Where have all the bad guys gone?

So I am watching TV again in the upper reaches of the cable spectrum - the movie channels, one of my favorite stomping grounds - and another 80's movie comes on, "War Games", with Matthew Broderick and Dabney Coleman.  (What is it with this guy and 80's movie's anyway?  Last post was on "License to Drive".  Now it is "War Games". Doesn't he do anything else?  When is he going to tell me about quitting work??!).

I still like the movie and I found it entertaining, but what caught my attention was not the young Matthew Broderick, or Ally Sheedy, but Dabney Coleman's performance.  What an @ss he was.  I mean, he was a first class jerk.  He played up the role of jerk to a new level. Even when he had the chance to show empathy, he actively avoided it so he could be an even bigger bastard.  It was really quite amazing.

This wasn't the first time Dabney played the bad guy.  In fact, most of his roles are bad guys.  Every role I can think of that he played was a jerk;  in drama's like "On Golden Pond", comedies like "Nine to Five" and kids movies like "The Muppets take Manhattan" he always plays the smug, ego-centrical, @ss.  He plays this role very well.

Then it hit me - nobody in Hollywood is really good at playing bad guys anymore.  Occasionally actors may do it for a role or two, but then quickly change back to traditional, heroic leading men parts. Both Kevin Spacey and Gary Oldman had phases where they played nothing but bad guys (Oldman did a better job playing Lee Harvey Oswald than Oswald ever did).  But beyond that, very few A-list actors play the bad guy.  Tommy Lee Jones occasionally plays the bad guy, but his characters have to have deep seated motivation for him to be the jerk.  We have to know and understand his reasoning;  he does not live for evil.  Even comic bad guy characters don't exist anymore.  Who will fill the role of Harvey Korman and all his humorous, and incompetent evil characters?  

In today's PC world, you have to be very careful with who is the bad guy.  Nowadays, if you play the bad guy you have to be white and male; very few minorities are cast as the bad guy, for fear of stereotyping.  Preferably, bad guys are a Nazi, or Nazi sympathizer, or you have some other racial prejudice.  South African's were a popular target back in the late 1980's.  After stories of Nazi gold stolen from Jewish families, Swiss bankers became an unwitting target of Hollywood.  Beyond that, it is tough to find anyone who will be the jerk.  It is a shame, too.

I think it would be fun to be the bad guy.  A few years ago for Halloween, I dressed up as a bad-guy pro wrestler.  It was a blast!  I got to break away from my traditional role as a nice guy, and let my evil side out, for humor's sake mind you.  It was a release from the way we are supposed to act, and you got to do those things we all want to at some point in our lives, but as good citizens, we don't do.  

What could be better than being an actor and getting paid to do it.

Ahh, where have all the bad guys gone.

PS - For all you Celebrity Death Pool players, Dabney Coleman is alive and well.  He will turn 76 in January.  He is still acting in TV and movies.