| Critic Sarah Kerr on the Cowboy, from a year 2001 wrap-up on Slate:
Did any of you happen to read an interview online with Justin Theroux, the young actor who plays the hip but hapless director in Mulholland Drive? The juiciest moment concerned that crazy scene in an abandoned corral above the Hollywood Hills, opposite the character named The Cowboy. For those of you who haven't seen the movie, The Cowboy is a redhead in, say, his late 30s who's nearly albino-pale. He speaks in a country drawl and, for no discernible reason, wears a 10-gallon hat, vest, and chaps and chews on a strand of straw. He appears in one key scene and later in a quick walk-by cameo, still fully costumed, and in both he displays a weird double effect: 1) looks like the fun, friendly adult in a children's TV show—the confidante kids go to for advice; 2) has unfathomable sinister ambitions/is probably a killer.
In the interview, Theroux relates how the guy who played The Cowboy is actually a producer friend of David Lynch's who never acted a day in his life. In the corral scene, they had to tape his lines of dialogue to Theroux's chest and forehead, and Lynch instructed him to simply read out the lines, slowly, in his flat, drawling monotone. That's the performance you get on screen. Theroux joked about how the scene was an assault on everything we think acting should be. He also called it one of the best performances in the movie, and he's right.
First place in the Village Voice alt-critics poll. (If that doesn't guarantee irrelevance, what does?)
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Did any of you happen to read an interview online with Justin Theroux, the young actor who plays the hip but hapless director in Mulholland Drive? The juiciest moment concerned that crazy scene in an abandoned corral above the Hollywood Hills, opposite the character named The Cowboy. For those of you who haven't seen the movie, The Cowboy is a redhead in, say, his late 30s who's nearly albino-pale. He speaks in a country drawl and, for no discernible reason, wears a 10-gallon hat, vest, and chaps and chews on a strand of straw. He appears in one key scene and later in a quick walk-by cameo, still fully costumed, and in both he displays a weird double effect: 1) looks like the fun, friendly adult in a children's TV show—the confidante kids go to for advice; 2) has unfathomable sinister ambitions/is probably a killer.
In the interview, Theroux relates how the guy who played The Cowboy is actually a producer friend of David Lynch's who never acted a day in his life. In the corral scene, they had to tape his lines of dialogue to Theroux's chest and forehead, and Lynch instructed him to simply read out the lines, slowly, in his flat, drawling monotone. That's the performance you get on screen. Theroux joked about how the scene was an assault on everything we think acting should be. He also called it one of the best performances in the movie, and he's right.
- tom moody 1-02-2002 6:19 pm
First place in the Village Voice alt-critics poll. (If that doesn't guarantee irrelevance, what does?)
- alex 1-03-2002 12:14 am [add a comment]