Instead, he went for another comedy, a zany piece called Airheads. Here he
played Chazz, leader of hairy rock group The Lone Rangers, who, along with
band-mates Rex (Buscemi) and Pip (Adam Sandler), hold up the local radio station
with fake guns and force them to play their new single, Degenerated. No good can
come of it.Following this was The Scout, where Albert Brooks played a major league talent
spotter, fallen on hard times and scouring Mexico for new blood. Amazingly, he
discovers Steve Nebraska (Brendan), one of the best pitchers and batsmen he's
ever seen. Returning in triumph to the New York Yankees, he quickly discovers
that not only is Brendan massively immature, he may also be unstable, so he
hires therapist Dianne Wiest to dig deeper. It was an odd film, part comedy,
part psycho-drama and, though it widened Fraser's repertoire, it did
little for his career. Neither did his next role, a bit part as a
Vietnam vet in the sappy chick-flick Now And Then. The Scout, though,
did give Brendan the chance to throw the opening pitch at a Seattle
Mariners game. Sadly, it was a disaster. "It was miserable," he later
recalled, "I pitched the worst slider you've ever seen".Now, at last, came a major breakthrough. Having lost out to Dermot Mulroney
for a key role in Julia Roberts' mega-hit My Best Friend's Wedding, Brendan
did score the lead in the wacky kids' flick George Of The Jungle, based on
the Sixties cartoon series. Here he played an unconscionably clumsy Tarzan
figure, repeatedly crashing into trees, who's discovered by a socialite on
safari and taken back to San Francisco, only to return to save his ape
brother from poachers. Adults would probably find the whole thing overly
slapstick but, once more bringing his physical talents into play, Brendan
became a huge star for children everywhere, scoring a huge hit in the
process.
The parts kept coming. Next came Twenty
Bucks, an art-house piece that followed a $20 bill from its ATM birth to its
eventual demise, changing and sometimes wrecking lives as it passes from hand to
hand. Joining such mavericks as Christopher Lloyd, Steve Buscemi, William H.
Macy and Elizabeth Shue, Brendan played a bridegroom who receives the note from
his father-in-law as a wedding gift - a gift intended as a warning that money
doesn't come easily.After this came Younger And Younger, where serial
adulterer Donald Sutherland has to run the family storage business when his poor
wife snuffs it. Even when son Brendan returns to help out, Donald continues to
break down, his wife reappearing to him in his dreams, each time looking younger
and more lovely. Even stranger was Brendan's next project, an episode of Fallen
Angels directed by Steven Soderbergh. This saw Peter Coyote as a bar owner and
Brendan as a hit man, both of them falling for the same bar-man. This would be
followed by With Honours, where Brendan played a Harvard student who loses his
thesis. Unfortunately, it's discovered by dosser Joe Pesci, who'll only return
it page by page, in exchange for daily food and accommodation (Brendan,
naturally, learns to respect him anyway).What happened next could have been very different. Brendan was up for the part
of cheating blue-blood Charles Van Doren in Quiz Show, but turned down the
opportunity. For a start, he felt he'd done too many New England preppie roles
and needed to spread his wings. He was also deeply intimidated by the movie's
director, Robert Redford, having earlier tried out for Redford's A River Runs
Through It but been pipped by Brad Pitt.
