so last night was a company dinner for spring festival. we went to a Thai restaurant that had Philipino performers doing Spanish dancing with the customers. as they surrounded our table in the middle of our meal and forced us to hold hands and circle dance around the table to the theme from "The Love Boat," Dan-dan turned to me and said, "I love China so much. We have everything." Yeah, Dandan. right.
i've also been watching copious amounts of Six Feet Under in my spare time. my god, it is a great show. i dunno, i guess i hadn't heard that much about it before, and i don't have hbo, so i hadn't really thought about watching it. but when you can get all five seasons for less than 5 dollars, there's really no reason not to. everything is great about this show, the writing, the directing, but i think particularly the actors are amazing, except nate i think is kind of blah. lauren ambrose, who i had only previously seen in her star turn as the dikey-but-not-actually-gay best friend in Can't Hardly Wait, is really incredible. the mom and brenda are also awesome.
my favorite, though, is david. michael c. hall's portrayal of a closeted mortician is really so perfect, its amazing that he's not actually gay. and yeah, of course straight actors can play gay, gay actors have been playing straight forever. its kind of annoying how much people harp on a straight performer playing a gay person, like its so different from the process of becoming any other character, taking on the psychology and mannerisms of another person. but i guess i've never seen a closeted person portrayed so sensitively, or with such intense detail. the only performance i can compare it to is felicity huffman in transamerica. not in that she is playing a closeted person, but in a similarity in the level of self-consciousness a person has in how they relate to the outside world. it really takes an intense commitment to think about the amount of energy and focus a person places on their behavior when they are dedicated to portraying a certain gender norm in which they are not completely comfortable or which does not come completely naturally to them. you can see david checking himself for lapses in behaving like a straight man, and the interesting way that he overcompensates by becoming almost entirely rigid, a perfect fit with the funeral home. and then there is the extremely heartening way that he opens up as the shows goes on, becoming more comfortable with himself and more willing to be himself with people. i think this kind of role requires an extra step for actors. it's not "how does this character behave," but "how does he try to behave, how does he try not to behave, when does he forget to think about how he should behave, where can you see him behaving naturally and where is he merely performing gender." this extra step can be taken for all characters of course, because everyone doubts themselves and worries about how others are interpreting them, etc, but for a closeted character, i think it is kind of essential. so good job, michael c. hall. oh and here's an interview with him that i really like.