers weaned
on cable television would find it, and once there, they'd stick around for a
while.
Why? Four magic words: Hey, it's that guy!"
Bell, Rebhorn, Grenier, and McGill are all That Guys, veteran character actors
whose faces are instantly memorable and whose names are, unfortunately, not.
You know them, but you don't. Since these actors pop up so often on television
and in movies, they pick up a variety of aliases along the way, and an of them
begin with the same two words. Rebhorn, for example. is known as ~that guy from
My Cousin Vinny," "that guy from the Game”, or “that guy from Meet the Parents."
You may know Grenier as “that guy from Fight Club" or that guy from 24.”
I would be remiss if I didn't mention that I did not come up with the concept
of1hat Guys. I noticed these actors, sure, and on more than a few occasions
even said, “Hey, it's that guy!" On a sad note, I probably said this even though
there was no one else in the room. But I didn't put pen to paper, or fingers
to keys, to define it. Credit for that goes to Bill Simmons, ESPN.com's the
Sports Guy, who has been peppering his columns with references to That Guys
since he was running his own site in Boston in the late 1990’s. Most of the
credit, anyway: "'there's a great website called www.heyitsthatguy.com... Simmons
says when asked about the origin of That Guys. "Somehow we came up with the
joke independently of one another." There is also a recent book called Hey.'
It's That Guy!: The Fametracker.com
Guide to Character Actors.
Like Simmons and other tat Guy fans, I grew up in the golden age of cable television,
back when there was only one channel on HBO, instead of seven or eight or however
many spin-offs are currently dogging the DIRECTV guide. When people still called
that network by its birth name, Home Box Office, on a regular basis. This was
a time when HBO's original programming, now the province of groundbreaking series
such as The Sopranos, pretty much amounted to made-for TV movies like The Terry
Fox Story, about an amputee who decides to run across Canada to raise money
for cancer research. Of course, they had to cast a guy with one leg in the lead
role, regardless of acting chops, because no one had any clue what CGI was.
It was a glorious time.
That's when I discovered the magic of That Guys. They are like condiments for
movies: 'They don't necessarily work well on their own, but when properly used,
they can certainly enhance the experience. Everyone who watches movies has a
few favorites. I've already listed some of mine, though those four names are
merely the tip of that particular iceberg. I didn't even mention Chelcie Ross
("that guy from Hoosiers and Major League"), Kurt Fuller ("that guy from Waynes
World and Ghostbusters II"), Tobin Bell ("that guy from The Firm and In the
Line of Fire"), or Kevin Tighe ("that guy from Road House and School Ties").
I neglected Vincent Schiavelli, the science teacher from Fast Times at Ridgemont
High, whose recent passing prompted a column acknowledging the That Guy phenomenon
in the Week in Review section of The New York Times. Or the patron saint of
That Guys: the late, great J.T. WaIsh ("that guy from pretty much everything").
If pressed, though. I'd say my all-time favorite That Guy is Marshall Bell.
Had Bell been born half a century earlier, he might have been Gary Cooper.
Worstcase scenario: Bell would have been in line to scoop up the parts Cooper
turned down, and he still would have become the same sort of iconic, enduring
movie star. This isn't just conjecture; the Hollywood Walk of Fame is built
on guys who were behind Cooper in the batting order. Cary Grant, for instance,
owed much of his early success to performances in roles Cooper rejected. Clark
Gable was cast as Rhett Butler in Gone With the Wind only after Cooper said
no. As long as an actor had ready access to Cooper's Wastebasket. he didn't
even need an agent back then.
Bell is a throwback to that era, when a man never left the house in anything
other than a smart suit and a perfectly blocked fedora - a look that, for whatever
reason, is only carried on today by NBA draft picks. His face is circa-World
War II, a steely mug with a square jaw and the kind of stare that tends to warn
off trouble. Hidden behind this take-no-guff exterior is a talent for comedy
that is far too rarely displayed. Bell is, in short, a two-way player: He could
have been the stoic Gary Cooper, but he just as easily could have been the suave
Cary Grant, too. He even has the name for it: Marshall Bell. To paraphrase Jack
Horner from Boogie Nights, that is a great name.
Great name aside, Bell wasn't born half a century earlier, so no one, apart
from casting directors and co-stars, knows his movie-star moniker. Instead of
becoming a leading man, an above-the-title star, Bell has been relegated to
supporting roles, usually characters whose job title is part of their name -
cops, coaches, colonels. His most recent appearance on screen is yet another
one of these parts: Warden Marshall Krutch in the Philip Seymour Hoffman vehicle
Capote. Bell, however, always makes the most of these roles, leaving an impression
no matter how little screen time he's left with, even when cast in minor roles
in such TNT New Classics as the Chase.
In other words, Bell is a classic That Guy. In his case: That guy from Twins.
That guy from Stand by me. That guy from Starship Troopers. And so on.
But don't go mourning the What-could-have-been quality of Bell's career. Being
a That Guy means he's accomplished the two most difficult feats an actor can
pull off: He's steadily employed, and people know his work. Besides, there's
still a chance for him. Maybe a director like Paul Tomas Anderson will take
a shine to Bell and add him to his menagerie of character actors (including
former That Guys Hoffman, Philip Baker Hall, John C. Reilly, and Luis Guzman),
giving him a chance to, if not stand in the spotlight, at least stand near it.
Bell might not even need a benefactor like Anderson. More than a few That Guys
have, thanks to one great part or a string: of good ones, gone on to become
actors with actual names. James Gandolfini was a That Guy before The Sopranos.
So was Chris Cooper, until he booked American Beauty and Adaptation. Paul Giamatti
was as well, until American Splendor and Sideways made him an unlikely leading
man. Stephen Tobolowsky became a name actor, too, almost by sheer force of will.
That and his Willingness to take virtually any TV or film role offered to him
(more than a hundred, including his breakthrough role in 1993's Groundhog Day).
For that, Tobolowsky is still an honorary That Guy. One of the defining traits
of this group of character actors is an (almost) overwhelming lack of preciousness
in regard to their careers. They don't bring in the $20 million paydays, or
even the $1 million ones, and mortgages don't pay themselves, so they have to
keep working. Take Tobolowsky: One of his most recent credits is something
called Boxboarders.', and I'm not sure what's worse, the title or the exclamation
point at the end of it.
Or take James Cromwell. Before he found wider acclaim with his work in Babe,
L.A. Confidential, and (later) Six Feet Under, he was just a Working stiff named
Jamie Cromwell, a That Guy, not yet successful enough to turn down roles in
all three Revenge of the Nerds sequels. Even after Babe and L.A. Confidential,
he appeared in Species II, and stooped to reprise his character from Star Trek:
First Contact in the short-lived Enterprise series. Work is work, and even former
That Guys can't shake the feeling that the next paycheck may be the last, or
that their place in viewers' memories will vanish when the lights come up.
The Internet has assuaged this second fear, becoming a boon for 1hat Guys and
fans of them. Between Simmons and heyitsthatguy.com - and, more important,
the Internet Movie Database (www.imdb.com), these actors are more familiar to
people who don't stick around for the credits. Viewers can, at long last, put
a name to the face. At least in theory: Many That Guys don't have a mug shot
on their IMDb page.
Bell is one who doesn't, which is why, more than likely, he will continue to
remain mostly anonymous. That's OK. In fact, to many That Guys, it's probably
a source of pride that they're known more by their character's name than their
own. It means they did their job. Maybe Bell wishes he could have been his generation's
Gary Cooper. He'd be a fool not to.
But he's almost certainly just as happy being that guy from Total Recall.
Zac Crain is an associate editor at American Way and a frequent contributor
to Spin.
Source: SpiritMagazine from Southwest Airlines
March 2006 Issue
|
 |
