Doorways don't lie...

I am not the tallest in stature. I am, however, taller than the average American gal, who stands about 5 feet 3.7 inches. I can claim a towering 5 feet 4. No doubt Billy Bob Thornton and Mel Gibson are taller than me. Websites claim the southern-drawling former is 6 feet and the pious latter is 5 feet 9 inches, but I think that those might be exaggerations.

I was enjoying "The Bad News Bears" a few weeks ago. I've been a Billy Bob Thornton fan since "Hearts Afire." What was I doing watching a Markie Post and John Ritter sitcom in the early nineties? I didn't get paid much so going out was expensive and didn't have cable. Plus, there was this charming, chubby (yep, Billy Bob was a little on the hefty side once) Southern guy that I enjoyed seeing. I didn't watch the show religiously, just once in a while. Anyway...where was I? Oh yeah, height and Billy Bob.

If a person is well proportioned, it's hard to tell how tall they are on the movie screen. Producers make sure they cast men and women against people who will be appropriate for their size. (You don't have Uma Thurman as Ben Stiller's leading lady unless you are playing the relationship for laughs.) You shoot someone like rinky-dink Sylvester Stallone from the right angle to make him look non-Lilliputian and appropriate for Rambo roles. Hollywood knows well how to take a shorter actor and make him look like a lanky Vince Vaughnian type (just make sure you don't have to be in a scene with the actually-tall-in-real-life Vaughn).

But sometimes the filmmakers put an actor up against a force that none of us shorter folks can overcome.

A doorway.

Billy Bob looks long-limbed and sporty in "The Bad News Bears." He's, of course, cast mainly against pre-teens, but if you had to guess you would probably say the dude is long and lean. But then in one scene in the film he pauses for a moment in front of a regulation door and you know know he is just lean and not so long.

He-man Mel Gibson goes mano-a-mano with a doorway in "Signs" and looks far more diminutive than the 5 foot 9 claimed by his bio. We can all estimate someone's size in front of doorway. Tom Cruise must have a clause in his contracts that stipulates he not stand near one. Either that or maybe they construct special oompa-loompa sized ones just for him to lean in a tall, manly way.

So, who cares if these guys are short? Yes, there is some sniggering, sexist part of me that thinks it's funny when an action hero is actually the size of Reese Witherspoon. And most of you agree or Hollywood wouldn't be selling us the image of these guys as towers of strength. I also just find it fascinating to be reminded that the special effects in movies aren't always of the red-ball-of-fire variety. And how exhilarating the sheer size of an actor can be when you know they need no special effects of that sort.

John Wayne never looked so macho as when he stood on the threshold of a civilized home. That man could fill a doorway.

I actually noticed this, with Tom Cruise, in the great courtroom/military drama "A Few Good Men". The script flows like a stage-play (the screenplay was adapted by Aaron Sorkin from his live-theatre script), and Rob Reiner actually did a bit of stage-play-type direction... so there are a couple of "leave-through-the-door-then-pop-back-into-the-door-to-say-your-next-line" kind of scenes.

Anyway, Tom doesn't really stand up to the door so much. Actually, Demi Moore and Kevin Pollack do more for filling the doorway than he does.

I'm guessing that contract clause starting showing up around 1993.