Comment by bottlepalm
14 hours ago
So many posts and comments are saying the same thing. I guess it's one of the things we remember most about Patrick Stewart and his portrayal of a starship captain. The quintessential captain. Honorable, wise, but humble, diplomatic, reasonable, with high morals, and fortitude under pressure.
an actual role model for all us nerds out there :)
A fictional role model.
A fiction yes, because we see in reality that role models and competent leaders are hard to find.
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It’s weird to me because he didn’t write the character and didn’t even watch the show. These tributes aren’t about him.
It’s like writing an obit about how much you like warmed hotdogs when local 7-11 worker dies and everyone sharing their taste for warm hotdogs in the comments.
Picard's actions were choices made in the writing, but Stewart's strengths as a performer gave it gravitas, made it believable and made it resist cynicism. He gave the writing legs.
I'm sure those writers were quite content writing for an actor of that calibre. Imagine putting words to the page, knowing Patrick Stewart will take them out into the world and surely stick the landing.
What a great combination.
We know Stewart was not a great writer, of course. When he had opportunities to take the reigns of the Picard character creativitely he usually asked for more action, and the results were a bit more conventional and boring. The combination was certainly also needed for the magic.
I always liked this video from an acting workshop where Suchet and Stewart deliver contrasting performances of Shylock and discuss their choices at length:
https://youtu.be/-35G7DOFrOo
https://youtu.be/FU_zqBIITDM
The Picard series on Amazon, which he had a big say in, was not great.
It's an actor's job to dramatise our projections, so from that POV he did a legendary job with TNG.
But there's a certain amount of learned skill involved. I know someone who used to work backstage at the Royal Shakespeare Company. She said that she'd all these famous names playing cards backstage, they'd get their call, turn on the juice, stride on stage, say their lines with the appropriate presence and gravitas, then turn the juice off again after the scene and pick up the card game where they left off.
Stewart's choice of roles and support for causes suggests there was more than that involved for him.
He wasn't Picard in real life, but he wasn't just acting either.
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This is absolute gold, but Suchet is so much better here. That performance was transcendent.
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A person's work is a valid part of their life, and for fans of a celebrity probably the only part they really have the ability to speak about other than they heard he was a nice guy. The way a work of fiction impacts your life is a valid reason to remember an actor fondly I think. I also think if a hotdog vendor died it would be ok to talk about how fucking good the hotdogs he made were and how much it meant to you to stop to get one after work or whatever.
Sure, but it's hard to imagine, say, Robin Williams or Tom Hanks bringing the same energy to the role. I also have to imagine that after the first season, the loop closed a bit, and the writers started writing JLP with Patrick Stewart in mind. Few people are as synonymous with a role as Patrick Stewart with JLP.
In your analogy, it is more like you know a great hot dog place in Chicago that has been around for decades, then the original owner dies, his kids take over, and it is bought out by private equity. The hot dog obit would be as much for the original creator as the hot dog itself.
Sir Patrick Stewart himself was a role model - not just the fictional starship captain he portrayed.
Stewart overcame immense adversity as a child, found a passion and calling into which he poured his heart and soul for decades before “making it” in middle age as Picard. He struggled with family and relationships as many do, but was honest and open about his challenges and regrets. And he continued to hone his passion and craft until the end of his days. Truly a life well lived and an inspiration for all.
Yes, Picard was a fictional role model, but what made Picard unique is that he introduced us to Stewart who was just as much of a real-life role model as the character he played. Picard will live on forever but Stewart will be sorely missed.
I'm sure Stewart would suggest that you should watch more theater.
Then you'll see how much different choices made by the actor can transform a script.
As a clear example, here's Darth Vader voiced by the actor who played him before James Earl Jones' voice was inserted https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KQFho0_G1VI
Imagine how different Star Wars would be without Jones.
I'm not sure how you can even watch that scene and not be struck by "oh man, how does this guy have such presence?". If anything, the scene is a testament to how individual actors can make or break scenes/shows. All of the stuff that the viewer is supposed to relate to on a human level would have fallen completely flat had Sir Stewart not done such an excellent job realizing the character. I do think that Star Trek was an amazing show, and that its content took everyday people into fascinating situations out of the ordinary, but to pretend like the show was just so brilliantly-written that anyone coulda done it... definitely not. the show easily coulda been utter dogshit with the exact same script. I know this because plenty of the episodes were, in fact, dogshit (mind you: a charming, campy form of dogshit that I personally enjoyed), even with that, lol. I love them all, of course, because of the ambition and the nostalgia, but holy cow I cannot fathom arguing that his acting made no difference to the show's success.
I'm going to agree with you, and I too have been sparing a thankful thought or two for the people that made the show what it was. The producers, writers, directors all had a hand in shaping that interpretation of the future (a future that day by day seems less and less likely).
If anything I'd say it's 50/50
He didn't write the character, but he delivered it. The delivery is just as much a part of Picard as the writing.
The presence of all the Shakespeare references is quite coincidental, if Patrick Stewart didn't influence the writing at all.
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Regardless of how accurate the analogy to 7-11 hotdogs is, I just want to say your comment made me smile.
I would say without Patrick Stewart's performance, the show would have been a disaster. He really carried the early seasons of the show, even when the writing was quite poor.
That’s ridiculous. The guy who puts the hot dogs on the rollers has essentially zero influence on the taste.
It’s more like a famous chef dying and lots of people praising his food, and you’re here saying all credit should go to the farmers and the chef just assembled the stuff.
Better comparison there is a line cook dying and praising how they executed some of the head chef’s recipes
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Except it is not? They are not praising his acting skills. They are praising words and values of fictional character he played.
That is like praising chef for restaurant decor.
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Every celebrity death thread is more or less the same in that regard. Discussion is far more about nostalgia for media and characters than the actual person.
I misspoke placing focus on them as people. I’m also referring to how people talk about performance. Of course he was a legendary performer. But a lot of the talk and this article is about things that were on paper or provided as direction. That’s just the script and I don’t see much articulation of what made him a good performer in ways beyond what he was told to express, aside from perhaps his aura (or as this crowd prefers, “presence”)
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Yeah, I find that weird too. He was a good actor, but he did not made Picard. Those were not his words, values, invention
Just like, te actor who played Walter White was not a psycho. Those were not his words, values, invention.
In both cases, they played it.
The feedback is two-way.
At first, Ian Fleming, author of the Bond novels, considered the casting of the brawny Sean Connery in the role of his suave, lanky super-spy to be absurd. After having seen Dr. No, however, he was so impressed with Connery's performance that he wrote a Scottish backstory for Bond and, for Ian Fleming as much as for anyone else, Connery became the original and definitive "face" of Bond.
A different actor might've been picked to play Picard in season one. But how would that Picard have hit with audiences were it not for Stewart's delivery? And would the character have evolved in a different direction had the writers had a different actor in mind when imagining the character? (My money's on yes.)
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Hmm... not sure. Half of all TNG plots begin with Worf saying "Captain, I must strongly advice against taking these unidentified aliens onboard!", Picard replying "Overruled Mr. Worf!", and then they find out that Worf was right all along. Picard never apologizes, thus comes off as a prick at times.
“With all due respect sir, I have always felt free to voice my opinions, even when they differ from those of Captain Picard or Commander Riker.” --Worf, when he's getting chewed out by Data
That makes him more real IMO. All humans have flaws of character. That doesn’t mean flawed equls good, we like people who have less of them.
“Captain, I must protest: I am not a merry man!”
Overruled!
I love how Jeordi just goes with it and tries to be play his mandolin