Get Well Soon, James Cromwell!

So I was chatting with my Scottish blog bully/mentor the other day, whom I shall now refer to as Super K – not that I have a particular affection for the K Food Store chain or because my lil Scot pal has any extraordinary powers that I know of but because let’s face it, I can’t call him a bully every time I write about him else he’ll stop being one of the three people who read this.

Anyway, Super K had suggested I pace myself and not worry about whether or not I blogged daily. Presumably this was so I wouldn’t get stressed about trying to come up with something new or I guess incessantly bore people. The problem is that I am undisciplined in the best of times so if I let more than a few days go by I’ll just blow it off entirely.

It’s like that thing where you’re dieting and you eat one cookie and then you go “oh man, I just ruined my diet forever, I might as well eat the rest of this bag of Milanos."

So in trying to break that unhealthy pattern I am going to look at things like French novelist, George Sand. I remember reading somewhere that she wrote twenty pages a day, religiously. Now the thing is, I think people remember Sand more for her personal life than her writing, but I can’t help but admire that sheer power of will. And my guess is she greatened the odds she’d come up with a golden nugget* by being so prolific. It’s like Michael Caine or my brother’s fave actor, Gérard Depardieu. They each made well over a hundred films – a ridiculous amount of them caca. Still they are each highly respected because for every five Jaws: The Revenge or My Father the Hero respectively, they came up with something truly special to last a lifetime. Caine couldn’t have deserved his Hannah and Her Sister’s Oscar more and Depardieu’s Cyrano de Bergerac is one of the most achingly gorgeous performances captured on celluloid.

And while I am no Caine, Depardieu or Sand, I’m going to do my best to just keep throwing things out there when I can, in the hopes that something sticks. In that spirit, I am actually going to go back and rehash some observations I made in the original Winona Bowl-a-Rama because I was just reminded of some of them when I read that actor James Cromwell had recently been injured in a bicycle crash. (From what I read he was supposed to be out of the hospital this past Monday.)

James Cromwell is one of those actors everyone knows, not remembering from what. I don’t think I would be wrong in suggesting most people can’t place the name when they see his face. But looking at his resume, the man is a beast. Like the two aforementioned actors, he’s racked up a ridiculous amount of credits, yet because he’s never the lead, doesn’t get significant attention. But unlike the aforementioned actors, Cromwell has rarely done anything that could be looked on as a source of great humiliation, even despite early appearances in things like Diff’rent Strokes, Three’s Company, and Eight is Enough.

I first wrote about Cromwell in the original Bowl-a-Rama’s Bob Balaban section. Bob Balaban is another one of those phenomenal, consistent and productive actors whose name isn’t readily recognizable but who I thought actually epitomized one of these types of outstanding actors that don’t get nearly enough the celebration they deserve. At the time I had written, “There is an amazing and extraordinary group of actors that do their jobs exceedingly well; so well, in fact, that even though I guarantee you’ve seen them all in at least one film or another, you may not even know their names. These people are not about stardom—they are about getting the job done right. They lend astounding support to each star with whom they’ve shared the bill, and with each picture they manage to distinguish themselves.” I think that still holds true and the actors I mentioned at that time perfectly exemplified that old adage that there are no small parts. James Cromwell – shocking in L.A. Confidential, unsympathetic in The Queen, quietly dignified in Babe – most definitely fit that description then and he continues to do so.

In celebration of these actors about whom when people realize who they are, invariably spout out, “ohhhh yeaaah that guy,” I will attempt to devote at least one blog a week. At the very least it’ll keep me vaguely regimented and perhaps offset the irritation I have from those actors I listed in the original Bowl-a-Rama as “Overrated Winonas,” e.g. Keira Knightley.

And so, to finish out the first blog regarding this second version of my Bob Balaban section, specifically about James Cromwell I say: That’ll do, Hanja. That’ll do. La la la…



*I know Goo & Pablo are sitting there snickering because they immediately thought of poo when they read the word "nugget". Sigh...