“I don’t like it”: The Oscar-winning movie Noah Wyle hated at first sight
Noah Wyle has had the comeback of a lifetime thanks to his Emmy-winning role on The Pitt, but that doesn’t mean he’s grown any more interested in what wins Academy Awards.
He has lately had quite the trajectory as his return to television with The Pitt has been fascinating to track, being one of the many young actors who got their breakout roles on the legendary medical drama ER, which also birthed George Clooney’s career.
While Clooney was able to transition to being a movie star, director, screenwriter, and Academy Award winner for his role in Syrianna, Wyle was stuck on ER for much longer, and later took on other television roles.
Making the leap between television and film was much harder in the late 1990s and early 21st century than it is today, and while today no one would blink to see A-list stars like Nicole Kidman, Matthew McConaughey, and Woody Harrelson on prestige TV shows, there used to be a very strict divide between the two mediums, so despite the amount of acclaim that Wyle earned for his role, it always felt like he was in the shadow of others’ successes.
Perhaps it was frustration on his part that caused him to lash out at La La Land, a film that seemed to embody everything that people loved about classic cinema, where, while promoting his film At the Gates, he admitted to feeling left out when it came to the hype surrounding Damien Chazelle’s Oscar-winning musical masterpiece.
“I remember seeing La La Land and thinking, ‘I don’t like it very much’,” Wyle said, “Then I found out what it was made for, and I had to grade it on a whole other criterion because if it had been made for a 100 million dollars, it’s not a great Hollywood musical, but knowing what it was made for, it’s an incredibly impressive piece of work.”
Wyle’s comments about La La Land may have been part of the constructed narrative mounted by strategic awards campaigners that led to one of the biggest upsets in Oscar history. It had been dominant on the award season trail since the beginning of the fall festivals in 2016, and seemed to win every critical and industry prize it was in contention for, but as is the case with any film that is treated with so much acclaim, a vocal minority is bound to pop up and proclaim that it’s overrated.
La La Land may have had some notable fans, such as Christopher Nolan, but seeing it win over and over did cause some to change their tune. In some instances, like the one with Wyle, people had listened to so much hype that they could only be disappointed, and in other cases, the recent election of President Donald Trump in the United States caused some to claim that it represented white culture, leading them to back a more diverse ‘Best Picture’ contender in Moonlight.
The most interesting aspect of Wyle’s comments is that he was assessing the budget, which is something that is critical for anyone working behind the scenes of a production, and the actor would subsequently show his brilliance as a producer, writer, and director when he fulfilled all three roles on The Pitt, ensuring that his major comeback was both in front of and behind the camera.
