You would not be familiar with the leading man in the acclaimed indie comedy The Peanut Butter Falcon.
He is an actor more interesting than his big-name co-stars Shia LaBeouf of the Transformers blockbuster franchise (2009 to 2011), and Dakota Johnson of Fifty Shades Of Grey (2015).
Zack Gottsagen, 34, has Down syndrome. Writing-directing duo Tyler Nilson and Michael Schwartz discovered him six years ago at an acting camp for people with disabilities.
They were inspired by his talent to create a feature film showcase for him and spent a year scripting a story around his style, even when sceptical production companies offered them money to recast.
The Peanut Butter Falcon is the product of their persistence.
Gottsagen plays Zak, a 20-something with Down syndrome who escapes from his North Carolina nursing home to pursue his wrestling dream, and LaBeouf plays a small-time outlaw.
Their chance encounter turns into a buddy adventure, joined by Johnson as the nursing aide on Zak’s trail, as the three kindred spirits wind their way down the back roads of the American South. Gottsagen’s offbeat rhythm is its special charm.
The Peanut Butter Falcon is a watershed in mainstream commercial movies, the first to be headlined by an intellectually disadvantaged performer in an industry that has for too long rewarded regular actors for faking the part.
The 1968 weepie Charly had Cliff Robertson as a mentally handicapped janitor who undergoes an experimental medical procedure and emerges as a genius.
His Academy Award win set the trend for Dustin Hoffman as Rain Man (1988), an autistic savant preternaturally gifted at numbers – do not challenge him to blackjack – and Tom Hanks’ Forrest Gump (1994), a lovable simpleton bearing witness to the epochal events of 20th-century history.
So you argue: These guys can’t be doing a bad job if they have the shiny prizes. Should not the best actor, regardless of his condition, deserve the role?
Perhaps, except who’s to say the intellectually disabled cannot themselves be world-class performers?
People with disabilities, after all, have no disability when acting. They are playing who they are.
Their visibility impacts wider society too. It improves public perception of them through films that show them – without condescension or pity – to be complex individuals, each different from the other, yet a person like everyone else.
Read more here.
Source: The Straits Times, 28 January 2020