The Dion Waiters Award for Best Heat Check Performance
In the discussion (6)
Approx. transcript time · 00:46:22Read transcript
- There may never have been more candidates, with Heat the only comparison; the field is Dennis Farina as Serrano, John Ashton, Yafet Kodo (as transcribed), Joe Pantoliano and Philip Baker Hall as Farina's lawyer.
- John Ashton, Marvin here and Rosewood's partner in Beverly Hills Cop, with Cop 2 one of the great heat checks, would win going away in any other movie; it is a mystery why he never had a bigger career or a Fox cop drama, since he could easily have been the Dennis Franz character in NYPD Blue.
- Yafet Kodo (as transcribed), the FBI agent whose identity De Niro steals, is in maybe fifteen minutes yet hits seven threes on presence alone, and carried it over to network TV.
- Joe Pantoliano, who has his own award on the show, was in the stretch where he stopped being that guy, after Risky Business, Running Scared and Eddie and the Cruisers, and became Joe Pantoliano here, dyed hair and all; by the strict letter of the Dion Waiters law one host gives it to Pantoliano for making the most of his opportunity.
- The other host goes Farina, who is in about five scenes, all filmed in Vegas because he was doing Crime Story, and is completely over the top in a baggy gray-and-black sweater; they agree to disagree, and his threats about the pencil, the cream soda and burying the telephone in his lawyer Sydney's head are recited.
- Farina's best work is argued over: his mob boss Lombard in the first Miami Vice season, which led to Crime Story and typecasting as cop or mob boss after eighteen real years as a Chicago cop; Manhunter as Will Petersen's boss (preferred over the Bronx Tale performance of the actor transcribed as 'Chaz Pimentary'); and Out of Sight as Jennifer Lopez's father.