Something to watch tonight: Wednesday 14 January

Pete's Dragon (Lowery, 2016)

On 30 December the world lost one of the char­ac­ter act­ing greats. (No, not NZ pro­du­cer, screen­writer and TV exec­ut­ive Steve Barr who is in the back­ground of the above still from Pete’s Dragon.)

Isiah Whitlock Jr. was almost cer­tainly best known for his recur­ring role as the cor­rupt state sen­at­or Clay Davis on The Wire but he enriched everything he came into con­tact with.

He was one of the standouts in David Lowery’s remake of Pete’s Dragon which was shot in New Zealand. Robert Redford, Bryce Dallas Howard and Wes Bentley were the big inter­na­tion­als in the cast.

I didn’t have a nos­tal­gic attach­ment to the ori­gin­al Disney film but liked Lowery’s ver­sion very much. For a film about a big green hairy dragon it felt very groun­ded, recog­nis­able, relat­able. I don’t have a writ­ten review for it any­where but it was the fea­tured review in an epis­ode of Rancho Notorious with spe­cial guest Phil Smith from RNZ.

Whitlock played anoth­er small town cop in anoth­er New Zealand (sort of) related film in 2022: The bear in Cocaine Bear was anim­ated by Wētā in Wellington and per­formed for motion cap­ture pur­poses on set by the gif­ted Allan Henry.

Another Whitlock per­form­ance that I remem­ber fondly is in the com­edy Cedar Rapids which I reviewed for Capital Times in September 2011:

Paramount Manager Kate sold Cedar Rapids to me as an “art­house ver­sion of The Hangover” and, des­pite my mis­giv­ings she was abso­lutely right. It even stars that film’s Ed Helms play­ing a strik­ingly sim­il­ar role – a strait­laced small town naïf who dis­cov­ers his dark side thanks to some illi­cit sub­stances and some major ena­blers (John C. Reilly and Anne Heche in this case).

Of course, The Hangover was almost per­fect and Cedar Rapids is not so much and the cheap shots at the expense of fly­over America and its val­ues often seem like Hollywood mean-spiritedness. Best bit is for fans “of the HBO series The Wire” in which Isiah Whitlock Jr. (who played Clay Davis in that show) does a beau­ti­fully judged and awful imper­son­a­tion of Omar.

Also covered in that column: Florian Habicht’s weird-but-charming pseudo-documentary Love Story; odd-couple (Brendan Gleeson and Don Cheadle) com­edy The Guard; Crazy, Stupid, Love (“Troubling, but at the same time very, very funny.); grip­ping motor­s­port doc­u­ment­ary TT3D: Closer to the Edge; and Paul Bettany in Priest 3D (“If the audi­ence I was with is any­thing to go by Priest barely rates as a diver­sion – most of them didn’t even both­er to put their 3D glasses on and just car­ried on talking.”).

Cedar Rapids can be found on Disney+ and Cocaine Bear is a digit­al rent­al (in New Zealand at least).

Bonus material

In 2021, Whitlock spoke to the AV Club about his career and told this story about how he got his first big gig — Martin Scorsese’s Goodfellas.

IWJ: When I came to New York, I star­ted hanging around The Actors Studio, and a woman came to me and she said, “You know, Paul Newman is doing a read­ing at his apart­ment. They’re try­ing to get some people togeth­er to read this script with Martin Scorsese, Tom Cruise, and a few oth­er people.” So I said, “Yeah, sure, I’ll go!” And I did; I read five or six dif­fer­ent parts, or whatever. And then I wanted to get in the movie, which turned out to be The Color Of Money, and they cast Forest Whitaker, which, all hats off to him. But I didn’t get into that movie, and I des­per­ately tried to.

Well, fast for­ward to Goodfellas. That was sort of like a feed­ing frenzy in New York City, and I got an audi­tion for it. I went in and I audi­tioned for the guy who gets who owns the nightclub—he gets hit over the head with a bottle by Joe Pesci. And I thought, “Well, look, they’re not going to cast me as this guy.” I mean, it didn’t make sense, you know? But I got a call­back! So I went back and I go into the room, and Martin Scorsese says, “What do I know you from? I know you from some­where.” I said, “Well, I did those read­ings at Paul Newman’s for you, for The Color Of Money. He said, “Oh, that’s right, that’s right! Look, that part you audi­tioned for—obviously, you can’t do that part of. It just wouldn’t work. But I have this char­ac­ter!” He’s a doc­tor and it’s in the part of the movie where he’s like the only per­son that that Henry Hill trusts while he’s all coked out and everything like that. He said, “Do you think you could do that for me? I know it’s not much, but if you could do it for me, I would really appre­ci­ate it.” And I’m sit­ting there think­ing, “Okay, act like you’ve been there before.” [Laughs.] I said, “Yeah, sure, Marty. I mean, you know, it’s not about the size of the part. It’s what we do!” So he says thanks, and that’s how I got cast! [Laughs.] I didn’t say, “Well, gee, Marty, I have nev­er done a movie before hardly.” But I got cast in Goodfellas—that’s how all of that happened.

I do remem­ber I went to my day job—I was a waiter at a place on 10^th Avenue—and I said, “I just got a part in Goodfellas!” And they said, “No way! Get out!” I said, “No, I met with Martin Scorsese, and they’re going to cast me as this doc­tor.” And one of the guys said, “Oh, I’m going down there tomor­row, and I’m tak­ing my stuff, because if you got a part, I know I’m going to get a part.” [Laughs.] He was like, “They must just be hand­ing out parts—they must need tons of people if they cast you—you just got here!” So he went down there and he didn’t get a part. And here I am!

Where to watch Pete’s Dragon

Worldwide (apart from India): Streaming on Disney+

India: Streaming on Hotstar