Tony Shalhoub. What do you need, a roadmap?

In the brilliant Coen Bros. film Barton Fink, Barton (John Turturro) asks producer Ben Geisler (Tony Shalhoub) for advice on getting started on the script he's been hired to write. Geisler takes a beat, then says, "Wallace Beery. Wrestling picture. What do you need, a roadmap?"

With apologies to the Coens, I'd paraphrase it to "Tony Shalhoub. Great in everything. What do you need, a roadmap?"

I've been a fan of Shalhoub from the first time I saw him as cab driver Antonio Scarpacci on the sitcom Wings. Like some of the actors I enjoy and admire most—Gene Hackman, Will Patton, J.K. Simmons, Richard Jenkins, Chris Cooper, Tracy Letts, the late great J.T. Walsh and the late great Jon Polito to name a few—Shalhoub is just money in the bank. Regardless of the quality of the material, Shalhoub elevates it.

From Galaxy Quest to The Man Who Wasn't There. Spy Kids to Monk. Men In Black to Nurse Jackie. Big Night to Primary Colors. The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel to Luigi in Cars, he's simply scene-stealing in every project he's in.

What's so impressive is his range of characters, and level of commitment to them. Nuanced, organic, complete, they're at once interesting, compelling and intelligent—even on rare occasions when they're not written that way.

I suppose with a Masters in Fine Arts from Yale, his intelligence has always been on display. Look at the brain on Tony.

Shalhoub also proved he doesn't need words written by a screenwriter to be funny. He had one of the funniest real-life lines ever when he won one of his Emmys for playing Monk, a detective with an obsessive-compulsive disorder.

"To my fellow nominees, whoever they are - I'm not that familiar with their work - I just want to say, there's always next year - except, you know, for Ray Romano."

As the flashy, expensive litigator Reidenschneider in The Man Who Wasn't There, during the trial of Ed Crane (Billy Bob Thornton), Shalhoub is talking to the jury. At one point he says, "He is your reflection."

The same might be said of Tony Shalhoub.

My hat's off

I suppose it'd be easy to think this is another post about Breaking Bad, what with the picture of Walter White, er, Heisenberg. That and the fact I'm the one writing it.

But it's not. It's actually about the hat.

On one of my Breaking Bad binges, I've lost count (9), I started falling in love with his Pork pie hat and wondering how it'd look on me. It was a rhetorical question, because the truth of the matter is no hat looks good on me.

For starters, there's the problem of finding hats that even fit me given the rather large noggin I use as a carrying case for my oversized brain.

Then there's the douche factor: I think 99.9% of guys in Pork pie hats—unless they're Justin Timberlake, Bryan Cranston, Buster Keaton or Gene Hackman in The French Connection—look like they go to eleven on the Douche-O-Meter.

My infatuation with the hat I'll never wear comes from my desire to have a style to call my own. Any style, I'm not particular. But I don't have one, and whichever one I eventually land on may not require a hat. Also, the "style to call my own" part wouldn't really apply since so many hats are being worn by guys in their own little fantasy world, where the Douche-O-Meter doesn't exist.

I think baseball caps are an exception. For starters, one size fits all. Even me. And it's considered, you know, a baseball cap—not a fashion statement (usually). Almost anyone can pull off wearing a baseball cap.

The point of all this is I've come to the realization, begrudgingly, that I'm going to have to put the Pork pie hat on my long list of things I wish I could do, but know I can't.

Of course I might have to binge Breaking Bad a tenth time to make sure.

Hoskins in Hollywoodland

A great, great actor died yesterday. Bob Hoskins was 71, and he leaves us one remarkable performance after another. It's hard to know where to start - Roger Rabbit, The Long Good Friday, Brazil, Nixon - when you talk about his films.

To me, like Phillip Seymour Hoffman, Hoskins was similar to Gene Hackman in the sense that he was brilliant no matter how good or bad the film. His was the performance you looked forward to.

One that sadly not a lot of people saw was in a small film called Hollywoodland (originally called Truth, Justice and the American Way). It was about the suicide and alleged murder of George Reeves (Ben Affleck) who played Superman on the television series. Hoskins played Eddie Mannix, a studio executive whose wife (Diane Lane) had a years-long affair with Reeves. It is by turns a frightening, tender, poignant and powerful performance.

And never anything less than riveting.

I'm really going to miss Bob Hoskins. I wish there were some way I could thank him for the honor of watching him work, and the joy he's brought me over the years.

Maybe the best way is to keep watching his movies and enjoying them.