Phoning It In: Actor Tics and Mannerisms Through the Ages

[Blarg]

Let's see what you've seen! For aspiring film directors, let's see what you can catch in your actors. With your help, we can assemble a quick and dirty guideline that can brief actors on everything they need to get through a production after sleeping with you! (Producers take note.)

Acting can be hard, and actors can be imitative. Some even imitate themselves. What a relief to have a mannerism to fall back on, especially if nobody else seems to have discovered it yet. Unfortunately, even most actors aren't entirely stupid, and as-yet-unpopularized acting mannerisms tend to be seized upon with the relentless voracity of piranha packs trying to protect their tenuous paychecks en masse and exhibited right when your own movie comes out, displaying your own lack of originality, or, as it should properly be seen, your originality. Happily, there is such a flood of product and viewers are so numb that freebies like these are usually far from lethal.

But there is an ever-growing need for new lacks of orginality. Below is a starter set for the up-to-date mediocre talent, and his/her hack or teat-addled director, to be aware of.

ACTING MANNERISMS THAT HAVE BEEN PLAYED OUT FOR WELL OVER A DECADE:

1. The Expressive Sigh: When your mind can't really fathom the complexity of your part and you don't know what to do, try the double-pronged attack of a heavy sigh. This has the wonderful dual virtue of making your performance work no matter how people interpret the mannerism.

Example: You have thought out the depths of the ramifications of your situation: A heavy sigh conveys the burden of of the heavy doings going on in your mind.



or:

You have felt the depths of your emotional response to the situation. A heavy sigh conveys your depth of feeling.



The ingenuity of this mannerism is that, if you have just staggered out of your trailer and are not really sure what your character is thinking or feeling, you can make the SAME sigh and be covered. Now you are just flustered and unable to deal with your undoubtedly deep and full-bodied thoughts and/or feelings! Really, you can't lose. Now that's good acting!

ACTING MANNERISMS THAT HAVE BEEN PLAYED OUT FOR ONLY ABOUT A DECADE:

Example No. 1: After the heyday of the Heavy Sigh, many actors were completely at a loss as to how to keep their jobs and drug habits. Luckily, out of left field, an incredibly avant garde mannerism spranged up to knock Hollywood talent sensors flat! It was the A-A-A-A Stutter!

This gambit took the stunned vapidity of the Heavy Sigh to new frontiers! Upping the ante, in retrospect it seemed like a simple natural progression, but at the time it had the unexpected tangy freshness of a peach at the height of its perfume or an indifferent but frightened intern.

This was unprecedented. It was a kind of acting holy grail. Beyond Strasbergian disassociative submergence in the fictive, it needed no anchoring reality at all! Pre-verbal, even an infant could do it! Think of it! A-A-A-A (repeat as necessary) before ANY line could convey so many things -- doubt, reticence, the need to go potty. What viewer hasn't had that soul-stirring mental disconnection?

Unobtrusive yet glaring, nuanced yet flatulent, A-A-A-A staked a postmodern claim in the history of acting mannerisms that redefined stupidity for the future: No longer would such tripe as raised eyebrows, tilted heads, or the vague sighs of players who might be supposed intelligent do -- No! Now we have entered a world beyond intelligence, where mere abstract sounds could convey to numbskulls an uneasy, hard to manage depth of feeling and inability to adress matters at hand.



A brilliant exponent of the A-A-A-A response to situations requiring an actually comprehensible reaction, Ms. Gellar served as a role model and rallying point for actors completely out of their depth across two millenia. Modestly-breasted, Ms. Gellar made clear that middling acting choices could sustain an ingenue's career long past its initial pubertal brightness well into the depths of fantastically remunerative syndication and creative bankruptcy.

What wonders face we next? And what able exponents? The history of acting horsepoop dribbles back through the ages to fall upon illustrious foreheads. What clumps have we yet to discover, and how may they point the way to our composted future?

[Blarg]

BTW, misleading wording. Aspiring directors/producers was an afterthought. This was just meant as a way to tick off your catalogue of repeatable performance weirdnesses. Hope I didn't weird it from the start!

[pryor15]

[ QUOTE ]
a quick and dirty guideline that can brief actors on everything they need to get through a production after sleeping with you!

[/ QUOTE ]

this reminds me of one of my favorite indie film jokes

Rules for Directing an indie film:

1. Under no circumstances should you ever sleep with a member of your cast, no matter what. Never, never, never.

2. After you've slept with a member of your cast...

[pryor15]

there's the twitchy hand near the head that Brad Pitt does quite a bit (think 12 Monkeys)

[diebitter]

Some mannerisms that are due a revival I think:


1. The scowl

Eastwood was the king of this, most notably in his many Westerns, and probably set in stone in his premiere as a leading man in 'For a Fistful of Dollars' (ya didn't know that's it's proper title, did ya?), but also as the great Dirty Harry (well, great in 2 movies anyway).

Eastwood unfortunately so dominates the scowl card that it's hard to think of recent examples in American cinema (which is the point of this thread I guess) other than it being a mainstay of Russell Crowe, but I'm sure it's in Ed Norton's repertoire.


2. Moving eyebrows

I guess there are a number of older proponents of this, including Michael Keaton, Johnny Depp, Christian Slater, and going back further James Stewart. There is of course the master eyebrow mover Jack Nicholson, but I feel a bit more jiggling eyebrows might be in order for someone.

Honorable mention to Roger Moore who managed to boil down the cool of Bond into a single eyebrow lift (sometimes).


3. The whole performance is a whole set of mannerisms

Recently, this crown probably goes to Johnny Depp as Jack Sparrow, who grunts and growls out that Keith Richards' impression, while starggering around and mugging at the camera, and generally not just chewing the scenery but tearing large chunks out of it and swallowing it without chewing.

Lifetime award must go to William Shatner though, who elevating mannerisms (both in gesture, weird vocal patterns and volumes ("it's my.....SHIP...and-I'll-do-as-I-please"), and contorted facial expressions (once seen, 'KHHHHHHAAAAAAAAANNNNNNNNNNN' is hard to forget). Shatner made mannerisms an art form and Kirk is an indelible part of the cultural psyche (and I don't mean this ironically).





We need some up and comers trying some of these out.

[Sniper]

My own personal list of tics and mannerisms that I have overdone:

...

!

,

[img]/images/graemlins/wink.gif[/img]

[img]/images/graemlins/cool.gif[/img]

[diebitter]

3. Sucking a Lemon Face

Mainly for actresses. See Renee Zellwegger in Bridget Jones

[mrbaseball]

[ QUOTE ]
2. Moving eyebrows

[/ QUOTE ]

John Belushi! Jack Black is also good at this. They both use them comically but they use them well.

[fyodor]

[ QUOTE ]
Some mannerisms that are due a revival I think:


3. The whole performance is a whole set of mannerisms



[/ QUOTE ]

MIchael J. Pollard in such films as 'Bonnie and Clyde' and 'The Russians Are Coming the Russians Are Coming' was great at this. I loved to watch him.