Snoopy wrote:
Would you expound on your De Niro and Christian Bale theroes ? Also, are suggesting Sandler as an Aspie from hiis performance in a movie role ?
First off, I don't say these things lightly. I have been training myself to dissect personalities as rapidly as possible for many years now, and once I understand how traits cluster, I'm pretty good at picking out the patterns from the noise. I have worked in high risk security jobs all of my adult life, and this skill I developed helps me pick out troublemakers from a crowd before a bunch of crazy crap goes down - some people are ringleaders, some are followers, and some people get stupid/brave under the right conditions, like drunkeness or being part of a crowd. One area where the "gaze" is helpful is if someone is being a loudmouth; just look at them, and don't try to scare them or intimidate them, just look with a neutral expression and locked on eye contact. Just like in horror movies where you only catch a glimpse of the monster and let your imagination fill in the blanks, or when you see patterns in stucco or clouds that look coherent, the target's mind will begin to work overtime, eventually turning on itself. Very effective - I've been able to control crowds of drunken violent Teamsters by basically doing nothing more than looking at who was being the most obnoxious.
Two from Sun Tzu:
* Be extremely subtle, even to the point of formlessness. Be extremely mysterious, even to the point of soundlessness. Thereby you can be the director of the opponent's fate.
* The best victory is when the opponent surrenders of its own accord before there are any actual hostilities... It is best to win without fighting.
So, that should answer your questions about Christian Bale and...oh. Sorry. Back on topic:
Both Bale and DeNiro subsume themselves in their roles to such a total degree, and they have another thing in common - massive weight fluctuations solely for effect. It is like the role is more important than they are, that their perfectionism is of such a high degree that they couldn't conceive of doing anything else but, that their body is only a tool for expressing their art, like a painter chooses the right brush.
As for Sandler, yeah, Punch Drunk Love was amazing, but that's not what I'm going on. Again, I like to watch interviews like crazy, and the Biography Channel is good too. It is when you see these actors who are usually so animated and full of life in their movie roles contrasted with their deadpan, monotone, awkward and self-deprecating interviews that you realize something is up.
Check out this one with Bale on Kilborn (who is very shy and anti-social in real life) and watch his eye contact, forced speech, and even though he misspells a word, notice how he thinks it necessary to differentiate between "little c" and "big c":
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DDPuzOq_tbA[/youtube]
Check out John Douglas's site for some great info on how to profile. He basically invented serial killer profiling, and I have learned a lot from his work.
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A son of fire should be forced to bow to a son of clay?
08 Nov 2007, 9:34 pm
