CAST: Susan Sarandon, Chazz Palminteri
CREATIVE TEAM: George Hickenlooper, Alan Sereboff, Kamala Lopez, Jill Kushner
MUSIC: Anthony Marinelli
TECHNICAL TEAM: Joel Marshall, Justin Shumaker, Clint Bennett
This is the 14th of the Writers Guild Of America member-conceived Internet videos for Project "Speechless" featuring A-list Screen Actors Guild talent. For the first time in the TV and movie industry, high-profile SAG actors are together taking their talents directly and exclusively to the Internet, the very medium which is at the center of the current WGA labor strike against the Alliance Of Motion Picture & Television Producers. The project, conceived by director/writer George Hickenlooper and writer Alan Sereboff, made its exclusive weekend debut here on my Deadline Hollywood Daily with 11 videos. The "Speechless" campaign now debuts on its new site, SpeechlessWithoutWriters.com, which will be adding new videos every day in both high-res and low-res versions.
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I’ve been getting tired of the parade of actors doing a bad job pretending to not know what to say, most of them have come off as more of a party game than anything worth watching.
But they did a great job with this one, it’s the same basic idea but the performances make it pretty hilarious.
these ‘blah blah blah’ clips are really disturbing, and I don’t mean they are disturbing in the ‘oh my god, movies would suck without words’ way. It’s just creepy watching actors stand up there naked without dialog other than ‘blah’. I think if you’re gonna give an actor a word to say for a minute maybe they should just reference the ‘Wassssup?!’ commercials from so long ago. That would be nice.
But if the point is they want to show their support for the WGA cause, then it sure would have been more effective to have writers talking to the viewer about the cause and the strike. That would have brought in tons more viewers and would have led to more attention on the news for sure.
Not that I don’t appreciate folks taking the time to make the clips. It’s just that if you’re going to take the time, why not do something that will have a strong impact and get the most attention?
- blah blah blah writer blah blah
while I appreciate the effort, and lots of these have been great, this one actually sends the wrong message about writing. It’s not just dialog that we write. It’s scenes. the fact that Susan Sarandon and Chazz Palmenteri are in some kind of relationship, seem happy to see each other, then get upset when one has bad news… without a writer… no way. without a writer, they sit in a room and don’t even move.
The more of these I watch, the more I realize that they are horrible and smack of pretension. This time would be better served actually talking about the issues or simply reading articles posted here rather than one more “Blah, blah” or silent moment. We get it. This is a strike about fair and equitable money – the writers need help, and these names and faces give credence to the issues. How about talking about those? And how about also getting these names and faces back together again and tackling bigger issues like Africa and the war? Sorry, but the one clip with the gaff tape over the mouth was a bit too much for me.
Jeremy, you make a good point. What makes these tricky is that anything they do that makes these interesting, even the pantomime type stuff, is something that came from a writer. Writers don’t just write the words, they come up with the whole concept, actions, and stage directions.
A spot that is more interesting and entertaining like this one is getting away from the notion of what actors would do without writers. While it’s fun to watch, if anything ones like this almost make it seem like actors CAN do something interesting without writers scripting it.