Commentators Is Soooooo Stupid

[filkertom]

Not a rant on political commentators this time, though Cthulhu knows there's always more than enough red meat there. Nope, this is on the other batch of commentators that presume they understand Life, The Universe And Everything way better than we poor shlubs ever could.

It was announced today that Daniel Radcliffe has signed on for the last two Harry Potter films. Not at all a surprise there; it's a huge amount of money, and he's already taking steps to make sure he's not typecast.

But check out the last paragraph of the story:

Movie commentators had wondered if Radcliffe could sustain the role of Potter throughout the film franchise, and whether the raunchy publicity shots of Radcliffe for "Equus" would alienate him from his core fan base.

Oh, really?

News flash for you bozos: Radcliffe's core fan base is mostly young to middle-aged women. Many of whom read -- or write -- fanfic that would sear the paint off the walls of J. K. Rowling's mansion.

The day those photos were released, there were sketches and photomanips based on them. And it's not like I subscribe to the hardcore HP groups.

The other point is equally ludicrous, and always has been. Gasp! At 18 or 19 or 20, Radcliffe (and Watson and Grint) might be too old to play... 15- and 16- and 17-year-olds.

I call to the stand Exhibit A: Grease.

When that film was made in 1978, John Travolta was 24. He'd just got done playing a teen on Welcome Back, Kotter, starting two years past his own high school graduation date. Jeff Conaway was 28. Olivia Newton-John was 30. Stockard Channing was 34. (Ages corrected -- thanks to pickledcritter for spotting my lousy math.)

I'm not sayin' they looked the parts; just that the foofrah of the Trio being a couple years older than their characters is nothing. And the idiots who really think the fans want to see anyone in those roles for the last two movies besides Radcliffe, Watson, and Grint -- especially for the bogus "reason" that they're too old -- has Not The First Clue.

Edit: ... Anne and I were boggling on the phone about the ages of the folks in Grease, and I mentioned that ON-J is still actually pretty hot. Only now she's sixty-three. (Which was inaccurate, by the way -- see above.) And Anne laughed and said, as if she was ON-J sayin' Yeah, I still look gooooood, "Look at me!"

And I almost choked as I sang, "Look at me, I'm sixty-three...."

Comments

[selenesue.livejournal.com]

LOL for the last sentence!

And I'm going to use GREASE as the counter-argument next time someone bitches about the increasing age discrepency in Harry Potter.

On the other hand, I'm happy that the Narnia filming is being planned in a more prompt manner to avoid this issue. PRINCE CASPIAN just began shooting; THE VOYAGE OF THE DAWN TREADER starts in Fall of the coast of Malta.

[catalana.livejournal.com]

*giggle* You're a loon, Tom!

But I agree: keep the original cast! Who cares if they're a few years older? Sheesh.

(And I think Stockard Channing was damned hot in Grease, too.)

[jmthane.livejournal.com]

keep the original cast! Who cares if they're a few years older? Sheesh.

Hear hear!

[thatcrazycajun.livejournal.com]

ONJ and Stockard are both STILL pretty damn hot, IMHO. (Admitted bias - I'm a Liv fan from way back in her XANADU days, and Stockard was in a TV-movie I enjoyed as a teen, "The Girl Most Likely To..." about a nerdgirl who gets plastic surgery and loses weight and returns to her hometown as an adult to murder all the former schoolmates who gave her a hard time.)

[filkferengi]

She & Ed Asner [iirc] so rocked in that!

[ann-totusek.livejournal.com]

"Look at me I'm sixty three
A burden to society
I'll stay in bed
til I'm legally dead
Who cares, I'm sixty three!

Too old to go out and play,
I can't hear a thing you say
My knees are shot with pain meds or not
No opiates today
I don't even care that I've lost all my hair,
My teeth sit all night in a cup
Keep your greedy hands off my hundred grand.
You think I'm some stupid schlupp?
As for you, my legal heir, I know you don't really care
I've got it made, I'm on Medicaid,
Hooray, I'm sixty three!
Nurses, nurses let me be, keep that Haldol far from me
Just keep your cool, I can't help that I drool
Hey, fungu, I'm Sixty three!"



Disclaimer: This in NO way reflects my feelings towards geriatric patients...Tom started it- it's HIS fault!

(Reply to this

[scruffycritter.livejournal.com]

Yeah you would need me.
Yeah you would feed me.
Cause I'm Sandra Dee.

[palenoue.livejournal.com]

As the old theater saying goes, by the time you've got enough experience to play Hamlet well, you're too damn old to look the part ;-)

[annearchy.livejournal.com]

Three words: Beverly Hills 90210. Nuff said. No problem at all for Dan, Rupert and Emma.

[avt-tor.livejournal.com]

Buffy, Roswell, DeGrassi, Jump Street...

[annearchy.livejournal.com]

Exactly :D

[gan-chan.livejournal.com]

Not to mention Doogie Howser, M.D. Max Casella (who played Doogie's best friend Vinnie) was 21 when he started playing a 16-year-old high-schooler, in 1989 - and the show ran for four years.

[seeliefey.livejournal.com]

Tom Welling from Smallville is 30, for another current example

63 ?

[pickledcritter.livejournal.com]

Where did you get 63 from? ONJ was born in Sept, 1948 (I oughta know - my mom always makes it a point to tell me every time we watched Grease that she and ONJ were the same age - quite exasperating in that motherly way) - see imdb.com (http://us.imdb.com/name/nm0000556). And since I'm exactly 20 years younger than both of them, that would put me over 40 several years early! (yeah, I know, I'm still a youngster...but still :) ).

In any even, it doesn't obviate the fact that Hollywood almost *never* casts high-school age actors for high-school age parts. My favorite example is Michael J. Fox - in Back to the Future, Marty is a high school kid, while MJF was 23 when the first one was filmed and 28/29 when pts 2 and 3 were filmed. Oh, and Teen Wolf - yeah, he hadn't seen his teens for 5 or 6 years when the thing was shot.

Re: 63 ?

[selenesue.livejournal.com]

Can't help being a little devil's advocate for a moment...

That's as it may be with MJF and other actors who don't look their age. Gary Coleman and his kidney condition must have been a godsend, until he started looking adultish in the skin texture. However, to the best of my observation, none of the kids in Harry Potter were particularly neotenous, they all looked their age and still do, which is why it's even an issue.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neoteny

Re: 63 ?

[filkertom.livejournal.com]

Bad, bad math. Stockard Channing is 63. ON-J is 59. My mistake -- thanks for catching it.

Re: 63 ?

[thatcrazycajun.livejournal.com]

>>Hollywood almost *never* casts high-school age actors for high-school age parts.<<

Nope, because when they do, by law any actor/actress under 18 years of age has to spend at least half the day in on-set school, and there are limits to how many hours a day they can work. Adult actors have no such problem, so Hollywood studios prefer to cast them unless there's some compelling reason to use a real teen.

[inamac.livejournal.com]

Hell, how many years did they CGI off Ian Mckellan and Pat Stewart in the X-Men movie? Hollywood can do anything these days.

The main reason that they're signing up R,W and G now is that they might get greedy and the studios don't want to take the risk of having to case someone cheaper in a year or two's time.

[fuuberry.livejournal.com]

Another example is Rachel McAdams in Mean Girls... She was frolicking around at the age of 28 in that movie.

I think there was an episode of Clueless (Shhh... I was a silly teenager) where they were talking about their 30's, and Cher said something along the lines of "*gasp!* We'll almost be old enough to play high schoolers on television!" Stacey Dash, who played Dionne, was 30 when the show first aired.

[purpleranger.livejournal.com]

Not to be picking nits or anything, but John Travolta dropped out of high school. He may have gone back to get his GED later, but at the time he did KOTTER, he was a dropout. (And not the beauty school kind, either.)

[filkertom.livejournal.com]

Didn't know, doesn't matter. Only thing germaine here is his actual age vs. the age he was portraying.