BY SERA ULUSOY (MAN/IV) sera.ulusoy@ug.bilkent.edu.tr
I have been meaning to talk about this spectacularly talented actor: Kevin Spacey. What prompted me to write about him this week, though, was that I stumbled upon one of the episodes of “House of Cards.” In the episode, Frank, now as the POTUS, invites Petrov—the Russian president in the TV series, who frighteningly resembles the real-life Russian president, Mr. Putin—to Washington. The particular scene that urged me to write about Spacey was actually the scene in which he started singing “The Birth of the Blues” by Sinatra, with the brilliant young musician Peter Cincotti—by the way, if you hadn’t heard of Cincotti until now, you have been missing out on a lot. Spacey’s singing reminded me of the fact that not only is he one of the most talented actors the world has ever seen, but he also has this tearfully beautiful, yet hidden talent: he has an incredible voice that turns him into one of the most talented impressionists.
I know this to be true: people either love him because of how talented he is as an actor, or they hate him—especially because of how talented he is as an actor. Now, what do I mean by that? In almost every movie he has starred in, his characters were either the main antagonists, or at least had some sort of an evil aspect that made the audience hate him by the end of the movie. This is how talented he is—because he makes you hate “him,” not just the character he plays. He makes everything in the movie seem unsettlingly realistic and believable. And when he doesn’t play someone evil, he makes you fall in love with him despite how incredibly annoying his other characters have been.
In “A Time to Kill,” he was this sleazy lawyer; in “Seven,” he was the astute serial killer; in “Glengarry Glen Ross,” he was one among a group of horribly competitive salesmen. Then in “American Beauty,” he was a nice but annoyingly repressed and somewhat disturbed—because of all the repression—man in the middle of a midlife crisis. This was one of the first movies with him in it that I ever saw. I first tried to watch it as a kid—and it is not at all a child-friendly movie—and back then I couldn’t really make sense of the plot, as I had no concept of what a midlife crisis was or what the American way of life was like. Then I watched it again a couple of years ago, and I loved Kevin Spacey in it. He plays a disturbed middle-aged man who has very unsettling fantasies about a minor, but it doesn’t make you enjoy his character any less. You feel uncomfortable at first when you realize that you do not actually hate him, but rather feel sorry for him for a lot of reasons (including him being a victim as well). And after that, I watched almost every single one of his movies— though I haven’t seen “KPAX” yet, which is next on my must-see movies list—and I loved him even more. Then I started watching “House of Cards,” and he annoyed me so much that I realized I had to change the channel occasionally in order not to hate him.
I fell in love with his talents even more when I watched him on Jimmy Fallon’s “Tonight Show” doing the Wheel of Impressions. He was absolutely perfect, especially when he did the Michael Caine and Bill Clinton impressions. I think the audience had never seen this side of him so vividly before, because they all went crazy, and Fallon laughed so hard that at one point tears appeared in his eyes. I also watched Spacey do his Al Pacino impression in front of Pacino on an episode of the “Late Show” with David Letterman. Needless to say, when you closed your eyes and just listened to him, it was like there was no sign of Kevin Spacey, but only the two Al Pacinos in the same room. Make sure to watch the aforementioned two performances; I assure you, you will not regret it.
In a promotional video by Mandarin Oriental—the hotel chain does this as a way of marketing and invites the most respected A-list actors to promote the hotel each year—he describes to the audience the similarities between the hospitality industry and the art of “acting” in front of a live audience. Since he has been in a lot of Broadway shows as well, he is well acquainted with the concept of having to perform in front of a large audience. He starts the video by stating that his favorite moment in the theater is not when the audience gives you a standing ovation, but is in fact the silence that falls when the character is about to do something so intriguing that the audience doesn’t make a sound, so eager are they to see what is going to happen or to grasp what has just happened. The way he tells this, though, makes you go silent as well, and you notice that he is such a great actor that even when you are watching this promotional video, you can’t help but wonder about the words that are going to come out of his mouth next. I hope I can get to see him perform on Broadway in the future.