Funny Cyphers, People with different faces, who are us.

Just thinking about universality of character and
being appealing while still being a bit of a cypher.

Hmmmmm....Movies...with an emphasis on Comedy and 80's to 90's comedy drama switching.

Oh Dear...... Jim Carrey.


Richard Dreyfus, Gene Wilder, Richard Pryor, Diane Keaton. 1970's
Bill Murray, Tom Hanks, and Eddie Murphy 80's
Jim Carrey and Wil Smith 90's
2000's....hard to call.....
Steve Carrell vs Mike Meyers vs Ben Stiller vs and Bernie Mac and Reese Witherspoon

Off the cuff.....
Perrenials: Dustin Hoffman, Sally Field, Chevy Chase, Robin Williams, Steve Martin, Adam Sandler, Will Ferrell, Cameron Diaz, I am looking to Amy Pohler and Maya Rudolph this next decade.


I would love to see a movie with Allyson Hannigan and Joan Cusack as the two leads in touch with their inner hayseed.


On the not so cypheresque performers....

Does everyone want to be Cary Grant? How about Catherine Hepburn?
Are they likable enough so that you can overlook their Patrician sounds?
In the early 40's were they so bankable because it was fun to make fun of egg heads and drunkards with money slowly running out of it or having it and it not making a bit of difference?

When the 1940's turned into the 1950's We had Victor Mature and Charleston Heston Actors of Biblical Proportions and Plot lines winning lots of cash opposite Ladies w/Tramps and Princesses.
By the 1960's it was a former Scottish Soccer Guy turned Spy who lived Big Thrice and the same Nanny who did twice. Also, some Egyptian Dude played some Russian Dude obsessed with and English Lady not playing an English or Russian Dude. There were also Jungle Books and Dalmations to be seen. The 1970's changed tastes quite drasticly. Lots of flying bullets and horrors of the deep to deal with. Lots of Navel Gazing to be had, and made fun of. Nuclear War was just around the corner in the 1980's.

Animation went out of "style" and got strangely Navel Gazey in the 1970's
Lots of stories about nothing in particular....to string "gags" upon.
Lots of Dynamism and nothing to really care about for the most part.
The corrollary is that by the time you got around to mneeting the characters you are supposed to care about you forgot you were supposed to care about them.

Movies by people like Robert Altman made me care about none of the people in them.
I gues that is why fantasy, adventure and science fiction erupted out of the 1970's and into the 1980's with such force.



Cyphers. Over and about the comedy people who can do drama listed above. How about it?
(I'm not gonna put in hyperlinks so look them up)

Jimmy Stewart: from Macaulay Connor to George Bailey to Buttons the Clown.
John Wayne: especially in pre-1960's westerns and things like The Quiet Man.
Diane Keaton: From The Godfather to Annie Hall to Somethings Gotta Give.

Just lists:
Michael Caine: Gary Cooper: William Holden: Jack Lemmon: Philip Seymour Hoffman:
Kate Winslet: Barbara Stanwick: Vivien Leigh: Bette Davis: Tilda Swinton: Betty Grable: