Martin Scorsese comments on Brendan Fraser’s Killers Of The Flower Moon performance, coins incredible new phrase
Martin Scorsese said Brendan Fraser is "a wonderful actor" and "just great to work with."
Aux News Killers Of The Flower Moon
Step aside, Pete and Ariana: there’s a new phallic phrase-coiner in town. And he’s none other than legendary director Martin Scorsese. Honestly, is there anything the guy can’t do?
It’s 2023 and Pete Davidson is no longer the only person embodying the ideals of big dick energy, according to Scorsese. Well… more or less. In a recent press conference, the director took some time to praise Brendan Fraser’s controversial Killers Of The Flower Moon performance, which has divided audiences since the minute the film was released. In his approximately seven minutes of screen time, Fraser really bursts onto the scene as attorney W.S. Hamilton, in an appearance that can mostly be described as “a lot.” (It’s best enjoyed unaware, so if you haven’t seen it, we won’t spoil too much here. You’ll know it when you see it.)
For Scorsese, however, Fraser’s take on the character was “perfect.” “We thought he’d be great for the lawyer and I admired his work over the years,” he said (via Variety). “We had a really good time working together, particularly with Leo. Particularly in the scene where he says, [SPOILER ALERT FOR FRASER’S FUNNIEST LINE] ‘They’re putting a noose around your neck, he’s saving you dumb boy.’”
“Really for us, when we heard that… he brought the whole scene down on Leo. It was perfect,” he continued. “And he had that girth. He’s big in the frame at that time. He’s a wonderful actor and he was just great to work with.” Let’s read that again together, shall we? “He had that girth.”
Apart from the usual platitudes, it’s pretty clear that Scorsese is really trying to compliment the physical space Fraser takes up in the frame at the moment he’s introduced, which is either a fairly bizarre comment on the actor’s physical size or a self-congratulatory nod to his own camera-work. Either way, it’s a pretty wild thing to say, even in context. But does context really matter when you’ve invented a phrase like “he had that girth?” In the words of one enthusiastic Twitter/X user, those four words have “gotta join the collective lexicon, like years from now no one remembering its origin, it’s just something we say.” He had that girth! Scorsese should be our next poet laureate.
The director and master wordsmith isn’t the only one to come out in Fraser’s defense. Last week, Apple Original Films also weighed in with a sassy little post highlighting the original text that Fraser likely took his on-screen enthusiasm from. “Note the exclamation point,” they wrote. The The Whale actor’s performance may not net him any Oscars this time around, but one thing’s for sure: if there was an award ceremony for generating great memes, those seven minutes would win them all.
47 Comments
“Stop trying to make girth happen!”
I mean, at least it had a H in it.Stupid national anthem.
I’m glad that Fraser is doing better these days. He had a rough go of it after he was sexually assaulted.
So am I.I’m just sad that he had to take time out from his career to deal with it.
It’s all about that girth. That girth.He’s right, baby!
Can you find the girth in this picture?
it’s always funny when you can track one of these articles back to the original tweet.
Did Beavis and/or Butthead write this article?
No it was written by an AI simulating Beavis and/or Butthead
Ok.
How long can we drag this out? Either you liked the performance or you didn’t; either it ruined the movie for you or it didn’t. It’s just shallow Cinema Sins hot-take criticism (see also: holes, plot). “Aha, I found one flaw with your critically-revered movie! Now, I don’t have to think further about the merit of the work, because it is now objectively bad!”
This is the first I’ve heard of any divisive performance. I was still reeling from the unexpected Lithgow appearance at the time TBH.
This all distracts from the fact that the real most jarring appearance in the film is by Jack White of all people. What the heck was that?
A little jarring but not that unusual. He acts occasionally.
Oh, I didn’t realize that. I think it was especially surprising because he appears in a coda that itself is very unexpected.
He’s amazing as Elvis in Walk Hard. “It’s called Karate and only two kinda people know it. The Chinese and the King. Lookoutbaby!”
Yeah, but Cinema Sins at least frequently starts out their eviscerations by saying, “We really loved this movie/series/what-have-you, but our whole job is to go for the cheap laughs, so let’s get started!”
Amen, totally agree! IMO, if his seven minutes ruined the entire movie, how in the hell do those people get through ANY movie??
No-one introduce Inherit the Wind to these people!Seriously, acourt scene as it would play out in real life would usually be dull and tedious; movie court scenes are supposed to be a little over-the-top and melodramatic. They are trying to distill a lengthy process into a sort of all-killer, no-filler scene.And, as we’ve seen in many public schow trials like OJ Simpson and the Johnny Depp/Amber Heard debacle, the lawyers know they are playing for an audience and adjust their behavoir to suit.
that’s what she said
OH MY GOD!! He referenced the fact that Fraser had some pounds on him!! He’s a VISIONARY!!
Wait until you get a load of what Scorsese had to say about Superhero movies!It’s…genius, I tells ya! Genius!
“he had that girth”So someone used words according to their ordinary meaning and formed them into a sentence, and we consider that coining some wildly original and exciting phrase?
It’s like how in school we’d read in some 19th century text that somebody “ejaculated” a statement and we’d all burst into laughter.
I haven’t read them in a while but I remember that popping up* in a bunch of different Sherlock Holmes stories.*ha
Dr. Watson was “ejaculating” all the time.I nearly got my mouth washed out with soap for asking my parents what that meant….
Or that time Tom Sawer and his friends had an orgy
Or how people in Victorian novels speak of “making love” by which they meant simply chatting affectionately with their object of desire and not doing what we expect they mean.
In Victorian novels when they say someone is “naked” it means you can see someone’s ankles
Or how people in Victorian novels speak of “making love” by which they meant simply chatting affectionately with their object of desireI’ll never forget my boss at a summer job decades ago, who I teased about the “dirty” music he listened to, with all its references to “making love” (after he trashed the music I listened to as depraved). To this day, I use his reply when teaching young people about the evolution of language. [Imagine cranky old geezer voice] “Dumbass, there was a time when making love didn’t mean fuckin’!”
The Tom Sawyer and IT universes are merging….
A child with no taste and porn on the brain wrote the article.
Oh, look, some Twitter randos are trying to make A Thing. Let’s all talk about the new A Thing they made. Then, within the next 24-36 hours let’s talk about the next A Thing Twitter randos will so graciously bestow upon us.
“it’s a pretty wild thing to say, even in context”Genuinely surprising how these Scorsese articles can keep getting stupider
It’s really telling that of all the rich topics of discussion that could come from KotFM, a masterpiece by one of the world’s greatest living filmmakers, the main internet discourse is on pee breaks and whether Fraser’s 5 minute cameo is too broad.
One thing in the film that undermines both Fraser and Jesse Plemons’ performances is that they both have to call DiCaprio “boy” many times despite DiCaprio not being a boy. It’s doubly confusing because at the start of the movie they have, as has been noted, Leo playing like 20 but looking 50 and they didn’t even try the shitty de-aging. By the time we are at that point of the movie he isn’t playing a “boy” so it is confusing like “is he still 20 at this point”? Jesse Plemons is 13 years younger than DiCaprio. It just highlights how the script didn’t have any kind of handle on DiCaprio’s character and he changed scene to scene from a dummy to a charmer to a huckster to a child to a mastermind to a dumbass but mostly a dumbass
At least Brendan Fraser is six years older…?I know, that’s not enough distance to call him “boy” unless Leo’s playing a minority and Fraser a bigot, but I guess the original screenplay envisioned Ernest as being in his early Thirties at most, rather than pushing fifty.
I feel like DiCapro has played younger so long that people just look at him now and think “he looks young” even though he hasn’t in a decade+. He doesn’t look bad for his age and still has a bit of a baby face but he doesn’t look like a twenty or thirty year old anymore
apparently in the real story she was ten years older than him (a bigger issue at the time), so having him be more of a sexy cad with a gambling issue would then have worked…it also could have explained why he remained a “boy” and never had to take on any maturity (he was a kept man, maybe he partly resented it, that even could have worked with Molly in the movie because she was so much sharper than he was but they didn’t do it) but they just can’t seem to just freaking make true life stories true to life.
It’s a problem having to do with how real people don’t make for consistent characterization. The real Ernest probably loved his wife at one point, but probably loved money and the esteem of other white men more.
Interesting choice of words.For Scorsese lately, it’s the length of his films that seem to be giving diminishing returns, not the girth of his actor “heavies.”
No one’s ever accused me of having girth. Or Length.I’m oversharing.
Scorsese was probably talking about screen presence and performance impact. “He filled up the screen” is a pretty common way to describe an immersive performance that has nothing to do with the actor’s size.
AV- at this point just stop trying to write articles and stick to listicles. You’re embarrassing yourself. Your girth exceeds your depth. And neither is impressive.
Now that I’ve seen the film…I have no idea why there was any “controversy” or even heated discussion about Fraser’s performance.