Author: Elayne Riggs

I finally watched most of the third X-Men movie on HBO last night, and found I didn’t really miss the absence of Patrick Stewart for half the film.  A major reason for that, of course, was another wonderful performance by Stewart’s fellow Shakespearean thesp, Sir Ian McKellan.

Sir Ian, not to be outdone by news of Stewart appearing in the Royal Shakespeare Company’s Hamlet alongside Dr. Who‘s David Tennant, has been headlining  ex-RSC director (and old Cambridge mate) Sir Trevor Nunn’s production of King Lear, which plays this week at the Brooklyn Academy of Music.  Alas, notes the NY Times preview, all performances are sold out.  The Dr. Who connection here is that Sylvester McCoy (Doctor #7) appears in the role of Lear’s Fool.

The production, which began in Stratford upon Avon in repertory with Chekhov’s The Seagull (that’s Anton Chekhov, not Pavel) and has been touring the world, will wind up in London’s West End in November.

More information and photos can be found on Sir Ian’s website.

Galaxy Quest is one of my favorite movies. I mean, go wrong with Alan Rickman and Tony Shalhoub, you know? And even the nominal stars of the ensemble, Tim Allen and Sigourney Weaver, go down pretty easily in this brilliant vehicle. But there’s one scene that makes me cringe every time I see it.

The bad guy, Sarris, has coerced Jason Nesmith to confess to Mathesar, who idolizes "Captain Taggart" and the Galaxy Quest crew, that he and his fellow Terrans are ordinary actors, something Jason has been trying to figure out how to do without success for much of the movie as Mathesar’s people have no concept of, I guess, showbiz. But it’s the way Sarris forces his hand that makes me squirm:

Jason: Mathesar, there’s no such person as Captain Taggart. My name is Jason Nesmith. I’m an actor. We’re all actors.

Sarris: He doesn’t understand. Explain as you would a child.

Jason: We, uh, we pretended. [On Malthesar’s blank look.] We lied. I’m not a commander. There’s no National Space Exploration Administration. We don’t have a ship… It’s all fake. Just like me.

Mathesar: But why…?

Jason: It’s difficult to explain. On our planet, we, uh… we pretend to… to entertain.

I was reminded of this scene again just recently when blogger Skot Kirruk at Izzle pfaff! said much the same thing:

[begin quote] I try not to lie. And when I do lie, I try to lie in such a hyperbolic, overblown fashion that I hope that it is patently obvious that I’m just making shit up. I probably fail at this, though. It’s just too easy to lie. Writers lie all the time, because most of the time, life is just fucking dull. So we pull out our little tricks, and we lie. We insert or import in false details to serve an anecdote… Writers are liars. Don’t trust them.

And especially don’t trust me, assuming that you even consider me a writer, as opposed to some twitchy dilettante. I’m also an actor, so I’m also trained in lying. I think I’m pretty good at it… It’s no good protesting that when people go to the theater (and nobody does any more, but never mind), that the audience is damn well expecting that I lie to them: it’s my job. It’s no good because we are delighted to take those very same skills and exploit them for our own base wants and needs.

I have been taught to lie, we realize at some point. This could be awesome.

And so we do. But it’s more sinister than even that. It’s more sinister because actors aren’t just trained to lie, they are trained to lie with the unshakable conviction that they are not lying at all… Don’t ever listen to actors or writers, or worse, some unholy combination of both. They are liars and aren’t to be trusted. [end quote]

Naturally, I believe everything I’ve just quoted to be absolute hogwash. In other words, a lie.

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