The banality of actors

I hate when I am perceived as a writer. I just don't like it. It sounds pretentious, and I'm not the one saying it. I want to write, I think my resume says writer, it makes me sick. I think I only say this because of actors. "I'm an actor." Maybe I'm the only one, and I know I'm not, but actors are deplorable, continuous streams of oral diarrhea--a nightmare that became true-like the movie "Mannequin." Let me first say, I have 98% rule, which means, whatever i say i like or hate, there exists a 2% give which supports an opposing argument. Say, all people are trash in Orange County, CA; by my rule, i have to allot 2% of the population to be worthy of existence, maybe more maybe less--suffice to say, there are no absolutes, as much as I'd love to abide by one. So anyways, an actor told me once that without actors, stories wouldn't come alive--this in response to my saying that an actor is a puppet, dead weight, a vacuous vessel--I have a thesaurus and just possess a plethora of synonyms for the word empty in relation to actors. I have to say that it got me thinking, are actors responsible for the execution of a beautiful story? Yes and No. And No and NO! My skewed view of the world says that actors are the end of the imagination, but I understand my own contradictions when I tell you that I hate to read but love to watch movies. Maybe nobody else understands, it's like this: simply because I need some sour cream to give my guacamole great texture doesn't mean I like sour cream. And many know how I feel about sour cream. I digress, I digress quite often. My point is that actors are merely an ingredient, an expendable ingredient at that, for the true vision, in film at least, comes from the story's creator and its visionary, which might be one and the same, in the form of the director. I'm sorry, but this subject gets me so fired up that words cram in my head like people in a burning building all trying to escape out the same door. When someone talks about a movie and I ask, "Who directed it?" I am often surprised that I receive the response "Who cares?" more than the answer to the question I asked. And my response, "Are you fucking kidding me?" I had an argument the other day about how actors are all shit, scum of the earth, and then my counterpoint goes and throws in Johnny Depp. Good ol Johnny Depp. Solid right? Her argument, "Pirates of the Carribbean," a shit movie that he rescucitated into two more excruciating sequels, I can only assume the third is shit as the second was exponentially worse than the first. But she's got me with Depp, partly. "Edward Scissorhands," arguably my favorite movie, and yes he was stellar, but tell me Brett Fatner makes that movie and Johnny Depp saves it? I'm sorry Mr. Burton for even referring to that fat, coked-out courtesan in the same sentence as any one of your films, including and most importantly "Pee Wee's Big Adventure." Anywho, back to Depp. First of all, maybe I'm committing sacrilege when I say, 21 Jump Street was one horrible piece of garbage, but I'm sayin' it. 45 film credits on imdb, and batting 500 in the big leagues is unheard of, but everywhere else it's failing. For every "Donnie Brasco" there's a "Nick of Time," "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas," "Benny and Joon." Now I gotta say, he personified the Hunter Thompson I saw in my brain when I read the book before seeing the movie, and I felt for Joe Pistone giving up Lefty, but come on now, Mr. Thompson lived that, and the great Terry Gilliam distributed a visual recreation of one fucked up trip, in both senses of the word. And while "Four Weddings and a Funeral" isn't "The Godfather," it's still better than being credited with "Van Halen: Video Hits Vol. 1," "The Avengers," "Saturday Night Fever," "Another Stakeout," "Bird on a Wire," the list goes on, but at least these guys are directors. And while my silly rage brings overflowing tangents in my favor for the dismissal of the pretty marionettes, I am disgusted with my disgust for the derived form of the very thing that I admire most, a storyteller.