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After seeing The Insider, a friend of mine was asked what he thought of the film, and he replied, "In the Platonic ideal of Hollywood, that movie would represent the exact median of quality" -- which is to say, in an ideal world, you would reasonably be able to expect the average movie to be at least that good. Of course, in the real world -- the one in which we live, and in which the vast majority of Hollywood films are crap on toast -- The Insider was actually one of the three or four best Hollywood films of the year.
So what does all this have to do with John Turturro?
Well, let us posit that, in the Platonic ideal of Hollywood, John Turturro would be Tom Cruise. John Turturro would release two or three lavishly funded but meaningful masterpieces a year, and the premiere of each would be greeted by long cover stories in Premiere and Vanity Fair, with coverlines like "Here's Johnnny! Hurricane Turturro Touches Down Again!" And People magazine would be scrambling for any flimsy excuse to put a John Turturro paparazzi shot in the every issue ("Jumpin' John! John Turturro, pictured here, sinks a basket at a pick-up basketball game in Brooklyn"). And John Turturro would return home at night to his enormous but tastefully decorated home, where he'd prop up his feet after another tiring but fulfilling day of making lavishly funded but meaningful masterpieces, and stare with contentment at his mantle full of Oscars, and fall asleep to an Entertainment Tonight Cover Story entitled "Turturro's Triumph."
Which is to say, in the Platonic ideal of Hollywood, John Turturro would be more famous, and Carson Daly would be less famous, and Dave Coulier would be -- well, he can stay pretty much whatever he is right now, as long as we don't ever have to hear from him again.
Of course, the aforementioned scenario is not a life we would necessarily wish on Turturro, nor would he likely wish it on himself. In fact, though we don't know the man, we suspect that he's probably pretty damn happy doing what he's doing now, which is supporting roles in Coen brothers' films and Spike Lee joints, and living with his wife in Brooklyn, and doing stage work in New York, and generally being ignored by Entertainment Tonight. The only reason we bring this up is because...well, there was a brief period around 1989 when John Turturro was actually very famous, or at least looked on his way to becoming very famous, and as such, he gave us all a glimpse of what the Platonic ideal of Hollywood might look like, in which people like John Turturro were very famous. Turturro, whose career started off, portentously enough, with a one-line role as Man at Table in Raging Bull, came to the public's attention in '89 as Pino, the squealing and hilarious bigot in Spike Lee's Do the Right Thing. Turturro gave what was, perhaps, the best performance in a film studded with great turns (Giancarlo Esposito, Danny Aiello, Samuel L. Jackson), and, in the next few years, his charismatic mug was everywhere -- State of Grace, Men of Respect, in the Coen brothers' Miller's Crossing as the whinging Bernie Bernbaum -- a period that climaxed with his leading-man role in Barton Fink. Certainly, none of these films took off like Top Gun, but, for a time, if you liked John Turturro, and you wanted more John Turturro, you didn't have to wait too long or look too far to find him.
(The one blemish on this period is Turturro's tasteless cameo in Lee's Mo' Better Blues as Moe Flatbush, a character that is to the depiction of Jews as Steppin Fetchit is to the depiction of Blacks. Lee lured Turturro into another less visible but almost as unfortunate cameo nine years later, convincing him to provide the voice for the talking dog in Summer of Sam, in a scene that is probably one of the ten stupidest and most ill-advised and ludicrous in film history, not including all of Nick of Time.)
Then John Turturro seemed to disappear. I mean, he's been around -- notably, as Herbie Stempel in Quiz Show, in supporting roles in Clockers and Fearless and The Big Lebowski and The Cradle Will Rock -- but none of it is as satisfying as Fink or what Fink promised. All of which may trouble you not one bit, though it might -- or should -- when you go see the Coen's O Brother, Where Art Thou. Turturro has a large, showcase role, and the film, besides being a lot of fun, serves as a potent reminder that the world -- or, at least, the film world -- while still far from a Platonic ideal, is a much better place when there's more John Turturro in it. That said, we are always happy to get any John Turturro we can, and are currently doing our best to deal with the Carson Daly issue.
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