Great Actors/Actresses & their Impact on Genre

Mel Brooks
Genre: Parody Comedies

Now here’s somebody who could definitely fit into the "Great directors and their impact on a genre" thread, but here I wanted to focus on Mel Brooks as an actor / performer, as the majority of films that Mel acted in were of the parody sorts. Starting his career as a writer for a variety programs, Mel Brooks very soon gained a name for himself after winning the best original screenplay for The Producers, however Brooks did not really gain popularity until the release of two massive movies in the same year, which happened to be among my favorites, Blazing Saddles, and Young Frankenstein. The first of course was a classic satire of westerns along with a brilliant parody of race, and the later was a loving homage to old black and white horror movies, it might honestly be the last traditional B&W movie ever made too.

Brooks followed these two massively successful films up with more financially successful parodies, the majority of which I think get a bad rap. Silent Movie was his tribute to (duh), old silent movies, High Anxiety was a fun parody of Hitchcock films, History of The World Part 1 was both a skit movie as well as a homage to biblical epics, and of course Spaceballs was his out of the world take on Star Wars.

Now what I love most about Brooks’s work, is that with his few exceptions, you can really feel his love for the source material. Most directors wouldn’t go out of their way to find the old cameraman and technician, who worked on the old universal horror movies, so they could film a movie the old way, and yet Brooks did that. Similarly only a director like Mel Brooks in his prime, could make a movie that almost entirely devoid of dialogue outside of Marcel Marceau’s “noun!” gag, and have it be released by a major studio, and do it as well as it did.

Of course Brooks’s later movies were not up to snuff. While Spaceballs felt like a common ground between silly Brooks and “hip Brooks”, Robin Hood: Men in Tights took that to its nth degree. I still enjoy this movie to an extent, but I recognize that its comedy is a bit shall we say wobbly, and by that point Brooks seem to parodying films that were recent, as opposed to more “timeless and old”. Similarly while it also has its moments, including a memorably gory climax, Dracula: Dead & Loving It does feel quite stale, and despite featuring the spoofmeister himself Leslie Nielsen in the title role (now there’s a guy I could do write-up of, and it would kinda get depressing), has a feeling of “been there, done that!”

People often give Brooks crap for eventually taking the lead movies in his movies, when he should have stuck to parts like Governor Lepotomane in Blazing Saddles, and while I agree that a different lead (like say if Gene Wilder had not turned the lead in High Anxiety), could have made those movies different, I still think Brooks has an amicable presence to himself, that lent itself well enough to leading roles. He also has wonderful comic timing going for him as well.

Another thing we can probably thank Brooks for that is non-spoof related, is advancing the careers of directors like David Lynch, and David Cronenberg, since without his involvement The Elephant Man, and The Fly probably never would have gotten made. Brooks even asked for his name to be taken off both films as a producer, specifically because of him being known as the spoof comedy guy. Dude's a legend, in more then one way.

Yup, I was in shock too, when I learned just how much he had done as a producer. I recommend looking up Brooksfilm. The studio was only heavily active during the 80s, but you might be surprised what they've been involved with. A lot of it was not comedy. It's a really remarkable career. 

It's interesting to note that her two biggest films and roles have had her blue and green. Quite the combination. I'd say she fits into the sci-fi roles mostly because she kinda had an exotic feel to her. The motion-caption effects definition help as well.

The reason she isn't paid as much as Scarlett Johnasson is two-fold, she's not "white" (if you know how Hollywood works, this is absolutely true), and secondly aside from Columbiana, she's never really led her own wide-released movie. After that films underperformed, it seems like studios were a lot less bearish on her giving "leading, leading roles", so she probably mostly just relies on her franchises these days, which is a shame, as I do think she has a very good presence, and she could carry her own movie. She's done well with a few indies as well. 

I think it's really lame that studios seemed to less bullish in creating solo lead vehicles around Saldana after Colombiana underperformed. Johansson had loads of wide release failures or underperformers  as lead (The Island etc) but kept getting chance after chance to fluke into something like Lucy. And than she kept being allowed to fail after that.

With some smartly chosen vehicles, I think Saldana could easily be carrying big studio Sci-fi or action films as the headliner, but Hollywood needs to give her the same opportunity to underperform and then come back as her white counterparts. I can also see the wisdom of Saldana sticking to ensemble franchises, knowing full well she can't fail as many times as someone like Johansson is allowed to.

I know I'm coming late to the party on John Candy, but I think one of the greatest tragedies of his passing was that he died before really tapping into his dramatic potential. He is excellent in his one scene in JFK, which hints at an untapped reservoir of possibilities. I sometimes imagine a world where John Candy didn't die, and some enterprising director decides to cast him as Judge Holden in Blood Meridian in the early 2000s, and he cleans house come awards season.

Sorry...was distracted by some of the frankly insane antics that have been going on on this board. Back to the topic:

Agreed, Candy could really find the specifics in a role, including the technical aspects like the Louisiana accent in JFK. 
I feel he'd have become an Oscar winner had he lived (as Stephen alluded to).

Patrick Swayze

Genre: Action

For a guy who's two most famous and successful films fall squarely into the Romance category (Dirty Dancing and Ghost), I have to say that the late Patrick Swayze was probably one of the most underrated action stars ever. First off he was a really good actor, so he could sell that part (not all action movies strictly need good acting, but it never hurts). But secondly, his physicality was perfect for action movies. More a trained dancer than a martial artist, Swayze's ability to choreograph moves perfectly onscreen made him a hugely effective onscreen fighter.

One of Swayze's best action flicks is Roadhouse, in which he played Dalton, the world's greatest Bouncer, who is hired to clean up a scuzzy bar of it's unwanted clientele. Swayze gets to kick numerous amounts of ass, do fancy roundhouse kicks and does this sort of thing as effectively as Jean Claude Van Damme and Steven Segal were doing around the same time. Anyways, Roadhouse is a terrific action movie, and on top of that it also has Sam Elliot  as the guy who used to be the world's greatest Bouncer, who taught Dalton everything he knows, but got too old and had to pass the mantle. It's a relationship that has echoes of The Karate Kid and the Bradley Cooper remake of A Star Is Born ( with Elliot playing wiser and grizzled, as always).

And of course there is Point Break, a much imitated action masterpiece, in which Swayze plays a Zen Master Surfer Bank Robber alongside Keanu Reeves. It's amazing.

None of Swayze's other action films quite live up to those two, but he's got some decent gems like Red Dawn, Uncommon Valor and Next Of Kin. Below, Swayze kicking some serious ass in Roadhouse:

Thanks !

For me maybe one of Swayze's biggest career  mistakes was not commiting fully to the action genre when the oppourtunity was there (the same way another good actor like Wesley Snipes did, while also mixing it up with other stuff). I understand why....he had huge hits outside the genre like Ghost and Dirty Dancing, and maybe wanted to avoid typecasting as an action guy, but when he had two action flicks like Point Break and Roadhouse in his back pocket, fans of the genre would have likely stuck with him for a long time if he stayed really commited to the genre. As you said by the time he came back to action films much later with Black Dog, his career had been failing in other genres (comedies, dramas and family films like Tall Tale), and yeah, it really did seem like a desperate cry for relevancy for a guy whose star had begun to plummet drastically since the early 90"s. His greatest strengths as an actor were being a romantic lead and being a convincing ass kicker, and for some insane reason he spent years of his career in the 90's avoiding doing the two things he was really, really good at. Fine actor, but he should have left the would-be Oscarbait to Tom Hanks or whomever.


But he has a nice little set/run of action films from the 80's and early 90's that I consider top notch for the genre.