over the top

jim emerson’s post on over-the-top perfromances

the comments are great too.

i think meryl streep is best when she’s over-the-top in comedies.

i love when an actor dares to go BIG … dares to be misunderstood by an audience … doesn’t play it safe. sometimes it falls flat. hugely flat. but i do admire the risk.

speaking of mommie dearest – i heard faye dunaway speak, once, and she spoke intricately about her experience filming that movie, and what it was meant to be – as opposed to what it turned out to be. an actress has only so much control. but the most fascinating thing was dunaway saying that it was never meant to be a “realistic performance”. she said, “I thought of it as being like Kabuki theatre – that was how I approached it.”

seen in that light, she was phenomenal.

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