Post by Patcat on Oct 15, 2005 16:43:46 GMT -5
From Today's NEW YORK TIMES.
I think I like Chris Noth. And I think I can see where Mr. D'Onofrio might like him.
October 15, 2005
When It's Easy to Play Older, Wiser, Wearier
By DAVID CARR
The tidy, almost fussy apartment in Greenwich Village is a place where neither Mr. Big nor Det. Mike Logan would live. Sitting in jeans with an open white shirt and a nearly shaved head, Chris Noth, the man who played both characters, fits in pretty well with the quiet, the lush furnishings, the huge rack of CD's and the books, including a gigantic antique book on a stand.
Mr. Noth has never confused himself with his characters. Still, he gets dirty looks on the subway from women because he has played a cad on "Sex and the City" and approval from police officers for his righteous portrayal of a working New York detective.
This season, Mr. Noth (rhymes with "both") is reprising that role as Detective Logan, the emotional, intuitive police detective who helped found the "Law & Order" franchise back in 1990. When he left in 1995, he characterized his tour in that police procedural series as a "five-year prison sentence," so it is a bit of a surprise to see him prowling New York as part of "Law & Order: Criminal Intent."
Ten years later, things are different. His recurring role as "Mr. Big," the suitor who won Carrie Bradshaw's heart in "Sex and the City," turned out to be a prison of another sort. He was in a bar in Saigon a few years ago, and someone started yelling at him for his portrayal of that self-involved Lothario allergic to commitment.
And this time around on "Law & Order" - the grind wore him down during his last tour - he and his co-star, Anabella Sciorra, have a partnership that alternates with another detective team played by Vincent D'Onofrio and Kathryn Erbe, so the physical and mental sprint of a weekly series will be only half as taxing.
Still, it is a genre in which actors are as much game pieces as thespians, pushed around by plot and form.
"For an actor, it's troubling, because you have to ask the fundamental question: does it matter what I bring?" he said, backlighted by a very sunny day pouring in the south window of his apartment. His hair, normally a thick mop that is a bit of a trademark, is all but gone - "I got bored" - and at 49, Mr. Noth is less apt to lean on his boyish charms than show up as a man in full.
Both Detective Logan and Mr. Noth represent talented, mercurial characters tempered by forces beyond their control. Detective Logan is back in Manhattan after having punched a superior and been banished to Staten Island. Mr. Noth, who is fond of late nights and gnawing on the hand that feeds him, bears marks from both. The youth has been replaced by a kind of majesty, though the look of someone who has been places and seen things.
The show's fans seem to think that Mr. Noth's version of a "Law & Order" detective matters very much. "Criminal Intent" episodes have drawn an average of almost 12 million viewers this fall, a ratings performance fueled in part by Detective Logan's return. This season, he is beginning to turn his investigative skills and moral compass on fellow cops, giving him plenty of texture and conflicts to chew through.
Mr. Noth is back partly because a man has to eat, and partly because 10 years have given him some perspective on the value of working with your craft, regardless of the outlet. A 1998 "Law & Order" television movie, "Exiled," was a hit with viewers and gave Mr. Noth a measure of input into the character and development of Detective Logan. He called the "five-year prison sentence remark" a reflection of his youth at the time and the grind of being on camera every week.
"The danger is that you feel you are on an assembly line, but this particular schedule gives an actor time to infuse himself creatively," he said.
Because the range of the characters is limited on all the "Law & Orders" - "Criminal Intent" is the third installment of a brand that has spread across television for 15 years - Mr. Noth said that it is important to use screen time judiciously.
"Every moment has to have a meaning, because on a procedural show, it can easily appear that you are doing it by rote," he said.
"The older you get, the whole notion of success in this business is ephemeral, confusing and hard to give as much energy as when you're young and it meant everything," he said.
Mr. Noth is less mellowed than matured, still itchy and somewhat obsessed, but realistic about where he belongs in the firmament of celebrity and acting. He knows he is not George Clooney, another suave salt-and-pepper television brand who crossed over and never looked back.
Mr. Noth, an actor who attended the Yale School of Drama, just finished a run of "American Buffalo" at the Berkshire Theater Festival. Early in his television career, he spent a great deal of time banging against the limits of the procedural genre and the man who invented it, Dick Wolf, who created "Law & Order." When Mr. Noth sought more money, Mr. Wolf invited him to leave.
"Let's face it, I had one foot out the door, and Dick turned out to be fundamentally correct," Mr. Noth said. "I was not trying to hide the fact that I was frustrated and restless. Restlessness is a part of my nature, and it has always come to haunt me personally and professionally."
Mr. Wolf did not hide that he and Mr. Noth had a complicated professional relationship, or that he was enjoying the renewal of that dialogue.
"Look, no one can play Det. Mike Logan better than Chris Noth," Mr. Wolf said in a telephone interview. "He has an attitude, a physical presence. He looks the way that most New York detectives look when they get up in the morning."
"I have had a longer-term relationship with Chris than I have had with almost anybody in the business," Mr. Wolf said. "Neither of us would admit it to each other, but there is a well of affection that is hard to account for."
There is far more clutter than when they last worked together; thanks to "Law & Order" and "CSI," a similar procedural franchise, the top 20 shows feature a glut of whodunit-and-how shows that invite and cue the viewer to solve the crime just ahead of the people on the screen.
"It is a very different climate than when we started," Mr. Noth said. " 'Law & Order' was pretty revolutionary. It felt like something that had never been done. Even New York City was a very different city back then, a far more dangerous place."
Getting Mr. Noth started on the subject of New York is an invitation for a tutorial on the dangers of civic sanitization, on the things that can be lost when a city is "improved."
"It has deteriorated into a very clean and shiny mall," he said, running his hand back and forth over his bristle of hair as he gets worked up. "We have to go out of Manhattan to get a texture of the city. I'm not just talking about graffiti and that we want to bring the crime back. From the meatpacking district to the East Village to below Houston Street, all those delicious and interesting and complex neighborhoods are just basically gone. It has been death by fashion and trend."
"Being a New York detective is a character," he added. "They are different than other detectives. There is a fraternity and a brotherhood and a way of doing police work in New York that's different than anywhere else, and you've got to tap into that also."
"Most of them are what we would call working-class guys," he said, "who deal in a very specific world and live in that world, 100 percent committed."
Patcat
I think I like Chris Noth. And I think I can see where Mr. D'Onofrio might like him.
October 15, 2005
When It's Easy to Play Older, Wiser, Wearier
By DAVID CARR
The tidy, almost fussy apartment in Greenwich Village is a place where neither Mr. Big nor Det. Mike Logan would live. Sitting in jeans with an open white shirt and a nearly shaved head, Chris Noth, the man who played both characters, fits in pretty well with the quiet, the lush furnishings, the huge rack of CD's and the books, including a gigantic antique book on a stand.
Mr. Noth has never confused himself with his characters. Still, he gets dirty looks on the subway from women because he has played a cad on "Sex and the City" and approval from police officers for his righteous portrayal of a working New York detective.
This season, Mr. Noth (rhymes with "both") is reprising that role as Detective Logan, the emotional, intuitive police detective who helped found the "Law & Order" franchise back in 1990. When he left in 1995, he characterized his tour in that police procedural series as a "five-year prison sentence," so it is a bit of a surprise to see him prowling New York as part of "Law & Order: Criminal Intent."
Ten years later, things are different. His recurring role as "Mr. Big," the suitor who won Carrie Bradshaw's heart in "Sex and the City," turned out to be a prison of another sort. He was in a bar in Saigon a few years ago, and someone started yelling at him for his portrayal of that self-involved Lothario allergic to commitment.
And this time around on "Law & Order" - the grind wore him down during his last tour - he and his co-star, Anabella Sciorra, have a partnership that alternates with another detective team played by Vincent D'Onofrio and Kathryn Erbe, so the physical and mental sprint of a weekly series will be only half as taxing.
Still, it is a genre in which actors are as much game pieces as thespians, pushed around by plot and form.
"For an actor, it's troubling, because you have to ask the fundamental question: does it matter what I bring?" he said, backlighted by a very sunny day pouring in the south window of his apartment. His hair, normally a thick mop that is a bit of a trademark, is all but gone - "I got bored" - and at 49, Mr. Noth is less apt to lean on his boyish charms than show up as a man in full.
Both Detective Logan and Mr. Noth represent talented, mercurial characters tempered by forces beyond their control. Detective Logan is back in Manhattan after having punched a superior and been banished to Staten Island. Mr. Noth, who is fond of late nights and gnawing on the hand that feeds him, bears marks from both. The youth has been replaced by a kind of majesty, though the look of someone who has been places and seen things.
The show's fans seem to think that Mr. Noth's version of a "Law & Order" detective matters very much. "Criminal Intent" episodes have drawn an average of almost 12 million viewers this fall, a ratings performance fueled in part by Detective Logan's return. This season, he is beginning to turn his investigative skills and moral compass on fellow cops, giving him plenty of texture and conflicts to chew through.
Mr. Noth is back partly because a man has to eat, and partly because 10 years have given him some perspective on the value of working with your craft, regardless of the outlet. A 1998 "Law & Order" television movie, "Exiled," was a hit with viewers and gave Mr. Noth a measure of input into the character and development of Detective Logan. He called the "five-year prison sentence remark" a reflection of his youth at the time and the grind of being on camera every week.
"The danger is that you feel you are on an assembly line, but this particular schedule gives an actor time to infuse himself creatively," he said.
Because the range of the characters is limited on all the "Law & Orders" - "Criminal Intent" is the third installment of a brand that has spread across television for 15 years - Mr. Noth said that it is important to use screen time judiciously.
"Every moment has to have a meaning, because on a procedural show, it can easily appear that you are doing it by rote," he said.
"The older you get, the whole notion of success in this business is ephemeral, confusing and hard to give as much energy as when you're young and it meant everything," he said.
Mr. Noth is less mellowed than matured, still itchy and somewhat obsessed, but realistic about where he belongs in the firmament of celebrity and acting. He knows he is not George Clooney, another suave salt-and-pepper television brand who crossed over and never looked back.
Mr. Noth, an actor who attended the Yale School of Drama, just finished a run of "American Buffalo" at the Berkshire Theater Festival. Early in his television career, he spent a great deal of time banging against the limits of the procedural genre and the man who invented it, Dick Wolf, who created "Law & Order." When Mr. Noth sought more money, Mr. Wolf invited him to leave.
"Let's face it, I had one foot out the door, and Dick turned out to be fundamentally correct," Mr. Noth said. "I was not trying to hide the fact that I was frustrated and restless. Restlessness is a part of my nature, and it has always come to haunt me personally and professionally."
Mr. Wolf did not hide that he and Mr. Noth had a complicated professional relationship, or that he was enjoying the renewal of that dialogue.
"Look, no one can play Det. Mike Logan better than Chris Noth," Mr. Wolf said in a telephone interview. "He has an attitude, a physical presence. He looks the way that most New York detectives look when they get up in the morning."
"I have had a longer-term relationship with Chris than I have had with almost anybody in the business," Mr. Wolf said. "Neither of us would admit it to each other, but there is a well of affection that is hard to account for."
There is far more clutter than when they last worked together; thanks to "Law & Order" and "CSI," a similar procedural franchise, the top 20 shows feature a glut of whodunit-and-how shows that invite and cue the viewer to solve the crime just ahead of the people on the screen.
"It is a very different climate than when we started," Mr. Noth said. " 'Law & Order' was pretty revolutionary. It felt like something that had never been done. Even New York City was a very different city back then, a far more dangerous place."
Getting Mr. Noth started on the subject of New York is an invitation for a tutorial on the dangers of civic sanitization, on the things that can be lost when a city is "improved."
"It has deteriorated into a very clean and shiny mall," he said, running his hand back and forth over his bristle of hair as he gets worked up. "We have to go out of Manhattan to get a texture of the city. I'm not just talking about graffiti and that we want to bring the crime back. From the meatpacking district to the East Village to below Houston Street, all those delicious and interesting and complex neighborhoods are just basically gone. It has been death by fashion and trend."
"Being a New York detective is a character," he added. "They are different than other detectives. There is a fraternity and a brotherhood and a way of doing police work in New York that's different than anywhere else, and you've got to tap into that also."
"Most of them are what we would call working-class guys," he said, "who deal in a very specific world and live in that world, 100 percent committed."
Patcat
