Countdown to Adventure - 10

I don't understand an actor's role in the creative process of a movie or television series.

Let me clarify this statement.

Whenever I hear an actor talking about adding to the product, I feel it is slightly pretentious. I know that there is a craft to acting, but in television interviews it just comes off as... well, I think it's impossible to describe something like that, and when practitioners of a craft try to give voice to it they don't do it justice. They make it sound absolutely ridiculous. Hollywood actors aren't exactly intellectuals (some maybe) and modern faux-news entertainment programs don't exactly allow for convincing dialogue. Having to hock an often flimsy product to an assumed brain-dead audience isn't the ideal situation. But still...

I would love to read a book on the art of acting written by someone with a gift for the pen. I know these books exist, I've just never read or heard of them. That's where my bias lies -with the writers. I know everyone involved in the process give something to the project, but the idea is paramount in my mind. The person who pen to paper (or types on the screen) the words and ideas that create all the elements of the film... I don't know. It takes talent to translate the word into image, but the genesis of the idea.

This isn't a rant about celebrity. I think that most artists, specifically because they are artists and they choose to express themselves in particular media, are unable to full communicate the details of their work. The role of the critic and theorist isn't to dictate art but to analysis and help clarify art. They say what the artist is, in a way, unable to say because he/she hasn't been trained in that form of expression. Critics doesn't have the answers, they only have a way of discuss art that augments the general discourse.

And, plus, this is just funny.