Oh please, God, don't let David Schwimmer become the next male role model

By CHARLES TAYLOR | Illustration by Eric White David Schwimmer fumbles his morose way through "The Pallbearer" all the while exhibiting a type of posture that my mother has always referred to as "Here is my head; my ass will follow." Life weighs on him so heavily that his chin seems to be pulling the rest of his noggin toward the ground. Try to imagine an over-age bar mitzvah boy with a face like a pair of fallen arches and you have the almost constant look of dazed, wounded disbelief Schwimmer wears throughout the movie. Schwimmer has made a career by forging a new archetype: The putz as doormat. He's the guy who doesn't get the girl, but proves how decent and likable he is by getting either killed or shafted. On "L.A. Law,'' he didn't get Cecil Hoffman, but he did get stabbed by her stalker. On "NYPD Blue" (where he was genuinely touching), he didn't get Sherry Stringfield, but he did take a bullet trying to keep the building they lived in safe from muggers. As Ross Geller on "Friends,'' Schwimmer takes the Sensitive Guy sweepstakes. Forming a parenting threesome with his ex-wife and her female lover, even walking his former sweetie down the aisle at her lesbian wedding when her own father refuses, Ross is such an understanding sport that he makes Nixon driving Pat on dates with other boys look like a winner. Matt Reeves' would-be black comedy "The Pallbearer'' is predicated on the ultimate David Schwimmer joke. Anxious not to let anybody down, his Tom Thompson gets roped into delivering the eulogy for a high-school classmate he can't remember because he can't bring himself to tell the dead man's distraught mother (Barbara Hershey) that he's forgotten her son. He even extends his comforting into the woman's bedroom. Playing this mid-20s arrested adolescent who can't find a job, can't get a girl, and still lives with his mom, Schwimmer is trying to get at the not-so-nice side of his nice-guy persona. But he and Reeves don't want to make us too uncomfortable. They want us to see that Tom, who's appallingly self centered and passive-aggressive, is -- guess what?-- really a decent guy after all. He learns to stand on his own two feet and even gets the girl he's been in love with since high school (Gwyneth Paltrow, whose acting has yet to be as enchanting as the curve of her long, lovely neck). Watching Schwimmer's adenoidal performance here, it's easy to forget that he can be ingratiating on "Friends.'' He's at least distinguishable from the other two guys who, like the Carpenters, I can never tell apart. But his brand of appeal is a long way from the sex-symbol status he's attained. And when you try to figure out why Schwimmer (featured in a Hurrell-like head shot on Entertainment Weekly and a profile in the new Vogue) has become a sex symbol, all the reasons you come up with are bummers. American audiences are terrified of sex right now (partly due to AIDS, partly due to the family values nonsense emanating from the left as well as the right) and Schwimmer doesn't threaten anything more than prolonged cuddling. For men, Schwimmer's approach is roughly what Sandra Bullock's is for women. If you've bought into the claptrap notion that movie stars are supposed to make you feel good about yourself, you can watch Schwimmer or Bullock and think "Gee, he/she's awkward and schlumpy and confused . . . just like me!" For women, Schwimmer plays into the fantasy of having a guy whose niceness is defined by his willingness to be dumped on, who's so needy he'll be grateful for any attention, who won't so much as look at other women, or be sexually demanding, or do any of those gross guy things. If there's an anti-Schwimmer, it's Ben Stiller. In the wild and ragged "Flirting with Disaster'' (whose all-hell-is-breaking-loose style stands in stark contrast to the safety and niceness of most recent romantic farces), Stiller spikes the stereotype of the bumbling, amiable putz by letting us see the selfishness and woolly sexual energy beneath the surface. In one sequence, Stiller, whose eyebrows act like quotation marks straight from the id, asks his wife (Patricia Arquette) if she ever thinks that people weren't meant to spend their whole lives together. He's just come from a frantic, spontaneous necking session with the spectacular Tea Leoni, and tried to convince Arquette that the hard-on he's sporting is for her. When I saw the movie, the women in my row all made noises of indignation; they were too upset to laugh because Stiller wasn't the harmless schlemiel they had thought. What seems weird to me about all this is that, right now, there's a bumper crop of young male actors who are comfortable enough with their own masculinity to show insecurity, even sexual insecurity, and who are generous screen partners to their female costars. I'm thinking of actors like Robert Downey, Jr. (one of the most gifted farceurs ever to work in movies), John Cusack, Nicolas Cage (has any actor ever looked at the objects of his adoration more soulfully?), Leonardo DiCaprio. You have to be confident to hold the screen against Sharon Stone, as DiCaprio did in "The Quick and the Dead,'' or stand up as Cusack did in "The Grifters'' to the sexual predators played by Anjelica Huston and Annette Bening, without resorting to strutting. What comes through in performances like Ethan Hawke's in Richard Linklater's overlooked "Before Sunrise'' (not just the greatest romantic comedy of its generation, but one of the greatest romantic films ever), James LeGros's in "My New Gun,'' Christian Bale's in "Little Women,'' and Max Perlich's opposite Jennifer Jason Leigh (making her bid to be the Claire Trevor of the '90s) in "Georgia,'' is the absolute wonder these men feel for the women they're acting with. It's as if they're saying that what's good about being a guy is made better by a woman, and that women inspire us to get over what's not so good about being a guy. Neither boastful nor embarrassed, these actors get at the mixture of exultation, bewilderment, impetuousness, and pride both silly and justified that I imagine feels very close to the experience of many young men right now. But if David Schwimmer becomes the movies' new male prototype, we could all feel like Ben Stiller returning from that necking session, hunched over and guilty, apologizing for letting the blood go to our head.

Speak, Dog Boy! David Schwimmer meets the press.

Charles Taylor's essays on film, books and pop music
have appeared in the Boston Phoenix,
the Modern Review and Millennium Pop.