Wich2 wrote:Being built by external exaggeration with the goal of one-note comic effect, a surface Sketch character can never really establish any dimensional personal trait in an actual Drama.
At the risk of putting us two in another argumentative gridlock, please hear me out. Little's Otterlake intentionally has no dimensional personal traits. He does not emote. He does not feel. Everything that comes out of his mouth is drenched in dishonesty. Nothing he says is genuine.
Hence, in the scenes between Jake and Rich Little's Brooksie, Jake would be opening himself up, which he rarely does, to someone he considers his closest friend. However, that "friend" is revealed to be a completely hollow human being. All that Little would need to do for his part is give a reaction to Jake that is so obviously phony, so clearly forced, that it leaves no doubt he's no friend at all. He doesn't comprehend Jake the way a true friend would. The drama in these scenes would have rested on Huston's Jake realizing this.
Imagine the "ancestral throne" scene, for example: Little's Otterlake goes on a rant about Hannaford's father's suicide. His delivery is insincere, as if he's a robot reciting factoids, as if there's no gravity to the event at all. Rubbing salt in the wound, he adds a lot of impressions as if to show himself off. When we cut to Jake, the inevitable expression of heartbreak on his face, the look of someone being bled to death by a "friend" who obviously does not care for him, would stand out against and be enhanced by the stupid, careless antics Little's Otterlake is doing in the background.
