|
|
|
 |
Benicio, Baby Hope springs infernal for our starstruck columnist. By Susan Zakin In my family, show business, not fly fishing, was like religion. That's why I had a momentary fling with Benicio Del Toro after watching the Academy Awards. Since you're a liberal, I know you'll understand how I went astray. It all has to do with my disadvantaged youth. You see, when I was a kid, the Oscars were Christmas, with the family gathered round in awed expectation. The Tony Awards were more like Easter, festive but a little light on glitz. I was even a seat-filler at the Tony Awards one year. What is a seat-filler? Once an actor gets an award, they migrate backstage. You can't have the house looking half-empty when the camera pans around. So someone like me, a nobody wearing a party dress, plunks down in their seat. I got to go to the party, too. Judd Hirsch bummed a cigarette from me. If he was trying to pick me up, I was oblivious, an unfortunate type of blindness that has afflicted me for my entire life. Oh, well. I'm telling you all this so you know why I still watch the Academy Awards®. Of course, I'm always disappointed, but that's part of the ritual, too. There are always a few good awards, just to string you along. "There is a God!" I screamed when Bob Dylan won Best Song. (He thinks so, too, which is so disturbing it's better not to even think about it.) "There is no God!" I screamed when Julia Roberts won Best Actress. I mean, does Julia Roberts act? I hadn't noticed. But I loved the vintage Valentino. One of the few things that didn't disappoint me was Benicio Del Toro's acceptance speech when he won Best Supporting Actor. He actually thanked the people of Nogales, Sonora, and Nogales, Arizona. That was cool. Way cool. Of course, Benicio is pretty cool. A few weeks ago, I was housesitting for a friend of mine who lives on the other side of the mountains. She needs a satellite dish to get any TV reception whatsoever. I was supposed to be working on my long-delayed second book. I did, at least a little. But satellite TV? Honey, I haven't even had cable since 1984, when my then-boyfriend spliced me into my neighbor's hookup. I spent most of the weekend getting in touch with my inner Al Pacino, since satellite TV seems to draw heavily on the '70s hippie auteur period of American cinema, described so well by Peter Biskind in Easy Riders, Raging Bulls: How the Sex, Drugs and Rock 'n' Roll Generation Saved Hollywood. When I had run out of Godfathers (boy, that Jimmy Caan was something when he was young) I ended up watching one of the most horrendous Bond films ever made, 1989's License to Kill with Roger Moore. Had I actually paid money to see that movie back in 1989? Of course. But I sat there and watched it again. Why? Because it was Bond, James Bond. The only good thing in the movie was a much-younger Benicio Del Toro playing a Nicaraguan contra psycho killer henchman. (At least I think that's what he was.) That guy didn't just act, even then. He inhabited a role. Plus, let's face it, Benicio is a mega-babe. He didn't get those bags under his eyes staying up nights studying. So I made a few calls to find out exactly what Del Toro had meant by his understated yet eloquent speech at the Oscars. Was it a political act? I didn't think Traffic was such a great movie, apart from the Ektachrome-like cinematography, Catherine Zeta-Jones' lips (they should be bronzed, like baby shoes), and Del Toro's mystical ability to inhabit his character. Other than that, I found it preachy and sophomoric. Being preachy is OK (after all, I've been accused of it now and then) but sophomoric and obvious isn't. Anyone who lives on the border knows the drug war is a stupid waste of money, kind of like the phony war against illegal immigrants, which would make a much better movie. I thought Benicio's one-liner was much cooler. It suggested that borders are permeable, more permeable than they have ever been before. That equity, respect and a sense of justice should cross borders, too. Wasn't he saying that Nogales, Ariz., and Nogales, Sonora, are linked in ways that verge on ineffable? The connection between these cities is a microcosm of the threads that connect the thorn forest in the Rio Mayo with the thorn forest in Madagascar, the Tepuan family living in a rock house with a mud floor to my peasant grandmother who spent her childhood in Bialystock and the rest of her life in the Bronx. Somebody recently sent me an e-mail describing a newspaper editor in Africa as "taciturn and difficult" as if this were something unique to their continent. The good side of globalization is that we're making these connections. The bad side is, well, you know about that. Sweatshop labor in Indonesia, the world's largest copper mine polluting the water in Irian Jaya, NAFTA, and having to talk to computers a lot. So I'm, like, all ready to make Benicio the man of the hour. I call the public relations guy at the film company that made Traffic. "What did he mean by that, exactly?" I asked. Turns out someone from the Hollywood Reporter had asked the same question. Here's what Del Toro said: "As an actor, the location is so important--the people are so humble and so beautiful that it made it easy for me to get into it. I think it helped all the actors, and I think it helped the film. So that's what I meant." That's what he meant? Thanking the little people? Well, there's always Bob Dylan.
|
 |
Home | Currents | City Week | Music | Review | Books | Cinema | Back Page | Archives
|
 |
© 1995-2001 Tucson Weekly . Info Booth |
|