Joan Plowright in Bringing Down the House - that was such an awful movie, I was so surprised when I saw her there. And she was the best part of the whole thing.
I mean, Global Heresy wasn’t great, but at least it was entertaining. Bringing Down the House was just plain old bad.
I don’t think “whoring” is the appropriate term here. “Working” would be a better one. They have chosen acting as their profession, and they are doing it. How many of us fully endorse the long range plans of our employers every day of our working lives? Yet we show up, day after day, and do what they pay us to do in order to bring home our bacon. That’s life, folks.
“I want justice.” (1:36)
lole
The more I watch this, the more unbelievable it is to me that it’s a real full length movie, and not some parody of an archetypical “bad movie” like the fake clips of fake movies from Funny People or Tropic Thunder.
To be honest, they are actors, and their job is to appear in movies or television … it really isn’t whoring out. They appear and get a paycheck. It is not their problem the movie plot sucks, or the script sucks, or even the director sucking … as long as htey give a reasonable performance, they did their job.
I believe Walter Matthau said he signed onto I.Q. because he owed his bookie money.
Jeremy Irons probably has Caine beat for this question.
Frank Sinatra in Cannonball Run 2.
People, please, Nic Cage owns this thread.
See: IMDb
We were having this very conversation at work today. Nicolas Cage seemed to be the winner. I quoted Caine’s bit mentioned in the OP. He was asked about** Jaws : The Revenge ** and replied I have never seen it, but by all accounts it is terrible. However, I have seen the house that it built, and it is terrific.
Nic Cage? The OP specified “great actors.” Does anyone really consider Cage to be a “great actor?”
Hey check out my link when he’s confronted with “tuh- tuh- tuh- triplets?!” If that isn’t the finest boggling face ever captured by the camera, I’ll eat my hat.
Well, at least he made millions in real estate.
Btw, his latest, Everbody’s Fine, is NOT in that category. It’s a pretty good movie, I thought, and he’s very good in it. It’s a shame it’s doing so poorly. There’s much more to it than the trailers would have you believe.
And I loved him in Stardust!
This is how I feel when people complain about actors who seem to be in a lot of projects in a short time. Nicole Kidman went through that, Jude Law went through that, several others. First of all, actors have no control over when their movies are going to be released. They show up, do the work, and move on to other projects. The release schedule is out of their hands. Second, actors act, it’s what they do, it’s their chosen profession, why shouldn’t they work? Third, actors like working with a variety of people. In, say, especially Nicole Kidman’s case, she wants to work with lots of interesting people, and boy, she has! Even when the movie hasn’t turned out as good as we might have hoped, she worked with people she thought would be fascinating to work with. Her upcoming movie is Nine, and no matter how the final movie turns out, the talent involved speaks for itself. Her next two movies are Rabbit Hole directed by John Cameron Mitchell (Hedwig and the Angry Inch), and The Danish Girl, directed by Tomas Alfredson (Let The Right One In). Who in their right mind would say no? And last, but hardly least, there’s the money. How many people would turn down a bucketload of money to do what they love doing? It beats a 9 to 5 job.
Jeremy Irons’ stint as the hammy bad guy in the Dungeons and Dragons movie takes the cake.
Plus, it’s not like it is a regular position where you can count on 40 hours a week with 10 days vacation a year and a paycheck on the 15th and 30th, for as long as the company can afford you. Scripts can stop coming and producers can stop calling on any given day. Oh, sure, after you’ve had a big payday you could decide that you can live quite well on those $15 million and be selective from here on out, but then again that’s not the sort of personality that usually goes for this career path.
Again a quote from Michael Caine addresses this:
F*irst of all, I choose the great roles, and if none of these come, I choose the mediocre ones, and if they don`t come, I choose the ones that pay the rent.
*
In the Eighties and Nineties, Gene Hackman always seemed to be working, regardless of the quality of the film. However, I do not ever recall seeing him phone in a performance. He always gave the film makers a solid day’s work.
I read an article about or interview with him once where he said his view was that he’s an actor. He’s paid to act. That’s his job. If someone wants to pay him to act in a crappy movie, he’ll act in a crappy movie because he’s still getting paid to act. He’s not ashamed of any of his roles because they were all paying jobs and he worked to the best of his ability in each one with what he was given to do.
I was sooo thinking Sean Connery.
I think Harold Ramis has whored himself out. I mean, he was once a comedic genius, with stuff like Animal House, *Ghostbusters *and Caddy Shack… and now? Bedazzled, Year One and Knocked Up? I mean, between his acting, directing and writing, he’s done some great stuff… but that was a generation ago for a lot of it. Okay, Groundhog Day was great and the Analyze This and Analyze That movies were ok… but seriously. He’s gone downhill.
Gene Hackman (and Michael Caine, Christopher Walken, and Morgan Freeman) is the guy you call when your director is half in the bag at 0700, the script is ten layers of rewrites thick and still shiite, and the supporting players are guys you pulled from the catering truck. For a modest fee, Hackman will increase the gravitas of your film; just by appearing in the credits he’ll up the caliber of your film by at least half a star, and if you put him in a headlining role, you’re at least guaranteed to break even.
I’ve always wanted to see an SNL skit in which the above actors met in a bar and competed to see who had been in the most bad films. “Jaws: The Revenge? That’s nothing. I was in Heartbreakers!” “Yeah, well I was in some Keanu Reeves movie that was so terrible they actually changed the name on the DVD release.” “Guys, guys, guys…I was in Kangaroo Jack, Gigli, and The Stepford Wives all in the same year. You want to tell me about bad? I want more cowbell!” “Okay, you win, Walken.”
Stranger