Actors NEED writers

Phil: It’s a simple fact that the real heroes of any film, television or theatre performance are the writers. Without them, everything you see in the way of entertainment would be rubbish. The problem is that actors are generally perfectly capable of walking and not bumping into the furniture, but if you ask them to speak without someone telling them exactly what to say, it all goes horribly wrong.

The proof of this is arriving thick and fast thanks to the awards season. Every few days, some thespians are stuffed into smart dinner suits, or diaphanous dresses, and then let loose on a stage with a microphone and no script. Then you get proper car-crash stuff such as pretty much every acceptance speech by Kate Winslett. Who else says “Gather” out loud to themselves before starting ? Or has the organisers winding up the music volume in a less than subtle effort to say, “Sit down love and shut up before you embarrass us all”.

But this years doozie, has to go to Christopher Plumber. At the Screen Actors Guild awards he said, “Actors are gregarious and wacky are they not? I love them dearly. When they honor you, it’s like being lit by the Holy Grail.”

Is it really ?

Well, after a little bit of research (looking at Wikipedia and watching the third Indiana Jones film) I find that the Holy Grail is “cup used by Jesus at the Last Supper”. That’s a cup Christopher. You are being illuminated by a cup. Now I don’t know about you, but having checked all the cups and mugs in my house, none of them provide any form of practical illumination. Fine though they are as vessels for containing tea, should the lights go out, you aren’t going to get any help finding it from them.

Chris has obviously confused cups with light bulbs. It’s an easy mistake to make, I’m always stuffing a 40 watt’er in my gob instead of a steaming mug of hot chocolate. No, hold on, that’s wrong, I’ve actually never done that. Because I can tell the difference. In the same way my favorite lifeboats mug never finds itself screwed into a light fitting.

So the division of labour is simple; Actors read stuff out loud, walk around a bit and pull faces then congratulate themselves on being clever. Writers do all the brainwork, make everything good and get hardly any of the credit. Or the money. Or the groupies. Humph.