Filming in a parallel dimension
Call
him Ishmael, it'll do.
Actors...
That
one next to him
will
end his days playing Admiral Nelson,
on
an atomic submarine.
For
now, he's signed on with Gregory Pecker
to
hunt a mechanical whale across a large tank of water.
Not
much skill needed there then.
The
techs are all drunks or hop heads, and Greg?
Check
out the stove pipe hat, false beard
and
the same voice he always uses.
The
techs vote to leave him pinned
to
the rubber side of the pretend creature,
all
through the lunch hour.
He
will shout himself hoarse.
They
call it method acting by committee.
None
of them have read the book,
too
long,
too
old,
couldn't
be bothered.
No
matter, few of the audience will have either.
I am alluding to Moby Dick, filmed by John Huston in 1956 and a tv show Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea. The rest I made up. I quite like the idea of the film's star being stuck to the side of the pretend whale and left there.
I leave you with the legendary Allen Toussaint live in 2011.
Liked the idea that nobody ever reads those books..explains why they so often get the subtexts wrong. And the same for the audience. Joint ignorance pretending to be cultured.
ReplyDeleteYou are so on the money. I think Moby Dick was a long cherished project of John Huston but sadly it just failed to work on the screen. On a broader note there is a tendency as you say for people to take the film of a book as the authentic voice of the story. Perhaps we are all getting lazy. Thank you for your perceptive [as always] comments.
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