|
There
are some things you would never expect certain actors to do.
If Vin Diesel was cast as the lead in a period romance,
people would be surprised (unless it was based on Beauty and
the Beast or something).
If Meryl Streep played opposite Adam Sandler in a remake
of The Blue Lagoon, film fans would be astonished.
And if Denzel Washington ever played a bad guy, the
moviegoing public would be so shocked that every organization
would throw awards at him, whether he was deserving or not.
Likewise,
nobody expects the brilliant William H. Macy, an extraordinary
character actor and indie film hero, to make a touchy-feely
TV-movie-of-the-week about someone with a physical disability.
But that's just what we get in Door To Door, a
film based on the life of Bill Porter, who is portrayed with
gusto by Macy. Bill,
a lifelong victim of cerebral palsy, became a successful
door-to-door salesman despite lacking just about every physical
tool one might think a successful door-to-door salesman would
need.
For
starters, Bill looks like a cross between a chimp and Alfred E.
Newman, and he walks as if fighting to part a hurricane-force
wind. A drooler with a laugh like Herman Munster, Bill is
introduced in Door as he struggles to look for work (and
it goes slightly less well than when Macy did the same thing
back in Focus). To
business owners, Bill appears to be unemployable, but through
the constant support of his frail mother (Helen Mirren, Gosford
Park), he eventually lands a gig selling cleaning products
on foot.
Nobody
on his route wants to have anything to do with Bill, but, of
course, he slowly begins to wear down even the most stubborn
buyer. In fact, he becomes such a success, he hires Portland State
student Shelley Brady (Kyra Sedgwick, What's Cooking?) to
give him a hand with the deliveries and whatnot.
It's all so wonderful, I felt like throwing up.
Seriously, though, Door isn't quite as calculatingly
manipulative as most made-for-television movies about people
with some type of physical problem, but it was still laden with
more cheese than I can typically bear (especially the scene
where Bill lectures Shelley about a derogatory comment she made
about a gay couple on the sales route).
And the little Forrest Gump-like introduction of
things like Viet Nam, disco, AIDS and home computers that
revolutionize the American landscape over Door's 40 years
was just too much to take.
Macy,
who co-wrote Door's script with director Steven Schachter
(they also collaborated on TV films A Slight Case of Murder,
The Con and Every Woman's Dream), is about the
only reason you'll want to tune in, as he gives a very strong
performance in a very physical role.
Mirren classes up the scenes in which she appears, but
her character suffers from Alzheimer's disease (what a gene
pool, huh?) and disappears halfway into the film.
Kathy Baker (Boston Public), who I always thought
resembled Mirren, does not play a Porter relative but is the
lonely alcoholic woman who becomes Bill's first sales victim.
|
