One Voice, One Vote

I can't help but notice that three of the five nominees for Best Actor Oscar play men who actually lived. Men whose fame, to one degree or another, depended on their voices, in both senses of the word. Their literary voices, to be sure, but also the sounds created by their vocal cords. In the case of Truman Capote, his literal speaking voice, in all its idiosyncratic glory, was all I knew of him as a pre-teen. I had not yet had encountered In Cold Blood, but I did know the Tonight Show, where he had become, like Paul Lynde, someone who seemed famous for being famous. I just assumed Johnny Carson kept asking him back because he was a bizarre little troll.

Imagine if the academy had to pick vote on Best Actor solely based on this criterion alone. It would require a certain process of elimination.

Let's begin with Good Night, and Good Luck. Leave aside the question that the film is black and white—and this time I am not speaking literally, I'm talking about the fact that it is utterly devoid of ambiguity. The point here is not whether it's the Best Picture, but whether its star is the Best Actor. Sure, David Strathairn is an excellent actor, and he got Murrow's look down perfectly. But that voice. I'm sorry but, sadly, it's just too much, well, like mine, frankly. What gave Murrow his authority was that he delivered his lapidary sentences with a set of pipes like the organ's at St. John the Divine.

As for Joaquin Phoenix, he does a remarkable Johnny Cash, but only when singing. (I don't doubt that he and Reese Witherspoon did their own singing, but it does make me wonder what kind of enhancement took place in post-production.)

Given that Heath Ledger plays a fictional character (remember, we're voting here based on resemblance to real life) and that I haven't seen Terrence Howard in Hustle & Flow (uh-oh, is it based on a true story?), that just confirms what we already know: if the Oscar does not go to Philip Seymour Hoffman, then the whole thing is rigged.