James Franco Thinks Andy Serkis Deserves an Oscar

My love for this year's Rise of the Planet of the Apes is no secret, and neither is my opinion that Andy Serkis deserves an Oscar nomination for his performance as Caesar in it.  Fortunately, people with far more influence then me agree as a five paragraph essay has recently been released by fellow Apes actor James Franco proves. It explains in surprising detail why Serkis' CGI-laden performance should not be barred from the running, and just how the technology doesn't overshadow what he put into the character.

You can read it here.  I'd strongly recommend readers go through the whole essay, but I'll post a couple of my favorite excerpts:

Performance Capture actually allows actors to work opposite each other in more traditional ways, meaning that the actors get to interact with each other and look into each others eyes. For years computer technology forced actors to act opposite tennis balls if a movie wanted to have CG creatures, but now the process has come full circle so that actors playing CG creatures can perform in practical sets, just like the “human” actors.

And Andy got to do the same because every gesture, every facial expression, every sound he made was captured, his performance was captured.  Then, what the Weta effects team did was to essentially “paint” the look of Caesar over Andy’s performance.  This is not animation as much as it’s digital  “make-up.”  There are plenty of Oscar winning performances that depended on prosthetic make-up to help create the characters: John Hurt’s in The Elephant Man, Nicole Kidman’s in The Hours, Sean Penn’s in Milk. Those actors depended on make-up artists to augment the look of their characters, but the performance underneath came solely from the actors. Well, that’s exactly the same position that Andy is in, his problem is that the digital “make-up” is so convincing that it makes people forget that he provides the soul of Caesar.

Well said, Mr. Franco.  It'll be a real shame if the academy ignores Serkis' performance out of an arrogant prejudice against computer graphics, and just how much of that performance was from the actor.