Cellars of IMDb: Willem Dafoe is Kind of Creepy but I'm Fond of Him Anyway


More than anyone featured in this series thus far, Willem Dafoe deserves the title of actor. None of our previous entries have had resumes anywhere near as storied. Dafoe has been in comedies, straightforward action flicks, character dramas, sweeping romances, and even animated films in English, French, and German. He's played a diverse array of characters, sweeping across the spectrum from supervillains, hoodlums, and evil masterminds to heroes of all stripes to unclassifiable supporting characters.

All these things are but supporting details. What really separates Willem Dafoe from his colleagues on Cellars of IMDb is the aspect of his career that isn't covered in exhaustive detail on IMDb. Willem Dafoe, unlike such notables as Dave Chappelle and Ethan Embry, is an accomplished stage actor. IMDb does have this to say:

Willem Dafoe is one of the founding members of The Wooster Group, the New York based experimental theatre collective. He has created and performed in the group's work since 1977, both in the U.S. and internationally.

The Wooster Group is still active today, and they perform their avant-garde works across the globe. Not limited to pure theater, they've done radio work, film, and video, but the Group is best known for its unclassifiable mixed media productions. The Group began its existence as "The Performance Group," started by Richard Schechner in the late sixties. As Schechner relinquished control of the Group it was renamed the Wooster Group, with Dafoe, Elizabeth LeCompte, Spalding Gray, and Ron Vawter, among others as founding members.

Before joining the Performance Group and meeting LeCompte, who would become the mother of his son Jack (now twenty-three), Dafoe was one of the earliest members of another experimental theater collective, Group X. Group X put put most of its emphasis on improvisation, and when Dafoe left he was replaced by Violent Femmes drummer Victor DeLorenzo.

Dafoe dropped out of the University of Wisconsin's drama program to join Group X. He grew up and attended high school in Appleton, Wisconsin, where he was the seventh of eight children. Willem is a corruption of "William" that was foisted on him by his schoolmates.

Seventh of eight children in Wisconsin? Sounds like the boy next door type, and Dafoe confirms, "if you lived next door to a mausoleum," at least in public opinion. He says that he doesn't get a lot of straightforward roles because he's known as "an eccentric actor in dark little films." It's not an entirely accurate characterization. Sometimes he's in dark big films.

When his film career began in 1979 no one could have predicted the were it's taken him. The beginning was inauspicious in the extreme. On the strength of his theatrical performances he was offered a tiny role in the 1980 film Heaven's Gate. He was fired, and his scenes were cut. Two years later he got his second chance: the lead in the unspectacular and unremembered biker flick The Loveless.

Dafoe played hoodlums and other various villainous ne'er-do-wells for the next years in a number of movies, none of which were particularly noteworthy. William Friedkin's To Live and Die in L.A. was something of an exception, I suppose. Not exactly a box office smash (it grossed about seventeen million dollars), it was his first chance to work with a world-class director and that exposure would be lead to his second such opportunity: Platoon, directed by then-unknown Oliver Stone.



This was truly Dafoe's breakout role. Platoon grossed something on the order of twenty-three times its six million dollar budget and is still a highly-regarded classic, even in its elite company, holding its own against other revered Vietnam pictures like Full Metal Jacket and Apocalypse Now.



Finally playing against type, Dafoe was nominated for an Academy Award for his performance as the almost messianic Seargent Elias Grodin. Two years later he played a similar character, this time leaving off the almost.


The Last Temptation of Christ, directed by Martin Scorsese was, by all accounts, a bomb. Hugely controversial for its depiction of Jesus as more man and less God, it hurt the careers of everyone involved. As an interesting note, the subject matter is still hugely controversial, and it will be interesting to see what happens when the similarly-themed Da Vinci Code is released in cinemas.



The role was an obvious flashpoint for controversy and Robert De Niro had already turned it down.* He is regarded as extremely picky about his roles, yet has never shied away from controversial ones. Dafoe took the role of Jesus because his focus has never been on success in the normal sense. Instead he looks for interesting and varied characters and great directors. After the Last Temptation debacle Dafoe worked with a number of universally-acclaimed directors on what were, for the most part, under-the-radar pictures. John Waters' Cry-Baby, David Lynch's Wild at Heart, Stone's Born on the Fourth of July, and Paul Schrader's Light Sleeper.

Dafoe did find time to make some more mainstream movies, like 1993's Body of Evidence. In said picture Dafoe had the obviously unenviable task of being seduced by Madonna and being forced to film a sex scene with her. The poor, poor man.

Dafoe never let himself get stuck in a single sort of role once he had established himself. He still often finds himself playing villains thanks to his truly distinctive face. Leonard Maltin's Movie Encyclopedia describes him as having a "seductive, serpentine smile," which seemed tailor-made for two-bit punks in his youth and criminal masterminds as he entered middle-age. Still Dafoe plays countless other characters, sometimes scene-stealing supporting characters in movies like Basquiat, sometimes sympathetic leads as in Tom & Viv, in which he played the poet T.S. Eliot.



Today, readers will most likely identify Dafoe with one or more of three films:
The Boondock Saints, Spiderman, The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou. Of the three, the cult hit The Boondock Saints is the only one that is truly Dafoe's movie.



He has supporting roles in all three, but as the homophobic but gloriously flamboyantly homosexual Detective Paul Smecker he steals ever scene he's in, and even some he isn't. Responses to the movie itself are deeply divided, and the director's personality has ruined what looked like the possibility of a sequel, not to mention any chance of working in Hollywood again. Regardless, Dafoe's performance is golden. It's hammy as all get out, and you'll love every minute of it.

Dafoe's performance as Klaus in Wes Anderson's movie about (surprise, surprise) the search for a father figure is almost as entertaining, though nowhere near as robust.



His performance in Spiderman is somewhat campy, but it's perfect for hollow comicbook supervillain. The Green Goblin has been Dafoe's only comic-inspired character to date, and the movie allowed him to show off his stuntwork. It really is him under that suit (except for the CGI segments).



Recently Dafoe's been as busy as ever, working on Before It Had a Name, which he cowrote with his wife Giado Colagrande, who also costarred and directed, the ill-fated blockbuster xXx: State of the Union, and two other films released in 2005, as well as working with the Wooster Group. Dafoe says he does two-dimensional villains in big movies like xXx 2 and Spiderman and Speed 2: Cruise Control because they keep his name in circulation. Otherwise he can't get the interesting small movies made. He needs his name to mean something so his movies get produced and distributed. Plus he's always looking to try new things, be they filming on boats or fighting Spiderman with bombs and a glider.

This year he'll be appearing in Paul Weitz's American Dreamz,** Paris, je t'aime, and Spike Lee's Inside Man.



And remember the guiding light, lest we forget the glory that be Lemon Party.
Because your blog sucks.



*Thank God. Can you really imagine Jesus Christ shouting, "You lookin' at me?" at a mirror?

**I had high hopes for this movie when I saw the cast and the premise. The more I hear, the more it looks like it's going to be a disappointment.
- posted by Odovaucer @ 11:58 PM