Fast Lips, Loose Quips

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If loose lips sink ships, and tight lips tell no secrets, and wax lips taste horrible, then why on Howard Hawks's good green earth do we love fast-lips?

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That sentence was an example of complete nonsense.

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But if Carey Grant would have parleyed it at the same speed as he spit most lines in HIS GIRL FRIDAY, I bet you would have been too mesmerized to even care as he sped on to his next supersonic speech.

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Why is this so impressive to us normal humans?

 

When people like Carey Grant, Katherine Hepburn, William Powell, Myrna Loy, Lauren Graham, Rachel Brosnahan, Alex Borstein... basically anyone in an Amy-Sherman Palladino role, steal the scenes, they do it with seeming ease. Besides all their natural beauty and charisma, I contend that it's their ability to speak English in that perfect place between too fast and intelligible, that really does the trick.

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English is a language that does not roll off the tongue as gracefully as other latin based languages. So when we get to bear witness to anyone who can speak it with charisma and speed, it's astounding. When does that happen the most? In the movies, of course.

If you don't know much about what goes into making a movie, let me just say, it's a lot of work and leave it at that. But throw away all the work the crew does to get us there and say we just have a couple of actors who accomplish all of this:

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- Memorize their lines, which can take a long, long time.

- Figure out the context of the scene and motivation of their character.

- Rehearse, and in so doing find new context and motivation

- Memorize blocking

- Perform flawlessly at least once, but in actuality dozens of times.

- Do it again for the next setup.

That's a very basic description, but it will give you an idea.

Now imagine you had to do all of that while, let's say... tripping all over someone else's dialogue, or walking down a hallway, or speaking faster than you ever would on a normal day...

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It's incredible! It's unrealistic sure, people aren't usually this put together. They don't talk like that in real life. But just because a javelin thrower at the olympics isn't warding off a charging army, doesn't mean the feat of speed, strength, and dexterity isn't impressive.

 

In addition to its impressiveness, I the re-watchability of these films and the actors within them is undeniable. You won't catch everything they say the first time through. Imagine watching HIS GIRL FRIDAY back in the day and not being able to rewind or rewatch!

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And this is as much due to the writing as it is the actors. If you go back and watch any of the good class or screwball comedies from the late 30s, the 40s, or the 50s, the dialogue was so witty that every other line is quotable, and generally layered. This means that the movie just gets more and more interesting every time you go back. I feel similarly about Shakespeare. I usually get around 90% of what someone's dialogue means in any given Shakespeare play the first time around. Even then, that is after YEARS of study. But every time I go back, I get more and more, and understand more context, which makes the art that much more enjoyable.

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A lot of that has to do with understanding references.

 

References have been a staple of the performative arts  since the Greeks invented Western theater (I'm sure it's been around far longer in older cultures in China and India). But those Greek geeks were just getting things started. And it didn't even have to be performative. From Shakespeare, to Byron, to Joyce, to Palladino, the reference has always been a part of fast-writing.

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And guess what, it's elitist.

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That doesn't mean it's bad. It just enhances the viewing or reading for those in the know. And what makes a truly good piece of art is something that can entertain in addition to the reference.

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Frasier wouldn't have been on TV for 11 seasons if people were just coming for the odd reference to Schubert. 

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But I think there is this complicated needle to thread that has to do with audiences who want to learn as well as be entertained. If I know 90% of the references, then run into one that I don't know, it reminds me that I don't know everything. This not only humbles me, but turns our characters into that much more interesting people.

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So we have these linguistic gods who can make up their mind at the firing of a synapse, while quoting some esoteric but relatable reference, and flirting with a rival. I think I only get to feel like these people twice a year, tops. Because it would be extremely exhausting to try that hard all the time.