Archives for March 8, 2010

One of the sharpest parts of last night’s Oscars was a nice bit by Tina Fey and Robert Downey Jr. about writers versus actors. The transcript, courtesy of Salon:

Fey: Great movies begin with great writing.
Downey:What does an actor look for in a script? Specificity. Emotional honesty. Catharsis.
Fey: And what does a writer look for in an actor? Memorizing. Not paraphrasing. Fear of ad-libbing.
Downey: Actors want scripts with social relevance, warm weather locations, phone call scenes that can be shot separately from that insane actress that I hate, and long dense columns of uninterrupted monologue, turning the page, and for instance seeing the phrase, “Tony Stark, continued.”
Fey: And we writers dream of a future where actors are mostly computer-generated and their performances can be adjusted by us, on a laptop, alone.
Downey: It’s a collaboration, a collaboration between handsome, gifted people and sickly little mole people.

The two were presenting the award for best original screenplay, which went to Mark Boal for The Hurt Locker. Watch the exchange here.

I finished my stint of jury duty on Friday afternoon, took the next bus to Connecticut, and went into hiding with Mrs. T, whom I hadn’t seen for three whole weeks, our longest separation since we were married two and a half years ago. Except for reading a couple of books that I’m planning to review, I did no work of any kind–a near-unprecedented occurrence.
Today I’m returning to New York, where I’ll be speaking about Pops: A Life of Louis Armstrong at the Jazz Museum in Harlem tonight at seven p.m. (If you’re interested, go here for details.) Between now and Friday I’ll be seeing three plays and writing a piece or two, or maybe three.
Not surprisingly, I’m a bit careworn from the events of last week–it isn’t easy to sit on a jury while simultaneously holding down what amounts to a full-time job–so I’m planning to keep my blogging to a minimum for the next few days. OGIC and CAAF will take up the slack.
Till soonish.

“As long as something is unfinished, there’s always that little feeling of insecurity. And a feeling of insecurity is absolutely necessary unless you’re so rich that it doesn’t matter.”
Duke Ellington (quoted in Don George, Sweet Man)