Good Old Hollywood Is Dying, was a 1974 song, in English, by the Austrian duo Waterloo & Robinson. Looking at what Hollywood does today, I’m singing or humming this song almost all the time.
The other day, I criticized a new TV show, Call Me Kat, that Fox, an American network, had launched. I called it predictable and inane, suggesting that it was so bad that it must have been written by a computer. The acting also sucked. Apparently, the American show is supposed to be based on an old British series, Miranda, and I never cared much for that one either. Miranda Hart, the star of the British series, was never my cup of tea—I don’t think she’s funny, or hilarious, or overly talented. I’ll come back to the point of acting later on.
Well, one of the people involved in the production of the silly and infantile U.S. show, Madison Martin of Warner Bros. Entertainment, saw my comment and tried to put me in my place. She failed. What can I say? She was still in diapers when I worked in her industry. In short, she’s clueless—and the fact that she defended the importance of having TV shows for people with a single-digit IQ simply confirmed what I had known for some time.
You see, for around five years, I worked in American TV—as a writer, assistant writer, and in a handful of other capacities. That was from around 1998 to 2003 or so. I split my time between Toronto (where I had my civilian life as a translator, teacher, etc.) and Los Angeles (where I operated using a nom de plume or nom de guerre, because I wanted to keep these two lives separate).
I had not tried to break into that line of work; I stumbled and fell into it. Yes, at some point, I had gotten some training in screenwriting, but I had never considered it a career option. But then there was that pivotal party for one-percenters (we didn’t call it that yet in those days, not really) to which I had been invited as an actress’s plus-one (we didn’t call it that yet in those days, not really). As luck would have it, one well-known Hollywood actor who hailed from Austria was there, and given my own personal ties to that Alpine republic, the host felt it necessary that the actor and I had a sit-down and chat.
To cut a long story short, that actor was well-connected in Hollywood, and after hearing about me and my life, what I had learned and done up that point, and probably charmed by the actress on my arm, he offered to open some doors for me—if I was so inclined. Now, I have always believed in meritocracy. I just hate it when people get ahead not because of what they know and do, but because of whom they know. But back then, I knew, as I do now, that sometimes you have to rely on others who can open doors for you; walking through them and staying on the other side, however, should depend entirely on your skills and talents and nothing else.
It didn’t take long, and soon I found myself jobbing on the writing staff of this show or that show. I’d develop dialogues and storylines, among other things, sit in on table-reads, and watch on set as the words were being fleshed out and taking shape. Thanks to my international background and knowledge of languages (including dead ones), I was often assigned to projects along those lines, such as sci-fi or mysteries (such as a show about three witches, for example, wink, wink, wink).
I have sworn to myself that I will never reveal my nom de guerre (yes, I’ll take that to my grave), the shows and projects I worked on, or the actors I befriended and liaised with. After all, I know quite a bit of personal stuff about many of them, and I just don’t think it fair to ever blab to anyone about any of that. Anyway, I did that for about five years, commuting between Toronto and Los Angeles like crazy, but eventually got bored and chose my civilian life.
In the dying words of James Tiberius Kirk, it was fun, oh my. I met and worked with most anybody who was somebody in television or the movies during those years. But when I look at the quality, or lack of quality, of American television shows now, I get sad and feel like throwing up. Having spent around five years writing creatively (and being involved in a few other production-related tasks) at a time when American TV was still fairly good, creative, daring and entertaining, I have a hard time understanding why it’s not working anymore today—on network TV, that is, because there is still a lot of good and great quality, and talent, in television (can we still call it that, or should we just call it streaming?) outside the realm of conventional TV networks: Netflix, HBO, etc.
Network TV, however, is on its deathbed, and the new show I recently lambasted is proof of that. Oddly enough, the whippersnapper who reproached me for speaking the truth about the show she’s currently responsible for represents one of the studios that I worked for—clearly, times have changed.
I promised earlier that I would give my views on acting, so here goes. I don’t think acting is a special talent. Everyone can act. And we all do it, for example, when we tell a lie or make excuses for not being able to do something we don’t really want to do.
You can take any part or role, and it can be played by literally anyone on the planet. Let’s say there are eight billion people in the world, so one and the same movie could be done in eight billion different ways by casting a different person in the lead role each time. Some of those versions would be extremely popular, while most others would end up in a landfill.
What makes a movie or show work is when the actor, the actual human being that is the actor, is liked by and somehow connects with the audience. All actors, including Academy Award-winning actors, really only ever play themselves. Sure, they may be made to look different (makeup, special effects, etc.) or they may speak with an accent or do a funny voice, but the essence, the flavour, of that individual, the actor, the actual human being, never changes. The only trick to acting is to imagine yourself in different situations and circumstances, mostly ones you yourself have never found yourself in, and pretending as if you had.
Thus, what we see on the screen, for example, is how actor so-and-so would react to learning that his or her mother has just passed away. The actor’s mother is still very much alive, which means that he or she has never actually experienced the loss of his or her mother. What the actor does, and literally any of us can do that too, is to imagine what it would be like to be given such horrible and tragic news. That’s all. And as I said before, if there are eight billion people on this planet, there are eight billion ways of acting out a scene like that.
So, when I observed that the acting on Call Me Kat sucked, it is, indeed, an annihilating verdict. For anyone can act, no special superhuman skills required, so when you, the actor, mess up your performance and come across as artificial and awkward (i.e., not authentic), you have not only failed at your job, if that’s what it is, but you have also failed at one basic human and innate skill we all possess.
But let’s give the actors on Call Me Kat a break, because the writing is so bad (see my previous explanations) that if I were an actor on that show, I wouldn’t be able to say my lines because I’d be busy suppressing a recurring gag reflex.