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Confidential to Hank
No, I haven't seen Gervais in anything but "The Office." But I stand by my pick. The subtlety of that performance is obviously crafted, or preternatural, but not natural. I mean, Jesus, every flick of his beady eyes toward the camera is letter-perfect. The scene where he wants everyone to know he's on the cover of the trade paper? The way he pretends to throw the paper away in "disgust" of his fame, but actually carefully balances it on the edge of the wastepaper basket so it can be retreived later? Genius. The scene where he's trying to induce Dawn to name him as her role model in the workplace? Genius. I could go on, but the memory of it is too painfully real to relive.
Where is it written that a good comic actor needs range, and a variety of roles to prove it? Fuck range; give me timing any day. And Gervais has timing so precise and dense, it's like a David Foster Wallace novel (with footnotes, natch).
I can't name another comic actor who could pull off a mockumentary and make it seem real. Christopher Guest pushes things over the top for laughs; Gervais manages to do it simply by making a character so detailed it's possible that such a man exists somewhere. That's beyond anything I've seen.
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