“The Best Actor Met Me.”

by Mike Fenn

So, not to brag, but I once hung out (meaning spent about 2 total minutes of time) with this year’s Academy Award winner for Best Actor: Brendan Fraser. In other words, I have spent more time with Brendan Fraser–who, by the way, won the Academy Award for Best Actor at this year’s Oscars–than I did on ALL of my combined dates in high school.

Last weekend, the 95th annual Academy Awards were held (with one of them, the Best Actor award, being held by Brendan Fraser, who once hung out with me for the better part of a package of instant ramen cooking time) (OK, I’ll stop now–for this paragraph). Studio executives, producers, directors, cinematographers, theater ushers, TV talk show hosts, and, of course, actors, actresses, supporting actors, and supporting actresses all gathered at the Dolby Theatre in Hollywood for the event. While friendly competition was in the air that night, everyone gathered had a single common goal: to distance themselves from last year’s show, when Will Smith laughed at a joke about his wife, angrily slapped Chris Rock for making said joke, and accepted the Best Actor Oscar–in that order. 

During the ceremony, which could very well still be going on, Brendan Fraser sat there patiently as the movie Everything Everywhere All at Once collected every single Oscar there was, including those in categories that do not yet exist (hey, a multiverse movie can do that). I’m sure he knew that he was likely going to win the Best Actor award for his role in The Whale, primarily because there was no one from Everything Everywhere All at Once up for Best Actor. After all, his competition in the category was pretty lame. You have Austin Butler, an Elvis impersonator (the Academy might as well award an Oscar to every late night Las Vegas wedding chapel minister if they give HIM the award), Colin Farrell (who the Academy feared would likely lose his shit on everyone present, regardless of his winning status, so they felt it best to keep him far from the stage), and the actors Paul Mescal and Bill Nighy, who starred in, respectively, Aftersun and Living; the Academy disqualified both men since no one had heard of either movie (or really either actor). To be honest, no one had ever heard of The Whale, either, but Fraser’s association with its lead–and possibly only–role had a lot of people SAYING that they saw it and loved it. That’s good enough for the Academy.

Since he was pretty confident in his win, Fraser was able to sit back, relax, and reflect on the time way back in 2010 when he met me. If you do not think he was doing this at the Oscars that night, I will need to see concrete evidence of such. Otherwise, shut up.

In 2010, Fraser was no longer the A-list star that he had been in previous years; the days of Encino Man, George of the Jungle, and even the Mummy movies were far behind him. He was damn near a Paul Mescal or Bill Nighy level or notoriety at that point. Also that year, the CBS TV network decided to branch out into films; after the better part of a nanosecond, studio executives decided that their film production studio would be named “CBS Films.” Fraser agreed, likely at gunpoint, to act in CBS Films’ first movie, Extraordinary Measures, with Harrison Ford. Extraordinary Measures, sometimes also called Extreme Measures, is the name of a movie that comes out every few years that follows a true–or at least true-sounding–story of someone who resorts to, well, extraordinary/extreme measures to fight the American medical establishment in the name of someone that they hold dear (spouse, child, goldfish, etc.). 

Have you heard of this movie?

That’s what I thought. That’s about how well it did at the box office.

Nevertheless, CBS wanted to promote their first foray into filmmaking. Ford got to promote Extraordinary Measures on the CBS late night show hosted by David Letterman (which was called, in keeping with CBS’ unparalleled creativity in naming things, Late Night with David Letterman). 

Fraser, on the other hand, had to promote it on Philadelphia’s local TV news station CBS3…where I happened to work at the time.

Admittedly, I wasn’t a huge diehard fan of Fraser’s work. However, I did enjoy movies of his like Bedazzled and Airheads and looked forward to meeting him–and even more forward to bragging about it on Facebook, and later on, in a terribly wordy Comedy Train Rek column to capitalize on his Oscar win for Best Actor.

Fraser entered the station and awaited his segment. As he did, I introduced myself and mentioned that I was a fan.

I don’t know if you have met any celebrities (you haven’t), so, being the Hollywood expert that I am, let me describe the experience to you. When a celebrity meets a peasant such as yourself, they will give you a medium-strength handshake, adopt a fake air of pleasure, say “thank you,” and possibly ask you to fetch them a bottle of mineral water. Or they’ll just ignore you because they think you’re beneath them (but will still ask you for the mineral water).

Fraser was NOT like this.

When he shook my hand, using the same hand that he recently clutched the Best Oscar statuette with, the look he gave me was not one of pleasure, false or otherwise. Instead, he gave me a look that said “I think I know you from somewhere.” You know that look. You’ve probably given that look to people yourselves, especially extended family members. To see it for yourself, find any random Facebook friend who you are reasonably sure is still alive. Ensure that your sole interactions with this person are casual birthday greetings every other year. Then go and find them and tell them who you are. You’ll receive that look.

Not only was he giving me that very un-celebrity-like look, but his eyes were also glossed over severely. 

Brendan Fraser was high as fuck.

I mean, I can’t say that I blame him. He was promoting a movie that he knew was shit on local TV news in Philadelphia. I would get stoned out of my mind, too.

Despite this bizarre interaction, I still wanted a full fan experience with him. I asked him to sign a copy of the only movie of his that I had on DVD at the time: Looney Tunes: Back in Action.

Seriously.

In case you are unaware, and you are, Looney Tunes: Back in Action was an ill-fated attempt by Warner Bros. to capitalize on the popularity of its Looney Tunes characters after they had been successfully introduced to a new generation in SpaceJam. The movie was such a disappointment that the studio had to make SpaceJam: A New Legacy decades later just to make it look better by comparison. However, I personally enjoyed it. I even saw it in the theater. My sisters and I have been lifelong fans of Looney Tunes, primarily because our dad refused to pay for the Disney Channel back when we were kids, since it was a “premium” channel on cable and we already had HBO and Cinemax.

Fraser was tapped to star in the movie after executives saw how well he could act with cartoons in the closing scenes of the Mummy Returns, when the Scorpion King was first introduced. Despite containing some other impressive names (Steve Martin, Timothy Dalton, Daffy Duck, etc.), the movie did not fare well at the box office, with critics, or even at the DVD store, which is why I was able to snag it for $3.

Anyhow, Fraser obliged and signed my DVD. As he realized what he was signing, though, he scrunched up his face.

“Oh…you actually SAW this?” he asked, handing it back to me.

“Yup, in the theater!” I replied.

Way to be proud of your work, dude.

He went into the studio to do his segment. On air, he seemed proud of his role in Extraordinary Measures, possibly because he was just reminded by the scrawny fanboy in the hallway that he had done much worse movies. After he was done, he came back out and posed for a picture with me, still wearing that very confused, very stoned “where the hell do I know this guy from?” look.

Then he left and won the Oscar for Best Actor.