Pay Some Attention To The Man Behind The Curtain

The Oscars are slowly but surely getting closer. We love to root for our favorites, and enjoy watching them celebrate their success. Something that steams my ham (I don’t know where I picked up that phrase, either)-- Andy Serkis’s performances as Gollum in the Lord of the Rings trilogy wasn’t even eligible. That doesn’t sit entirely right with me.

Yes, it’s been a good long while since Return of the King came out. No sense crying over spilt milk. But King Kong is still eligible for any and all nominations. I saw that movie tonight. It was a spectacle. What movies should be. And I swear, that thirty-foot-tall behemoth Kong had a soul. And Andy Serkis provided it.

I don’t want to belittle the work of the special effects minds behind the magic of King Kong. I don’t. We’ve never been closer to cinema magic thanks to their pioneering efforts. But the fact is, they didn’t just conjure the gorilla out of thin air. Something had to move for them to follow. Boiled down to the absolute simplest truth, they were tracing Serkis.

The man studied gorilla movement for months. He put on a suit similar to the one he wore for Gollum and, pardon the term, went apeshit. Here’s the thing. The Special Effects wizards will possibly get their recognition at the Oscars, but the man who put breath in that ape’s lungs and provided every twitch gets the shaft? I don’t think so.

To be fair, to be completely fair, I’m not campaigning that they just give him the Oscar. But at least give the man a freaking chance. Actors and actresses have won themselves a statue playing kings, paraplegics, transsexuals and the mentally challenged; is playing an animal that far a stretch? CGI representation is the prosthetic mask for the 21st Century. Sir Laurence Olivier put putty on his nose and a hunch on his back to adopt Richard III. Ralph Fiennes’s English Patient was buried under a tapestry of prosthetic makeup.

Andy Serkis has played misshapen freaks and kings of the jungle, and his make-up was nothing more than moving pixels of color and light.

That’s my argument, Oscar Judges. There it is, spoken plain as a dork can say it. And if that’s not good enough, if you can’t even bend the rules that you make up as you go along, then nominate Serkis for something else, okay? He also played Lumpy the Cook, on the S.S. Venture, in the same flick. One damned convincing cook, if you ask me.

Wink wink.