Lifetime Pass: Harriet Sansom Harris

There are actors who always give a great performance, even if it's in the midst of a terrible show/movie. Helen Mirren springs to mind. There are actors that have genuine talent, but seem to lack the ability or power to pick quality scripts, and seem to be doomed to languish in whatever horrible show/movie they're trapped in. Amanda Seyfried would be a good example of that. But what do you call an actor who always manages to not only be a standout in whatever show/movie she happens to be in at the time, but actively makes the entire enterprise better? You call her Harriet Sansom Harris.

Six Feet Under. The Lost Room. Memento. Frasier. All of these were acclaimed or popular to some degree, and yet all of them got even better when Harriet Sansom Harris appeared on screen. Even Desperate Housewives, which could get patently ridiculous at times, benefited from her stopping by to add her own special brand of crazy.

There are some actors who excel at comedy, and some at drama, but I'm hard-pressed to think of many that are experts at both. And yet Harris handles it effortlessly. She makes dramas more dramatic. She makes comedies funnier. She makes thrillers more thrilling. And let's not forget that she's not limited to screens. She's also a Tony-award-winning stage actress, and oh, how I wish I could see her in a play.

In looking at her IMDb page, it seems she hasn't done much lately, and that is simply unacceptable. Casting agents, get on top of this. I would watch Harriet Sansom Harris play sentient dental plaque. You're telling me she can't do a guest spot on Mad Men or something?

Lifetime Pass: Bryan Fuller

Shall I compare Bryan Fuller to a summer's day? I don't think I will. Because summer is going to come out looking like a real chump. As with directors, writer/producer types don't usually stand out to me, and if they do, it's only to find them gloriously overrated. That would be J.J. Abrams' ears burning right about now.

There is only one writer/producer who has ever managed to capture my attention for good reasons, which would be notable even if he'd created a single show that entranced me. Bryan Fuller has not created that single show that bowled me over; he's created three.

He got his start after submitting a script to one of the newer Star Trek iterations, but what really caught my attention was a show that has firmly ensconced itself into my top five series of all time: Dead Like Me. By turns tragic, hilarious, and deeply thoughtful, it was an incredible show chronicling the afterlife of a young girl who dies and becomes a grim reaper, tasked with collecting souls of the dearly about-to-be-departed. It also kicked off the hallmark of a Bryan Fuller production - it was appallingly underrated and unceremoniously yanked off the air. If that had been the end, I would have been disappointed, but glad that I'd gotten one great show out of the deal.

But no! Next came Wonderfalls, a charming show about a slacker who works at a Niagara Falls gift shop, and when the tchotchkes begin to talk to her, she has to decide whether or not to listen to the ambiguous tasks they keep assigning her. I liked it, but it was the next show that really blew me away. Pushing Daisies was exactly suited to my tastes. It was funny, morbid, colorful, and a thousand other things besides, and I was totally in love with it.

Just like Wonderfalls and Dead Like Me before it, Pushing Daisies didn't last long enough. Bryan Fuller then went on to work on the first season of Heroes (aka the good one). At this point, his Hall of Fame status with me is sealed - it just seems like whatever he does, I'm sure to adore it.

He currently has two typically-strange projects in the making: A updated version of The Munsters and a show about Hannibal Lecter before he put all those nice ladies down the well. The topics don't even matter. From this point on, any show that Bryan Fuller puts on the air is one I'll be watching.

Lifetime Pass: Christopher Nolan

Most everyone is familiar with the concept of the Lifetime Pass: An artist of some stripe -- be they actor, musician, director, or what have you -- puts out work so remarkable that they engender a seemingly inexhaustable supply of goodwill in your heart. Sometimes, it's that a movie, song, or whatever it is becomes your unwavering favorite, and though the artist may not go on to do much else of note (or even slides into actively terrible territory), you will always think of them fondly.

There's another type of Lifetime Pass, though, and that's when an artist has a string of reliably enjoyable work, to the point that his or her name attached to a project means that you're immediately on board, even if you have no idea what it entails.

I tend not to think in terms of directors. I can sort actors into "I like" and "I dislike" piles all day long, but I rarely bother with directors, because for the most part, they're not as easily pigeonholed. I can predict whether I'm going to like a particular actor in a movie, but a director can go either way; making a good or bad movie doesn't really portend how I'll feel about his or her next one.

Christopher Nolan is a notable exception. He's directed seven movies (the upcoming Batman release is his eighth), and there isn't a single stinker in the bunch. He has literally never made a movie I've disliked. Memento. Inception. The Dark Knight. The Prestige. I came away from all of these not only loving the movie, but knowing that when I inevitably watched them again, I'd discover more layers beneath the one I saw on first viewing. I think I've seen Memento a dozen times, and spot something new each time. His movies please the art-house crowd, yet still make gobs of money from the general public.

At this point, he could announce his next film is a fourteen-hour documentary on paint drying, and I'd be first in line. As far as I'm concerned, regardless of his future projects, Christopher Nolan gets to coast on his current reputation for the next sixty years.