Kevin Spacey, Wherefore Art Thou?

I’d like to file a missing persons report. A stunningly talented actor, one of the most important of our generation, has gone missing, and no one seems to be doing anything about it. My guess is that it’s the work of a rebel underground faction from the planet K-PAX who has got him, but whether you believe that or not, someone must be involved, and we’re all just sitting here, doing nothing that will restore this brilliant actor to the planet Hollywood. Call the police! Call out the National Guard! Call Russell Crowe!

Case and point: Actor Kevin Spacey has accumulated one of the most impressive resumes in recent entertainment history. The winner of the 1995 Academy Award for best supporting actor for his role in The Usual Suspects, and the 1999 Academy Award for best actor for American Beauty, not to mention a slew of other film acting awards and nominations, Spacey also starred as Hickey, the lead roll in the London production of The Iceman Cometh to rave reviews, no easy feat. He earned four major London Theater acting awards for the roll, for a Yank, almost impossible. It can’t be denied, this actor has got the chops.

So, WHAT happened?

Spacey started his impressive career combining an unobtrusive everyman face, one that would allow him the opportunity to become almost invisible at will in the glare of the Hollywood spectacle, with the razor sharp wit and devastating talent of Gregory Peck, and a freakishly alluring panache for dastardly, yet seductively sinister rolls that would make Christopher Walken feel like a pampered pussycat. And it works, oh, does it work. Watching his work in the rolls of the characters he played in films like Glengarry Glen Ross, Swimming with Sharks, LA Confidential, and A Time to Kill makes me want to gleefully throw spitballs at my television screen, their nasty, underhanded endeavors brought so sniveling to life by Spacey. But those characters are nothing compared to the ice pick maniacal freak outs he brought to life in the television series Wise Guy, and the feature films Se7en, and The Usual Suspects. And that’s not mentioning the heartbreakingly conflicted and self destructive malcontents he brought to life in Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil and American Beauty. Watching him in the multiplex, or in the lights-out living room of my home in the 1990’s, I often had the sensation of wanting to shake him, cage him, flee from him, or take him home and straighten him out, but I never wanted to ignore him.

Kevin Spacey, wherefore art thou?

To paraphrase the immortal words of Hall and Oats, he’s gone! Pay It and K-PAX and Gale… OH MY! Can the evidence be any clearer that our brilliant Mr. Spacey has been somehow thespianically incapacitated at best and most likely abducted altogether and replaced with an unfortunately milquetoast substitute? Did they think we wouldn’t notice? Why, just rent Pay It Forward if you need proof (and only if you need proof). What I had hoped would be a sensitive but edgy portrayal of a damaged man connecting with a damaged student in order to produce something better for the world than the world was producing for them proved, in fact, to be a schmaltzy feel good with lackluster writing and, gasp, by the numbers acting. And K-PAX!K-PAX? Eeeeet ahhhhhht ooooooh no! And the Shipping News was, well, boring. The real Kevin Spacey could sit and watch paint dry, and I’d sit there and watch him watch it. I don’t know this man.

That’s not to say that the real Kevin Spacey never missed a beat. Outbreak was supremely forgettable, The Negotiator, while an enjoyable action romp certainly wasn’t the stuff of genius, and Hurlyburly was certainly better formatted for the stage than the screen, but with all of these missteps, you could see the man working. Never once did he lack spark or fanatical creativity. And never did we have to wait more than a year or two before he blew the doors off conscious minds again.

It seems that nothing short of a superhero can rescue our devilish genius and restore him to his proper place amongst us mortals of Earth, churning our insides and scaring us senseless. Call me crazy, but I can’t help thinking that Superman may be out only hope of saving Spacey from planet K-PAX. When Superman Returns to us in June, he is bringing along Kevin Spacey as the embodiment of his arch nemesis, Lex Luther. Now THAT should be a role the real Kevin Spacey can sink his teeth into. Furthermore, he’s being directed by his old friend Bryan Singer, who guided him to such malevolent brilliance in The Usual Suspects. If he fails to run an icicle along the spine if every moviegoer in the theater while playing one of the most notorious villains of all time, then well, all I can say is eeeeet ahhhhhht oooooooh!