James Ransone.

b. 2nd June, 1979.
Last week with Art Hindle I was talking about a guy whose overacting detracted from the quality of the films he was in, but James Ransone often acts 'big', overacts, appears borderline hysterical onscreen, and it works, dammit. You probably recognise the guy as Ziggy Sobotka in series two of The Wire, or as Corporal Josh Person in Generation Kill. He's also shown up in Treme and Law and Order. I loved him as Ziggy - such a pathetic character, who wanted so hard to fit in and be one of the boys, but whose tantrums and idiocies got in his way. He was funny, but there was also a lot of frustration at not being able to be cool no matter how hard he tried that I really empathised with. 
      I first saw Ransone in John Waters' A Dirty Shame, where he plays a character aroused by dirt (he chews lovingly on a used tissue Tracy Ullman's character tosses to him), and since then have been rewarded with many "hey it's that one guy" moments. I got to see Larry Clark's Ken Park recently, which I liked, but I especially loved Ransone's psychotic character, Tate. The Scrabble game with his grandparents that devolves into triumphant screamed accusations of cheating is a particular highlight. The film also contains some fairly explicit masturbation and nudity courtesy of Ransone (I was going to include that as the picture for this week, but then I felt like a creeper.) I think he shows up nude quite a lot in general, and is also getting handsomer and handsomer with age. Hence the culty following he seems to be accruing: for more photos of the man than you can shake a stick at, check out this tumblr Fuck Yeah, James PJ Ransone!  It's just full of shirtless and broody.

Art Hindle.

b. July 21st , 1948.
I do love horror movies, and one of my all time favourites is The Brood (d.David Cronenberg, 1979.) I've watched it many times but still find it pretty scary - it's about a father, Frank Carveth, whose wife is in an experimental psychiatric facility, where patients are trained to allow their emotional pain to manifest as physical afflictions. Whenever Carveth's wife feels hurt or wronged by someone, mysterious deformed children show up and bludgeon them to death. Like all good Cronenberg, the film makes you feel really disgusting about your own body, and aware of how vulnerable your mental health can be. There are some wonderful performances in this movie as well - Samantha Eggar as the disturbed Nola Carveth, a great child performance by Cindy Hinds as her daughter, an ice cold and creepy Oliver Reed as the psychiatrist. But what the film really needs to hold it all together is a well-played, grounded portrayal of Frank Carveth, who is one of the only sane and responsible characters in the film. The fascinating flaw of The Brood is that Art Hindle plays Carveth, well... kinda terribly. His eye rolling and scenery chewing and hammy yelling are particularly embarrassing next to the gravitas of Reed. I have a lot of affection for this frightening little movie, and I even have affection for Hindle's ridiculous performance, but a lot of the blame for why this isn't a great movie rests on his shoulders, in my opinion.
      Hindle is from Toronto, and was encouraged to pursue a career on the screen by his uncle, character actor Michael Kane (not Michael Caine, as the IMDB claims.) He's been in many, many films from 1971 to the present, most of them Canadian, and is best known for his roles in the TV series Paradise Falls, and the 1978 Phillip Kaufman version of Invasion of the Body Snatchers, in which his acting is serviceable but not outstanding. I first saw him in a horrible made for TV movie called Liar, Liar (1993) (not the Jim Carrey comedy.) It's about a father who is brutally sodomising his children, and when his eleven year old daughter reports the abuse, no one believes her.  The father is played with much creepy intensity by Hindle. For some god-unknown reason we were shown this film in our Social Education class in highschool, leaving us all traumatised.

Ajay Naidu.

b. February 12, 1972.

Ok, so you remember all those neat kids films about having some weird body swap or morph, like Freaky Friday and Big and 18 Again! and Like Father, Like Son? Well for my money, the best of those is a little movie from 1988 called Vice Versa, starring Judge Reinhold and Fred Savage as a father and son who swap bodies. Aside from the hilarity of seeing Reinhold playing a nine year old boy in a man's body, the film also has a teenage Ajay Naidu, playing a mean kid who picks on Savage at school.

     You get a lot of "It's that one guy who was in that other thing" moments with Naidu, because for a time there it seemed like he was the only young, cute, Indian guy appearing in American movies (now, with Kal Penn and Aziz Ansari, there are three! Progress.) Which meant that, any time a film called for a humourously accented convenience store clerk (as in Richard Linklater's SubUrbia) or cab driver (as in episodes of Monk and 30 Rock), it would be Naidu. And he's really distinctive and funny - much better than the comic stereotypes that those roles call for. He is probably most known for his role as Samir in the cult comedy Office Space, and for appearing in nearly all Darren Aronofsky's films to date (he has parts in Pi, Requiem for a Dream, and The Wrestler.)

     One thing that I've really enjoyed with writing these posts is seeing how fans react to these actors. Because they're not big stars people seem to feel they can address them directly, lay claim to them, be more familiar than they would be with the unreachable A-listers. Of course, this means on one hand, you get the crazy, like the bodyguard guy who was so fond of Linda Manz , but on the other hand you can get some really sweet interactions that you know probably made someone's day. On the discussion boards for Naidu on IMDB, several people have written things along the lines of Hey Ajay, we were in highschool/college/the neighbourhood hometown together. We're so proud of your success. And several times he's written back: I remember you, you were friends with my sister. Big respect to you and your family, Ajay. What a lovely guy. 

EDIT: Here's a link to a rather sweet piece about the building in which Office Space was shot.

http://www.avclub.com/articles/austin-were-gonna-need-you-to-go-ahead-and-visit-t,57328/

Linda Manz.

b. August 20th, 1961.
I had originally planned to get this post done real quickly so I'd have several up in the first week, but this one has proven difficult to write, if only because I really, really admire Linda Manz, and hence the careful balance of filmographic trivia and fanatical raving that I was hoping for with this blog was already looking like it might get skewed in favour of the latter. So I'll get it out of the way straight up: Linda Manz is one of my favourite actors, despite only appearing in a handful of films. I think she's incredible. I promise I'll try and write this without just reiterating that every few sentences.

When she was in her late teens, Manz landed her first starring role in Terence Malick's epically gorgeous Days Of Heaven (1978) Her performance in this film has the same rough-hewn combination of vulnerability and toughness that, to my mind, shines through strongest in her next big role as Cebe, in Dennis Hopper's 1981 film Out of the Blue.

There have been a lot of films which articulate how fucking horrible it is being a teenager, a lot of stars who've conveyed it well - James Dean, Brando, Jake Gyllenhall in Donnie Darko, Joseph Gordon-Levitt in Brick... most of them are dudes. Teenage girls in films might have troubles, but they tend to have friends or family who support them in some way - they seldom seem as painfully lonely and isolated as their male counterparts. Linda Manz's angry, raw, frustrated portrayal of Cebe is as close as I got as a teenager to seeing a character who seemed as tightly-wound and alone as I felt (which is sorta ridiculous - I had supportive friends and family for Africa; but like everyone else I felt like I was the only one having an existential crisis.) Director Dennis Hopper, as Cebe's drunk ex-con father, gives one of the most unhinged, terrifying, fabulous performances of his career in this film, and I mean, that's a career of playing a whole lot of unhinged, terrifying characters. But Linda Manz wipes the fucking floor with him. Arhg, seriously, just watch the film. It is Pretty Good.

As well as Days of Heaven and Out of the Blue, Manz played Peewee in Phillip Kaufmann's The Wanderers (1979), but after that she pretty much disappeared from movies for a good while. She married Bobby Guthrie, who was the cameraman who put out Michael Jackson's hair when it caught fire during the filming of a Pepsi commercial in 1984. They have three sons. After about 17 years away from acting, Manz appeared in Harmony Korine's 1997 film Gummo, playing Solomon's mother. She does that eerie tap dance in front of a mirror. She also gifted Chloe Sevigny (Korine's then-girlfriend) the denim jacked with 'Elvis' sequinned on the back she wore as Cebe. Like I need another reason to be envious of Sevigny's wardrobe.

Before her role in Gummo, People magazine ran a 'where are they now' sort of piece on Manz. In it, casting director Barbara Claman (who discovered Manz for Days of Heaven) explained "Linda was a natural...she was wonderful at being. But there weren't a lot of jobs open for just being." It's a huge pity, because watching Manz 'just be' in a film is such a rewarding experience.

P.S: There is a fanpage for Linda Manz on facebook, and on its wall there is a post which is just....amazing. I'm going to copy and paste it in its entirety, for your edification and amusement: 

 "DO YOU NEED A BODY GUARD MS. LINDA MANZ. I AM AN EXCELLENT DETERENT AND WOULD NEVER CHARGE NOTHING. AN AVERAGE BODYGUARD COST AT LEAST $50,000.00-$75,000.00 PER YEAR FOR A CHEAP ONE. I AM 6ft 6in (78 inches) TALL AND NOT A LINKY STICK BOY. I AM 42 YEARS OLD & I KNOW WHAT I AM DOING. I ALSO HAD OTHER PEOPLE & FRIENDS SAY TO OTHER PEOPLE I AM THEIR BODYGUARD. THAT TOUCHED ME A LOT BUT DON'T MEAN NOTHING. I WOULD MUCH LOVE IT MORE TO BODYGUARD A CELEBRITY OR SIR PAUL McCARTNEY THAT I LIKE AND/OR LOVE. I WATCHED YOUR MOVIE "THE WANDERERS" WHEN I WAS A KID. YOU DONE AN EXCELLENT IN MY BOOK. I WOULD HAVE LOVED TO DATED YOU. I WAS BORN IN 1968 AND A 1980's KIND OF PERSON LIKE YOU ARE. I WOULD HAVE TAKEN YOU TO MY 1986 & 1987 HIGH SCHOOL PROM. I GRADUATED IN JUNE OF 1987. THERE IS NOT MANY I WOULD ASK BUT YOU I DEFINITELY WOULD. I JUST WISH I WASN'T OVER 1,800 MILES AWAY. YOU ARE MY TYPE & I DO LIKE YOU. NO LIE! YOU'RE THE BEST. I LOVE YOU PROBABLY MORE THAN RICHARD GERE. I MEAN IT! TAKE CARE."

I hope my obsessive fandom doesn't come across like this.

Eric Blore.

b.23 December, 1887
d. 2 March 1959.
I went with my father to see Top Hat (1935) at the Embassy theatre in Wellington earlier this year. We were sitting there, enjoying watching Fred Astaire dancing about, when his character's valet came into the room (the room in the movie, not the room in the theatre). Dad grabbed my arm excitedly and whispered "Oh my god, it's that guy who was in The Lady Eve!"  It was, and we spent the rest of the movie almost in tears of laughter whenever this guy came on the screen. Fred and Ginger are lovely in Top Hat, but Eric Blore steals every scene he's in.
Blore made a career of playing butlers and valets and the like; he appeared in over eighty films, including several of the Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers films for RKO, as well as Preston Sturges' The Lady Eve (1941) and Sullivan's Travels (1941). He has a fruity British voice and impeccable comic timing.
Blore's IMDB bio includes this anecdote:
"as sometimes is the case when personalities move into obscurity, their deaths are prematurely announced. Such was with Blore when the New Yorker journalist Kenneth Tynan reported him as already passed on. Blore's lawyer raised a flurry, as did the editor of the New Yorker who claimed the periodical had never had to print a retraction. The night before the highly profiled retraction appeared, Blore indeed passed away. And the next morning the New Yorker was the only publication with the wrong information. It seems like Blore would have been particularly tickled with the irony of this last comedic bit in honor of his passing."
 I think Eric Blore is great, and I think he would've been a fun guy to have a gin and tonic with.

Welcome.

Hi. In It's That One Guy Who Was In That Other Thing I aim to celebrate the actors who I've seen in a film, then seen in another film and had a nice moment of recognition. Maybe they were character actors who never made it big but kept on doing reliable but unheralded work; maybe they were supposed to be the next big thing but never made it; maybe they're still in the process of becoming the next big thing. Anyway, with all of them, something about them piqued my curiosity enough to make me want to think about them a while, look to see if I could find out more interesting things about them, and then share them with you. Maybe if you see them in a film, you'll get a happy moment of recognition too.