Earlier this week I had a very six degrees of separation kind of night, flowing from one train of thought to another like a slow moving ADD victim. It all started with me searching through Hulu for a video clip (damned if I remember which one) when I stumbled across an episode of the Late Late Show where Craig Ferguson interviewed Stephen Fry. What was intriguing about this particular show was the lack of studio audience and a return to the interview format of its Tom Snyder days. (intro, pt 1, pt 2, pt 3, pt 4, outro)
What struck me most about this interview was the raw intelligence on display. Fry is known for his wit and savvy, but Ferguson brought out his A game as well. For Christ’s sake, tautology was used during the course of their conversation. When’s the last time you even heard that word on television? There were many choice nuggets like that which made the entire show a true joy to watch.
The one sad thing about the interview was noticing how much Ferguson has to dumb himself down to fit the comedic structure of late night television. It also made me miss watching the BBC which tends to have a lot of intelligent discourse in its programming. Mental stimulation isn’t always a requirement for my entertainment, but it is difficult to make it the standard and not the exception with the quality of today’s fare. I don’t know if Ferguson will attempt it again, but I found his experiment to be incredibly successful and entertaining.
Having tasted 40 minutes of Fry’s charm I was compelled to find more. I didn’t have A Bit of Fry and Laurie handy so I pulled out V for Vendetta instead. Even though his part is small, Fry’s performance is fantastic and in its final moments heart wrenching. Natalie Portman also has one of her better roles in this film. As talented as she is (Leon the Professional is still my favorite) she’s damned inconsistent, fluctuating between painfully wooden (Star Wars prequels) to blandly generic (Mr. Magorium’s Wonder Emporium). Perhaps she’s one of those actresses that only shines when the source material is especially good? There’s no denying that Alan Moore’s mad genius is some of the best material out there when it’s not being fucked with, like the painful to watch League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, a textbook case of Hollywood screwing the pooch.
As I continued to watch V for Vendetta I began dissecting Hugo Weaving’s performance. Here you have a character, V, whose face is never shown yet at any given moment the audience knows exactly how he’s feeling. He does this merely using the inflections in his speech and the movements of his body. I honestly don’t know of any actors—other than Doug Jones—who could pull off such a nuanced performance without relying heavily on facial expressions. As extensive as Weaving’s career is, I think that V for Vendetta is one of his best performances ever.
And this took me to my final pondering of the night, a consistently parroted bit of writing advice which is "show don’t tell" usually followed by "less is more". Having someone holler these phrases at you while you try to create something isn’t terribly helpful, but when you can experience solid examples of this in action, like Weaving as V, you begin to see the true power behind the ideas.
Related posts: (Auto Generated)
- Short Stories and Film The movie adaptation of a novel is an old standby...
- What happened to taking chances? During a lazy weekend conversation, my girl asked “Why don’t...
- When Good Writing Goes Bad: Sanctuary [If you haven’t seen seasons 1 & 2 of SANCTUARY,...
- Guilty Pleasures, Television I’m not much for television in general (at least according...
- Beyond the Sea (2004) The theme continues as I dive into crooner films. Listening...
