I love Orly Taitz!

[salinen]

to poop on. Wow, that's some glad yard sized crazy bag. At least she doesn't look crazy.

[hlthe2b]

1. "She doesn't look crazy?"

Are you kidding?

[gateley]

2. Gotta agree. Edit -- with you. nt

[salinen]

4. yep

[bluestate10]

3. Taitz has crazy, crazy eyes. nt

[DJ13]

5. At least she doesn't look crazy.

[salinen]

6. A great actor

in his greatest role.

[kenny blankenship]

Oddly enough, he didn't like it.

Which is just mind boggling. Scot didn't like the takes Kubrick selected of him. I'm pretty sure he was -had to be- in on the joke (not all the actors were, for ex. nobody onboard the B52 had a clue they were acting in a satirical comedy) so it's hard to see how he could be mad about being seen as ridiculous. Maybe he thought there were takes in which he was more menacing, and therefore more impressive or something. I don't know what it was that upset him, but it goes to show that a great actor can still be unhappy with his performance or his director, even when he turns in one of the great comic performances of his century.

[salinen]

11. That's interesting

that the actors on the B52, Pickens and others, had no idea they were doing comedy.

[kenny blankenship]

12. It's the perfect device to get deadpan line readings

where almost every little speech is freighted with irony, along the lines of "I'm a-get them bomb doors open if it harelips everybody on Bear Creek!" Actors who know it's ironic because they've been told by the director or otherwise cued (like seeing famous comic actors on the set) will exaggerate it for comic effect, to show they know it's funny, and in that way they would rob the overall scene and film of impact. Actors in the dark will play it for every ounce of heroism and seriousness they can muster. It's not nice to say but it was probably very easy to keep Pickens in the dark. And keeping the cast members on the B52 separated from any others who had a better picture of where the story was going would have been easy since they have no overlapping scenes. They didn't share any dialogue with Keenan Wynne for example who has to trade lines with Sellars: "I think you're some kind of deviated prevert. I think General Ripper found out about your preversion, and that you were organizing some kind of mutiny of preverts. Now MOVE!" Who would have been able to keep a straight face after that? They wouldn't have been on set while Sellars was giving one of his crazed improvised telephone speeches as President Muffley or Dr. Strangelove's leering Nazi impressions. Anybody would had seen any of that being filmed would affected by it in his acting. Peter Bull (Ambassador DeSadeski) cracked up so often around Sellars that some of the takes used in the film are shortened (awkwardly) to avoid having Bull very inappropriately laughing while in frame.

The genius of "Strangelove" deepens probably by keeping as many of the actors in the dark as possible. They become funny pieced together in an edit that undercuts their seriousness. In this way, Kubrick is not only able to make his despairing and absurd joke about the Cold War attitudes and the ludicrous position humanity had gotten itself into, but he was actually able to draw on these attitudes as they exist in actors themselves and use them as raw materials, or like found footage. It's stuff the actors are bringing in and don't even know it. The actors aren't asked to create them consciously and aren't tempted to adapt them comically - the attitudes and poses they strike come right from the culture they inhabit. It's like being able to paint a picture of an orange using pigment that comes from the peel of the orange itself.

[spanone]

7. these racists were exposed today, so why are they all over my teevee

[progressoid]

8. heh...

[LibGranny]

9. Orly Taitz looks

bat sh!t crazy! I thought she was made up for Halloween!

[flamingdem]

13. Did she get eye bulge surgery or what? nt

[immoderate]

10. Ya gotta!

If there were no Orly Taitz, someone would have to invent her.

--imm