Seraphic Secret

Robert J. Avrech: Emmy Award winning screenwriter. Religious Zionist. Republican. Movie fanatic. Gun owner. Helplessly and hopelessly in love with my wife since age nine.

Faye Dunaway

Friday Photos: True Hollywood Confessions

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“I find it so boring to talk about myself. I don’t remember the last time I did an interview. Somebody came to my house and I thought I’d never get rid of him. That sort of cooled me off.”
—Irene Dunne (1898 – 1990)

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Friday Photos: True Hollywood Confessions

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“For all actors know that truly natural acting is rejected by the audience. Although people are better equipped to judge acting than any other art, the hypocrisy of ‘sincerity’ prevents them from admitting that they too are always acting some part of their own invention. To be a successful actor, then, it is necessary to add some eccentricities and mystery to naturalness so that the audience can admire and puzzle over something different from itself.” -Louise Brooks, Lulu in Hollywood (photo via Kobal Collection, c. 1929)American actress Louise Bro. Photo by Eugene Robert Richee, 1928.
“For all actors know that truly natural acting is rejected by the audience. Although people are better equipped to judge acting than any other art, the hypocrisy of ‘sincerity’ prevents them from admitting that they too are always acting some part of their own invention. To be a successful actor, then, it is necessary to add some eccentricities and mystery to naturalness so that the audience can admire and puzzle over something different from itself.”
—Louise Brooks, Lulu in Hollywood, Photo by Eugene Robert Richee, 1928.

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Three Essential Films About Terrorism

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Faye Dunaway in “Bonnie and Clyde,” 1967.
Faye Dunaway in “Bonnie and Clyde,” 1967.

Faye Dunaway once told me that to effectively play a role she had to commit to the character with all her heart and soul. She needed, she explained, to love the character.

In terms of performance this means the actor has to empathize and identify with the fictional character. The danger lies in a character who is evil. If a skillful actor identifies and loves a character, as Faye, a brilliant actress, did with the homicidal Bonnie Parker in “Bonnie & Clyde”(1967), or the amoral Diana Christensen in “Network”(1976), then the audience will also love the character.

Because movies are a moral landscape, sympathetic villains are an ethical problem.

We allow for a certain amount of romanticism in the movies. Afterall, that’s why we go to the movies. But what happens when the subject of the film is contemporary terrorism — evil which should be beyond gauzy romanticism?

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