In the Pics section, film critic Floortje Smit casts her eye on contemporary visual culture.
That producer and director Adam McKay (Don’t Look Up) has dropped his avid eye on Elizabeth Holmes’ story makes sense. The life of the fraudulent businesswoman and Theranos founder has everything: drama, hubris, deception, money, the American dream in overdrive. Blessed.
Jennifer Lawrence, of course, liked the part. Until, she said this week in The New York Timesthe eight-part television series The Dropout saw on Disney+. It also deals with the case and in it Holmes is played by Amanda Seyfried, who won an Emmy for her portrayal. “She was a genius. And I thought: yes, we don’t have to do that all over again. It is done.’
What a wonderfully refreshing insight into Hollywood, where nothing is sacred and redoing something thin is seen as a business model. Something that actors usually lend themselves gratefully for, and then put forward fine reasons for doing so, such as ‘modern reinterpretation’, ‘making accessible to a new generation’ or ‘tribute to the original’.
Admittedly, brave it is. You just have to dare, for example: playing Norman Bates in a completely unnecessary remake of Psycho. It almost hurts the viewer, when Vince Vaughn in 1998 is exactly like that looking into the camera as Anthony Perkins in the legendary final shot. What was on your mind, dear Vaughn, that you thought this was a good idea?
And then you sometimes also have to deal with the actors from the original who are not always cheering at your ‘declaration of love’. This is how Angela Lansbury’s role in The Manchurian Candidate (1966) played by Meryl Streep in 2004, and Lansbury was still unhappy with it. “She shouldn’t have taken that part,” she simmed. Jude Law played the playboy alfie according to Michael Caine completely wrong. “He plays a male chauvinist pig,” Caine said. ‘I played a male chauvinist pig who didn’t realize it himself.’ There you are, with your ‘reinterpretation.’ Suddenly it becomes a competition.
But of course it already was. You can come up with so many well-meaning arguments, you won’t take on such a role if you don’t have the arrogance that you can do better or at least as well as your predecessor, who at the time soul and salvation on the roll.
And that’s what makes Lawrence’s comment really remarkable. In Hollywood, everyone calls each other ‘genius’ or ‘great’ every now and then, but actually turn down a nice project because you can’t do better: you can’t really give a fellow actress a more sincere and generous compliment.