Working actors – I was Correct!

A few years ago, I finally publicly lamented the curse of the musician in popular culture.  When an actor goes on Jimmy Kimmel, they aren’t expected to do a scene.  Shouldn’t they?  Instead of showing a clip, let’s bring on 2 of the actors and have them read a scene together.

Point of contrast being – when a band comes on same shows, they have to perform.   Why not let them sit and chat for ten minutes… and then ‘play a clip’  of their new song?

Since I am closer to a musician than I am an actor… I feel we are getting screwed.  Well, I was Correct!  The late night breath of fresh of fresh air, James Corden, has rectified this.  He has brought on some great sports to re-create all of their iconic roles of the last 20 years.  With quick minds, quick change  clothes, and a lot of fast working stage hands… they ‘play a clip’ by performing live.  In essence, it becomes ‘dance, you monkey, dance’.  This is what the entertainer was for.  Sit around with the king and bust everyone’s balls to amuse the King.

I feel this puts us music playing folks on a more even keel with actors.  Oh, and let’s say you are going camping.  Who do you want by the fire?   Folks with acoustic guitars!.  Actually, though, it would be pretty cool to have a small troupe sitting around a campfire drinking and doing a play or scene together for fun.

Enjoy!

 

See, I still have this great idea.  Take a 100 million dollar Tom Cruise film.  Instead of filming it, you take that show on the road… 10 cities.  Perform it live!  I know you are thinking ‘that already exists, it’s called a play”.  Not quite. I  want the big budget super special effects thing done with all the stars right in front of me.  Maybe use a football stadium.  Each night would be expensive to produce… a million bucks a night!  This movie has jets?  Then we get jets to fly over the stadium.

How do you afford that?  The average football stadium is 70,000 seats.  If each seat pays $14… we have a million already.  You are already paying almost that to see the movie in the theater.  You would certainly pay that to head downtown and see all the big actors do the roll in person.  There is certainly another few million to be made in concessions.

With special effects and a LOT of money, this is all doable today.  Now, you think ‘but the sound sucks in a football stadium’… it sure does.  So, the actors are mic’d up and you are wearing a headset that beams the audio directly to your ears.  They did this in the Vatican, it was really clevel.  As you can imagine, at any point in time, there is thousands of people touring.  You can’t have a group bigger than about 15.  So, that would leave hundreds of tour guides shouting over each other.  Intead, the guide wore a mic and just spoke at a soft whisper… and we were each wearing a headset paired only to our guide.

In closing,

I would like to paraphrase a brilliant and fun acceptance  speech from a young Will Smith “I would like thank me!  Without me, none of this would have been possible.”

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