Alternate Best Actor 1979: John Heard in Chilly Scenes of Winter

John Heard did not receive an Oscar nomination for portraying Charles Richardson in Chilly Scenes of Winter. 

Chilly Scenes of Winter is essentially an anti-70’s romantic comedy.

John Heard is probably one of the most recognizable actors to the general public where the general public, and even some of the more knowledgeable cinematic public doesn’t have a hint of an idea of his actual talent level. I will freely admit being one myself until I saw his utterly brilliant transformative turn in Cutter’s Way, which while I knew him more than Kevin’s dad in Home Alone, that performance showed an entirely different avenue Heard might’ve taken, but that’s not where the story ends. As we have his performance in this film, which unlike Cutter’s Way he looks exactly like John Heard as we know him as we follow a workaday guy in the 70’s as he deals with his family and the relationship with a married woman. The latter being an important note because the sort of “freewheeling” relationship was a trend within 70’s films whether it be Touch of Class, Same Time Next Year or Shampoo, where honestly the relationships were celebrated and the protagonists treated as “cool”. Well this film and Heard’s performance seem weaponized to eviscerate those notions and turn that subgenre on its head ...despite the marketing team behind the film later trying to re-release it as exactly the type of film it is subverting. 

Heard’s performance is a unique lead for any film because he’s a terrible person in such an uncommon way, which this is not a man with any pageantry to his behavior, he’s not any grandiose villain, he’s not someone where we see motivation of the man, alcoholism, drug addiction, even while his family is a little strange, hardly enough to create the horrible man that we find here. Heard’s Charles Richardson is a moderately successful man and a terrible person regardless of all else and notable in Heard’s performance is the fact that he manages to pull off a compelling performance by uncovering the nature of the man, without ever excusing the behaviors. Heard is fascinating in the specific guide he offers as his character who in many ways is commenting on his existence not unlike Woody Allen in his films. Yet what Heard does here isn’t about comic asides rather uncovering the nature of this man with an unnerving honesty of someone just telling you exactly who they are without exception. 

We follow Charles as he goes about spending time with his more than a little off-beat unemployed brother, his mentally unwell mother, his overly jovial step-father and his seemingly well to do sister. Heard’s performance is one of constant judgment with a callous dismissiveness frequently even in his narration that speaks to his sister having it together there is a degree of resentment. Heard reeks naturally of a lived in bitterness of the man within his family with almost a rejection of familial connection, despite technically interacting with his family a lot. Heard looks upon all of them as a burden to Charles on one level or another, there may be a smile but even the smile while not wholly forced is weighted with a lack of natural warmth within it. Heard presents it as another aspect of Charles where we see nothing to make the man likable, although again a curious effectiveness in Heard’s part in that he manages to be captivating despite being so horrendous and horrendous in such an average day to day manner. There’s nothing special about Charles, and within that Heard perhaps realizes within this normalcy a different type of creep, because he is a tangible one. 

The central element to the film is Charles’s relationship with a married woman Laura (Mary Beth Hurt), a relationship that even at its start there’s an unpleasantness even within the initial connection. As Heard's delivery of his flirtation is with what can be described I think as a privileged matter of fact entitlement to the notion of connecting with her even though she’s married. When she states her interest in him, Heard’s performance accentuates a certain immediacy to exploit the notion and no hesitation in terms of her obviously vulnerable state. As we see the relationship progress, Heard has a natural manner to himself but also a certain extra push about every little segment of the relationship. Heard creates this particularly unnerving obsession by the way he develops it so naturally in such a disturbing way. Heard’s performance is so incisive because of how subdued yet penetrating he is in his methods of creating Charles’s particular form of toxicity which grows throughout the film. 

Even in the initial stages Heard brings no innate joy, more of this twisted kind of enjoyment of his “steal” in a way, but even that particular joy is brief. From there Heard’s performance becomes increasingly paranoid, controlling and despicable. What is so remarkable about his work though is the ease he brings to it, that isn’t of psychopathy but rather of an unpleasant expectation in his mind. Heard’s eyes don’t share love, just concern and critique. Something that becomes more penetrating as we go on in the relationship where he becomes less and less accommodating to her having any kind of actual freedom within their relationship, even though their starting point was knowing she was married. Heard lets us see the spite building in his mind that is not of love but of obsession and control. As when he builds a fantasy in his mind of Laura cheating on her, explaining first with this playfulness, that Heard makes shaky to start but seemingly like he can find any levity in the situation. Heard so naturally swings though as this “fantasy” turns into a disturbing violent threat that is especially disturbing because Heard’s portrayal of it feels so honest in depicting a particular sort of controlling man. Heard commanding the putridness in a uniquely disturbing way, particularly as becomes more aggressive with her there is the calm determination that makes every word feel beyond threat, given the emotional desperation mixed in with this precise viciousness. Within this horrible man though in the off-beat nature of the film, Heard’s depiction even becomes within a classic romcom silly situation where he pretends with his brother to insert himself between Laura and her husband at the latter’s home. There’s no fun to be had however as we do get the playacting, Heard’s performance isn’t performing rather just another form of obsession as he stares down both members of the couple before stating his “love” less as a grand romantic gesture and more so emphatic need to set his “claim” to her in a point of despondency. Although much of that fails the film isn’t even exactly about him getting his comeuppance though he finds no happiness, which I suppose is a form of it though a twisted version of the expected protagonist. Such as even a theoretically comedic scene of him unloading his life on someone randomly, which is a brilliant scene for Heard but again not comic in the way you’d expect. Rather Heard even in the more comic sendup is this unleashing of every bit of insecurity as an onslaught of the man’s essential hatred of everything and its treatment of him as just another inconvenience. Notably a true seventies protagonist, where the lessons are not learned, although comical realization of the difference in the values of the decades as the 80’s re-release attempting to put a square socket in a round hole, in trying to make the film more so a traditional romcom with a lesson. But it’s not that, it is rather an uncompromising portrait of a casually horrible person, realized in a masterclass by Heard, because he doesn’t soften an edge, nor do he heightened an element, he rather just shows you this man’s heart in vivid detail, a rotten one at that.