I’m a huge CSI Miami fan (for years I wanted to live in Miami, but wound up in San Diego when I accepted a job in 1982 as a reporter for the recent sold and seriously downsized San Diego Union). I’m also now in the entertainment biz and love studying acting and comedy technique.
Which raises a question: is David Caruso’s way of delivering some lines on CSI Miami, and putting on his sunglasses a sign of a good character actor or an actor who showed enormous promise in his NYPD Blue days but has evolved into an acting hack? Watch this and decide (your comments are welcome):
FOOTNOTE: I’ve now tried using this intonation and putting my glasses or sunglasses on and it doesn’t work as well. It really doesn’t work when I try to do it with my contact lenses.
UPDATE: Some comedians are having fun with Caruso’s technique:
And a famous, top comedian even poked fun at him on David Letterman:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=glvGfQnx3DI
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.