Word: deadpan
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...Manny to know that Agee, however lauded in his time (he died at 51 in 1955), would in the long run be the white elephant to Manny's termite? No, let's be fairer: Charlie Chaplin, equal parts genius and sentiment, to Manny's Buster Keaton, the deadpan acrobat and scene constructor, who had to wait ages for his star to eclipse Chaplin's in critics' eyes...
...plays also reinforced the argument that Beckett was, in large part, a comic writer: unquestionably deadpan but characterized by (his phrase, from Happy Days) "laughing wild amidst severest woe." Godot is really a spectacle of mordant vaudeville; the role of Estragon in the first Broadway production was taken by that comic Cowardly Lion, Bert Lahr; and in a 1988 Lincoln Center revival, directed by Mike Nichols, the stars were Steve Martin and Robin Williams. The set up to the play's gag: they wait for Godot. The punch line: he doesn't show up! Maybe this is concept comedy...
...liked to have a human secretary taking notes and laughing in the right places.) But he wasn't the sort of funny man who laughs at his own jokes. In performance and in life, Twain's facial expression--except, presumably, when he was furious, which was often--was deadpan. After Twain's death, the editor of the North American Review recalled that he had known him for 30 years and never seen him laugh...
...That Max Smart is played by the admirable Steve Carell, who is desperately looking for deadpan jokes in all the wrong places, is beside the point. So, too, is that his sidekick is played by the lissome Anne Hathaway, who also seems willing to go along with a gag if only she could find one. Or that their nerdy colleagues in CONTROL have a few attenuated comical moments in their fight to save the free world from KAOS. They are all strapped to a hurtling plot line that is heading from one fireball to the next, with only...
...Diego. A conventiongoer, dressed in a medical costume, strode up to a microphone at the Marvel panel and told Downey, "You've always been one of my favorite actors because we kind of share the same difficult past, if you know what I'm saying." To which a deadpan Downey replied, "Are you a war veteran too?" When asked why he dodged the kid's obvious search for some advice on beating addiction, Downey suggests that being the poster boy for recovery is just another form of narcissism. Other stars have been known to call Downey for help, a responsibility...