For this year’s Hollywood issue of the New York Times Magazine, artist Alex Prager has created videos of 13 stars depicting iconic film villains. There’s an accompanying photo series by Prager as well.
Some of these are very specific: Rooney Mara is Alex from A Clockwork Orange, George Clooney is Captain Bligh, Michael Shannon is Gordon Gekko, Gary Oldman is the dummy from Magic, Adepero Oduye is Bonnie Parker getting ventilated, etc. Others use an archetypal role as a starting point. Brad Pitt looks like Henry from Eraserhead for instance (though I wouldn’t call Henry a villain), but he’s apparently channeling a crazed Peter Lorre.
Last year’s Hollywood issue featured 14 actors performing iconic movie scenarios to the music of Owen Pallett (a recurring Arcade Fire collaborator and touring member when not doing solo work). These scenarios included singing in a nightclub, destroying the good china, running away from some freaky stuff, and getting really wigged out by scary things.
Next year, I hope they restage iconic movie fights: the boxing match, the swashbuckling sword fight, the barroom brawl, the wuxia wire-work fight, the Tron disc battle, the alleyway throwdown, the quickdraw, the close-quarters spy fight, the Scanners telepathy-off, the lightsaber duel, the fight on top of a moving train, and the pie fight. Hell, throw in the “shoot the guy with the sword” bit from Raiders for good measure.
[Via New York Times Magazine]
