Maybe it's my ignorance to what Captain Sobel was like in real life; but after reading the BoB book, I felt like Schwimmer nailed the character. Sobel from my understanding was petty, sadistic, and power hungry. What exactly did people not like about Schwimmer?
shareI was in the military long enough, and I've read enough about Herbert Sobel beyond Stephen Ambrose's original book, to not judge Sobel based on David Schwimmer's portrayal alone. Having said that, I agree that Schwimmer nailed Sobel as he was depicted in the book.
I've never been able to sit through an entire episode of Friends, but I was familiar with Schwimmer as Michael, the sister's boyfriend/eventual husband in The Wonder Years. I suspect that people who dislike Schwimmer in BoB do so because the character was so different from Ross Geller. He did too good a job with the character as constructed by Ambrose and the screenwriters.
But, to paraphrase what Dick Winters said to Sobel during their last encounter, "You hate the character, not the actor!"
Tom,
I know you made this post awhile ago abut if you felt like giving us a little back ground about Sobel that was NOT in BoB I'd love to read it. All I have is what I saw in the series and tried to remember to take it with a grain of salt. Was he really the villain he was portrayed as?
~~~"Who do you think you're dealing with? Guess again."~~~
Pretty much so. They said that they were surprised that he was able to pass the PT tests and he was a horrible leader on the field - as well as being a total prick.
BUT, every one of them said they were better prepared for what they went through BECAUSE of how much of an azzhole he was.
They continued to keep him updated in what was going on in the group and paid his dues as well, along with continuing to invite him to their reunions.
Perfectly stated! That's exactly what I was thinking. I watched Friends a lot, and had gotten used to Schwimmer's goofy, nerdy role as Ross. So to see the contrast between Sobel and Ross personality wise, knowing they were played by the same person, I was almost in awe.
shareOne of the things I came to understand about the casting for BoB was that it was the casting crew's goal to cast actors who looked as close to the originals as possible. I think the only difference was when it came to Luz, but all else were fairly close. After seeing a picture of the actual Sobel compared to David Schwimmer, I don't think they could've gotten much closer to that goal. And you gotta admit, the mild aloofness one can detect in Schwimmer's demeanor lent itself well into his portrayal of Sobel at key points along the way.
shareScott Grimes looks nothing - and I do mean nothing - like the real Don Malarkey, something Malarkey himself noted (although he liked Grimes' performance). I think the closest was Ron Livingston as Lewis Nixon, he looked a LOT like him.
That being said, I thought Schwimmer was fine as Sobel. I think a lot of people based their opinions of him on his role in "Friends", which isn't really fair. I felt he captured the essence of the man pretty well. I even felt a twinge of sorrow for him when he found out he was being reassigned to Chilton Foliat, even though I didn't like him. He sold it pretty well.
Saying "I apologize" is the same as saying "I'm sorry." Except at a funeral.
As I hadn't watched more than a handful of "Friends" episodes prior to watching BoB, my impression of Schwimmer's Sobel were largely untainted. That being said, he did a really good job.
shareSame here. I thought Schwimmer's portrayal was excellent. The bullying Sobel during kit inspections, the oblivious and silly Sobel leading the men up Curahee, the incompetent Sobel getting lost on exercise and the nervous Sobel realising that he had pushed Winters too far with the court martial over a contrived petty offence were all captured very well. Evidence of Schwimmer's range as an actor IMHO.
Latterly I've got into reruns of Friends. And I like him as Ross without it deflecting my opinion of his portrayal of Sobel.
True. Schwimmer is well-known as Ross on "Friends", but his portrayal of Sobel is proof that he hasn't been typecast too hard. A well-known actor who can act in a way that makes you forget he was another role entirely is definitely an actor of merit.
shareI don't know, what I took away was that Schwimmer is typecast as a douche.
shareYou just might have a point: I dug up Flight of the Intruder a few days ago and gave it a go...lo and behold, Schwimmer makes a cameo as a "day officer", with a disposition somewhere between Ross and Sobel. This was before he was cast for Friends, of course.
shareI was shocked to learn the New York Times (in a review that was otherwise a rave) had described Schwimmer's performance as "so terrible...that he almost single-handedly destroys the series before it gets started." Well, different strokes for different folks. Personally I thought he was excellent, and the scene in which he learned he was being reassigned to Chilton Foliat - and losing command of Easy - was one of the show's most memorable. And Schwimmer played it masterfully.
shareIt's a sad fact that people all too often transfer their feelings about the character an actor plays into their assessment of the actor's performance. Schwimmer did such a good job portraying Sobel, without the movie star "out" of the formula redemption scene that would make his character likable in the end, that too many people couldn't take it and simply trashed the performance and the actor. It's their failure. This in the end may be Schwimmer's best performance, and I'd match it against many a more acclaimed performance in this mini-series and elsewhere.
And yes, I hated the character. If there's any complaint about that, it's the fact that it may have been part of "stacking the deck" more in favor of Winters as a popular character. But as someone who served in the military, I can honestly say I met people in a command position who were pretty irredeemable as human beings.
I thougth Schwimmer was perfect -- first as the perfectionist taskmaster who took pleasure in finding fault with his men, but pushed them to their limits, then as the screw-up you didn't want leading you into combat. As the colonel said, the Army needs you elsewhere.
share[deleted]
I've never watched Friends but I know what Schwimmers character is like in the show. He's plays a similar sort person in Six Days, Seven Nights and I find both characters extremely annoying. However, I really enjoyed Schwimmer's role in this series and I thought it really suited him as opposed to his role in Friends.
shareJimmy fallon was the only person in the whole cast that i hated. Everyone else played there roll very well.
shareYeah, this pulls me right out of the realism of the series, seeing Fallon there. I hate that he's cast in this. Not that he was bad - it was a 6-line role - but why someone so recognizable?
I want the doctor to take your picture so I can look at you from inside as well.
Yeah, I like Fallon otherwise, but seeing him suddenly appear in BoB was as bad for taking me out of the moment as Sam Malone (Ted Danson) being in Saving Private Ryan.
As for Schwimmer, I never watched Friends or anything else he had even been in so I had no preconceived ideas about him. I thought he did an excellent job as Sobel. Other than Fallon, the only actor I had ever seen in anything before and who gave me a little trouble accepting as a WW2 GI was Ron Livingston as Nixon. I knew him only from seeing Office Space a few times before I saw BoB, but I had trouble not seeing him as Peter Gibbons and thinking of some of the funnier, oft-repeated lines in Office Space every time he was on screen.
I didn't see Livingston in Office Space until a few years after BoB, after I got interested in him and his career. But yeah, I could see where seeing him as Peter first would put you off his character as Nixon.
And I agree about Ted Danson. That was weird casting to drop him in like that out of nowhere.
I want the doctor to take your picture so I can look at you from inside as well.
No, I also agree.
Say what you want about David's other work, but he NAILED it with Sobel.
I found nothing wrong with the performance.
The "problem" for me was that Schwimmer doesn't have the looks and mostly the voice to pass as a touch s.o.b.
Listening to him while the inspection in the first episode almost made me laugh.
However, his voice and looks was perfect when they showed the scenes that he did tactital errors on field, when he got transfered off the Easy Company, and in the end when Winters made him salute him.
Well, the real Sobel didn't have the looks, either. As for the voice, it is hard to know, but in another movie portrayal of an American officer, "Patton", George C Scott had a deeper, more gravelly voice than the real Patton's rather high voice. Perhaps your idea of what officers should sound like is coloured by the way Hollywood pick actors for the roles?
shareWould Darth Vader be so iconic as a vilain without the voice of James Earl Jones?
Don't narrow it only in army officers.
In many aspects of real life, take 2 guys with exactly the same attributes, plus one of them has the vocal capability a certain situation demands.
He would have an advantage and I would choose him over the other guy.
But if they wanted to make Sobel to appear like a martinet, a badass voice would've been out of place.
shareI agree with you, but not 100%.
From what we see in the series, Sobel was a badass instructor/trainer, but a terrible action/battlefield leader/commander.
So having a badass voice in my eyes would give more emphasis at his poor leading skills.
I thought Schwimmer did a fine job. I should add here that I am rather proud to say that I've never watched a single episode of 'Friends,' so I don't have that to compare it to. By the same token, I thought Matthew Perry did a terrific job in a couple of episodes of The West Wing. Give a competent actor some good lines, they'll take care of the rest.
Parenthetically, my dish needed fixing a couple of weeks ago, and the repairman had left an episode of 'Friends' on while he went out to realign the dish. In three minutes (or less) I was reminded--with exquisite precision--why I never watch television.
Have you ever seen the real Herbert Sobel? Schwimmer looks like a musclebound badass in comparison:
http://sites.psu.edu/aqhoke5396/wp-content/uploads/sites/17162/2014/10/sobel.jpg
As is often the case when true stories are adapted for the screen, they chose an actor who resembled the real person, but somewhat better looking/more Hollywood. And he wasn't the only one. Eion Bailey bears a passing resemblance to the real David Webster, but he's much "prettier". Same with Matthew Settle (Speirs). One exception to this in BofB would be the casting of Damian Lewis as Dick Winters. Lewis is a handsome guy, but personally I find the real Winters to have been more handsome. Others, like Don Malarkey, Babe Heffron and Roy Cobb, were portrayed by actors who, as far as I can tell, look little or nothing like the real men they played.
The further a society drifts from the truth, the more it will hate those that speak it.
Sobel looks oddly like a young Bob Dylan.
Why can't you wretched prey creatures understand that the Universe doesn't owe you anything!?
Ha, a little I suppose. He was harsher looking than Dylan, I think - personally I think Bob was kind of cute when he was young; Sobel not so much. But there is a bit of a resemblance.
The further a society drifts from the truth, the more it will hate those that speak it.