Talk:Breaking character

Deleting reference to "Six Characters in Search for an Author", because they do not break character. "Six Characters in Search of an Author" is similar to "Last Action Hero" or "Moulin Rouge". However Chevy Chase referring to his role in "The Invisible Man" talked about how he couldn't break character by winking to the audience.

In Return of the Killer Tomatoes there is a scene where there is a pretend break of characters, where the actors play actors that have to quit acting the main characters while revenue is drummed up in the form of paid placement.

Carol Burnett Show
Arguably the most famous (or perhaps infamous) example of repeatedly breaking character occurred during The Carol Burnett Show which lasted from 1967 to 1978. The show was often recorded live before a studio audience and the comedy sketches were written days if not hours before they went on, so oftentimes the performers had not yet had time to be desensitized to the humor. Harvey Korman was the worst. He'd start cracking up at the drop of a hat in later years. However, at one time or another all the regular performers were guilty of breaking character. ZachsMind 13:22, 17 June 2006 (UTC)

Lost
According to interviews taken during the second season of CBS's television series Lost for the official podcasts, actors like Naveen Andrews and Dominic Monaghan have admitted to something they called 'corpsing' which is a slang term for breaking character by laughter so much that one or more actors can't go on without a break. The complexities and stress regarding serial production of television can sometimes take its toll and manifest in nervous laughter over the smallest of things. When the actor breaks character, and can't stop himself and regain composure, that's corpsing. Outtakes for many tv shows and movies, now often available on DVD, offer many examples. ZachsMind 13:42, 17 June 2006 (UTC)

merging out of character w/breaking character

 * The following discussion is an archived debate of the . Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. No further edits should be made to this section. 

no merge. Skeezix1000 01:39, 16 September 2006 (UTC)

I don't believe these two pages should be merged. They're not the same thing. It's possible for an actor to remain in character but be performing things that are out of character for that role, because of writing choices, production complexities, or other external forces. ZachsMind 13:45, 17 June 2006 (UTC)
 * I agree. --Storkk 13:11, 6 September 2006 (UTC)
 * The term Out of character, and the abbreviation "OOC" have nearly proper-noun status within role-playing and fanfic circles. Merging them with the Breaking Character article would dilute this distiction. Perhaps the answer is not in merging the two articles, but in editing both articles so that their distictions are clearer. --Roninbk 07:34, 10 September 2006 (UTC)


 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

Usual Suspects
Another classic example is during the scene in The Usual Suspects near the beginning of the film, the six principal actors are supposed to stand before a police lineup and read off a phrase given to them by the police. It was originally intended to be a straight opener to the film, but the day of filming, the actors couldn't keep a straight face. As the story goes that one scene took all day to film and take after take was ruined because the guys kept corpsing. They'd laugh so hysterically and break character uncontrollably. Director Bryan Singer took the six of them into a room during lunchtime, had a meeting with them where he basically said "you're screwing up my movie" and his chastisement was meant to discourage them from laughing any more, and all afternoon this just made them laugh even harder. They couldn't get through a single take. So editor John Ottman took the footage and incorporated the best of the bloopers of that day into what is now on film. The result is one of the most memorable works of cinematic history. It won Oscars.

The actual line is "hand me the keys, you fucking cocksucker", but I can't edit the page because of the stupid filter. Can somebody else do it, please?

The Lord of the rings example
The example made it into the final cut right? I added the sentence which said it made it into the final version, because I watched it and assume it to be true. If I'm wrong, someone please fix it. Sentriclecub (talk) 01:13, 7 June 2008 (UTC)

Roleplaying games
Out-of-character redirects here, and I usually associate that term with roleplaying games rather than with the contexts presented here. Should this article discuss the notion of breaking character in a game, or is there another page about that to which this can link? B7T (talk) 02:47, 7 January 2011 (UTC)
 * The discussion above suggests that Out-of-character should not have been merged with this one. Has consensus changed? B7T (talk) 20:15, 14 January 2011 (UTC)

Example farm
I'm thinking that pretty much the entirety of the example farm should be removed. I'll see if I can find any actual citations for these things, but I suspect that the vast majority of them are either original research or IMDB trivia. NinjaRobotPirate (talk) 02:25, 22 January 2015 (UTC)