Read the post before you watch the video if you like. It’s right here 👉 “Playing Dead for Fun and Profit”
If you’d rather I read it to you, I am happy to do so.👇 Reading commences as soon as you hit play. Enjoy!
Notes from the Captain
Crew! Playing dead for fun and profit is a skill. A skill every crew member should practice and perfect if they—I mean you—want to move the work forward.
Did I just call creative pursuits work? Of course I did. It is work. If you’re taking yourself seriously, it is your job. It might not be the job you have that actually pays the rent—yet—but if you want to produce art, whatever that art is, you have to treat it like a job.
You have to set time to punch the time clock and work on it. And at it.
And that’s what I’m calling playing dead, a concept I explain in the above video, which includes some opossum facts (more below), hognose snake footage (also, more below), and a whole lotta Weekend at Bernie’s talk.
Watch it. Play dead. (Metaphorically) Make stuff with vigor. (And rigor. Which is half way to mortis, but you know, more rigorous focus than rigor mortis immobility).
The supplementary material below is for aromas and shizzles. Enjoy! Leave a comment if you dare.
🫡
Thangs from this episode…
👩✈️ All about Playing Possum AKA Thanatosis AKA Playing Dead
Some reading things:
Fact Sheet on the Virginia Opossum
Opossums Feign Dead to Evade Predators - Via Asknature
Here is a very loving documentary about opossums.
👇 Ze Frank video about opossums which is, as always, delightful. Two headed penis trigger warning. Playing possum bit in below video starts around here with some freezing action.
Opossums are North America’s ONLY marsupial. Did you know that?
The Eastern Hognose snake in action. Wriggly snek danger noodle.
👩✈️ Weekend at Bernies
Did you know that only ONE SCENE with Bernie’s body in Weekend at Bernies (he is “dead” for half the film) was not a real human body? It’s pretty easy to guess which one.
The actor who plays Bernie, Terry Kising (a name I wrote down incorrectly so mispronounced in this week’s video), is in most of his dead body scenes except for a few where he had to get a stuntman to stand in. It was not a job without injury:
Kiser himself talked about being put through the wringer. "I broke three ribs during the course of filming," he told Mel Magazine. "I had a nerve in the back of my neck press down that was causing violent dizziness when they kept dropping me on the couch on my head." - From Slashfilm
And if you’ve never seen this gem of 80s… eighties-ness, here’s the trailer
👩✈️ Acting and how to play dead
When it goes wrong, it goes really wrong. But I do loves me some good dead acting, even when it’s overacting.
A compilation of what Mojo considers the worst.
As some theme adjacent footage, I did some digging on what are considered amusing scenes or circumstances where characters had their lights go out. The Funniest list won’t embed here, unfortunately, since it has age-restricted movie scenes, but go here to watch.
Here’ a sub that will embed.
Here’s some TV ones.
Now, more to the mechanics of how to act dead as an actor.
“How do actors play dead?” - Backstage step-by-step
Bonus video 1
Bonus video 2: I bet you weren’t expecting a HITLER story.
👩✈️ Is that the real Paul McCartney or a dupe?
I made a dumb joke in the video where I mentioned that some beetles do the ol’ playing dead lark. It was a perfect opening for a The Beatles/Paul is Dead nod.
If you are unfamiliar with it, the conspiracy theory went/goes that Paul McCartney died in 1966 on his way home from working on Sgt. Pepper and they didn’t want to upset fans so didn’t let the world know and just replaced him with a stand in.
One of the iron clad clues that proves it is that on the cover of Abbey Road, Paul is barefoot and walking out of step with the others. Iron clad! There were other easter eggs that provided further evidence. You can read a summary here.
It’s a conspiracy that goes way back. Here’s a video about it.
At the end of this👇 James Cordon of all people, brings up that playing dead can get you out of things. I said that! As an aside, I sometimes watch interviews like this with Paul McCartney and, as a recovered extreme McCartney fanatic and consumer of anything ever written and recorded and documented that I could get my hands on between my years of 12 to maybe 20, I feel like I have heard every question he’s ever. Imagine how he feels? I can’t believe he’s still answering them. Patiently on the outside. Probably sighing loudly on the inside. There is NO QUESTION HE HAS NOT BEEN ASKED!
Thanks for listening/watching and sharing this week. If you want to comment on any of the concepts in last week’s post—or just in general—feel free to leave a comment for the Captain (it me.)
I remain, as always, your faithful Noodle of the Sea. And yes, I do usually put the zipper end under the tab but I guess I was SO EXCITE to get out with Neptune, I forgot.
Your Captain, Janeen 🫡
Shameless Podcast Plug
Listen to audio versions of early issues of The Stream on my podcast, Field of Streams, available on 👉 all major podcasting platforms 👈
Here’s Apple
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