I was a big Christopher Evan Welch fan I just didn’t know who Christopher Evan Welch was. I remember loving both moments when I first saw those movies, and now, watching them again, I feel a real loss. Equal parts hopeful, pessimistic, and deviant, Welch made the scene one of the most iconic and memorable of Kaufman’s career. Despite this, Welch’s ability to tackle the philosophically, narratively, and tonally complicated speech is nothing short of brilliant. As the story goes, writer-director Charlie Kaufman wrote the scene 24 or 48 hours before shooting and Welch was hired as a day player. Then there is the funeral monologue from Synecdoche, New York. It’s a somewhat clunky scene, in a fairly clunky movie, but Welch invests personhood in what easily could’ve been a flat or cliché character. was supposed to be the focus, but it’s impossible not to watch Welch, who subtly uses his face and body language to communicate his intentions. In it, Ed Begley Jr.’s very religious character is in a bar, drinking after his wife has left him, and he meets a gay man, played by Welch. After Vicky Cristina Barcelona, he was given a chance to be onscreen in Woody Allen’s 2009 film Whatever Works, albeit basically for one scene. Sometimes, however, Welch demanded to be noticed. I wish I had realized that about him sooner. His part was essential, like many small parts in big movies we so easily take for granted are. Watch Welch play a person who is forced not to react to the immensity of the moment. Welch is in the part you’re not supposed to pay attention to, so I embedded it below to allow you to pay attention. He flatly reads each name and the corresponding actor gets to do some capital-A acting, trying to capture some deep-seated feeling about this historic issue. The best example of this was in Lincoln, where Welch plays the Congressional clerk tasked with calling the roll, one congressman at a time, to record the vote on the Thirteenth Amendment. In movies, like last year’s Admission, where he played Brant, Tina Fey’s snotty co-worker in the Princeton admissions office, or in Woody Allen’s Vicky Cristina Barcelona, where he served as the well-enunciated, not too distracting narrator, Welch’s specificity helped fill out the universe as much as a bit character could. Welch played Mitch - he was not a Stanley. There was his breakout performance in director Ivo van Hoveʼs 1999 experimental version of A Streetcar Named Desire, for which he won an Obie. He was Reverend Samuel Parris to Laura Linney and Liam Neeson’s Elizabeth and John Proctor in a 2002 revival of The Crucible. Onstage, it led to a prolific career playing the Roderigos and Mercutios of the world. It had a mix of distinct and nondescript that made him an ideal character actor. Welch was a working actor who mixed solid theater work with small but more lucrative film and TV gigs. Welch maybe could’ve worked to get to that point, but at the time of his passing, he was far from well-known. Welch was not a “that guy,” a term affectionately used to describe actors, like the recently deceased James Rebhorn, whom you constantly and regularly see in small and often thankless roles on TV and in film but couldn’t name off the top of your head. I decided to spend the weekend watching as much of his work as I could, hoping to shine a light on a career I unintentionally overlooked. Silicon Valley would have been his breakout role, that’s how good he is in it. Maybe there were some people who knew that the actor had died, but I was not one of them. There it was: Christopher Evan Welch died on Monday, Decemat age 48, after a three-year battle with lung cancer. It started with, “So, the guy that plays Peter Gregory in Silicon Valley” and included a link to his IMDb page. That was until Friday, when I got a series of IMs from my editor. I was excited to talk to the actor who plays Gregory. And, having seen the next few episodes, I can attest that the show triples-down on his oddness. In a hilarious pilot full of standout characters, Peter Gregory was maybe the most dynamic, or at least the strangest. “We got to get the weirdo angel investor,” he said. We are rerunning it after last night’s Silicon Valley premiere, which paid tribute to Christopher Evan Welch’s character.Ī couple of weeks ago, I was talking with one of my editors here about potential interviews with cast members of the new HBO comedy Silicon Valley. NEW YORK, NY - DECEMBER 10: Actor Christopher Evan Welch attends the Sundance Institute Documentary Film Program Reading Of “Ad Inexploata” at 52nd Street Project - Five Angels Theater on Decemin New York City.
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