It had been written and directed by a relatively unknown actor-screenwriter named Jimmy-Dale Hawthorne, who had poured his blond and guts into his film during the nearly ten years that had elapsed between inspiration and completion. Hawthorne also starred in HackSaw, in a real scenery-chewing role as the film’s exceptionally odd protagonist.
Googling for "scenery-chewing role" returns a lot of hits used in a similar context, but I still need an explanation. What does this odd expression mean? TIA Michal
It means that the role required the actor to go to extremes of emotion and agonised behaviour such as you would associate with the clinically insane.
The image may come from 'chewing the carpet'. Hitler was said to go into paroxysms of insane rage in which he would chew the carpets.This story owed something to the British propaganda department, I expect In Britain we sometimes say 'it had me chewing the carpets' to mean that something was intensely, maddeningly, frustrating or annoying. An alternative that we use is 'chewing the furniture'.
I consulted a friend of mine who is a film prof, his answer below mirrors that of Fred
"This used to be applied to Kirk Douglas, chewing up the scenery means something like hamming it up, or if one wants to favor this sort of thing (I like Douglas), you would say it's getting everything you can out of the role. Good example would be Lust for Life, where he contorts himself into about every imaginable facial distortion, emotes, anguishes, etc. Polar opposite would be, say, Gary Cooper, who underacts deliberately."
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“Two for the Money It's just like Devil's Advocate except this time it's Matthew McConaughey (Sahara) getting seduced by Satan, except Pacino ain't Satan this time around, he's just Pacino (William Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice) doing his Al Pacino imitation, yelling a lot and chewing up the scenery, and if you've seen that once, you've seen it enough.”
In Britain we sometimes say 'it had me chewing the carpets' to mean that something was intensely, maddeningly, frustrating or annoying. An alternative that we use is 'chewing the furniture'.
