Invisible Obama Used a Teleprompter

There’s a graphic going around about how Clint has seven children by five different mothers, but has only been married to two of them. If that’s true, then we’ve launched into Andy Kaufmanesque territory.

@matador1015: This is from memory, but I think another point is that Clint, like Steve Jobs, didn’t acknowledge fatherhood for one or two of them.

I would have been perfectly happy to run with Clint’s backstory as a contrast to GOP ideals. But that was presuming he gave the speech everybody was expecting from him — Third Quarter in America, more or less. God bless him, Clint spared me the trouble.

Clint was just a little confused. He thought he was auditioning for the role of Grandpa Simpson in the inevitable Simpsons Movie sequel.

Jesus. He had a teleprompter? This is why movie stars – who never memorize their lines – should never be confused with actors who are expected to deliver the author’s work correct to the least comma. He can’t even read the words on the screen before him. Pathetic.

@Benedick: I saw a photo of it somewhere — something like line-riff-riff-riff-line. It was a general outline, not prepared text.

@matador1015: Mr. Eastwood was there to support the man, not the party platform. Just ask Sondra Locke.

@Benedick:
the local PBS.2 station aired a show on history of teevee cop shows last night during the RNC. The episode featured Jack Webb and Dragnet. As director he required the actors to only read their lines from rolling cue card rather than memorize them.

@texrednface: Dragnet was easily and broadly mocked, but there was a staccato economy to those single-shot lines — I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that they inspired Mamet.

And cop/detective shows were very much cookie-cutter when I was growing up, with occasional charming exceptions like Rockford Files. I still remember how Hill Street Blues blew everybody away — in part because the filming itself showed much more consideration than the usual dreck. The closest comparison today is the difference between HBO and network TV.

I’ve always been incredibly impressed by television actors who somehow memorize a 40 to 80 page script every week. it just seems impossible. There must be tricks to it, right? Editing? Gawd I wish I had them IRL, but then my pobre cabeza is totally fried on booze and pills and dope.

On Moonlighting, they usually taped the script to the dashboard of the car just out of camera view for the driving scenes since they usually only got the pages a few minutes before shooting. Yet it’s incredible how natural it looked… except when they’d forget to “drive.”

I tried to watch the 11 minute video, I got 45 seconds into it and I felt overwhelming shame and embarrassment for Clint. Who thought it’d be funny to trot an Alzheimer’s patient in front of a convention?

Oh, right, 1984.

@SanFranLefty: Yesterday was Molly Ivins’ birthday. Had she lived (sigh) all conversation about last night would be unnecessary. She’d have said it all.

@texrednface: True that. These are the times my heart aches for Molly and Ann. And I had no idea it was her birthday, I have to go light my St. Francis candle and tell my friends in Austin to go to the Hyde Park dog park and pour a 40 out in honor of her and her sweet giant poodle who once schooled my bratty puppeh. My friends/her neighbors are probably already drunk as skunks over at Gueros in her honor.

And, after a day of fun and frivolity, Jon Stewart nails it: Clint’s performance showed that Republicans are running against a President who doesn’t exist.

I am totally confused. Okay in general, but WFT is this business? I’ve been off the grid, but has Obama become so white that he’s translucent and I can’t see him sitting in that chair, or is that chair for Clint Heston?

@er, nojo: You did this, Nielson Man.

Nevertheless, television ratings may be of some value in predicting the size of the bounce a candidate gets from the convention in the polls.

@JNOV: I doubt that MSNBC getting eighteen hours of Nielsen credit this week will help the Mitt Bounce. Speaking hypothetically, of course.