Gary Cole - an Underappreciated Actor

Originally, this essay was intended to be a piece on character actors, those workhorses of the silver screen large and small who show up in everything, but you can never quite put the name to the face. When contemplating this idea, however, one face kept popping up in my mind. Probably because I've been watching Crusade on DVD, but for whatever reason, Gary Cole kept cropping up, and I realized, "Here's an acting pro that needs his own article."

Movie fans have had plenty of chances to get familiar with Cole over his 20+ years in Hollywood. I started noticing him after his cult classic turn as Bill Lumbergh in Office Space, but he's been in plenty of other roles, ranging from an uptight Secret Service agent in Wolfgang Petersen's In The Line Of Fire to Ricky Bobby's daddy in Talladega Nights. But TV is where Cole has really made a home, from guest appearances to headlining interesting shows that rarely seem to last more than a season. I've compiled a list of the most interesting roles I've seen (or, in one or two cases, heard) Gary Cole play to the best of his considerable ability. In no particular order, they are:

Bill Lumbergh, Office Space: "So if you could just go ahead and pack up your stuff and move it down there, that would be terrific, OK?" Aiieeee! The perfect passive-aggressive middle management bastard, Bill Lumbergh the character is a triumph of comic timing. Cole, who tends to specialize in strong, take-no-prisoners men in his dramatic roles, pulls a subtle spoof in this role, and flat-out nails it. Office Space tanked at the box office, but has become one of the best-known and respected cult films of the last 20 years, and Cole is responsible for a lot of that. Everybody has worked for a boss like Lumbergh at least once ... and if you haven't, maybe you are a boss like Lumbergh.

Jack Killian, Midnight Caller: Probably not a show you'll see running ad infinitum on TV Land, but for its time, it was a pretty decent show. Cole played Jack Killian, a former cop (who left the force after the accidental shooting of his partner) turned late-night radio show host who tended to get involved in his callers' lives and troubles. At the time, it was interesting to me to see a protagonist who was a night owl, but it was the series' willingness to let the characters and stories branch out beyond the standard tropes of the time that makes it memorable. Cole was an integral part of that; his sensitive portrayal of the haunted man on the microphone was better than NBC probably deserved, but probably kept the show afloat. Caller was one of the few series Cole has been on that lasted longer than a season (or even the initial order of 13), and the only one I know of that he toplined.

Lieutenant Conrad Rose, Wanted: In 2005, TNT aired an interesting experiment. Wanted was the story of an interagency task force who had one job: to hunt down and apprehend the 100 most wanted fugitives in Los Angeles. Agents were taken from the DEA, LAPD, ATF, FBI and U.S. Marshal's office, and thrown together under the leadership of Cole's character Lt. Conrad Rose, a man who probably ate glass and crapped light bulbs. It was rough and edgy, similar in some respects to The Shield, but broader in its law enforcement scope and more sympathetic to its main characters. As "Connie" Rose, Cole had the unenviable task of being simultaneously the toughest alpha male in a pack of alpha dogs (one of the agents was a lady who wasn't any weaker than the guys) and sensitive enough to be a caring father and husband outside the job. Anybody else might have had trouble with those changes in tone, but Cole made it look easy. Like many of his projects, Wanted deserved a longer life than it got.

Mike Brady, the Brady Bunch films: Granted, the original show was dumber than a bag of hair, but back then, everybody watched it because ... well, we only had three channels, and the other two were worse. When I first heard Hollywood was making new Brady Bunch movies, I was sure Satan had finally come to Earth to kick-start the apocalypse, but somebody hit on the genius idea of keeping the Bradys exactly the same and allowing the rest of the world to progress. At least in the first film, these instincts were correct, and that film is trippy, gloriously weird fun, and nobody personifies that better than Cole, whose serious yet contented Mike Brady was the dependable center of the Bradyverse. Even while moviegoers were goggling at the Bradys' apparent obliviousness to the 1990s, Mike kept his family together with love, and the gravitational pull of his 'fro. Man looked like a big brunet Q-Tip, but Cole rocked the 'fro, and he did it straight-faced. Why the Academy slighted Cole that year, I'll never know.

Harvey Birdman, Harvey Birdman, Attorney at Law: Not only is the man an excellent dramatic actor with wizard comic timing, he also turns out to be a dedicated voice-over artist. Exhibit A: The eponymous character of Cartoon Network's deranged takeoff on both superhero cartoons and legal shows. With deft timing and a tone of permanent befuddlement, Cole makes Birdman into an endearing idiot who, despite his tanning cream addiction and ongoing abject humiliation with Gigi the wonder slut, is the most sympathetic (and possibly sanest) lawyer at the firm of Sebben & Sebben. Hilarity ensues every time.

Sheriff Lucas Buck, American Gothic: One of the few roles in Cole's background where he plays an outright bad guy, Sheriff Buck is the malevolent engine that made the whole series run. Controlling Trinity, South Carolina, with an iron fist and some extranormal abilities, Buck has no compunction about doing bad things to people to keep his son Caleb by his side. All Caleb's got going for him is the Buck blood and the ghost of his sister to help out. What made Buck so damn scary was that he'd take any approach to get what he wanted done, so you could never pin down exactly the nature of his abilities or his motives, and once in a while, he'd even do something good. Confounding, charming and sporting one of the blackest souls ever seen on network TV, Buck was a hell-raisin' badass, and Cole has never been scarier.

Dr. Possible, Kim Possible: Yes, yes, I know Kim Possible is a cartoon series on the Disney Channel; with two kids underfoot, I'm very familiar with the Disney lineup. That doesn't automatically mean it sucks, though. Kim Possible is, in fact, a smart, hilarious send-up of teen-focused shows and the spy genre as a whole. Cole gets to shift into Mike Brady mode a little bit as one of two Dr. Possibles; he plays Kim's rocket-scientist father, whose skill with aeronautics, engineering and physics are tempered with a little absent-minded watchfulness over his kids, globe-trotting super agent Kim and the genius tweebs, Jim and Tim. Superheroes, supervillains and the conventions of spy flicks all get a few well-deserved potshots, without dropping (too far) into cloying sweetness. Cole gets to be a supporting player on the show, but he invests every line with a unique style, part square-jawed 1950s scientist and part post-modern 2000s father.

Captain Matthew Gideon, Crusade: As a followup to the much-loved SF classic Babylon 5, Crusade died an early death, not even finishing out its initial run of 13 episodes. There are a number of reasons for its early demise (and fans of the show can give you chapter and verse on why), but Cole likely wasn't one of them. Captain Gideon was a little different than the other commanders seen in the B5 universe, in that he was used to commanding Explorer-class ships, which prized ingenuity, diplomacy and first-contact skills rather than tactical or strategic prowess. However, Gideon (seen in flashback episodes in infantry, or gropo, uniform) was a two-fisted hardass when necessary, just like every other commander in the B5 universe, and Cole made this strong but thoughtful leader fit right in. Gideon was a continuation of the other authority figures Cole had played to date, and he continued the trend with style.

Bonus mention: Cole's got a lot of other fine work on his resume, but I would be remiss if I didn't throw a shout-out to his portrayal of sportscaster Cotton McKnight in Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story. When you get Cole and Jason Bateman straightfacedly tossing out dialogue like, "Ladies and gentlemen, I have been to the Great Wall of China, I have seen the Pyramids of Egypt, I've even witnessed a grown man satisfy a camel. But never in all my years as a sportscaster have I witnessed something as improbable, as impossible, as what we've witnessed here today," well, that's just comic gold. Surreal, profane, disturbing and riotous; isn't that what we all want from the movies?