Props

Versions of this have been floating around YouTube for weeks. But this one's probably the tightest edited one I've seen.

Look. We all use props. Actors love 'em. It lets them focus all their feeling on something external. It's a trick that many like to use.

Writers use props too. We talk in shorthand in the room. We have jargon. We do things like cut to the chase and say, "it's a Frankenstein story" or "we got a High Noon showdown here." We may even think of certain plot turns or reveals that it's good to use and reuse, because they always work. We call them go-tos. Or we talk about something hacky and say, "we'll do the good version of that" and then somehow run out of time and leave it.

Directors have the lenses they love to shoot with. They have their pet visual tricks, their flash, their ways of working entirely inside their comfort zone.

Props can be very useful. The only problem with using props is that it's so easy -- too easy -- to become utterly dependent on them. And one of the downsides of the watching-tv-on-DVD revolution is it makes it easier to spot the pattern, see the seams in the storytelling, or the same old, same old choices of the actors.

It becomes easier to see the props. And when you do, you say, well, then what happens?

Ladies and Gentlemen, I give you David Caruso's Sunglasses. Oh Lordy loo, them be a warning to us all.