A friend of mine, the scion of a legendary entertainment industry family, once used a great piece of old-timey show business jargon to describe a recent Broadway production.
"It was too 'centre door fancy' for me," he said with a shrug.
Centre door fancy? I'd never heard that expression before, and I pride myself on collecting - and using - odd and anachronistic show business slang. I drop it into conversations to appear worldly and experienced. That's the trick of getting old gracefully - you can't really fight it, so you have to do it in a cool way.
It's an affectation, I know, but when I talk to young people just starting out in the entertainment business, I salt my conversation with hard-bitten, Rat-Pack-tinged jargon. Phrases like "hang a lantern on it" - which means, essentially, calling obvious attention to an unbelievable plot coincidence in an effort to make it seem less cheap and flawed. Then there's "too much sunny Spain", which means too much exposition, as in a Shakespeare play when two characters walk onstage and announce, "Here we are in sunny Spain!" to let the audience know where they are. And I'm partial to the phrase "too Mousetrap" to describe anything overly complicated and hard to explain in a story.
All of these make me sound like a wily, seen-it-all old-timer. Which I almost am. I even refer to movies as "pictures", like one of those old-timey movie moguls.
When my Hollywood-born friend used "centre door fancy," it was new to me, though it wasn't hard to figure out what he meant: the show was a little overdone, a little overproduced, a little too perfect. Nice looking, but too nice looking.
The solution to being too "centre door fancy" is to "throw it away", a phrase I heard a lot from an older, hugely successful television director I worked with. He'd approach an actor after a take, think for a moment, and then say, "You know what? Try this. Just … throw it away."
He meant: don't work so hard. Don't push it so much. Just throw the line away and it'll work better.
It's almost impossible to imagine this kind of jargon working in any other business.
It's just not imaginable, for instance, for a lawyer to write in a United States Supreme Court brief that the lower court reasoning seems a little too "centre door fancy". It's hard to wrap my head around the possibility that right before he makes his first incision into a patient's brain, the nurse will remind the neurosurgeon that he really should just "throw it away". And I have yet to meet the CFO who looks at the miserable quarterly performance of his company and decides to "hang a lantern" on it.
Every other business just seems too consequential and concrete, too sturdy and fact-based, to need a silly language of its own. Investment banking has its "workouts" and its "short squeezes". The energy business has "fracking" and "wildcatting". Dentistry has its "canals" and its "temporary crowns". All of these seem more purposeful and adult than "centre door fancy". They all seem more, well, businesslike.
Every business, that is, except for the only business more frivolous and spendthrift than the entertainment industry - the capricious mess called "American politics."
What can you say about the Obama presidential campaign, with every press release touting the unemployment rate and every joyful announcement that his approval rating is now around 48 per cent, but that he and his team are doing a very good job "hanging a lantern" on some otherwise grim milestones?
And how else could you describe the chaos now unfolding in the frigid states of Iowa and New Hampshire - the sites of the first two primary elections among Republicans selecting a candidate to face Barack Obama in the fall - except that the front-runner, Mitt Romney, seems a little too "centre door fancy" for a lot of voters.
On second thought, why single out US politicians? They are not uniquely suited for entertainment industry slang. For instance, try as she might, it's hard to think of hapless, desperate German Chancellor Angela Merkel and her frantic attempts to shore up the euro without thinking, "I don't know. Seems a bit 'too Mousetrap' to me".
Show business may be a frivolous enterprise filled with inconsequential people, but at least we've got a colourful vocabulary. Not every business can say the same thing.
Rob Long is a writer and producer based in Hollywood.
MATCH INFO
Manchester City 4 (Gundogan 8' (P), Bernardo Silva 19', Jesus 72', 75')
Fulham 0
Red cards: Tim Ream (Fulham)
Man of the Match: Gabriel Jesus (Manchester City)
DEADPOOL & WOLVERINE
Starring: Ryan Reynolds, Hugh Jackman, Emma Corrin
Director: Shawn Levy
Rating: 3/5
COMPANY PROFILE
Name: Xpanceo
Started: 2018
Founders: Roman Axelrod, Valentyn Volkov
Based: Dubai, UAE
Industry: Smart contact lenses, augmented/virtual reality
Funding: $40 million
Investor: Opportunity Venture (Asia)
The biog
From: Upper Egypt
Age: 78
Family: a daughter in Egypt; a son in Dubai and his wife, Nabila
Favourite Abu Dhabi activity: walking near to Emirates Palace
Favourite building in Abu Dhabi: Emirates Palace
ROUTE TO TITLE
Round 1: Beat Leolia Jeanjean 6-1, 6-2
Round 2: Beat Naomi Osaka 7-6, 1-6, 7-5
Round 3: Beat Marie Bouzkova 6-4, 6-2
Round 4: Beat Anastasia Potapova 6-0, 6-0
Quarter-final: Beat Marketa Vondrousova 6-0, 6-2
Semi-final: Beat Coco Gauff 6-2, 6-4
Final: Beat Jasmine Paolini 6-2, 6-2
Tomb Raider I–III Remastered
Developer: Aspyr
Publisher: Aspyr
Console: Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4&5, PC and Xbox series X/S
Rating: 3/5
Islamic Architecture: A World History
Author: Eric Broug
Publisher: Thames & Hudson
Pages: 336
Available: September
WWE Evolution results
- Trish Stratus and Lita beat Alicia Fox and Mickie James in a tag match
- Nia Jax won a battle royal, eliminating Ember Moon last to win
- Toni Storm beat Io Shirai to win the Mae Young Classic
- Natalya, Sasha Banks and Bayley beat The Riott Squad in a six-woman tag match
- Shayna Baszler won the NXT Women’s title by defeating Kairi Sane
- Becky Lynch retained the SmackDown Women’s Championship against Charlotte Flair in a Last Woman Standing match
- Ronda Rousey retained the Raw Women’s title by beating Nikki Bella
The specs
Engine: 6-cylinder, 4.8-litre
Transmission: 5-speed automatic and manual
Power: 280 brake horsepower
Torque: 451Nm
Price: from Dh153,00
On sale: now
Living in...
This article is part of a guide on where to live in the UAE. Our reporters will profile some of the country’s most desirable districts, provide an estimate of rental prices and introduce you to some of the residents who call each area home.
Fixtures
Opening day Premier League fixtures for August 9-11
August 9
Liverpool v Norwich 11pm
August 10
West Ham v Man City 3.30pm
Bournemouth v Sheffield Utd 6pm
Burnley v Southampton 6pm
C Palace v Everton 6pm
Leicester v Wolves 6pm
Watford v Brighton 6pm
Tottenham v Aston Villa 8.30pm
August 11
Newcastle v Arsenal 5pm
Man United v Chelsea 7.30pm
Uefa Nations League: How it works
The Uefa Nations League, introduced last year, has reached its final stage, to be played over five days in northern Portugal. The format of its closing tournament is compact, spread over two semi-finals, with the first, Portugal versus Switzerland in Porto on Wednesday evening, and the second, England against the Netherlands, in Guimaraes, on Thursday.
The winners of each semi will then meet at Porto’s Dragao stadium on Sunday, with the losing semi-finalists contesting a third-place play-off in Guimaraes earlier that day.
Qualifying for the final stage was via League A of the inaugural Nations League, in which the top 12 European countries according to Uefa's co-efficient seeding system were divided into four groups, the teams playing each other twice between September and November. Portugal, who finished above Italy and Poland, successfully bid to host the finals.
Frida
Director: Carla Gutierrez
Starring: Frida Kahlo
Rating: 4/5
The five pillars of Islam
Getting there and where to stay
Fly with Etihad Airways from Abu Dhabi to New York’s JFK. There's 11 flights a week and economy fares start at around Dh5,000.
Stay at The Mark Hotel on the city’s Upper East Side. Overnight stays start from $1395 per night.
Visit NYC Go, the official destination resource for New York City for all the latest events, activites and openings.
Sarfira
Director: Sudha Kongara Prasad
Starring: Akshay Kumar, Radhika Madan, Paresh Rawal
Rating: 2/5
Fixtures
Wednesday, April 3
Arsenal v Luton Town, 10.30pm (UAE)
Manchester City v Aston Villa, 11.15pm (UAE)
Thursday, April 4
Liverpool v Sheffield United, 10.30pm (UAE)
Jeff Buckley: From Hallelujah To The Last Goodbye
By Dave Lory with Jim Irvin
The specs
Engine: 3.8-litre twin-turbo V8
Power: 611bhp
Torque: 620Nm
Transmission: seven-speed automatic
Price: upon application
On sale: now
Dhadak
Director: Shashank Khaitan
Starring: Janhvi Kapoor, Ishaan Khattar, Ashutosh Rana
Stars: 3