As by now you probably know, Andy Serkis and his boys are making a big, somewhat grandiose push this year to get him an Oscar nomination for his work on Rise of the Planet of the Apes. Sure. He played the role of "The Monkey." Andy Serkis is widely known as one of the best motion capture actors in the game after his work on the Lord of the Rings trilogy, and King Kong, and now this. Actually, I think he's the only known motion capture actor in the game. I literally cannot think of another person who has been given so much credit for his motion capture work. This means one of two things: either Andy Serkis has cornered the market, or there is no market and Andy Serkis is trying to pretend like there is a market. (How sad would it be to be the second biggest motion capture actor out there, just constantly living in the shadows. There goes big Andy Serkis, getting another multi-million dollar franchise, and you have to be, like, a tortoise swimming in the background of A Dolphin Tale or whatever. So sad! Hang up your cleats!) Anyway, as part of the Andy Serkis Oscar Circus (see what I did there? I used a word that sounded like another word and then drew attention to it like it was a thing: IT'S CALLED BLOGGING) a behind-the-scenes clip of Andy Serkis acting out a Planet of the Apes scene pre-CGI over-mapping has been released, and well, uh, so, here you go:
EEK! What a risky gamble for Team Serkis! On the one hand, he's obviously doing something. Like, I couldn't do that. Could you do that? I couldn't do that. Who could do that? "Get me Serkis on the phone." On the other hand, this clip makes me want to HIDE UNDER THE COVERS. It is crazy how lucky everyone involved with this movie is that it turned out pretty good. It's a pretty good movie! Quentin Tarantino says "this is the second best movie of 2011!" But can you imagine being on the set during the filming of this scene? You know that when the cameras turned off James Franco immediately got on the phone to his agent and was like "What have you done to me? I could be doing a Semester at Sea right now!" (All of this being said, I would actually pay MORE money to see a cut of this film with pre-CGI Andy Serkis. And then I would swallow a bottle of pills.)
Good luck to Andy Serkis at this year's Academy Awards. For real, I hope he does win. That would be great. His acceptance speech would be like, "BLEEP BLOOP 1010010110101100101010101001." Hahhahahaha. AND THANK YOU TO MY HIGH SCHOOL DRAMA TEACHER WHO TAUGHT ME MICROSOFT WORD. And scene. (Via PopCultureBrain.)
