The Importance of Subtlety in Art

A couple of days ago I met one of my favorite actors, Karl Urban from the new Star Trek movies, "Dredd," and "Lord of the Rings."
I told him that most actors who aren't from the south-- especially non-American actors-- can't nail the Southern accent nearly as well as he does when he plays Doctor McCoy in the Star Trek films.
I even named a couple of actors specifically whose affected Southern accents are horrible. I won't name them here in case a tabloid publication has a Google alert on Karl or the actors. But if you read this blog regularly then you probably know to whom I'm referring.
A word that was in the back of my mind when I was praising him: subtlety.
Anyway, he paused for a long time, then I got somewhat nervous as I wondered if I had pushed my criticism of those actors too far-- maybe I had insulted his friends or...
Suddenly, he looked up then said, "yes, I agree completely. Thank you so much for that."
He paused again then said, "It's about being subtle."

It made me think back to a bar show where I performed a couple of weeks ago. The first two comics who I watched got maybe one laugh each in their five minutes, so I thought, "I can put this baby in cruise control. Who cares?" Granted, the crowd was 80% comics, AND the first two comics were abysmal, so it was difficult for me to take the crowd's response seriously.
Then a girl who had supermodel looks did something that extremely hot girls rarely do-- she was actually funny, really funny.
I was next. The pressure was now on.
I wanted to equal or exceed the responses to her act so much that I forced the issue. The non-comics laughed at most of my jokes, but I wasn't satisfied with just those five people because at this stage it's almost easy to make non-comics laugh. So I targeted the other twenty people in the room, which is really, really stupid because comics are soulless cunts-- I've known this for a long time. But I'm stubborn. And the more I forced the issue the more my act was feeling and probably looking affected and mechanical. I even started to lose the non-comics during the last two minutes or so. I probably did 60% as well as the delicious supermodel before me.

Moral of the story for anyone who is in the arts: just relax, just do you, and if the art requires a tweak of some sort don't stray so far away from yourself that you're not even feeling it anymore.