MovieChat Forums > The Normal Heart (2014) Discussion > Did all of the actors demand an 'oscar w...

Did all of the actors demand an 'oscar winning' speech?

posted 10 years ago by Nl50148
4 replies | jump to latest

Good grief! While I enjoyed this I found it rather unnecessarily long and it's not like they couldn't have cut the rants down a bit. At least four were over the top, Meryl Streep on Speed, melodramatic moments that stood out like a speech that the actors had demanded they get or they weren't going to do the film (..."and it must be at least as long as x, y, or z's monologue, or I'm outta here"). I found it very distracting and my eyes were rolling like a slot machine.

[–] Spectator88 10 years ago

While I too am a big fan of this film there may be something to what you are saying. I'm thinking that the "speeches/melodramatic moments" may be what can happen when a play is adapted for film.

[–] Nl50148 10 years ago

Yes, that's a good point. I'd forgotten it was a play. That's a whole lot of dialogue to expect those poor thespians to remember. Drama is much more acceptable in the theatre for some reason. Tonys all round.

[–] ArtAesthetics 10 years ago

It may seem like that but the thing is the movie is based on what they call an agitprop play. A play meant to incite with a political, social message. So even though the speeches may have seemed a bit much it's the nature of the beast. To me the only one that didn't flow was Emma Brookner's and maybe a bit of Ned's talk to his brother was unnecessarily "speechy". The movie expanded a bit of both the roles, maybe, because A-list actors were playing them.

[–] ofumalow 10 years ago

I know what the OP means. I've seen the play (more than once), and even THAT seems overly verbose and polemical at times, but big speeches tend to work a lot better onstage. It's incomprehensible why they didn't drastically trim some of the speeches here (especially Joe Mantello's endless rant). It's a movie, meaning gets conveyed in visual as well as verbal terms, and we've fully grokked the point of several speeches here well before they end.

I don't know how involved Larry Kramer was in this TV movie, but apparently a big reason the Barbra Streisand-directed movie never happened was because he wouldn't let stage dialogue be trimmed for the screenplay...so maybe that's what happened here, too. (p.s.--update--I forgot to look and see that indeed Kramer adapted his own play. So there's your explanation. He refused to cut his deathless prose for the benefit of the movie, and voila! the movie suffers for it.)