Kurt R.A. Giambastiani

I wish my brain had an OFF switch.

There are times when it just gets in the way. I mean it’s thinking. All. The. Time. Thinking thinking thinking. Every damned minute it’s filled with thoughts, memories, comparisons, evaluations, judgments, decisions.

And there are times when it’s a real pain in the ass.

One situation in which it really gets in the way is when I’m watching actors do something I know in great detail. You know what I mean. It’s that part of the movie where the star sits down to a keyboard and supposedly starts typing in code/prose like a savant, but you know–from the position of their hands or the regular stadium-wave pattern of their fingers–that they’re just frobnicating, mindlessly tippy-tapping the keys while they utter their lines.

I have the same problem with actors who “dance” ballet or “play” a musical instrument. Few actors can fake it well enough to fool me. Hell, few can fake it well enough for me to suspend my disbelief. Especially painful (for me) is when actors pretend to play a violin, viola, or cello. My decades as a concert violist and my knowledge of the instruments make the tiniest misstep a glaring error, and it just pops me right out of the story (like when a character in a story set in Victorian England says “Okay.” Arg!)

And so, it was with great trepidation that I queued up A Late Quartet, the story of which centers on the members of a world-famous string quartet. (more…)

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