|
Because Woody Harrelson is just so...unlikely. Because when he first appeared on Cheers, his dim-witted "Woody" character seemed like little more than an adequate simulacrum of Nicholas Colasanto's dim-witted "Coach" character. Because the idea that Harrelson, of all the Cheers cast, would evolve into a major movie star seemed as ludicrous at the time as, say, the suggestion that Florence Halop, the raspy-voiced bailiff who replaced raspy-voiced bailiff Selma Diamond on Night Court, would evolve into a major movie star.
Because you feel, intuitively, that you should dislike Woody Harrelson, but you can't quite do it, which makes you want to dislike him even more (but you're still unable to actually dislike him). Because his dad was a hit man, and rumoured to be one of the "well-dressed tramps" of JFK-conspiracy fame. Because -- okay, despite -- his public claims of sex addiction ("America, pity me! I'm addicted to sex!"). Because of his gleeful penchant -- and eerie affinity -- for animating grease-ball lowlifes like Larry Flynt or Mickey Knox in Natural Born Killers.
Because he understands better than most actors the utility of cultivating patrons. (Woody Harrelson, meet Ron Shelton.) Because he turned out to be a pretty great comic actor, in Cheers, and White Men Can't Jump, and even Kingpin, and he has enough of a sense of humour to cameo in the second Austin Powers movie, to make a joke about the fact that his name is a synonym for, well, you know. (Dick Clark was conspicuously absent from that sequence.) Because, deep down, he doesn't seem to really give a flying fig, or is at least uncannily successful at cultivating the impression that, deep down, he doesn't really give a flying fig. Because when he turns up in an unpromising movie like Play it to the Bone, you actually expect that he'll make the movie better, not worse. (Unlike, say, his co-star, Antonio Banderas, who is the oppposite of that.) Because his real names are "Woodrow" and "Tracy." Because, God bless him, he fights for hemp.
For all these reasons, we, the Fametracker auditors, find Woody Harrelson to be exactly as famous as he deserves to be.
|
