Word: personae
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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Speaking of easy gags: Don Johnson, banking on a Burt Reynolds inability to covert our knowledge of his washed-up career into a slimy on-screen persona (what this implies about our judgment of people and stars is somewhat disturbing). Unfortunately, Johnson's acting skills aren't quite up to par (Tin Cup...never mind): his comic timing stinks and sinks one scene after another, not disastrously, since his character's smoothness is meant to fall short of his lust...
...while his literary production grew and he became a Nobel Laureate and one of the most important literary influences of the 20th century, Hemingway's public persona expanded as well, and threatened even to overshadow the writing: Hemingway the brave idealist, the avid fisherman, the boxer. The mythic man impinged on the literary production all the more so because his poise and his life ran together--some would say to the extent that the discussion of one can not help but bleed into a discussion of the other. There was a sportsman's code to which he held himself...
...Chideya, that message was clear: "In Adams House, you had a lot of latitude to create your own persona," she says. "He allowed us to get crazy--but in safe ways. He understood that we were experimenting...
Which is why last week's national eulogy was so unusual; people were talking ceaselessly about someone they knew not at all, except by the stats and a few crumbs of anecdotes. DiMaggio's persona was wholly the product of abstractions: pride, fidelity, natural aristocracy and, above all, ability. He did not need to talk because he was superior to anything he might have said. "Refined" is what my parents called him, a word currently out of use, and which always implied that one should keep a respectful distance...
...Civil Action:Judi-Dench-Syndrome. The Academy passed thedeserving Duvall over last year in TheApostle for Nicholson in As Good As ItGets. They might give it to him this year, buthe's undeserving. His role in A CivilAction was weak--he tried to add randomeccentricities to his "bad-guy" persona, but itjust made him even less sympathetic...