Apparently, Timothée Chalamet really is Marty Mauser
By Alfred P. Doblin
At first, I thought this was Timothée Chalamet’s Joaquin Phoenix riff – playing a jerk because it’s an elaborate act to promote a film project down the road, or even to give an added push to his lead role in Marty Supreme. Search for “The Late Show with David Letterman” if you don’t catch the Joaquin Phoenix reference. But this was not a joke. Well, there was a joke, and he was sitting across from Matthew McConaughey during a recently aired CNN townhall.
I did not watch the two men banter on CNN; I stumbled by it and moved on. It was not my cup of Darjeeling. But the clip that has since gone viral has been impossible to ignore, and since I am huge opera fan, it has gotten under my skin.
In case you have been living under a rock, or perhaps been at the ballet or opera, you might have missed what Chalamet said: “I don’t want to be working in ballet or opera, or you know, things where it’s like, ‘Hey, keep this thing alive,’ even though it's like, no one cares about this anymore.”
Not content to leave it there, he proceeded to make a joke: “All respect to the ballet and opera people out there… I just lost 14 cents in viewership. I just took shots for no reason.”
As far as I can tell from the clips online, McConaughey doesn’t push back. He doesn’t drop his jaw, or “drop trou” and start playing the bongos, so I wonder why no one is questioning why McConaughey didn’t try to stop Chalamet from self-destructing. But that is another blog.
There is a lot happening in the world right now and what one young, privileged, and, I will acknowledge gifted, actor says is not of great consequence, in of itself. But the thing is the performing arts are under attack in this country. Look no further than to the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts that has been rebranded like a tied-up calf with a hot iron.
Film actors – the ones who make it – reap benefits that few opera and ballet stars will ever receive. The money, the fame, the ability to go on CNN and slouch in a chair like the reincarnation of William F. Buckley Jr. is not something that most opera or ballet stars enjoy. Occasionally, someone breaks through the glass ceiling and achieves pop status, but it’s rare.
Yet, that does not mean “no one cares” about opera or ballet. Fewer people may care than the number of people who have watched Marty Supreme. But operas sell out. Ballets sell out. There are generations upon generations of parents and children who trek across the plaza of Lincoln Center to the now-named David H. Koch Theater (a man I don’t think ever wasted his money, $100 million of it, on something no one cared about) to see The Nutcracker every damn December.
Ballet and opera – these art forms – theses highly competitive, glorious live theatrical experiences matter. They also influence the very industry that provides the gas for Chalamet’s smug cloud.
Imagine West Side Story – the original or remake – without ballet? Or John Boorman’s great film Excalibur, an epic sans CGI worms, without the opera music of Wagner? Moonstruck and Pretty Woman — two huge hit movies of their time — depend on going to the opera to advance character development.
There is the amazing ballet sequence in An American in Paris or, if that is too high-brow, Bugs Bunny in What’s Opera Doc, Long-Haired Hair, and The Rabbit of Seville. The Bugs Bunny shorts are hysterical on many levels, but they only work because even audiences watching Bugs Bunny have some connection to opera.
More important, opera and ballet break down barriers. Both forms tackle complex, often socially taboo, subjects. They did hundreds of years ago. They do it today.
Artistic freedom is under attack outside of Chalamet’s smug cloud. And while someone might easily be able to create an AI version of Chalamet or McConaughey, they cannot do that when it comes to a live performance. If you saw Callas, you saw the real thing. Good or bad night, it was real. If you go to the Metropolitan Opera to hear Lise Davidsen as Isolde, it is the real thing.
And people do go. I’m one of those people. There is nothing more exciting than watching a human being push themselves to a level that seems unimaginable. I saw Rudolph Nureyev in his prime. I heard Joan Sutherland, Beverly Sills, and Birgit Nilsson in their primes. Audiences went nuts to get tickets. They waited on lines – not virtual lines, actual lines. And at the curtain calls, shredded-up programs made into instant confetti rained down from the upper reaches of the Metropolitan Opera House.
There’s an improbable scene in one of my favorite films, Field of Dreams. James Earl Jones is telling Kevin Costner that baseball is the glue that holds America together – “people will come Ray, people will most definitely come.” It’s an improbable scene because Jones is playing a black author who ignores the historical racial barriers of baseball. He does that because in the book the film is based on, Shoeless Joe, his character is J.D. Salinger who is white. But Salinger did not grant permission to have his name used in a film adaptation so enter the great James Earl Jones playing a similar, but fictional, writer.
The idea that baseball is the glue of America is limiting. It is the glue for many people, but not all. The performing arts is another connector. It joins disparate people into something unified and bigger: an audience. People will come, Timothée; people will most definitely come.
Chalamet’s clueless remarks do not diminish his talent as an actor. He is a good actor. He may one day be a great actor. But if, as Shakespeare wrote, “all the world’s a stage,” what you do off the set matters as much as what you do when the cameras are rolling.
Willy Wonka was an irrepressible charmer. Willy Wanker is a consummate jerk.
Until next time, Alfred with a P