You know what I hate? Well, that's a lot to ask, really. Lemme rephrase that question. Do you know what item #17846 is on my hate inventory? It's semi-realism in movies. I don't object to realism. I'm not a huge fan of it, of course...after all, my favorite movies are zombie movies.
Realism, however, is okay. But incomplete, half-assed attempts at realism in the movies aggravate me. I hate it when, say, two ostensibly German characters are speaking to each other, and they speak English with a German accent. I'm gonna let you in on a little secret: Germany is really not full of Germans speaking English to each other in German accents. It's full of people speaking German to each other. That's why they call it that.
If you want realism in your movie, let your characters speak German with little English subtitles. And if realism isn't that important to you, just let 'em talk normally. You're not fooling us with these crappy accents, okay? We know they aren't really German, they are American actors pretending to be German, and that's okay.
Movie watching is about the willing suspension of disbelief. Forget the stupid accents. Just tell us they're German. We'll believe you. That's what we came to the movie for.
I'm gonna make a movie someday, and I'm gonna cast my friends in it, but I'm not gonna write particular parts for particular folks to suit their particular character traits or appearance. In fact, I'm gonna cast the movie by putting the names of my actors in a hat and drawing them at random. If we do that, then hopefully Mrs. P will be the 6'11" professional basketball player from Zambia. Stephen will be the beautiful woman that everybody's falling over themselves to get close to. Amy will be the fat girl with the great sense of humor that everybody loves and nobody wants to sleep with. My brother will be a six-legged Martian goatherd.
All of this without makeup; my brother, for example, will not have six legs, and Mrs. P won't have to stand on a ladder for the whole movie. I'll convince people of who my characters are through the use of clever dialog, stellar performances from my cast, and just repeating the big lies over and over. After twenty or twenty-five people make fun of my sweet little Amy for being fat, or walk up to Heather and say "How's the weather up there?" I think people will start to get with the suspension-of-disbelief program. It worked for the ancient Greeks; I'm gonna make it work for me.
On a not-entirely-related note: on payday, I have decided, I am going to Latta's and buying myself a new set of pastels. I miss doing my colorful little sketches. And what I'm gonna do is, I'm gonna start doing pictures on every surface I can find, and I'm going to sketch the pictures of what you really see when you're wherever the picture is. For example, I'm going to sit at one of the big concrete tables outside the library and do a picture (on the table) of what you'd see if you were looking up, out over the campus, instead of down at the table. I'm gonna lacquer it when I'm done, too, so it will last forever (and not ruin people's clothes). And my picture is gonna look exactly like the campus on an early-summer afternoon, only better, 'cause it'll be brighter and more colorful and the folks in it will be more beautiful, and people will sit at the table and compare my lovely picture to the actual campus and think, "Jeez, I wish the real world was like that."
Realism, however, is okay. But incomplete, half-assed attempts at realism in the movies aggravate me. I hate it when, say, two ostensibly German characters are speaking to each other, and they speak English with a German accent. I'm gonna let you in on a little secret: Germany is really not full of Germans speaking English to each other in German accents. It's full of people speaking German to each other. That's why they call it that.
If you want realism in your movie, let your characters speak German with little English subtitles. And if realism isn't that important to you, just let 'em talk normally. You're not fooling us with these crappy accents, okay? We know they aren't really German, they are American actors pretending to be German, and that's okay.
Movie watching is about the willing suspension of disbelief. Forget the stupid accents. Just tell us they're German. We'll believe you. That's what we came to the movie for.
I'm gonna make a movie someday, and I'm gonna cast my friends in it, but I'm not gonna write particular parts for particular folks to suit their particular character traits or appearance. In fact, I'm gonna cast the movie by putting the names of my actors in a hat and drawing them at random. If we do that, then hopefully Mrs. P will be the 6'11" professional basketball player from Zambia. Stephen will be the beautiful woman that everybody's falling over themselves to get close to. Amy will be the fat girl with the great sense of humor that everybody loves and nobody wants to sleep with. My brother will be a six-legged Martian goatherd.
All of this without makeup; my brother, for example, will not have six legs, and Mrs. P won't have to stand on a ladder for the whole movie. I'll convince people of who my characters are through the use of clever dialog, stellar performances from my cast, and just repeating the big lies over and over. After twenty or twenty-five people make fun of my sweet little Amy for being fat, or walk up to Heather and say "How's the weather up there?" I think people will start to get with the suspension-of-disbelief program. It worked for the ancient Greeks; I'm gonna make it work for me.
On a not-entirely-related note: on payday, I have decided, I am going to Latta's and buying myself a new set of pastels. I miss doing my colorful little sketches. And what I'm gonna do is, I'm gonna start doing pictures on every surface I can find, and I'm going to sketch the pictures of what you really see when you're wherever the picture is. For example, I'm going to sit at one of the big concrete tables outside the library and do a picture (on the table) of what you'd see if you were looking up, out over the campus, instead of down at the table. I'm gonna lacquer it when I'm done, too, so it will last forever (and not ruin people's clothes). And my picture is gonna look exactly like the campus on an early-summer afternoon, only better, 'cause it'll be brighter and more colorful and the folks in it will be more beautiful, and people will sit at the table and compare my lovely picture to the actual campus and think, "Jeez, I wish the real world was like that."
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