The Dion Waiters Award for Best Heat Check Performance
In the discussion (8)
Approx. transcript time · 00:47:18Read transcript
- Before the nominees, a moment in the credits is called possibly the best in the film: after Gyllenhaal, Ruffalo and Downey, the names Brian Cox, John Carol Lynch, Elias Codius, Dermot Malroney and Donal Loge (as transcribed) appear, a that-guy all-star team; Malroney as Captain Marty Lee is loved and Cox as Melvin Belli really makes the most of his moment.
- More favorites: Philip Baker Hall as Sherwood, the handwriting specialist who starts drinking a little; Clea Duvall, with a great heat-check scene; John Goetz (as transcribed), from Blood Simple, as the Chronicle editor; and Anthony Edwards, fantastic and unexpected.
- One pick gives the award specifically to Cox, with the Melvin Belli phone-call clip played, 'Is there something I can call you that's a little less ominous?', for making the most of his few moments, the television interview, the sincere attempt to offer the caller a lifeline, and the way he physically takes the incredible screaming sound.
- Jimmy Simpson (as transcribed), who plays the shooting victim at the start and returns at the end, prompts a detail: the character is Mike Mageau, and when the name is reported over the Vallejo PD wire it is said aloud in the newsroom as 'Mayhew', so the film intentionally misleads in a way that was probably true to how it was said, an obsessive Fincherism; James LeGroix (as transcribed) is good and weird, and Zach Granier (as transcribed), the boss in Fight Club, runs the Vallejo police department.
- A second pick is Elias Codius (as transcribed) as Detective Mullinax (as transcribed), a great real name: a that-guy who can shoot when given the ball, known to the hosts' generation as Casey from Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, a guy who looks like a cop and rarely gets a stage this large, and a great serial killer in Fallen with Denzel Washington, directed by Gregory Hoblitz (as transcribed).
- Asked directly for a winner, a third pick is John Carroll Lynch as Arthur Lee Allen, with the 'Nobody calls me Arthur' clip: the role basically made the second half of his career, he directed the last film starring Harry Dean Stan (as transcribed) this year, and he is a well-known theater actor remembered as Norm in bed with Francis McNormand (as transcribed) at the end of Fargo.
- Asked whether the film still works with a huge star like Anthony Hopkins as Arthur, the answer is not as well: it has to be a face whose physical presence unsettles because you feel you could have seen him without knowing why, since viewers bring previous films into the room and would read a famous actor as an important part; the misdirect succeeds because the only place to remember Lynch is Fargo, where Norm is a completely different, friendly disposition.
- Later, the Ioni Sky (as transcribed) roadside scene is called another Dion Waiters performance and the hardest scene for one host to watch.