Bad actors

We got into a discussion of bad actors. Natalie Portman was bad, but people disagreed with me about the Scientologists, Tom Cruise, John Travolta and Will Smith. There was disagreement about Bette Davis who a couple of us thought was terrible.

I marveled that Brian Kieth, while starring in Family Affair on TV, got third billing after Marlon Brando and Elizabeth Taylor in John Huston's Reflections in a Golden Eye, a weird sex movie. Marlon Brando played a repressed homosexual Army officer who mumbled AND spoke in a phony Southern accent. He's an officer in love with an enlisted man who, it turns out, has been breaking into his house to gaze at his wife (Taylor) as she sleeps. (They had separate bedrooms.) I don't know if Taylor's character was supposed be drugged at night or what. You'd think SOMEONE involved in the production would bring up the possibility that she might have to get up to go to the bathroom at night.

Come to think of it, how did that dangerous weirdo know they had separate bedrooms? In the end (SPOILER ALERT) Marlon Brando shoots him as he comes into his house because he realized he likes Elizabeth Taylor more than him. If they had slept in the same room, he would have been killed the first time he tried it.

Kieth's character had an apparently gay Filipino house boy and his wife is in a mental hospital.

Tom Cruise and John Travolta both do that stupid thing where they act crazy and start yelling things like they're game show hosts. Tom Cruise did this is A Few Good Men and John Travolta did it in The Taking of Pelham 123. Will Smith in Independence Day walked around alone yelling funny things. I assumed this was some idiotic Scientology thing.

Go to the 1:20 mark to see what I'm talking about.

The actress among us thought that Scientologists were good actors because they were able to suspend their own disbelief. Being able to mindlessly believe any nonsense they tell you to say is the key to good acting.

And have you noticed how third rate movie stars often make great TV stars? There was Charlie Sheen, Raymond Burr, George Reeves. I've seen Carroll O'Connor and Ed Asner in early movie roles before they hit it big on TV.

I googled Bette Davis. She said herself she didn't believe in realistic acting. If you want realism, go outside, she reportedly said.

I didn't mention James Dean who never acted like any human being I've ever seen.

I pointed out in another conversation that he wore slacks and a sportcoat to high school in Rebel Without a Cause and was surprised that people defended this as a sign of teen rebellion.

"It was a different time."

He was a rebel because he didn't wear an ascot? I quipped wittily. Yes, I know I used that line on this blog a couple of times. I finally tried it in front of people and amused no one.