This time we received a comedian who plays a serious character.
Jeff Garlin was our guest during my previous Television Symposium class. Ironically, and rather fitting to our class discussions, Jeff Garlin's character in Curb Your Enthusiasm is one of the less comedical characters in the series. However, in real life this guy was non stop jokes. He really seemed to carry a completely different personality than the character in-which he portrays. This duality of character representation versus realty is incredibly interesting to see first hand (Very much more than the traditional non-real re-representations portrayed in shows like TMZ). It has always been easy for me to say that I understand the concept that these actors are only playing their characters, but really seeing it first hand has proven to be a very different experience than just understanding the simple concept.
In other words, Even though I knew Jeff Garlin is not the same in real life as his character, it took me a minute to adjust to the fact that Jeff was different than his character portrayal. After a few minutes it was easy to make this adjustment, but all this still makes me think about all the other actors I have watched over the years. I guess this all means that Jeff Garlin, like many actors, is good at his profession because he is believable. Now, I can see why stars and studios alike pay big buck to maintain an actors image with cultural norms and ideals. It keeps is coming back for more.
1 comment:
There was an interesting NYTimes article about him and his body/eating issues - it also talked about comedians like Chris Farley, John Belushi etc. who feel their career is tied to maintaining a certain body size.
Curb Your Enthusiam's improv style makes it especially hard to separate him from his character.
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