Beatrice Strait won a Best Supporting Actress Oscar in 1976 for the movie Network . Her screen time? Just five minutes and 40 seconds. Is it really plausible for a person to completely develop an entire character in just 5 minutes? Furthermore, is it plausible to completely develop an entire theme of a movie in just 5 minutes? In the 1992 version of Of Mice and Men, Joe Morton, the actor who plays Crooks, has to do just that. While not a huge component of the novel of the same name, Crooks symbolizes the discriminated in John Steinbeck's microcosm of society. To boil down that entire symbol, the entire theme of what loneliness can do to a person, to just over five minutes of a two hour movie simply isn't good screen writing. What Morton did with those few lines is pure gold though. He combined the meanness George was supposed to have had, with the desperation of a man downtrodden, into a character Steinbeck himself would have been proud of. However, one thing that should have perhaps been included was Crooks asking George and Lennie if he could become a part of their ranch, that would further explore the power that dreams can hold on a person. The way Crooks was portrayed and written is arguably one of the best elements in the entire film, and certainly the best element transferred fro text to screen. Crooks' character is definitely as fantastic in the movie as he was under-looked by the ranch hands in the novel.
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