The Golden Age-ism of Hollywood
‘Everybody’s talking ‘bout Bagism, Shagism, Dragism, Madism, Ragism, Tagism, This-ism, that-ism, ism ism ism…’ — John Lennon
‘You can’t take away her house, she’s too old…’ — Happy Gilmore
I’m sorry, but there is no reason that Christian Bale should be playing Dick Cheney and I say that as someone who loved, Newsies.
When I first saw the trailer for Oscar-winning screenwriter, Adam McKay’s new biopic, Vice, exploring the career of former VP, Dick Cheney, it really made me wonder? Why Bale?
Dick Cheney is currently 77. Bale is 44. Cheney was 59 when he was elected VP and first made Americans think, ‘Well, it can’t get any worse than this.’
Why not get an actor closer in age to Cheney? Do you know how many actors above the age of 55 are registered with the Screen Actor’s Guild? Me neither but it’s probably a lot. And I would wager that ALL of them can do a Dick Cheney impression. It’s just not a difficult character to impersonate. Which begs the question, Why not Darrell Hammond? (in my opinion SNL’s greatest impressionist along with Hartman & McKinnon.)
Obviously, they did it because he’ll sell tickets and he’s a phenomenal actor and the movie spans the career of Cheney when he was closer in age to Bale and they probably wanted to avoid doing that equally weird thing where they have multiple actors playing the same character at different points in their life.
And it absolutely will help at the box office and not just to people who have a vested interest in how the Bush White House transpired but they’ll sell a couple thousand at least to people who just want to sit there for two hours saying, ‘Oh my god I can’t believe that’s Christian Bale. He’s so goooood. He’s such a convincing old angry white guy.’
And on the bright side some costume/makeup person will win an Oscar for the hours of painstaking work making Bale look like Cheney.
Granted this is one 40yr old white dude complaining that another 50yr old white dude cast a 44yr old white dude to play the part of a 59yr old white dude. I can already feel the responses from people.
‘Worrying about job opportunities for old white men is not a top priority.’
Agreed. But worrying about job opportunities for ALL older people absolutely should be a priority.
