From: gld@cunixb.cc.columbia.edu (Gary L Dare)
Subject: Green Card (was: Most Underrated Actor/Actress)
Reply-To: gld@cunixb.cc.columbia.edu (Gary L Dare)
Organization: The Bates Motel
Date: Wed, 30 Dec 1992 01:19:28 GMT

nhmas@gauss.med.harvard.edu (Mark Shneyder) writes:
>This is a joke,right? Why do you term someone underrated if their
>acting skills are equivalent of a 2 by 4?

I can't tell if you're responding to the same posting (Andie McDowell
is underrated) that I responded to (i.e., that Andie McDowell is way
*over*rated) so since we both seem to agree ...

>Gerard was silly enough to be convinced($$$) by some Hollywood
>marketing lawyer type that in 'Green Card" he'd be acting with a new
>'hot,fresh-face' American 'talent' and it'd be a good way for him to
>reach and make some money of the general American movie-going public
>who doesn't normally see 'foreign films'.  

Actually, what I read in a Montreal newspaper (La Presse) was that
Depardieu wanted to see New York City; he'd hardly been outside of
Europe until then, and NYC was only a stopover for him.  He hates the
U.K. and needed a crash course in English.  If anything, he used them
just as much ... I caught him on Letterman and Depardieu was barely
functional in conversational English then, but Dave was tastelessly
making him look like a dumb oaf by baiting him into answering silly
questions that he didn't understand.  Gerard learned to stay away from
the Upper East Side where a lot of French and wealthy Francophiles
hang out and said that he loved to take the subway as an anonymous Joe
...  errr, Jacques. (-; Apparently he had lunch a couple of times on
the fabled Low Library steps here at Columbia University and anybody
who recognized him merely thought that it was a guy who looked kinda
like Gerard Depardieu ... and he was within 100 feet of our Maison
Francaise (at Buell Hall) to boot!

>When Gerard finally got to the set of "Green Card" he saw what he 
>was up against....In some scenes,it certainly looked like he was so
>pissed at McDowell for being such a talentless,unwaterred plant that
>he wasn't even acting ...

Some spoilers for those of you who haven't seen or rented "Green Card"
(it's still worth watching, just for Depardieu --- he was the movie):



When Lauren (Bebe Neuwirth from "Cheers") showed up at the swanky
dinner with Georges in tow, Bronte' (McDowell) looked up as if the
salad just arrived; a real actress like Mary-Elizabeth Mastrantonio 
or Elizabeth Perkins (makes you wonder if McDowell got dropped into
someone else's place at the last moment -- there's two underrateds for
ya; Joan Cusack or Judy Davis from "Husbands & Wives" would have made
good Brontes, too) would have portrayed a few tremors or ticks to
indicate the bubbling nervous breakdown underneath.

Through much of this film, Andie MacDowell walks through as if in a
daze.  Gerard Depardieu does the acting for both of them and saves
the movie, so your time won't be wasted unless you think about how
good it could have been like we're doing ...

gld
--
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Gary L. Dare
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