What "strange" habit do you have?

[Boris Godunov]

Originally posted by The Emperor Fabulous
Sir Laurence Olivier was often drunk on stage.

So were Burton, O'Toole, Kiley... there's a long tradition.

And they were still amazing.

He also came before the techniques that shaped modern American film acting like Meisner and Adler (Strassburg was a loon).

And yet Olivier's film performances were typically excellent.

No fair pointing to Inchon, though.

[Q Classic]

Originally posted by Boris Godunov
No fair pointing to Inchon, though.

Nobody should ever see that movie.

[Darius871]

Just about anytime I go to the health club, or out hiking, or to the beach club, or just about anywhere else, out of politeness I have the strange habit of letting random men suck my ****. It's really getting on my nerves. Soon enough I'll have to stick it so far up someone homo's butt that they learn not to mess with me again.

[The Emperor Fabulous]

Originally posted by Boris Godunov
And yet Olivier's film performances were typically excellent.

While that is true, you will note a shift in his acting as the years progress. His 19th C. British Shakespearean stage acting in "Hamlet" is very different from his more modern and realistic American acting in "Marathon Man".

For instance, doing Hamlet he says "O" at the beginning of a line like he's thinking, kind of an aside. A more modern take on using Shakespeare's prevalent "O" is to use it as a starting point vocally and emotionally to move through the rest of the line.

I'd sum it up like this: the older style was "showing", the more modern style was "being" or "doing". I don't think "showing" has as much of a place in today's world because people want more realism than theatricality.

[Boris Godunov]

I think that's more attributable to the vast difference between performing Shakespeare vs. other media. If you watch his late Shakespeare films (like the BBC King Lear), he hadn't changed much in style since the earlier Shakespeare entries. RSC-types simply aren't goint to approach a Shakespeare role like they would anything else.

What I was driving at is best summed up by this comparison:

There are good opera singers who have to put themselves through virtual torture to produce the art they want on stage. Constant vocal exercises and obsession over their technique to near-crazed point. This is often why divas are total *****es, by the way...they've driven themselves half-mad. Maria Callas is a perfect example--brilliant artist, but it was a huge effort for her, and she eventually destroyed her voice.

And then are others who just walk out, open their mouths and belt it out, and it's amazing. Pavarotti really was one of these kinds of singers. That's not to say he didn't put effort into it, but he really didn't have to put as much as others, because the dude just had it.

Olivier was more of a Pavarotti in this regard. The dude could just go out there and do it.

[Japher]

(nice threadjack...continue)