It’s a film. The character over there whom we know nothing about yet is introduced to the audience as being selfish, arrogant and deluded. He’s smoking a roll-up of dubious provenance and at last we pan back so that a guitar case is revealed to be sitting beside him. This is the dramatic portrayal of the musician. They do the something similar when they want to signify a writer – except they substitute a half-empty bottle of scotch for the joint and a pencil sits in for the old banjo.
I realise that there are artistic factors at work here, and the director needs a shortcut to save 2 things. Firstly, time, and secondly, the audience having to think too hard when he wants them to be concentrating on his carefully designed tracking shot. But is it really necessary for the lawyer to always be the one who’s in a tearing hurry? ‘Sorry, I’m due in court’, they’ll gasp as they struggle with the hugest of humungous bundle of files underarm, papers spilling out, yet being caught by a handy and handsome-stroke-pretty passer-by when it’s necessary to engineer a little love interest.
In the old days if you saw someone in a mac, in the pissing rain, lighting up a fag and looking for a pub that was open then that person was bound to be a copper, if he had an ex-wife and a boss who didn’t like him, well that was the full set and he was obviously a very good detective, if not a very good husband or much of a team-player, but you marry the job don’t you, love?
Journalists also ticked most of those boxes, but they tended to have bad teeth and a rather seedy air about them.
You want a loose-ish woman? Then get the wardrobe department to dress her in stilettos and a pencil-skirt. Make sure her highlights are overdue, she has a slightly knock-kneed walk and can hold a glass of gin at a 30 degree angle. Job done.
On the other hand, if you’re casting a vicar he must have a big set of teeth that wrap around his chops like a corner sofa in white leather. Well, not really, but ever since Dick Emery played such a character that’s what I expect from a vicar. To the extent that one of the experts on the Antiques Roadshow – the one with the large specs, the slightly greasy hair in a side-parting and, most crucially, the mouthful of teeth – is known round these parts as Dick Emery.
If a murderer’s involved this will invariably be the loner, the outsider. The kids throw eggs at his windows, and he is what used to be called the local nutter. In fact, life imitates art here, as I believe there have been certain high-profile, real-life cases in which they’ve been so pressurised for a result, that the police still rely on this theory, regardless, or in spite of, or possibly because of, offender profiling like they have on telly. Which leads them to arrest the local oddball, even though he’s likely to be freed on appeal in a few years when all the fuss has died down.
During a murder mystery we were watching, I said to Sandra, “Look, you can tell she’s supposed to be a librarian, ‘cause she’s wearing glasses.”
But my theory doesn’t always hold true, as Mrs Bryer replied, “Wouldn’t be the fact she’s surrounded by shelves full of books then? In a big building marked Library?”
Never said it was foolproof. Did I?
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