Dear Mr. Cumberbatch,
I think you’re great.
No, that’s wrong. Too safe, too mundane. You never hold back in your roles, and I shouldn’t hold back when writing to you.
I love you.
I love your style. I love your name, of course. I love that you’re not above expressing an undiluted opinion about certain pieces of dreck like, say, Downton Abbey. I love that beneath the calm British exterior, you’ve got some crazy energy happening. How many actors have that wild, manic undercurrent anymore? Jack Nicholson’s not in his 30s anymore, so maybe none?
And look, I know you can play interesting “normal” characters. You were fantastic as the plantation owner Tom Ford in 12 Years a Slave, and you nailed your supporting role as Peter in Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy. August: Osage County was kind of a clunker, but that wasn’t your fault. You’ve proved you can do just about anything.
That being said, you’ve got that thing we talked about; that rampant, unharnessed quality that makes you so unforgettable in Sherlock. You even tapped into it as the philosophical dragon Smaug in the latest Hobbit movie. And anyone who hasn’t watched clips of you portraying Vincent Van Gogh in the TV movie Painted With Words should hasten to do so now.
We’re living in an increasingly stifled world, and our performers (not to mention our dramas and comedies) reflect that. What you have is a valuable commodity, and for my money it simply can’t be wasted playing anything but the most restless, ardent, irrepressible characters the world has to offer. You’re the essence of the word ‘personality,’ and I have a few suggestions for you, along the writers and directors of the world, as to which roles you could translate into immediate genius.
1. Sebastian Dangerfield
J.P. Donleavy’s The Ginger Man is one of the funniest works of fiction ever written, a true picaresque featuring a main character so controversial that the book was immediately banned in Ireland and the U.S. Johnny Depp has been all over this film, meeting time and again with Donleavy in Ireland to get it started, but nothing’s come of it. This is ripe for the picking, Benedict. Nobody can play the carousing, amoral, drunken Dangerfield like you.
2. Dean Moriarty
Jack Kerouac’s On the Road is basically the bible of the Beat generation, and the best attempt to capture a freedom of spirit that even in 1950 was being suppressed by the conformity descending on America (and the world). And Dean Moriarty was the ultimate expression of that freedom impulse—someone Kerouac described as “tremendously excited with life” and the inspiration behind that roman candle quote everybody’s always posting on Facebook. Moriarty was a stand-in for beat eccentric Neal Cassady, and you would be the best at breathing life into a truly captivating literary figure.
3. Withnail
This is pretty simply. Withnail & I (1987) is one of the greatest dark comedies ever made, and though Richard E. Grant was truly wonderful as the philosophical drunkard and exuberant ne’er-do-well Withnail, I think you’d be the perfect man for the remake. It would also let you indulge whatever anxieties plagued you in the days before you became famous; Withnail is a struggling actor doomed to fail, and I have a feeling you could tap into your own buried insecurities to bring him to scintillating life.
4. Ignatius J. Reilly
They’d have to stuff you into a fat suit, but I like to think the repeated failures to make A Confederacy of Dunces into a film (John Belushi, Will Ferrell, John Goodman, John Candy, Chris Farley and Zach Galifianiakis are just of the few who have come close to taking on Ignatius) are fate’s hand intervening, stalling the process until you, Mr. Cumberbatch, can assume the role. JFK Toole’s Ignatius is a giant, ostentatious man who yells at movies, dismisses anyone of inferior intellect and generally waddles his way through New Orleans, offending and disgusting all who stand in his way. This role is your birthright.
5. Don Quixote
I’d love to see you challenging windmills to a duel. Really, though, this is the original literary vagabond, the traveling rogue operating by his own bizarre principals. It’s the seminal lunatic by which all others are judged, and for you, Benedict, the role is practically required. And while we’re here, let’s just get Martin Freeman on board as Sancho Panza. The dynamic with those two is basically the same as Sherlock and Watson, minus a bit of credibility.
6. Hunter S. Thompson
It’s probably become clear now that your main competition in the “wild & eccentric” actor category is Mr. Johnathan Depp. And I think Depp was pretty great in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. He has a natural advantage in the sense that he’s American, he’s less physically imposing, and he’s spent his entire career training in mumble technique with Keith Richards as a tutor. You, Benedict, are bigger, far more English, and tend to enunciate with some precision. So perhaps this is a stretch. Spiritually, though, I think you’re brothers with the late Mr. Thompson, and I know in my heart you could translate his unique breed of drug-fueled insanity into something glorious.
7. Tristram Shandy
I feel like I’m saddling you with a lot of American roles. And I know you’ve shown again and again that you’re up for the challenge, but let’s head back to the auld sod to give you a bit of relief. When I think of the physical embodiment of Shandy, of course, I picture Steve Coogan, but A Cock and Bull Story was one of those film-within-a-film deals that shied away from really tackling the story on its own. And it’s understandable, of course; the Tristram Shandy books by Laurence Sterne are filled with long streams-of-conscience and other digressive literary devices that aren’t immediately to conducive to film. But even if there were long moments where you marched back and forth in period costume, muttering in Shandy’s untethered dialect, I think the adaptation would be worthwhile.
Benedict, let me know what you think. I can be reached at all the usual avenues, and I’m more than willing to discuss any or all of these roles. I think you’re brilliant, but wasted on roles that don’t emit light at brightness levels that are almost harmful to human senses. You should be the roving, barmy king of cinema, and these roles will take you there.
Yours,
Shane
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Benedict Cumberbatch on his directing dreams, keeping the moral slate clean and why he "owes society"
Benedict Cumberbatch has revealed that his next career move might be towards the director’s chair.
Sherlock sensation Cumberbatch, whose re-imagining of the super sleuth detective attracted an audience of nearly 10 million on his recent return to TV screens, said it would be “incredible” to pitch up behind the camera.
In this week’s Big Issue cover interview, Cumberbatch has discussed his recent raft of big screen triumphs, his reluctance to be pigeonholed, and a desire to go behind the scenes in the production process.
“Behind the camera is where my future might be, I think,” he revealed. “I would love to oversee a project from conception to completion. I would love to go on that full journey.”
“That is so much more than the actor gets,” he added. “Things stay in development for years, let alone the production and then the post-production, which goes on for at least as long as the production.”
Does this desire to be involved with a project’s entire creative process extend to wanting to write screenplays?
“Writing? Oh God no. Well, maybe in the future some time, but not at the moment. I would prefer to direct than write.”
“I’m a bit of a do-gooder”
‘Go photograph Egypt and show the world something important.’
It was a simple message relating to the escalating violence gripping Egypt at the time, written plainly on A4 paper and held in the hands of Benedict Cumberbatch in the direction of fawning photographers as he filmed Sherlock last summer. He’s not been called the thinking man’s celebrity for nothing.
A few days later, Cumberbatch was it again – this time firing off a series of signs highlighting the detention of David Miranda, the partner of Guardian journalist Glenn Greenwald, and the destruction of computer equipment containing information that had been leaked from Edward Snowden.
‘Hard drives smashed, journalists detained at airports … Democracy?’ one modest sign read.
Several months on from his jibe at press agenda and the UK government, the Sherlock star told The Big Issue that he sees himself as “a bit of a do-gooder” that owes something to society.
“I know how lucky I am to be paid to be in a position to have a voice, do my work and also just the fact that I’m being paid to do something that is really good fun and do something that I really love doing,” Cumberbatch said.
“You owe society a little bit for that – your fans for giving you a good life, but also yourself, just to pay back. I feel very strongly about the little work I do when I have the time.
“I try to be principled – of course there is a part of me, a bit of a do-gooder, it is a thing of keeping the moral slate cleaner, but it is really enjoyable and I get a kickback from it.”
“It is not a sense of duty, it actually makes me feel good to do things for other people – where it can actually matter and make a difference to talk to people who wouldn’t normally have access to you or the kind of world you live in or the work you do.”
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