PETE POSTLETHWAITE: Pete Postlethwaite, who either overcame or employed (depending on your opinion) his lack of leading man looks while quietly and with dignity out-acting every leading man who ever appeared against him,
died last night of
Keyzer Soze cancer. I'm sure Postlethwaite has been in bad movies (IMDB reminds me:
Clash of the Titans), but when I think of him, I just think of how great he was in smaller, but diverse, roles in so many great movies --
In the Name of the Father,
The Usual Suspects, and
The Town, to name a few.
Also, he is in a select group of white men who improbably and inexplicably have played Asians: John Wayne, Mickey Rooney, Jake Gyllenhall, and Postlethwaite.
Edited to add: Most of the stories about Postlethwaite's death are accompanied by a photograph of him smiling, which, given the dearth of non-menacing smiles in his film
oevre, is both unexpected and really nice to see.
I always thought it was part of the weirdness of the story of Usual Suspects that Kobiyashi might have had a Japanese name, but the accent was all Welsh. (Unless you were referring to a different movie in terms of his playing an Asian character.)
ReplyDeleteI'd also note that he's one of the few truly great things about Romeo + Juliet.
Absolutely loved this guy. Just saw Inception for the second time the other night and was thinking it was a shame his character was so underutilized.
ReplyDeleteNo, that's what I meant. I always thought that they had just written the character as Kobayashi and then thought it would be funny to cast Postlethwaite in it.
ReplyDeleteHe was a H!ITG! for me, which says something about me, I know. But even though I couldn't ever remember his name, I loved his performances, esp. in The Usual Suspects. RIP, Mr. Postlethwaite.
ReplyDeleteWith that voice, they could have given him any last name in the world and I would have been happy. Especially, for some reason, the way he pronounced "McManus."
ReplyDeleteAbsolutely agree. Any time I come across the name McManus, I do a poor impression of it. (Well, if nobody else is around.) I might do it for "Kint" and "Soze" too, but those don't come up that much.
ReplyDeleteI read the AP obit twice trying to find a mention of The Usual Suspects - couldn't believe it wasn;t there....
ReplyDeleteThe last time I watched The Usual Suspects, it occurred to me that Kobiyashi wasn't at all his name, but Kint amused himself by picking out the most amusing option from the choices in front of him and tagging him with it. (Yes, I have seen that movie quite a few times.)
ReplyDeleteRIP. I haven't seen The Town but it's next on my Netflix, and I can't wait.
"Also, he is in a select group of white men who improbably and inexplicably have played Asians: John Wayne, Mickey Rooney, Jake Gyllenhall, and Postlethwaite."
ReplyDeleteCoincidentally, was just watching an old Twilight Zone ep ("The Quality of Mercy") in which Dean Stockwell adds his name to that list. Of course, as Tina notes above, Kobayashi was at best a borrowed name....
RIP Pete.
An excellent point, Tina.
ReplyDeleteI did pick up on the same idea as Tina (and I have also seen US many many times), although when I was younger and watching this, I always wondered if Kobayashi just sounded Asian, but was really a differently spelled Hungarian name. Obviously, in my youth I was not exposed to much Hungarian.
ReplyDeleteI will miss seeing him in movies- he was never mentioned in previews, and it was always a pleasant surprise to watch him.
ReplyDeleteDidn't he pluck Kobayashi from the tea cup? So it def. wasn't his name, just made up. I always took the appearances and people from "the story" to be true, just not the plot and Verbal's own background.
ReplyDeleteRight, but since the whole thing was happening in Kevin Spacey's story, there was no reason for him not to be Japanese. So he's still inexplicably Asian.
ReplyDeleteStockwell was also in Kim, where he played a young Indian boy. Or maybe he was white, but could pass for Indian, and only a few British spies knew his secret. I'm vague on the details, but Errol Flynn was in it, too.
ReplyDelete<p>But are we seeing the story as Verbal is picturing it in his head or as Agent Kujan is hearing it? The former, because when we see "Kobayashi" he looks as he did in the storytelling.
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</p><p>Still: we don't know what *actually* happened because so much of Kint's story is bullshit. Which pretty much calls for a separate post.
</p>
I would love a "parsing The Usual Suspects" post. It is the one exception to my "I HATE stories that turn out to be a dream/made up" rule, because the movie is just so smart that you completely forget that Verbal's story doesn't have to contain one shred of truth to it.
ReplyDelete