Sunday, August 21, 2005

Brian Fellow and The Hurricane


Well, I'd like to say that I have something deep and important to write about today...

The Bride and I watched "The Hurricane" last night with Denzel Washington. (We didn't watch it WITH Denzel Washington, as he was unavailable to hang out last night. We'll invite him next week when we watch Malcom 10.) This is a great movie that tells the story of Rubin "The Hurricane" Carter, a prizefighter who was wrongly imprisioned for nearly 30 years for a brutal homicide that he did not commit. After the movie was over, with The Bride falling asleep, I watched one of the DVD bonus features that contained some interviews with the real-life Rubin "Hurricane" Carter.

He had the same fedora on as in the above picture. (he's the guy on the left...duh) And he had the same moustache as well. And the whole time he was talking on the DVD, he didn't sound anything like Denzel Washington. (Weird, I know.) He sounded exactly like Tracy Morgan doing the 'Brian Fellow's Safari Planet. I mean, when I closed my eyes, it sounded like Tracy Morgan as Brian Fellow imitating The Hurricane.

Which served two purposes in my mind: It was hilarious and I will never see that movie the same way again. Just imagine "Brian Fellow" saying one of Denzel's lines from the movie, like, "hate put me in prison, but love's gonna bust me out." (If you need to refresh your brain on the sound of Brian Fellow on Saturday Night Live, check out some more samples here,
here, here, here, and here.

The second purpose it served was to reinforce a theory I read about on The Sports Guy about how Denzel actually wasn't a really great actor. Wait, wait, wait...before you string me up, just hear me out. The SG said that what Denzel does better than anyone, is play Denzel. He goes through movie by movie, dissecting how Denzel bascially just acts like himself in all of his movies, but like Tom Hanks, we just love who Denzel is. That's why we respond. Not because he's doing some great method acting, or improvising some memorable lines, or crossing a line and becoming the character he's portraying. Now I love Denzel, and I don't necessarily agree with the Sports Guy, but I understand where he's coming from on this one.

After seeing the "real" Rubin Carter on the DVD last night, I liked him better when he was Denzel. Much more eloquent, better-looking, and compelling. And Denzel doesn't sound like Tracy Morgan/Brian Fellow.

I guess real people are not as charismatic or attractive as the nearest Hollywood look-a-like. The only time I can think of right now, where a real-life person didn't get better looking in the movie about their life was when Brian Dennehy played the former Indiana basketball coach Bobby Knight.


And that picture of Brian Dennehy is old! When he wasn't fat and wide-faced. Well, not as wide-faced as he is now. Who would've thought that they would be able to take a fairly unattractive guy like Bobby Knight and make him MORE unnattractive in his biopic.

Be sure to read a hume-or-us blog @ www.carterdavis.blogspot.com