comment #1

Breedlove says ...

Hillary Swank is one of these actors who, if she's in a movie, there's a 95% chance it will be terrible. Just awful taste in projects. After each Oscar win she seemed eager to just piss away all the good will and respect she'd won as quickly as possible. Angelina Jolie is another one who's supposedly A-list and has her pick of scripts and has been in about 20 pieces of shit in a row (haven't seen 'The Good Shepherd' yet).

comment #2

D.Z. says ...

Jeff: "I've been slinging with interviewers? And don't get all judgmental. Not everything you do in life can be Boys Don't Cry or Milliion Dollar Baby."

You seem to show a lot of praise and disappointment for an actress whose debut was Karate Kid 4.

comment #3

rocco says ...

"Sometimes you take a job because it seems like a good way to go at the time, given what you;re looking to achieve."

Like Hollywood Elsewhere, for instance? Hey, it's not a cheap shot if it's true...

Anyway...the woman has two "Best Actress" awards. TWO. Acadamy awards may be transcendentally trivial, but her place in history is secure. Her contribution to her craft is indelible. She could make nothing but 'Norbit's from here on out..she's gained about as much immortality as any Hollywooder could hope...

comment #4

Hal says ...

I honestly don't think Hilary Swank's post-BDC CV is anything to sneeze at. She did fine work in Insomnia, The Gift, Iron-Jawed Angels, even Freedom Writers. She and Aaron Eckhart made their scenes in The Black Dahlia worthwhile. I think her main problem she has is that she does not do many "major" films, and does not work with who Jeff would consider to be a "hip" director.

comment #5

austin111 says ...

With the exception of Boys Don't Cry, which was a miraculous piece of work, and her remarkable physicality in Million Dollar Baby, I really haven't felt that Swank has found a real niche as an actress. She can be amazing in just the "right" role, but really nothing remarkable otherwise. She doesn't seem, for instance, to have much luminosity or range, like, say, Kate Winslet - an actress whose talent seems almost boundless by comparison, but has ZERO Oscars to show for it. In her lesser roles, she can be okay but generally just sort of earnest and likeable in a desperate sort of way. Personally, though, I'd have given her M$B oscar to Annette Bening, whose work in Being Julia was far more interesting and entertaining, or to Winslet, whose work in Eternal Sunshine was far more liberating. She's a bit like Sally Field --who seemed to get lucky twice in her film career but has since faded into the woodwork.

comment #6

malibugigolo says ...

What scripts is she supposed to do?
Where are these mythical grand projects of taste that she rejects, in favor of junk?

The Recount one was littered with typos and was utterly sophomoric and it was "Hot".

comment #7

Undercover Brother says ...

It boils down like this. She wins one Oscar and then does "The Core" and that artsy costume pic that no one saw. Her career nearly goes right back to where it was pre-Boys. She miraculosuly wins ANOTHER Oscar for "M.D.B.", and she does "The Reaping" and "Freedom Writers" as her headling gigs. I have to give Swank some kind of respect for being fearless and gutsy in her two great films, but Christ, can she straddle no middle ground at all? Had the woman not won two Oscars no one would have the slightest inkling to see her in anything.

comment #8

Terry McCarty says ...

I saw the artsy costume pic and Hilary Swank obviously took it because it was a chance to play a "girl" role after Brandon Teena.

comment #9

Legowombat says ...

The assumption here is simply that there are nothing but great scripts out there for actors to take their pick of when they need to work, and that those good scripts that are in production and are looking for cast members are open and accessible to the actor in question. It's simply a matter of making the best of your limited options at the time.

I remember reading an interview with Mena Suvari after the release of 'American Beauty', stating that she would only work in top quality movies, and wondered how quickly simple economics would force her to accept lesser work. (She's currently starring in 'Day Of The Dead', a generic zombie movie).

Blame the writers. Blame studios for not recognising decent writing.

Is that *really* the 'Recount' script, or a late April Fool's joke? Terrible writing, bad dialogue, *You're*?

comment #10

Josh Massey says ...

Actually, I remember Robert Duvall freely admitting Gone With 60 Seconds was for the money.

comment #11

malibugigolo says ...

I think as the maudlin nature of Recount and many other script that have been hot "Things We Lost In A Fire" comes to mind, is that people are looking for passion, instead of quality, which in turn would make the audience passionate. The actors have nowhere to go with an emotional script, they have to almost mute all physicality, voice inflection, to make it the slightest bit true, as such they aren't really even allowed to act. Which is sad.

I remember hearing how McG was hired for Charlie's Angels and how he danced on the table and was really "passionate" and then after seeing the movie, Bertrand Russell's comments rang true in regards to McG's "passion":

"The degree of one's emotions varies inversely with one's knowledge of the facts."

Can you see Kubrick dancing on a table?
I can't.

Although, as Camus pointed out in The Stranger, the criminal justice system is big on emotion in judging validity of one's arguments.

comment #12

austin111 says ...

If Swank is such a great actress, why doesn't she go back to the Indie well from which she came. She should shy away from the big money and do the smaller more character driven things for awhile. I don't think she'll starve and she might find things that challenge her somewhat difficult to cast persona. She has a raw, big-boned beauty, and an angular face that cries out for the unusual, but if she keeps making the mainly ordinary potboilers, she's going to wear out her welcome for good. She really needs to do something quite different to stand out.

comment #13

sutter kane says ...

Jeff, I really think you've hit the nail on the head with this piece. I couldn't agree with you more. With two Oscars, Swank's obviously talented. But she's hard to cast, and her commercial appeal will never approach that of the infinitely less talented Julia Roberts or Drew Barrymore. But she's been working at this for a long time, and if she wants a big paycheck for a programmer that'll disappear from people's memories in two weeks, who really cares? Besides, if Zemekis and Silver ask you to do a movie, isn't it just good networking for the future to say yes? She's got lots of great performances ahead of her, and hell, even Meryl Streep did The River Wild and Death Becomes Her.

comment #14

Cadavra says ...

Sally Field "faded into the woodwork?" Someone hasn't been watching much TV this season.

comment #15

Gnome de Guerre says ...

Richard Dreyfuss freely admits to taking roles for the money, such as in Poseidon.

But on to Swank... The problem is not that she's taking on commercial crapola for cash. It's that she's taking on what are clearly 2nd-tier projects. The first time you hear about The Reaping and it already sounds like tired, cheap, early-spring filler.

who knows if she gets offers for big summer events, but assuming she does and that she just chooses to go w/what her tastes dictate are less-blatantly commercial (i.e. faux "quirkier") projects, then she should choose big, big BIG event flicks, or true quirk. Hell, just go be in the next Cillian Murphy movie.

If she wants to do mix up cash-rich films w/artier fare, I'd recommend a hearty brew of Marvel, Wachowskis, Rodriguez/QT. Follow it with a Craig Brewer project. Then go with Verbinski's next. If she were part of an ensemble in X-Men 4, or Transformers 2, blogs everywhere would give her a pass because those are seen as merely sell-out choices rather than as a step down on the A-List.