Word: deadpan
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From New York to smalltown Michigan to the English countryside, the three deadpan artists whose short films are featured in the Harvard Film Archive series Two Mikes Don't Make a Wright seem to be able to laugh at anything. If there is one feature that unites the shorts, it is a strange mixture of comedy and horror that reaches its crescendo in the final film. Two Mikes starts dark, turns black and gets blacker...
Meanwhile, Culkin himself acts precociously. He realizes that casual deadpan in a ten-year-old looks far more sinister than sidelong glances and wicked cackles, and so plays it straight. Culkin's calm in turn forms the perfect foil to the frenzied indignation of Wood, his fearless adversary. Splattered with tomato juice, frenetically pumping squash down the disposal, Wood manages to look far more twisted and dangerous than Culkin ever does. The dynamic of this role-reversal, excellently acted by both Wood and Culkin, generates all the tension in the film. The pair carries the production; all other players...
...Ralph Richardson. In the past few years Hawthorne found roles that fully challenged him: as novelist-metaphysician C.S. Lewis in Shadowlands and as George III. The former brought him a 1991 Tony Award; the latter earned him, in the same year, London's Olivier Award. He is still deadpan-dismissive about his craft: "You have to understand that throughout life I have more or less played my father. George III's attitude to his sons I took from...
...generation. When Late Night with David Letterman made its debut on NBC in 1982, it was the prankish outsider, a subversive send-up of talk shows, television, the entertainment world in general. Letterman refused to fawn over guests; with the help of Vegas-obsessed bandleader Paul Shaffer, he took deadpan aim at show-biz phoniness. He griped about his NBC bosses, turned stagehands into stars, conducted elevator races in the hallway. His medium-twisting inventiveness was influenced by Ernie Kovacs, his man-on-the- street playfulness by Steve Allen. But Letterman seasoned them with his own sardonic, cranky, cooler-than...
...Cameron Boyd) is sent off to relatives so that the family can save money. Next his mother enters a tuberculosis sanatorium. Finally his father hits the road selling watches -- the only job he can get in the Depression. That leaves Aaron, who hides his survivor's wit under a deadpan demeanor, to fend for himself in the shabby hotel where the declassed Kurlanders have washed...