Realizations and Belated Understandings
An aside: why can I do screen captures on fuzzy Netflix and Hulu movies, but when I put in my nice clear DVD, all my screen caps come out blank??
I've been coming to some fairly significant realizations over the past few weeks -- due mostly to two factors.
1) my meds seem to be stabilizing into a good mix for my moods, and
2) I've found a good therapist who pushes me (in a gentle, inflexible, sort of immovable way) to work on my issues. Like Heyes, I tend to be a trickster, and instinctively distract attention from what's really going on.
I was trying to explain to a friend what a talented actor Pete Duel was, and halfway through our conversation, the light bulb went off. I'm always going on about actors like Lawrence Olivier, Spencer Tracy, and Humphrey Bogart ... my friends are probably getting tired of me.
"LB," I said, "you know how I'm always bitching about how our generation doesn't have any fantabulous actors like the previous one?" What I mean when I bitch about this, is there are great actors in the 50's and the 60's. We had Tracy (and Hepburn), Olivier, Bogie, Charleton Heston... Today, have some good actors, like Tom Hanks and Dustin Hoffman, who got their start in the 70's/80's and are really hot now. We've got some good-looking youngsters coming up, too. But where are the great actors who got their starts in the 50's and 60's and came into their own in the 70's and 80's? Where are the great actors of the 1940-ish generation?
When I say "great," I mean the actors who can shoulder the great roles. The actors who raise the hair on the back of your neck with their sheer talent. The ones who can turn a gesture into a conversation, and use their expressions as a great pianist uses the keyboard.
I'm not saying I don't love me some young actors! Since the 70's, we got eye candy out the wazoo! And there are plenty of talented young men who can do a good action flick, or a romance, or a comedy, or ... you get the idea. A lot of actors are really good at their chosen genre, and I respect their talent in those fields. Even some of my absolute favorites, like John Wayne, Morgan Freeman, or Sean Connery, do best in a certain genre -- but they retain something essential, some aura that remains the same. I mean, John Wayne is John Wayne, no matter what role he plays! And I do love The Duke wholeheartedly!
I'd say Johnny Depp is a great actor. He can play drama, comedy, romance ... his characters are often so different that you have to look closely to see that it really is him. But just one? Only Depp in the whole generation? Where are the other greats who will compete with the man for the great roles?
He killed himself on Dec. 31, 1971.
Pete would have been our generation's Olivier. Watch any of his performances -- even the really early ones where he's so damn young he could be his kid brother Geoffrey! -- and you can feel the hairs rising. The way he brings any character he plays to life -- each with his own mannerisms and gestures, his own way of speaking! The lovely, mobile face that reads like the best book you ever read. The way he can just look at another actor, or make a gesture, or get that little dimple in his left cheek -- and entire paragraphs of dialogue flow from him in those moments.
So I said to my friend, "LB, I have had a revelation. I know what's been bothering me about this acting thing. There is a giant, Pete-shaped hole in the whole damn profession and it's only now starting to heal over." LB, not being a true Pete fan, made as if she understood. I'm not sure she did, but she has only seen the man in ASJ. I need to make her watch some of his other roles, so she can understand it.
I also had a belated understanding about a personal quirk. I have always hated politics -- despise it with a passion! People willingly subjecting themselves to a totally false world where you can trust no one, where you must be fake to survive, where you can never turn your back! How can anyone possibly find that entertaining?
So I said something of the sort to my new therapist. She snaps back with "So politics is like your family life up until you left home?"
Wow.
It's great to finally have another therapist who can make this sort of connection with me. All these years, and I never connected the false fronts put up by my family and in my family with my hatred of politics. Yeah, I hate politics because I had too fucking much of it when I was growing up. I'm bloody tired of fake smiles and emotion denied because that emotion wouldn't get you what you want from someone else.
And, damn, I really hate my family now. *sigh*
It's going to be so nice when pipmudturtle moves into my spare rooms! The family you choose is so much better than the family you get tossed into at birth!
I've been coming to some fairly significant realizations over the past few weeks -- due mostly to two factors.
1) my meds seem to be stabilizing into a good mix for my moods, and
2) I've found a good therapist who pushes me (in a gentle, inflexible, sort of immovable way) to work on my issues. Like Heyes, I tend to be a trickster, and instinctively distract attention from what's really going on.
I was trying to explain to a friend what a talented actor Pete Duel was, and halfway through our conversation, the light bulb went off. I'm always going on about actors like Lawrence Olivier, Spencer Tracy, and Humphrey Bogart ... my friends are probably getting tired of me.
"LB," I said, "you know how I'm always bitching about how our generation doesn't have any fantabulous actors like the previous one?" What I mean when I bitch about this, is there are great actors in the 50's and the 60's. We had Tracy (and Hepburn), Olivier, Bogie, Charleton Heston... Today, have some good actors, like Tom Hanks and Dustin Hoffman, who got their start in the 70's/80's and are really hot now. We've got some good-looking youngsters coming up, too. But where are the great actors who got their starts in the 50's and 60's and came into their own in the 70's and 80's? Where are the great actors of the 1940-ish generation?
When I say "great," I mean the actors who can shoulder the great roles. The actors who raise the hair on the back of your neck with their sheer talent. The ones who can turn a gesture into a conversation, and use their expressions as a great pianist uses the keyboard.
I'm not saying I don't love me some young actors! Since the 70's, we got eye candy out the wazoo! And there are plenty of talented young men who can do a good action flick, or a romance, or a comedy, or ... you get the idea. A lot of actors are really good at their chosen genre, and I respect their talent in those fields. Even some of my absolute favorites, like John Wayne, Morgan Freeman, or Sean Connery, do best in a certain genre -- but they retain something essential, some aura that remains the same. I mean, John Wayne is John Wayne, no matter what role he plays! And I do love The Duke wholeheartedly!
I'd say Johnny Depp is a great actor. He can play drama, comedy, romance ... his characters are often so different that you have to look closely to see that it really is him. But just one? Only Depp in the whole generation? Where are the other greats who will compete with the man for the great roles?
He killed himself on Dec. 31, 1971.
Pete would have been our generation's Olivier. Watch any of his performances -- even the really early ones where he's so damn young he could be his kid brother Geoffrey! -- and you can feel the hairs rising. The way he brings any character he plays to life -- each with his own mannerisms and gestures, his own way of speaking! The lovely, mobile face that reads like the best book you ever read. The way he can just look at another actor, or make a gesture, or get that little dimple in his left cheek -- and entire paragraphs of dialogue flow from him in those moments.
So I said to my friend, "LB, I have had a revelation. I know what's been bothering me about this acting thing. There is a giant, Pete-shaped hole in the whole damn profession and it's only now starting to heal over." LB, not being a true Pete fan, made as if she understood. I'm not sure she did, but she has only seen the man in ASJ. I need to make her watch some of his other roles, so she can understand it.
I also had a belated understanding about a personal quirk. I have always hated politics -- despise it with a passion! People willingly subjecting themselves to a totally false world where you can trust no one, where you must be fake to survive, where you can never turn your back! How can anyone possibly find that entertaining?
So I said something of the sort to my new therapist. She snaps back with "So politics is like your family life up until you left home?"
Wow.
It's great to finally have another therapist who can make this sort of connection with me. All these years, and I never connected the false fronts put up by my family and in my family with my hatred of politics. Yeah, I hate politics because I had too fucking much of it when I was growing up. I'm bloody tired of fake smiles and emotion denied because that emotion wouldn't get you what you want from someone else.
And, damn, I really hate my family now. *sigh*
It's going to be so nice when pipmudturtle moves into my spare rooms! The family you choose is so much better than the family you get tossed into at birth!