Which positions do the Seahawks have 'building blocks' at already?
9/25/2022: And ranking the priority of Seattle's remaining need
Even Brendan Fraser still has hope.
As a kid, you think the actors see watch in movies will always be there. There’s not even a scenario that you pose in your mind that posits a time before, after, or even during the height of an actor’s fame, you just think, “Hey, he’s one of the actors! She’s one of the actors! These are the people who will tell stories throughout my life.”
To a 13-year-old Seaside Joe, Pauly Shore was in the same bucket as Robert DeNiro. Same jobs. They make movies. I like movies. They must hang out.
Then time passes and Hollywood seamlessly and organically flushes out 95-percent of the actors for a newer, younger, trendier tribe every few years. Lucky are the few like Keanu Reeves, Nicole Kidman, and Tom Cruise who always seem to prove themselves valuable again.
Unlike in sports, there are never retirement announcements and farewell tours. These days, maybe the occasional public pink slip for off-field behavior. But rarely do we find out that an actor is “not going to be in the movies anymore—or at least, not movies you’re likely to hear about or watch.”
Instead, I find out that an actor is “not in movies you’re watching anymore” when I’m reminded of that person and check their IMDb and come to realize that “Actually, I haven’t seen this person in a major motion picture in forever.”
The last movie that I saw John Cusack in was Hot Tub Time Machine. That was 2010! You could argue that Will Smith’s last legitimate hit, prior to the Oscars, was Hancock in 2008. And Don Cheadle went from being in everything I watched to everything that I’m avoiding—though I am avoiding all cinematic universes.
Is it not fair to say though that mid-aughts Cheadle isn’t getting as many offers as 2022 Cheadle? You would think that being nominated for Hotel Rwanda and playing the lead in Crash, a Best Picture winner, would be the start of an upgrade. Somehow the awards often feel like the beginning of the end.
Crash was certainly that ending for Brendan Fraser.
There was a time when it seemed that Fraser could pull out the impossible task of graduating from adolescent comedies targeted at people like me to making serious dramas targeted at people like me. While Encino Man teammate Pauly Shore always had an expiration date and fellow lead Sean Astin was destined to a career as a “character actor,” Brendan Fraser worked on his credentials by doing School Ties, With Honors, and Gods and Monsters after his debut as a caveman who wants to party.
Even Airheads with Adam Sandler showcased Fraser as a likable leading man. Think of him like Chris Pratt, but genuine.
Though he could have been toasted at the turn of the century when he made Blast from the Past, Dudley Do-Right, Bedazzled, and Monkeybone, Fraser’s livelihood was saved (and is still crystalized as a part of modern culture as the best current ride at Universal Studios Hollywood) by making The Mummy in 1999. The sequel probably bought him a lot of houses, which is how I imagine rich people spending their money.
But as much as 2004’s Crash was an ensemble piece that painted Fraser’s character in the most unforgivable light, it didn’t seem like it would tank his career. It won the Oscar! It shouldn’t have. But it did! Yet most of the cast, as well as writer/director Paul Haggis, seem cursed or purposefully exiled ever since.
Until now.
Fraser didn’t make a single wide-release movie from 2005-2007, then kerplunked in 2008 with Journey to the Center of the Earth, a third Mummy movie co-starring Jet Li that nobody remembers, and Inkheart. It could be the single-worst trifecta action/adventure year for one actor in film history.
But Fraser still never stops.
A devastatingly forgettable decade separated Fraser from being a leading man to taking parts on TV that were offered to him. There’s nothing wrong with acting on TV, and Doom Patrol is really good even if you never actually see Brendan Fraser (he plays a robot), it’s only that there was clearly a major shift in how he was being treated with respect to offers he got in the past.
A lot of TV shows wanted Fraser, probably. But how many of those TV shows did Brendan Fraser want back? His offers might start coming again.
Fourteen years after he resurrected Mickey Rourke with The Wrestler, director Darren Aronofsky cast Fraser in his movie The Whale and the early reports suggest a potential Best Actor nomination will follow, same as it did for Rourke. Fraser recently received a six-minute standing ovation at the Venice Film Festival.
And about 12 years after he was last cast as one of the leader actors in a wide release live action movie, Fraser is next set to appear in Martin Scorsese’s Killers of the Flower Moon alongside Leonardo DiCaprio and Robert DeNiro.
There’s always hope. Unless you’re Pauly Shore.
I’m still waiting for In the Army Now 2: Maverick.
The Seattle Seahawks met their mummy on Sunday during a 27-23 loss to an Atlanta Falcons team that I’m sure will be in contention for a top-three pick late into the season. It would have been easy to fall under a belief that Pete Carroll’s Seahawks would always be a good team, or at least one that plays with good fundamentals sans quarterback, based on a long track record of success:
12 seasons as a head coach, nine winning records, four division titles, two Super Bowls, one championship, and four-time winner of DVOA.
Pete Carroll has crashed. More appropriately, he’s Crash’d. He’s a Brendan Fraser who just traded away his Sean Astin—and holy shit I think I just fell backwards into the perfect personality comp for Russell Wilson.
A question that a lot of Seahawks fans will have now and over the course of the season is: What has Seattle done right this year, what’s left to do, and what are reasonable expectations for the 2022 team’s win total?
First and foremost, the Seahawks have done a lot right this year. The worst case scenario for Seattle was not that they would trade Wilson, it’s that they WOULD NOT trade Wilson. If the Seahawks had held onto Wilson, there’s a good chance that the team would actually have more holes on the roster than they currently do—not less. They would then be saddled with a potential losing record, a quarterback who doesn’t want to be in Seattle anymore, and lost leverage that would result in giving him up at a fraction of the two first and two second round picks acquired in March.
The Seahawks didn’t run into danger by trading Wilson. They avoided disaster by trading Wilson.
So fans next turn to the roster and ask how it can be fixed. Which first requires knowing what needs to be fixed and how easy it is to address that need given Seattle’s resources. These are the BUILDING BLOCKS on the Seahawks roster already (who will be around beyond 2022), the NEEDS, and the PRIORITY of each of those needs next year.
Is Pete Carroll going to be Brendan Fraser or Pauly Shore? Depends on how he plans to address these needs: