Courtney Grace, “Disclosure Day,” and the One-Scene Wonder

Spoilers for “Disclosure Day” immediately ahead.

After exiting the press screening of “Disclosure Day” a few weeks back, I powered up my phone and looked up Courtney Grace, who plays the NBC News anchor in a pivotal late-film scene. Over the course of just a few minutes, with the emotional weight of the entire story in the balance, Grace’s unnamed character serves as the messenger to much of the world as she witnesses and processes, in real time, the incredible footage proving that aliens have been among us for nearly 80 years.

At first, she’s in journalist mode, delivering the news. Then she apologizes for the disturbing images, wrestles with the profound implications of the footage, and finally, reassures the viewer: If you are watching this, you are not alone.

What brilliant work! One character, whom we didn’t even know existed while we followed the paths of the central figures played by Emily Blunt, Josh O’Connor, et al., is suddenly tasked with bringing the story to a close. The anchor doesn’t interact with anyone else. We see shots of her at the news desk, alternated with the no-longer-secret government footage of the aliens. Her reactions are raw and real.

Who is Courtney Grace? Is she a TV journalist playing a version of herself, ala Wolf Blitzer, Rachel Maddow, Lester Holt, and the literal King of almost too many appearances to count, the late Larry King? Or is she an actor portraying an anchor?

In a way, both. Grace spent seven years as a TV news reporter and anchor, primarily with WTSP in Tampa, FL,  before quitting her job three years ago to pursue an acting career. Since then, she has had small parts in series such as “Tulsa King,” “Sweet Magnolias,” and “Stranger Things”—but it’s her singularly powerful performance and the poise she displays while helping bring a Steven Spielberg film to an emotional conclusion.

I love a good “one-off’ scene, where an instantly indelible character who usually arrives with little narrative baggage is suddenly plunged into the narrative, often deep into the story, and shifts our attention away from the main players. Often, they’re the smartest person in the room. Frequently, they drop emotional and plot-point grenades.

The best of these performances shakes things up. They inject a visceral kineticism into the proceedings. They change the game.

(We’re not talking about gimmicky cameos, however entertaining they may be, e.g., Sean Connery showing up as King Richard in “Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves,” or George Clooney’s Bruce Wayne stepping out of the car in “The Flash.” A true one-off wonder is integral to the story, dominates the screen for a few golden moments, and leaves a deep footprint.)

Occasionally, the one-off performance will introduce a blazing talent with exciting potential. Think of Robert Duvall’s Boo Radley emerging from the shadows in “To Kill a Mockingbird.” For the entirety of the story, Boo Radley has been constructed as the boogeyman, a dangerous monster, but when Mary Badham’s Scout casts eyes on him, she sees a scared, gentle, and lonely man. That Duvall silently conveys so much with his eyes and his body language, and the hesitancy of his movement is all the more remarkable in retrospect, given what we’d come to know about his booming, commanding voice.

Then there’s Brad Pitt, whose resume included roles such as “Boy at the Beach,” “Waiter,” and “Party Guest” before he exploded onto the scene as the charismatic drifter and con man in “Thelma & Louise.” The shirtless Pitt bounced into the scene with an electric, movie-star presence.

Much more often, though, the great one-off performances come from established actors who come in with chops blazing. Arguably, the most cited example is the Oscar-winning performance by Beatrice Straight as Louise Schumacher in “Network” (1976). In just over 5 minutes of screen time, Straight burns down the house after William Holden’s Max Schumacher confesses to an affair, as Louise explodes with rage and pain. (Dame Judi Dench is often mentioned in the same breath as Straight due to Dench’s brief, Oscar-winning role as Queen Elizabeth I in “Shakespeare in Love,” and it’s a performance for the ages—but we see Dench a number of times in the film.)

Quentin Tarantino has teamed up with some legendary performers to deliver unforgettable one-off moments. His script for 1993’s “True Romance” (directed by Tony Scott) features Christopher Walken as the dapper and snake-blooded Vincenzo Coccotti, who goes toe-to-toe with Dennis Hopper in one of the most tense exchanges in movie history. Walken has another moment to shine in “Pulp Fiction” (1994), with Captain Koons telling young Butch Coolidge in excruciatingly exact detail about a certain family heirloom. 

Another one of my favorites, and one of the most-quoted one-off appearances: Alec Baldwin’s laser-focused and alternately hilarious and terrifying performance as the sociopathic corporate fixer in “Glengarry Glen Ross” (1992). The role and the scene didn’t even exist in David Mamet’s Pulitzer Prize-winning play, but Mamet crafted a near-perfect monologue for Baldwin, who killed with such lines as, “Put that coffee down! Coffee’s for closers only,” and, “Second prize is a set of steak knives. Third prize is you’re fired.”

In “The Fabelmans,” Spielberg’s latest release prior to “Disclosure Day,” David Lynch makes one of the most memorable one-scene appearances in recent memory as John Ford, who barks at aspiring young filmmaker Sammy Fabelman: “Now remember this! When the horizon’s at the bottom, it’s interesting. When the horizon’s at the top, it’s interesting. When the horizon is in the middle, it’s boring as shit. Now, good luck to you. And get the f— out of my office!”

Priceless.

For “Disclosure Day,” the casting of Courtney Grace is brilliant on a number of levels. If Spielberg had cast a famous actor, there’s the danger it would have taken us out of the moment and shifted focus from the intensity of the scene in favor of us chuckling and nodding in recognition. If he had gone with a name anchor—well, that would have been a lot of heavy lifting even for a Wolf Blitzer or a Rachel Maddow. Most of us didn’t know Grace before she appeared onscreen, but we instantly believed her in an anchor role that, on some level, she’d been prepping to do for the better part of a decade.

from Roger Ebert https://ift.tt/v2q1WYR