Friday, March 22, 2013

Will Adrien Brody Ever Be Nominated For Another Oscar: Investigating the Under-30 Oscar Curse


The release of the movie InAPPropriate Comedy has led to a lot of questions.
Like for example:
  • A movie came out called InAPPropriate Comedy?
  • It’s directed by the ShamWow Guy??
  • How does this movie exist?
  • Why does this movie exist?
  • What the hell is Adrien Brody doing in it?
  • No, seriously, it’s directed by the ShamWow guy?? 
  • Didn’t he beat up a prostitute? (Yes he did)
And while all of those are fascinating questions (note: your definition of fascinating may differ from mine) the one that interests me the most is the fifth one. Because while this movie was apparently filmed awhile ago, the question is still worth asking: what in the world has happened to Adrien Brody?

Ten years ago this week, Adrien Brody memorably won an Oscar for Best Actor. The world was his oyster. Yet he hasn’t even so much as sniffed an Oscar nomination since. And he’s not alone. Since 1970 eighteen actors have won Oscars before their 30th birthday. Only two of them have gone on to win another Oscar, and as a group they have only amassed a grand total of seven post-victory nominations.

The Oscar curse is well known, but it hits the young particularly hard.

Looking at the eighteen people in the past four plus decades who have won Oscars before turning 30 it's possible to break them down into at least one of three specific categories. And looking at these categories can maybe help us figure out where Adrien Brody might fit in, and by extension, what might be next for him.

The Child Actors:
Adrien Brody doesn’t really seem to fit into this category, but in fact, at the time of his win he still had a youth about him that would have kept him from playing true adult roles. To paraphrase Britney Spears, he was not quite a boy, but not yet a man. Which is really what your 20s are all about. But  people like Anna Paquin and Tatum O'Neal weren't even in their 20s yet when they won their Oscars. So the "child actor" Oscar winner most comparable to Adrien Brody would then be Timothy Hutton who won at age 20 for Ordinary People.

Depending on your feelings about French Kiss, Leverage, and hitting on college girls at the bar next to my dorm (which Timothy Hutton used to do regularly) then Ordinary People was the peak of Timothy Hutton's career. Instead of his Oscar propelling him to great heights, he hasn't made a relevant movie since. A large part of that was likely the always difficult transition from child actor to adult roles. And part of it was also surely the difficulty in trying to move from supporting roles to leading man parts. But what his career (and the careers of all the actors who have won Oscars while still ostisentably children) demonstrates most acutely, is the biggest and most obvious reason for the Under 30 Oscar Curse: it's the ultimate in "too much too soon". That Oscar creates too much pressure, too many expectations, too much success before you can handle it and before you know what you want to do with it. After all, people younger than 30 aren't generally known for their exceptional decision making ability. But that's why although Adrien Brody was youthful when he won, I wouldn't say he was particularly young.

By the time Adrien Brody won for The Pianist he had been in the business for over ten years. He had headlined movies. He had had major roles in films made by Barry Levinson, Spike Lee, and Ken Loach. He had already experienced the highs of critical acclaim and the infamous low of being cut out of The Thin Red Line. All of the problems that Timothy Hutton would have to face Adrien Brody had already overcome. So perhaps Adrien Brody would fit in better in the next group....

The Young Ingénues
What do Gweneth Paltrow, Angelina Jolie, and Reese Witherspoon have in common? They're some of the biggest female stars in the world. They all won Oscars before their 30th birthdays. And they’re all only one-time Oscar nominees.

Its no secret that the old men who make up The Academy love them some attractive young ladies, so it should be no surprise that the bulk of the Under 30 Oscar winners fall into this category. What is surprising though is the lack of critical success the winners have had after their victories. And as surprising is the fact that there's not a single man that you would clearly place in this category. In fact of all the Under 30 Oscar winners since 1970 only three of them have been men. So while women can be taken seriously as actors right away, men have to wait until they're older to win Oscars. Especially attractive men. Which raises the question: Is Adrien Brody a leading man?

Gillette would say yes. People who saw The Affair of the Necklace would say maybe. But the roles that he takes on would seem to suggest that the answer is no. Sure Adrien claims to view himself as a leading man, but after winning his Oscar, when he could have seemingly had any role he wanted, here are the ones he chose:

A violent mentally ill person in The Village
An amnesiac trapped in an insane asylum in The Jacket
A brooding writer in King Kong
A brooding detective in Hollywoodland

Only in The Jacket does he get the girl, and none of those parts would be considered typical leading man roles. So while an attractive enough guy, clearly his looks/attractiveness aren't a real driving force behind Adrien Brody's career. So it seems like its more likely he's in the next category...

The Character Actors
Depending where you put Jennifer Hudson, Marlee Matlin, and Hilary Swank, the only real character actor type in the past four decades to win an Oscar before turning 30 is Cuba Gooding Jr. Which is interesting. Because these days Cuba Gooding Jr. is exactly the type of person you'd expect to see in a movie like InAPPropriate Comedy. In fact it's kind of surprising to learn that Cuba Gooding Jr. ISN'T in InAPPropriate Comedy. Because Cuba Gooding Jr. has become synonymous with crap.  So it's encouraging that Adrien Brody isn't at that point yet. Like Swank and Hudson he hasn't used his Oscar as a license to work non-stop. He's been relatively discriminating and worked largely with great directors like Peter Jackson, Wes Anderson, Rain Johnson, and Woody Allen. But working with great directors doesn't necessarily a great career make. In his movies with each of those men he's played the smaller more interesting character parts rather than the leads, even though it seems like he could easily be playing leads if he wanted to. It's fitting he's played Mark Ruffalo's brother, because they both seem like guys who could be leading men, but yet aren't for some reason. Although with Adrien it's hard to imagine him ever being in things like 13 Going on 30 or The Avengers. It seems like he'd rather just hang out with Andre 3000 and say lines like "Go ahead, make me gay" in InAPPropriate Comedy. Rather than becoming the next Pacino, he seems more like James Franco without all the degrees. Someone that doesn't quite know what he wants out of Hollywood any more than Hollywood knows what it wants out of him. He's trapped between leading man and character actor, unable to fully commit to either side. He doesn't quite fit into any Under 30 Oscar Winner category, yet also fits into all three in different ways. But while the newest member of the Under 30 Oscar club, Jennifer Lawrence, is clearly the new Audrey Hepburn, it appears that there's no historical precedent for Adrien Brody. Except for maybe one...

Richard Dreyfuss was technically 30 when he won Best Actor for The Goodbye Girl and was at the time a bigger star than Adrien Brody will likely ever be. Ultimately his post-Oscar career was derailed by drugs. But like Adrien he was someone trapped between being a character actor and a leading man. He made a point of working with good directors and chose interesting roles rather than simply the biggest ones. And also, he made comedies that were seemingly way beneath him (Stakeout, Let it Ride, Moon Over Parador, What About Bob). But, most importantly, he was also eventually nominated for another Oscar (Mr. Holland's Opus). So there's real hope that Adrien Brody, Mr. Flirty Harry in InAPPropriate Comedy himself, could once again be an Oscar nominee. And he wouldn't have been in Detachment or be currently filming a Paul Haggis movie (with James Franco!) if he didn't care about such things.

But of course if it doesn't work out, Richard Dreyfuss is about to star in a movie directed by Jason Preistley. So there's always that....


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