"Staying in character" or "method acting" should not be an acceptable excuse for being a jerk to one's co-workers.
In defence of Shades of Gray
- Thread starter AntonyF
- Start date
Tony Clifton, sometimes also performed by Kaufman's friend Bob Zmuda
In this specific case, the character went beyond method acting. It was Kaufman's attempt to legitimately present Clifton as a real person. He did so on many television appearances, wherein he appears to be uncontrollably crass & drunken (In stark contrast to his meek Latka AKA Foreign Man character) Kaufman was always trying to blur the line between performance and reality, attempting to successfully have audiences believe these events were real, as was something of a calling card for him. In pretty much every case however, these appearances were staged, or prearranged, & I imagine (Without proof) similar had taken place on Taxi, to some degree or another
I know that, but my point stands. We shouldn't gloss over the fact that whenever actors "immerse themselves in a persona" like that, the persona always seems to be an abusive jerk (and yes, I'm thinking of Jared Leto too). It's just using the pretense of an alternate persona as an excuse to act out and evade responsibility for it.
While I agree with that, Kaufman was trying to get Clifton sacked. Insane levels of acting.
I'm not so quick to judge Kaufman for it though, as much of what we know about how he went about Tony Clifton is almost myth at this point. I'm not so sure I'd lump him in with the usual sack of jagoffs going too far on sets. From what I've heard, Kaufman himself was very considerate, even when it came to these stunts he prearranged, of which there were many, like feigning sexist attitudes in wrestling rings, in order to play the heel, or mouthing off at & getting attacked by pro-wrestler Jerry Lawler on The David Letterman show
Plus, I kind of feel it backfired in the worst way for Kaufman, when in the end he got cancer, & ended up dying, with pretty much everyone thinking it was a gag.
Plus, I kind of feel it backfired in the worst way for Kaufman, when in the end he got cancer, & ended up dying, with pretty much everyone thinking it was a gag.
I hope you're right, that it was all staged with the consent of the people involved. Still, I never cared for Kaufman's "performance art" back in the day. I've never thought it was funny to try to fool people into believing a lie. I hate practical jokes too.
If it was one murder, I could see your point. But if someone committed multiple murders, without any remorse, then as far as I'm concerned, they forfeited their right to live.
And by the way, people have been known to trick shrinks into thinking they were 'rehabilitated'.
All that being said, I am for the death penalty only when it's been proven well past any doubt they committed the murders, because you can't undo death.
And child rapists. That's such an abhorrent thing that the rapist has no right to live afterward. And no amount of 'therapy' will 'rehabilitate' someone like that.
Also, if they are still a danger, why bother to keep them locked up at all, eating food and using resources that could go to more deserving people, like the homeless as an example? Because if they are that dangerous, they could easily kill other inmates who are not as dangerous, like an embezzler or something. So what's the point in keeping that kind of dangerous person around?
The state gets to make that determination? No thank you. Even ignoring the "eye for an eye" ethics, how many executed prisoners have been later discovered to be innocent?
In the episode being discussed it was a diagnosable and treatable condition.
Good luck with that.
Now we start adding to the list of capital offenses. What about greedy fucks (generally in America with it's for profit "healthcare" system) who quintuple the price of life saving medicine? They never killed any one directly, likely ever even broke a law, but they can have a body count many times that of the most "successful" serial killer. How about the worst polluters? They're contributing to potential global extinction.
Because if we start killing people for being a danger, we eventually have to kill ourselves or be massive hypocrites.
Guess we'll have to agree to disagree, then.
I was thinking that in the 70's and 80's TV shows were so light on continuity that clip shows were virtually the only time they referenced characters' past adventures.
You know, that's a good point. Although sometimes they had recurring villains or allies, and a clip show would be about reminding the audience of a returning character's past. I think there was a MacGyver clip show that brought back Bruce McGill's Jack Dalton character and involved reminiscing about his past visits. Then there was the one where MacGyver was getting threats from a past foe and he and Pete spent the episode trying to figure out which of his recurring enemies it was. And I think there was one that brought together the four members of the Colton family of bounty hunters who'd appeared separately in previous episodes (Richard Lawson, Cleavon Little, Della Reese, and Cuba Gooding Jr.), showing clips from those episodes to tie them together.
Japanese tokusatsu (special effects/superhero) shows back in the '80s-'90s such as the Metal Heroes franchise would sometimes do 2- or 3-parters where the first episode consisted mostly of montages of characters reminiscing about past events presented over the various insert songs the shows used as theme music for their characters, vehicles, and such -- basically music videos of a sort -- before finally getting the story moving in the closing minutes of the first part. Sometimes this was done when there were characters returning from earlier episodes, and the clips were a way to refresh the audience's memory about those characters. Sometimes it was the first part of a concluding multi-part story arc, a reminiscence of the past season before it came to an end.
Modern toku series still do money-saving clip shows routinely -- Ultraman does one as episode 13 of every 25-episode season -- and I find they can actually be helpful in reminding me about the story arc so far.
I wonder if this was confusing during reruns in syndication, where tv stations would broadcast the episodes in no particular order and a clip show might be shown before the episodes it was referring to!
I wonder if this was confusing during reruns in syndication, where tv stations would broadcast the episodes in no particular order and a clip show might be shown before the episodes it was referring to!
Well, that's no problem, since the show would keep repeating on a loop anyway and it would be normal to reach the end of the series and jump back to the beginning the following day.
I was thinking that in the 70's and 80's TV shows were so light on continuity that clip shows were virtually the only time they referenced characters' past adventures.
You'd be left wondering, "don't these people ever do anything else"?
"Past adventures" would often be limited to new stories about people they'd supposedly known in the past before the show began, or things that happened when the show was on hiatus - "I met him last summer when you took your two week vacation, Ralph, remember?" "Oh yeah, you told me you got into some crazy situation, but then we never talked about it again." (Stuff the audience has never been told or seen, but that characters are vaguely or entirely aware of.
There's also strings of cousins, old school chums, mentors, army buddies, etc, who provide endless fodder for reunions, "you've changed so much since then", sad musings about friends found dead/suspected of murder, etc.
I still remember an episode of Family Ties where Mallory's beloved aunt dies. And she explains how INCREDIBLY important and present in her life this aunt was. Which obviously she had only appeared in this episode. And I remember that, even though I understood the production reasons (they certainly couldn't introduce the actress for 5-6 episodes and then have her character die), how incredibly stupid it seemed to me.
I think something like this is simply unthinkable today.
If you set up the whole "we were close once but drifted apart (i.e. before the show started)" it can work.
Except that shows back then hadn't yet gotten into the habit of pretending that they took place in real time and had a gap of months between seasons. That caught on around the '90s, I think. Older shows just took place in a continuous present and were vague about the passage of time. By the late '70s and '80s, there was more continuity and sense of progression up to a point, but they didn't pretend to be in sync with their airdates or anything.
I've been rewatching The Greatest American Hero from 1981-3, and in its brief first season, which was released over about 2 months from premiere to finale, they were saying about 6 episodes in that it had been 2 months since the premiere, yet two weeks later in the finale, they said it had been 6 months. In the season 2 premiere, there was a time jump of 3 months just between the climax and the tag scene. (Also, the pilot apparently showed its lead character teaching a summer school class, but in the very next episode, which was narratively still very early in the main characters' relationship, it was suddenly spring break.)
It's a change in mindset. Episodic TV is better at call backs and bringing back past ideas than last century.
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