No Small Parts: J. K. Simmons in “Break Point”

Though I’m hardly a tennis player, I’ve been wanting to see the much-applauded tennis movie, Challengers. The world in which it’s set reminds me of how many great movies of the past have included tennis in at last one key scene. Just think of the mesmerizing tennis tournament scene in Hitchcock’s classic Strangers on a Train. (The action is on the court, but the audience should be paying attention to a spectator sitting quietly in the stands.) Tennis shows up in movies as different as Annie Hall (Alvy and Annie first meet on a tennis court) and Gigi (Leslie Caron’s girlish character, who cavorts all over the court, stands in joyous contrast to the stiff demoiselles who can’t be bothered to move at all). In Pat and Mike, Katharine Hepburn’s character famously melts down while playing against real-life tennis celebrity Gussie Moran. The recent King Richard is, of course, all about the father who raised tennis stars Venus and Serena Williams.

The 2014 film Break Point (not to be confused with the 2015 surfing flick Point Break) is an amiable comedy in which tennis takes center stage. It’s written by and stars Jeremy Sisto as a slovenly tennis pro who’s forced to team up with his estranged brother, a wholesome substitute teacher, in order to win a berth in a major tournament. There’s lots of tennis action, but this is more of a human-interest story in which two siblings accept each other’s different choices and a lonely kid finds a substitute family. 

Part of why Break Point is worth watching is the presence of J.K. Simmons, who plays the gruff but loving father of the two tennis-playing brothers. He’s his sons’ biggest fan, always front-row center at their matches. To be honest, I’d never heard of Simmons until 2014. He started making movies back in 1994, and I’m sure I spotted his bald head and his low-register voice in big films like Juno, Up in the Air, and Burn After Reading. He’s pretty well disguised with hair and mustache as J. Jonah Jameson in several Spiderman flicks, which gives me an excuse not to have recognized him there. But in any case he didn’t come into focus for me until the year that Point Break was made. That’s became 2014 was also when Damien Chazelle released Whiplash, in which—playing the leader of a college jazz ensemble—Simmons demands perfection to the point where he’s downright maniacal. The role of Terence Fletcher was Simmon’s first big chance for a truly bravura performance, and he hardly wastes it. The role landed him major critical acclaim, and other more showy roles, like that of William Frawley (the original Fred Mertz) in Being the Ricardos. Still, a guy’s got to eat, and Simmons’ filmography is filled with roles in forgettable films like The Tomorrow War and Ride the Eagle It’s not unusual for him to release six films in a single year. And he also keeps busy using that wonderful basso voice of his in videogames and animated features. He also sings, and has appeared on Broadway as Benny Southstreet in Guys and Dolls

Like J.K. Simmons, there are hundreds of characters actors who’ve long been the backbone of the movie industry. Their names aren’t always familiar to us, but we know their faces and appreciate their reliable professionalism. I interviewed Robert Forster when Whiplash won Simmons an Oscar for Best Supporting Actor. Forster, an Oscar nominee himself for Jackie Brown, was thrilled for his colleague, a real pro who had truly paid his dues in the motion picture industry.  

 

The Many Faces of Robert Forster

Back in late December, when Christmas music was in the air, I breakfasted with Robert Forster at his favorite West Hollywood café. Oscar season was just heating up, and our chat turned to the possibility that  showbiz veteran J.K. Simmons might score a Best Supporting Actor nomination for his role in Whiplash. We agreed that any honor coming to Simmons at this point in his career would be a tribute to the years he’s spent paying his dues within the industry. Said Forster, emphatically, “This guy deserves that, and he will get it. I’d say it’s a foregone conclusion that he’s gonna get his turn.”  

Forster can easily put himself in Simmons’ shoes, because in 1998  he was nominated in the Best Supporting Actor category for Jackie Brown. The accolade from his peers, arriving “quite out of the blue,” filled him with “a feeling of warmth that was unexpected.” It had been a long time since his glory days as a handsome young rising star, and “I thought I was by then forgotten. . . . You know, to catch a little warmth near the end is a nice place to get it.” 

Though Forster freely admits he’s not going to be People Magazine’s next Sexiest Man Alive, he’s hardly finished with his acting career. He may be over seventy, but interesting character parts keep coming his way. There was a time, however, when he seemed to be scraping bottom.  Back in 1967, he had made his film debut under the direction of John Huston. For five years he played important dramatic roles in acclaimed Hollywood productions like The Stalking Moon and Medium Cool. He’s philosophical about his fall from grace: “There is a constant push of new people coming in who get the attention of an agent who goes to town and tries to promote them. There’s only so many jobs, and everybody is trying to find room for their clients in those few jobs.” Still, he had a family to support, and it was tough being relegated to the occasional TV episode and Roger Corman flick.

That’s why, after twenty-five years of struggling, he’s grateful to Quentin Tarantino for returning him to the limelight as good-hearted bail bondsman Max Cherry in Jackie Brown. (As he puts it, “I was dead, and this guy gave me life.”) He’s also grateful to Alexander Payne, who cast him in the small but meaty part of George Clooney’s father-in-law in The Descendants. Which, in turn, led to his memorable appearance in Breaking Bad. Not one to blow his own horn, he describes himself as “a very lucky guy.”

Certainly, his start as an actor was remarkably lucky. Accompanying a friend from acting class to see an agent, he ended up featured in a Broadway play. And suddenly John Huston was asking to meet with him for an important dramatic role in Reflections of a Golden Eye, starring Elizabeth Taylor and Marlon Brando. Forster admitted to Huston, “I never made a movie, I don’t know how they’re made, I don’t know what the tricks are, but if you hire me I’ll give you your money’s worth.” Next thing he knew, he was in Rome, riding naked on a big white horse.

(Forster does a capital imitation of the deep-voiced Huston explaining to him, just before the cameras rolled, the essence of screen acting. Suffice it to say: “He gave me the responsibility and the authority to deliver whatever is needed inside that frame.”)     

Is there a typical Robert Forster part?  “I always say, whatever comes next is a surprise. It’s always a surprise.”

  

Publicity Shot for "Medium Cool" (1969)