Bob Balaban’s soft-spoken professionals make room for the louder people around them. We value his deadpan ensemble work, especially for Christopher Guest, though the familiar casting can make separate characters seem too much alike.
Fi1m perspective
Balaban often appears behind spectacles, speaking softly and looking as though he understands the matter in hand. There is comic value in that appearance of competence, especially when other actors are making more fuss. We rate his willingness to fit into a cast without competing for its biggest moment. The reservation is that the intelligent professional has become such a familiar assignment that we can start recognising the casting before considering the person he is playing.
The early screen parts include the young student in Midnight Cowboy (1969) and David Laughlin in Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977), the latter a breakthrough supporting role. By the mid-1990s he was becoming a regular in Christopher Guest’s mockumentary ensemble, which gave that unshowy manner a more particular comic use. Guest’s format suits an actor whose deadpan can help the comedy without drawing attention to the performance. Not everyone needs to signal that a joke is being made.
Best in Show (2000) gives us good reason to value this approach, with Balaban as Dr. Theodore W. Millbank, III in Guest’s dog-show comedy. We felt unexpectedly fond of its difficult people because Guest makes them funny without treating them with contempt. Fred Willard supplies the biggest laughs, and our enthusiasm for the film should not be mistaken for a claim that Balaban dominates it. His effectiveness in this kind of comedy lies in helping the ensemble work; he need not be the person we remember first. Some routines settle into repetition, a useful warning that even this well-matched company needs a firmer limit occasionally.
His later work includes Gosford Park (2001), where he played Morris Weissman and also served as a producer. Wes Anderson found another use for his quiet authority in Moonrise Kingdom (2012), their first collaboration, casting him as the Narrator. Narration is a sensible use of an actor so associated with intelligence, though it hardly challenges the habit of casting him as the person who knows things. Start with Best in Show, and pay some attention to the people who are not getting the biggest laughs.
Biography
Bob Balaban is an American actor, director, producer and author. Born on 16 August 1945 in Chicago, Illinois, he began his career in the theatre, originating the role of Linus in the 1967 Off-Broadway production of You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown and receiving Tony Award nominations for later Broadway roles.
He is known for his appearances in Christopher Guest's mockumentary comedies Waiting for Guffman (1996), Best in Show (2000), A Mighty Wind (2003) and For Your Consideration (2006). Other film roles include Midnight Cowboy (1969), Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977), Capote (2005) and several Wes Anderson films. He produced Gosford Park (2001), which was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Picture. Balaban has also directed feature films and television episodes, and written children's novels.
