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| "Man, I don't drop character 'till I done the DVD commentary." |
At some point in the past 30 or 40 years, our acting tradition turned against the integrity of the words themselves. Forgetting that they are almost as carefully written as notes in opera, it pressed them into the service of production ideas – shouting them, mumbling them, slurring them in search of a more ''natural’’ style and a new interpretation. There have been some gains – the importing of greater physical energy (Mugging and scenery chewing. ed.), for example – but they have been outweighed by the losses.Translation, modern actors are a load of lazy, pretentious buggers who take easy shortcuts that involve everything except doing any actual acting.
Maybe that's because there's no mystery to acting. It doesn't involve any absurd rituals or arcane exercises. It is a craft that consists of, in the words of Noel Coward, "Just say the lines and don't bump into the furniture". After that, it's down to talent and experience.
I've heard it called "playing pretend on cue, using someone else's words". The fact that children (and Bob Saget)can do it is a clue as to how complicated it is.
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