Alyssa Rosenberg, who I respect but very frequently disagree with (if not for her conclusions than for her path to those conclusions), has come out against Andy Serkis winning an Oscar for his work on Rise of the Planet of the Apes. I didn’t want to comment at first, because I haven’t seen the film yet, but my issue with her stance lies in a fundamentally flawed assumption on her part about the nature of film.

Film is a collaborative art form. When someone is nominated for Best Director, they are receiving praise for the costumes, for the lighting, for the lenses used, for the performances, for the script, for the way it was shot, for the way it was edited, and yes for the way they championed all those things to make a final product. I’m not saying that Directors don’t offer up tremendously valuable work or that they shouldn’t be considered for awards because they rely on others to make a final product.

Serkis is one of the few actors who has figured out motion capture as an art form. He acts through totally fictional characters, but if you were to compare his work to any of the wholly CG characters you see in other films that don’t have an actor providing a base performance, it would be laughable to claim that he contributed nothing to the film.

Should we create a new category called Best Baseline Performance for CG Character? I guess we could, but I don’t see the point. What Serkis does is acting. He acts without little balls tapped to a spandex suit just as frequently as with. However they altered his performance in post production is a part of post production and should be examined as a separate act.

I’ve been meaning to write a bit about Reaper, a show in the same vein as Chuck, ever since its season finale. One thing I noticed was the fairly significant similarities in their progression. Reaper ended its second season with what could be considered an evening of the playing field between Sam, the slacker Reaper looking for a way out of his contract with the Devil, and his pseudo-girlfriend Andi, who had shrinked from Sam this season after learning he was a son of the Devil: she had lost her soul to the Devil as well. Additionally, the season ended with a cryptic message from former demon, and current angel, Steve that everything that’s happening is happening for a reason, and the blueprints aren’t downstairs; the world was expanded, and Sam’s significance had increased.

Similarly, with Chuck the season ended with Chuck obtaining a newer more powerful Intersect which gave him physical capabilities as well; twisting this slightly to make the point, he was now on a level playing field with his pseudo-girlfriend Sarah, who until now had been the kickass super-agent of the relationship. And in the process of obtaining this new Intersect the scope of the story was expanded: the enemy of the last two years had been but one part of a larger machine. The parallels are striking.

That isn’t to say the shows were similar. In fact, the contrast between the two shows was much greater in their second seasons than their first, but the similarities in their arcs are  nonetheless notable.

Chuck and Reaper have followed similar paths on the production side of things as well. They were both affected, and truncated, by the Writer’s Strike and as a result both were “bubble shows” that made it back for a second season by the skin of their teeth. Of course, here their paths diverge slightly. Reaper was given a short season renewal. I’d initially read that it was a 9 episode season, but ultimately 13 aired; Chuck was given a full 22 episode pick up.

So Chuck returned in the fall and spent months developing its identity and fanbase to the point that when it was placed once again on the bubble (albeit as a likely renewal) the fans sprang into action. Reaper, with its shorter season, began airing as a mid-season replacement and didn’t have as much time to grow a fanbase. So, despite continual assertions of inevitable cancellation by TV rating analysts, the fanbase barely materialized and the show was killed, while Chuck’s wildly successful fan-driven campaign resulted in saving the show from the increasingly fickle chopping block.

But following the trend of cancelled shows being picked up by other networks, seen this year with Medium and (potentially) My Name is Earl, the execs behind Reaper were rumoured to be looking for a deal that would have allowed for a third season on a new network. Jenny Wade, who starred on this season of Reaper as a demon and Ben’s Anya-esque girlfriend, posted on twitter of an unofficial deal in the works, a deal that fell through rather quickly. Since then, I’ve been following her and she recently posted a video discussing Reaper. In it she, among other things, defends Tyler Labine and Bret Harrison, the stars of Reaper, from fans who said they gave up on the show. This is the first I’d heard of it, but I decided to hypothesize completely uninformed of the context of the comments.

Tyler Labine was cast in a new pilot which was subsequently greenlit for a season order. I can see how that can be construed as “abandoning” a show, but it’s simply the reality of the industry; in addition, his contract for Reaper almost certainly overrode any other deals and the pilot he filmed was merely “backup.” Bret Harrison is another story; he hasn’t quickly moved onto other roles or anything of that sort so the anger of the fans seems even more unjustified to me. What I think it boils down to, though, is Reaper’s unintended doppleganger: Chuck.

One of the more noted aspects of the Chuck renewal campaign was how vociferously some of the stars of the show encouraged the campaign: namely, Bret Harrison’s Chuck counterpart Zachary Levi. While at a convention in London, he took a group of Chuck fans to a nearby Subway and, following one of the ideas of the fan campaign, started buying five dollar footlongs. Subsequently, he appeared on CNN, and most likely other channels as well, to discuss the campaign and support the show and the renewal campaign. As far as I know, Bret Harrison did none of these things, so I presume that this is at least one aspect of why the fans seem displeased with Harrison. Which (finally) gets to the point of this post: are those sorts of actions the duty of an actor?

I don’t think so. An actor’s duty is to act. Beyond that, every actor does things differently. Acting, in the end, is just a job. To some people, their job is their life, to others it’s not. We’d all like to believe that all the actors in our favourite shows and movies ansolutely love the roles they’re playing, but that’s not always the case. And really, it’s not their job to love their job.

Maybe Zachary Levi really loves Chuck more than Bret Harrison loves Reaper. Or maybe that’s just who Levi is; maybe he will spend a week evangelizing all of his friends when he finds a great rib joint. I don’t know either of them. What I do know is that the both of them did a great job. They performed their roles well, and brought to life their characters. Beyond that, I don’t give a shit.

(Obviously, I care a little; personable and fan-friendly actors are better than the alternative, but I’m not going to chastise an actor for not being an acolyte for their show.)

And ultimately, Zachary Levi talking about Chuck on CNN did not renew the show. Zachary Levi would not have even been on CNN talking Chuck except for one thing: the fans. The fans created the campaign, the fans pushed the narrative, they renewed the show. Anything Zachary Levi did was ancillary, just as anything Bret Harrison could have done would have been. The only thing Zachary Levi did to renew the show was give a great performance, one that engendered such an enthusiastic fanbase. He did his job. And so did Harrison.

Oh boy. I was on the IMDB message boards early last year because someone was talking about how weird it is when male actors get grossed out about kissing other men for their roles. Here’s my response.

It’s called preference. I don’t want to kiss guys and I think it would be gross. Just because you accept other people’s homosexuality doesn’t mean you have no problem performing homosexual acts.

In some ways it’s right, but at the same time going back to that thread now I see myself as woefully ignorant. Actors are paid to perform roles. And most of the actors who get interviewed about kissing against sexual preference (truthfully, no-one ever asks NPH how weird it is to kiss hot chicks all the time) are famous enough that if they didn’t want to kiss a guy, they wouldn’t have to. And really, even if you’re a struggling actor desperate for a role and you’ve got an audition for a gay character who goes through an intense and intimate sexual awakening (not that I’m working on a screenplay or anything) why wouldn’t you do it? A kiss is only as intimate as you make it. A kiss is only as sexual as you make it. And all of that happens in your mind. It has nothing to do with how deep your tongue goes down their throat or how hard you push your face onto theirs.

Beyond all of that, I’ve grown up a fair bit since then. I’m not wet in the pants to make it with a dude, but it’s not something that disgusts me any longer. And there’s always a chance the dude’s a good kisser.