Despite its cinematic genius and our own attempts to broach the matter with its stars, no one has really spoken publicly about Tiptoes, a 2003 film in which Gary Oldman ("In the role of a lifetime") plays a dwarf and brother to Matthew McConaughey. But in an interview with Times Magazine, former Brooklynite Peter Dinklage, who inexplicably plays Gary Oldman's friend and not his character, is asked about the movie: “Oh, that movie. That was something.”
Dinklage tells Dan Kois:
“There was some flak,” Dinklage acknowledged. “ ‘Why would you put Gary Oldman on his knees? That’s almost like blackface.’ And I have my own opinions about political correctness, but I was just like: ‘It’s Gary Oldman. He can do whatever he wants, and I’m so happy to be here.’ ”
The actor goes on to call the 2.5 hour director's cut "gorgeous" (Riiiiight. 90 minutes was plenty for us.) but Kois asks him about the idea that Dinklage would have to play the dwarf, to be the "spokesman" for little people.
“It was sort of an amazing idea for a movie, but the result was what we were fighting against—the cutesiness of little people.” I asked if he ever hoped to be a spokesman for the rights of little people. He made an exasperated sound and held his hands out, palms up. “I don’t know what I would say. It would be arrogant to assume that I. . . .” He put his hands down on the table. “Everyone’s different. Every person my size has a different life, a different history. Different ways of dealing with it. Just because I’m seemingly O.K. with it, I can’t preach how to be O.K. with it. I don’t think I still am O.K. with it. There’s days when I’m not.”
Dinklage recently won a Golden Globe and an Emmy for his work on this budget cable-access show called Game of Thrones. The whole interview is excellent, with Dinklage describing how the walls of his apartment under the Williamsburg Bridge would shake as the trains passed over, and that his landlord left him a knife to deal with the rats crawling in his oven.
