There’s a movie coming up on HBO, this weekend. MY DINNER WITH HERVE. It’s a biopic, covering I don’t know how long a period in the unhappy life of actor Herve Villechaize.
Peter Dinklage plays Villechaize.
And, spectacularly unfair as it might be to say, the casting is not perfect.
First, Peter Dinklage is a full foot taller than Villechaize was
Second, Dinklage has managed a trick Villechaize never could, in that he has a thriving career, and you can even say stardom, that includes many roles where his size is not a factor. Yes, if you want a small guy with gravitas, you do go to Dinklage, and that is why I got so excited when I heard that he was going to be Tyrion Lannister. (Which was ongoing when a certain neighbor of his, a well-known science fiction writer who is gone now, but who claimed to know him well, wanted us to know that UNDERDOG was his “big break.”)
Unlike Villechaize, a profoundly limited actor of whom it is fair to say that no one ever saw fit to ask him to convey any operatic emotions, Dinklage is so good that cosmetic changes are made to roles that are size-neutral, to accommodate him, which is how come the main character of THE STATION AGENT was changed from a lonely withdrawn guy of conventional size to a lonely withdrawn dwarf, and the high-powered attorney of FIND ME GUILTY was changed from a guy of conventional size to one who used a platform on wheels to address the jury. Robin Williams needed someone to play his brother in THE ANGRIEST MAN IN BROOKLYN, and they inserted Dinklage, and not a single goddamned reference is made to his height; nor was there a single height-related joke in the awful PIXELS, where he is just an awful person, and would be even if he was towering..
When Roger Ebert saw THE STATION AGENT, he was sufficiently impressed to say, with an accuracy that would have delighted him had he lived to see it, “There’s no reason why Peter Dinklage can’t play Braveheart.” And so this came to pass, with Tyrion on the ramparts of a besieged King’s Landing, in GAME OF THRONES.
I am very much looking forward to his performance as Herve, but in so doing I want to ward against any facile observations that he has merely taken Herve’s place as filmed entertainments’s go-to-dwarf. Because, honestly, I believe that the place he has actually taken, if there is such a thing, is closer to Brando’s, and that is a substantial victory not just in terms of his own career, but for inclusiveness in general.
(He has, incidentally, been hit with accusations of “white-washing” for allowing himself to be cast as Villechaize, and, honestly, people; if you are among the people who give this credence, you really do need to consider first that Villechaize’s Filipino appearance reflected his medical condition and not his actual French /German background, and second that matinee names the size of Villechaize with the apparent racial mix of Villechaize who can act as well as Dinklage are NOT EXACTLY WALKING INTO EVERY CASTING OFFICE EVERY DAY.)
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