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Spike Lee has managed to do one thing consistently throughout his erratic career: unearth fantastic actors. In fact, ever since he unveiled the adult Larry Fishburne in School Daze, Lee's served as mainstream Hollywood's de facto talent scout for black male prodigies, essentially discovering, or at least bringing to prominence, Fishburne, Denzel Washington (Mo' Better Blues), the pre-action movie Wesley Snipes (Jungle Fever), Samuel L. Jackson (Jungle Fever), Delroy Lindo (Malcolm X), Mekhi Phifer (Clockers), and Giancarlo Esposito (Do The Right Thing -- which also basically introduced the non-black but also very great John Turturro).
Of course, Washington, Fishburne, Snipes and Jackson (and Turturro) have all found nice homes on Hollywood's A or B lists; Lindo nabs plenty of character roles in high-profile, mainstream fare like Broken Arrow and Ransom, and Phifer is currently duking it out with Usher for the title of teenage America's favourite black brat-packer. (Phifer laid his claim in both High School High and I Still Know What You Did Last Summer.)
But what of Giancarlo Esposito? A brief stint on the cast of Homicide, a few fine supporting roles in Fresh and The Usual Suspects and Smoke...I mean, it's not like he's starving or anything....But still...
I know that asking Hollywood to go out of its way to find parts for a half-black, half-Italian actor from Denmark with a funny name that's hard to pronounce is kind of like asking a bird to knit a sweater -- i.e. against its essential nature. But: Giancarlo Esposito can flat-out act, and has screen-presence to burn, and is good-looking in a cool, old-school, Errol Flynn kind of way. So why can't anyone figure out what to do with this guy?
In an ideal world, someone would develop a showcase TV show for him, except that sort of already happened, and the show was called Bakersfield P.D., a 1993 effort (on then-fledgling network Fox) that excited many critics and garnered a small but fierce following and then quickly sank from sight, as such shows are seemingly obliged to do. Or, in another, different, but also ideal world, some young, smart director would give G.E. a showcase role in a hip little breakout hit, like what Tarantino did with Ving Rhames in Pulp Fiction, and what Bryan Singer sort of did for Esposito in The Usual Suspects, except a bigger, better role that would make him really famous, instead of simply inciting viewers to remark "Hey, there's that guy from Do the Right Thing."
In the meantime, in this less-than-ideal world, Esposito toils away in obscure projects like Creature and Naked City: Justice with a Bullet and Phoenix and Stardust...why? Why? Either he has a terrible agent (not unlikely) or shies away from the myriad of high-profile gigs that are piling up at his doorstep as we speak (less likely, but not impossible) or Hollywood simply lacks the imagination to figure out what to do with a great half-black, half-Italian actor (very, very likely). Or some combination of all three.
We can't really audit Mr. Esposito's fame, because he doesn't really have any fame. But we want someone to give him some. Take away the fame of Joey Lawrence and give it to Giancarlo Esposito. Or take Whoopi Goldberg's. Do you know how many underappreciated, under-recognized and under-utilized actors -- like Giancarlo Esposito -- could be made famous simply by stripping Whoopi Goldberg of her fame and dispensing it to the deserving, like some sort of fame-redistributing Robin Hood? Many, many.
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