Tuesday, May 22, 2007

........................in talking about

..............acting in life, as well as acting onstage, I should have avoided any chance of voting  on Kirk Douglas taking place.

To be honest, when I start a blog entry I often have

no idea where I'm going with it.  Better, I figure, than writing about nothing....

 

But since you bring it up, I'll give an example of Kirk

Douglas the atrociously bad actor. His portrayal of

Vincent Van Gogh is a perfect example of failure to

play a character, and instead give vent to an hysterical sketch

of how Van Gogh is perceived as an ear-hacking madman,

instead of as a religious character trying to find God in Art.

99% of the time IMO Van Gogh was probably a quiet, gentle soul

much loved by many people.

 

Onscreen what we see is Kirk Douglas and another scenery

ripping, over-ambitious, over-the-top 'results' actor  competing

with him, Anthony Quinn. John Houseman should have known better than to let those two destroy the credibility of the characters'

relationship.

 

But again I really didn't want to talk about professional acting and

certainly not Hollywood acting, but instead acting as a human skill of great value in ordinary life.

 

Barry

 

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