That Guy From Jurassic Park Would Like To Ask You a Few QuestionsWhat is Jeff Goldblum doing on Law & Order?
Posted Thursday, June 25, 2009, at 9:26 AM ET
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StumbleUponFor several years now, Jeff Goldblum's hallmark has been to play Jeff Goldblum characters as people who realize they're living on a screen. By talking just a bit too loudly, by holding smiles a bit too long, by dwelling on his vowels and feathering his T's with drama-school affectedness, he keeps us from suspending disbelief. And the net effect is irony: Even as the Goldblum body plays its role out on the screen, the Goldblum mind is pondering the episode right beside us, poking fun and throwing monkey wrenches where it can. The result is, not infrequently, brilliant. Recall Goldblum as preening oceanographer Alistair Hennessey in Wes Anderson's The Life Aquatic (2004):
Hennessey's behavior is so stylized, he seems to be responding not just to the other characters but to the presence of the movie camera itself. For the typical Law & Order viewer, though, Goldblum's style probably comes as something of a surprise. In the blockbuster films for which he is best known—Independence Day, Jurassic Park—his excesses were buffered and explained away by the tech-whiz parts he always seemed to play: Quirky behavior is nothing strange if you are a mad scientist.
Lately, Goldblum's role selection has gone scattershot. No more is he typecast as an inventor (The Fly), a chaos theorist (Jurassic Park), a cable engineer (Independence Day), and the like; instead, he shows up as a white-collar thug, a comedian Holocaust survivor, and a dog-faced CIA agent. These recent roles are colored more by Jeff Goldblum's distinctive touch than Jeff Goldblum is by their demands. To go see a Goldblum movie these days is to wonder what Goldblum will make of it. This stylized presence sets him up to be a more nuanced, distinctive actor—even as it narrows the pool of parts that can accommodate him.
If anybody knows this, it's Jeff Goldblum. In the 2006 faux documentary Pittsburgh, one of several recent indie film parts, Goldblum plays Jeff Goldblum trying to play Harold Hill in a small-time production of The Music Man, all so his Canadian lover can get a green card. (In a typically Goldblum-esque confluence of real life and performance, the situation is invented, but the actors are all playing themselves; their dialogue was largely made up on the spot.)
On one hand, Pittsburgh is a spin on the mockumentary, a form that is already spun. But it's also a movie about the perils of trying to fit an outsize screen presence in a cookie-cutter role. As The Music Man's exasperated director puts it near the film's climax: "You can never not be Jeff Goldblum. You can never not bring your particular quirkiness or your particular eccentricity to it. But my job is to make sure we're all in the same play."
This pithy formulation is the problem facing Law & Order in a nutshell. In the past decade, Goldblum has gone from being a product of Hollywood—an actor best known for his dealings with dinosaurs, space aliens, and giant insect mutants—to an artist clawing at its boundaries. He's fun to watch on Criminal Intent, despite his ravages on the show's long-standing personality; his season has more than once nosed into the Top 10 in cable ratings. Part of the fun comes from watching an artist with a major-motion-picture style bring his talent to a more constrained form—like John Updike kicking off a crime thriller or Yo-Yo Ma attempting tango music. But there's also pleasure in seeing the formulaic behemoth of Law & Order tripped up and cast onto new, uncertain ground. Goldblum's irrepressibility, the sheer volume and variety of his performance, makes him one of the most interesting things to show up on Criminal Intent in years. Interesting is not the same as fitting, though. The show is going to have to grow a lot if it intends to hold him.
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Interesting. I had a completely different reaction to seeing Jeff Goldblum on Law and Order for the first time; I was convinced that he melted into the show in the same way a person slides into their favorite pair of jeans. And his "eccentric detective" character runs rings and figure eights around Vincent D'Onofrio's Robert Goren. Don't get me wrong, I love me some Goren, however I can't shake the feeling sometimes that D'Onofrio is working hard at Goren, whereas Jeff Goldblum inhabits Nichols like a man possessed. Which makes sense, given the facts included in the article about his method.
-- mlisaoverdrive
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Goldblum can't hold a candle to Vincent D'Onofrio. Goldblum is a cartoon character. D'Onofrio is flawed and personal. I like Goldblum in broad character roles like Jurassic Park and Independence Day, but they are all the same characters.
D'Onofrio is on the level of Robbie Coltrane in Cracker. Goldblum? Just quirky. Americans like broadly quirky though, anything that hits a little too close to being personal and real makes them nervous. That's why Americans screw up excellent TV shows like Cracker and Prime Suspect when they try to remake them.
-- Adrasteia
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Your review is exactly right except it only impliedly answered its question: What is Goldblum doing on Criminal Intent? It is obvious why Criminal Intent's producers wanted him -- he has added a truly original, twisted character to the formulaic Law & Order series. He has added stature.
From his own point of view, in light of his career choices described in your piece -- challenging a formula program is its own campy reward. Goldblum is known as a better actor than his movies are known as good movies. He has never been too pure to take on a commercial project with little artistic merit. Nor has he been afraid to take on an artistic project with zero commercial potential.
In his most memorable and representative role (the People magazine writer in The Big Chill) he introduces core character traits that have animated his entire career. In a nutshell, he lives within his own quirks and takes reality as it comes, one day at a time. The result is that rare Hollywood result -- art.
-- john adkisson
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