In his latest (12.29) newsletter Jeff Sneider has posted a new For Your Consideration video (12.29) with Scott Mantz and Perri Nemiroff, in which they kick around the leading Best Supporting Actor contenders.
Their current faves are Oppenheimer‘s Robert Downey Jr. (strong impression as despicable Salieri figure), Barbie‘s Ryan Gosling (essentially a superficial goofball performance), Poor Things‘ Mark Ruffalo (hey, I’m playing a pathetic libertine asshole really broadly…ohhh!), Killers of the Flower Moon‘s Robert De Niro (easily the most irritating, one-note supporting performance of the year…his “King” Hale literally gave me a headache during my second viewing of KOTFM), May December‘s Charles Melton (a vote for Melton being a vote of compassionate support for all real-life minors who’ve been sexually assaulted by adults, plus he’s half Korean!) and American Fiction‘s Sterling K. Brown (funny, blunt-spoken gay guy).
And of course, Mantz, Nemiroff and Sneider completely ignore Blackberry‘s Glenn Howerton. Because they’re afraid of sounding like outliers…because they want to play a safe consensus game by favoring corporate-backed contenders.
It doesn’t matter how riveting Howerton’s Jim Basillie is, right? And to hell with that rickety, old-school requirement that at least one Oscar-aspiring supporting performance should hail from the indie sector, n’cest pas?
Mantz mentions that he had Howerton on his list but…uhm, that ship has sailed. “Way back in the day we had Glenn Howerton,” Nemeriff says dismissively.
At the top of his 12.29 column Sneider writes, “In addition to becoming outright boring, much of the entertainment media, which ostensibly exists to serve as the voice of the people who make up this beloved community of ours, instead serves as the voice of the corporations that finance it.”
That is precisely what Mantz, Nemiroff and Sneider are doing by blowing off Howerton in favor of Downey, Gosling, Ruffalo, De Niro, Melton and Brown.
It is HE’s view that Howerton’s performance is just as good as Downey’s, and at the same time is quite funny if you understand asshole behavior. Truth be told, Downey’s Lewis Strauss is a drag to hang out with, and by the end of the film you’re thinking “Jesus, I get it, he’s a dick…enough already.” Yes, Downey brilliantly plays a weasel, but how hard is it to radiate weasel vibes? Weasel weasel weasel weasel weasel weasel…Weasel J. Weisenheimer.