Where Oscar Leads: Kevin Spacey
By Daron Aldridge
May 19, 2009
BoxOfficeProphets.com
Where Oscar Leads takes a look at exactly that - "where Oscar leads" the winners and whether the audience rewards the award winner by showing up for subsequent films.
Who is Keyser Soze? The answer appears to be a man that's not a box office powerhouse but rather a respected actor with a couple of gold men on his mantle that didn't make him the leading man the studios wanted. At least, that is what Kevin Spacey has shown us to this point.
Spacey is a different kind of award-winning beast in that he has two Oscar paths to follow. So, let's start at the beginning. Just 20 years ago, Spacey was the epitome of an ensemble actor that hadn't scored an above the title credit yet. The quality of his pre-Usual Suspects films are the definition of hit-or-miss. For example, he appeared in films that garnered Oscar attention for his co-stars, like 1988's Working Girl and 1992's Glengarry Glen Ross, as well as Henry & June, one of the first films to earn the newly-minted NC-17 rating that replaced the tawdry X rating.
To counteract the respectability of these films, Spacey sprinkled the resume with lightweight to god-awful fare, like Disney's Call of the Wild rip-off 1994's Iron Will on the kid-friendly side, and 1992's Consenting Adults, which was much more salaciously-titled than the end product would deliver.
This discussion would be remiss if it didn't include a nod to possibly his greatest pre-Oscar role as Lloyd Chasseur in Christmas-themed The Ref. Spacey (and Judy Davis for that matter) stole every scene from the over-the-top, high volume Denis Leary as the last two people in the world you would want to kidnap. Go rent The Ref, even if it's just for the dinner scene and the moment when Lloyd grows a backbone.
Let's move onward and upward to 1995, possibly the best year of Spacey's career, where he not only got critical acclaim, he creeped the bejesus out of $100 million worth of moviegoers. In late August of 1995, The Usual Suspects opened small and could have easily become a derivative Pulp Fiction clone. Instead, it boasted an impressive ensemble cast with no clear marquee names. As the titular characters, Kevin Pollak, Gabriel Byrne, Stephen Baldwin, Benicio del Toro and Spacey all delivered near-perfect performances but thanks to the well-crafted script, Spacey got the meatiest of these meaty roles and the attention of the AMPAS.
That same fall, Se7en, a gritty and visceral serial killer film was released. Not only did Spacey not receive billing, he didn't even get listed in opening credits or on the poster at all. He has been credited with making such a request to avoid people waiting to see when and how he appears in the film. Regardless of the decision maker, this was a stroke of marketing genius that would be impossible in today's Internet-fueled world that contains just about any casting news or spoiler that you could want. For Se7en, that best kept secret played perfectly with the tone of the film. The audiences showed up for Brad Pitt but also got to see Spacey embody a character we really didn't want to think could exist.
The Oscars are often accused of rewarding performers for a body of work and not the film for which they are nominated. Yes, I'm looking at Al Pacino's egregious win for Scent of a Woman over four more deserving performances from Denzel Washington in Malcolm X, Robert Downey Jr. in Chaplin, Clint Eastwood in Unforgiven and Stephen Rea in The Crying Game. That's for another discussion entirely, so I digress.
Arguably, the Academy nominated Spacey for not just his performance in the Usual Suspects but also his Se7en turn. Regardless, while John Doe got what he deserved in Se7en, Spacey definitely got what he deserved in the form of a Supporting Actor Oscar for two great performances.
No doubt salivating at the prospect of having an Oscar winner and someone that audiences now recognize; the studios apparently failed to entice Spacey to leading man roles. He wisely followed up these notable supporting roles with more supporting roles.
His immediate Oscar encore was in the holy grail of novel-to-film adaptations in the '90s, A Time to Kill, which was John Grisham's first book and the one he was most hesitant to give a big screen treatment. While in the summer of 1996 A Time to Kill was the launching pad for the artist formerly known as Wooderson and a summer movie at its heart, the film also attracted big names in Sandra Bullock, Samuel L. Jackson, and Spacey. As the district attorney tasked with prosecuting a man for avenging the rape of his little girl, Spacey's name was finally above the title but the role was still just on the peripheral like Bullock's compared to Jackson and Matthew McConaughey. Marketing was suspect at best for this one because Bullock got top billing for minimal screen time, so Spacey probably shouldn't think that he had arrived with his name in lights. I blame this advertising misdirection on director Joel Schumacher...well, because I want to blame him for anything as often as possible. Make no mistake; the real star of A Time to Kill was the Grisham brand name and a sweaty Southerner with a penchant for left-handed cigarettes.
Around this time, Spacey's choices seemed to mirror his pre-Oscar glory days and he didn't rush into the next big thing or even the next small thing. He reunited with his Glengarry Glen Ross co-star Al Pacino for Pacino's directorial debut Looking for Richard. Spacey's participation this documentary/literary analysis of Shakespeare's play was clearly just another opportunity to work with the legend of Al Pacino before he became the reigning, self-parodying mayor of "Hoo-Wah" Land.
It would be almost another year before Spacey would appear in a film and it was worth the wait in 1997. The 100%-superior-to-Titanic L.A. Confidential was released with the type of strong cast that Spacey tended to surround himself with. Similar to the "untruth in advertising" of A Time to Kill, Spacey received top billing. While the role was pivotal and showcased his ability to play smarminess with a touch of redemption, his Jack Vincennes was only a supporting player. It simply made more sense for Warner Bros. to give a recognizable Oscar winner the top spot instead of giving two unknown Australians - Guy Pearce and Russell Crowe - the honors. Powered by critical praise for the 1940s crime noir homage and the stellar direction and acting that it featured, the film earned more than $64 million against a surprisingly low $35 million budget. More importantly for Spacey, the film garnered enough Oscar goodwill in general (granted, not for him) to keep his profile high.
Just two months later, his next film would have a similar pedigree of being the film adaptation of a respected novel, having a critically-acclaimed director and a diverse, reputable cast. The fact that most people would be hard-pressed to remember Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil even existed is somewhat hard to believe considering it was directed by Oscar favorite Clint Eastwood and starred Spacey, John Cusack, relative unknown at the time Jude Law and Clint's little girl, Alison. Once again, Spacey was the "star" of the show or at least credited as such. Despite Eastwood's ability to keep budgets low ($30 million on this one), the film only earned $25 million. While a ding to Spacey's box office credibility, this one's underperformance didn't taint the shine on L.A. Confidential.
Finally, three years removed from his Verbal Kint glory days and a string of respectable box office outings that he was associated with but not responsible for, Spacey dipped his toe a little deeper in the leading man waters. For 1998's underrated The Negotiator, Spacey took the check for $4.5 million and went mano-a-mano with fellow Grisham alumni Samuel L. Jackson. Though Jackson delivered his bigger role with the gusto to make Jules Winfield beam with pride, Spacey got almost as much screen time as his counterpart. This was a pure popcorn flick coated in Rico's buttered flavored oil with no nutritional value but it sure it tasted good. Unfortunately, it would play out just like Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil by coming "this close" to earning back its $50 million. Given the span of time between his win for The Usual Suspects and this film as his first real attempt at a bigger role in a mainstream film, Spacey seemed to be ignoring the siren's call of selling him to the American public as a box office draw.
Looking purely at the release date, it seems that his next choice was to lend his voice to the evil Hopper in A Bug's Life. While released in November 1998, his work here was obviously in the can quite a while before, considering that Pixar films take years to bring to life. Therefore, it could be argued that Spacey was approached about voicing the villainous insect immediately following his antagonist turns in both The Usual Suspects and Se7en. While it would be nice to give Spacey credit for the film's $162 million gross, we all know that Pixar was the real reason. If you foolishly assign credit to Spacey, you'd better be ready to argue that Dave Foley is a box office superstar too.
How do you follow a voiceover in a Pixar film? In 1999, Spacey decided to visit suburbia and the devil-may-care middle life crisis of Lester Burnham in American Beauty. More than likely, DreamWorks wasn't thinking five Oscars and a $130 million gross when they gave Sam Mendes $15 million to make this film. Alas, that was the reality and Spacey was the biggest beneficiary of the film.
Spacey was the favorite through the award season with the only possible Oscar spoiler being his L.A. Confidential co-star Russell Crowe's performance in The Insider. It wasn't in the cards for him to be spoiled and he walked away with his second Oscar in five years. While in the post coital afterglow of his first Oscar, he didn't succumb to the allure of oversized, bloated projects. Sadly, the same couldn't be said of the next time around.
Maybe Spacey thought all the good work and pretty smart film choices were his own forward payments to negate four upcoming decisions. These decisions would prove that American Beauty was the exception and not the rule for Spacey as a leading man.
In 2000, about ten months after his second Oscar victory, he joined fellow Oscar winner Helen Hunt and It Kid of the moment, Haley Joel Osment, in the destined-to-be-despised Pay It Forward. Innocently enough, the film had a well-meaning script that tried to serve as the blueprint for showing humans how to be better to one another. Something went wrong and the film soon was the butt of many jokes. Since I can't blame Joel Schumacher for this one (I wish I could), let's just blame the script that went out of its way to unnecessarily manipulate an emotional response from the audience and was a melodramatic mess. A bit too glossy and small to be thought of as real Oscar bait, it probably still appealed to the actor's desire for a chance to do some "ACT-ING." With a $40 million budget, not enough people wanted to pay for it at all and it only made $33.5 million.
Obviously, Spacey decided to make the logical rebound film and play...Prot, a space alien that might actually just be a mental patient?!? In K-PAX, he teamed up with four-time Oscar bridesmaid, Jeff Bridges, as his shrink, and played Prot with tics galore, which was the showier of the two roles. Likely, the actors and roles would had been reversed if American Beauty had not earned so much gold at the box office and at the Kodak Theater. While it's not exactly one for the record books, K-PAX's gross squeaked past its $48 million budget to $50.3 million.
Next up for Spacey: More potential Oscar fodder. The Shipping News, adapted from a novel Annie Proulx of Brokeback Mountain fame, had Spacey joined by Julianne Moore, Judi Dench and Cate Blanchett for a Lasse Hallstrom-directed drama. Despite the box office failure of the $35 million film only making around $11 million, it appeared that a little bit of the old Kevin Spacey was still there and wanted to immerse himself in projects that could be dramatic showcases with high-caliber actors.
More than a year later, it seemed he tried that formula again but with slightly more costly results. For 2003's The Life of David Gale, Spacey played the title character in what was essentially a $50 million civics lesson and anti-death penalty PSA. Ultimately, the film was a bit long on pretentiousness and self-righteousness and too short on box office as it only pulled in a meager $19.6 million. Sharing the screen again with a couple of great actresses (Kate Winslet and Laura Linney), Spacey seemed to continue to be riding the wave of notoriety that Oscar brought. This film not only failed at the box office, it was derided by critics with only 20% of top critics giving it a favorable review according to RottenTomatoes. At least Spacey had the conviction to only star with talented people, even if the dollars earned weren't justifying the dollars spent.
In what appears to be the final nail in his leading man coffin, Spacey finally got his reported pet project in theaters by December 2004. The Bobby Darin biopic Beyond the Sea didn't make a splash but rather a thud. Priced at $24 million and with Spacey at the helm and in the lead role, Beyond the Sea docked a measly $6.3 million. Credit must be given to Spacey for fully embracing this film despite the aforementioned proof that audiences weren't exactly buying him as a star. About the film, he was quoted as saying, "[It] is not a linear story at all. It's not what people will expect and it's not a biopic. It's my statement." If that type of nontraditional perception doesn't scream "I'll do things how I want to do them," then I don't know what does. Again, I give kudos to him for not compromising his vision despite it costing a studio millions of dollars.
In the wake of Beyond the Sea, Spacey got back to his roots in the theater and clearly parlayed his cinematic accolades to become Artistic Director of London's Old Vic Theater. It would be a year and a half later before Spacey's face would grace the silver screen again.
In 2006, he not only reunited with Bryan Singer Superman Returns, he got back in touch with his John Doe-dark side by transforming Lex Luthor into a more sinister villain and less the over-the-top version that Gene Hackman gave us. While it might seem a step backward, this move was the right step for him since exhausting the lead options that yielded fair to poor results outside of American Beauty.
Subsequently, he followed up his portrayal of Lex Luthor with supporting roles in two minor hits over the last two years, 2007's Fred Claus and 2008's 21. The fact that neither of the films featured Spacey in the advertising is a testament to the fact that he is clearly not assumed to have much box office heft. If the studios thought they could wring a few extra million dollars out of a film by playing up his role, then we all know it would have happened.
Wisely, he appears to have settled back into just being an actor and not a movie star until the right time and right project arise, like it did with American Beauty. Until those occasions present themselves, we will just have to enjoy him chewing the scenery as the bad guy or the supporting player.