How to paint like a movie star or TV actor
You know how hairdressers look at people’s hair to check for style and quality of cut – usually before making eye contact with the wearer of said hair; or gardeners tend to zone in on a beautiful flower ahead of the beautiful gardener tending it? Well, it is no different for professional painters and decorators…
Do not paint a ceiling like this movie star
I remember a scene in a rom-com movie where the starlet was redecorating her airy apartment. Sadly, as is customary for a professional painter, I looked very closely at the technical accuracy of the acting, and I couldn’t believe my eyes.
I can’t recall her name, but whoever she was had her roller pole (good start) pushed up through and out the top of an open umbrella, and was merrily rollering away beneath, splattering every surface in the room, apart from herself. It was quite amusing in fact. It was Hollywood, and I didn’t take the ridicule of my age-old craft too much to heart! But come on, what a missed opportunity to teach DIY ers everywhere the art of rolling a ceiling. How hard would it have been to weave a few lines into the dialogue so that her visiting friend could have shown her (and the world) how to roll paint on a ceiling without getting splattered?
Do not paint a wall like this TV actor
You would have thought a trade association would have advised the makers of the Brushstrokes series, a TV comedy based around a couple of painters and decorators. But no. Our trade was plundered once again for laughs, in the name of entertainment.
Jacko was the only name I remember. He used to really annoy me. I can’t tell you how many times he would be stood bantering in front of a blank wall with his mate, paint brush in hand – and then casually start to paint – slap bang in the middle of the wall. Whatever happened to working as a team, one cutting in a straight line round the edges, working from the top down? Is it funny? I have tried to get into jacko’s writers’ minds, but I don’t find it funny!…I mean, who does that starting in the middle of a wall deal in real life?
The damn actors on the DIY painting ads, that’s who!
Do not paint a room like these advert actors
One example of terrible trade practice is those numpties who demo the easiest self-filling roller systems in the world. They start in the middle of a wall too. Straight out with the roller. Doh!
And let’s not forget the beautiful couple in £100 jeans, hand-sewn mocassins and a £5000 grin who start in the middle of a wall or ceiling, and mysteriously complete the whole room, furnished, fire lit, champagne poured – all by tea-time, and not a speck of paint on them.
Now I know, it is possible to avoid getting covered in paint, especially if you use the Dulux paint that condenses into hard beads before it hits the floor, but that’s not what these idjuts were selling.
Raise standards in painting and decorating, movie directors
TV and Hollywood should be using their clout to raise standards and improve the public perception of painting and decorating.
Get rid of cowboy decorator actors with umbrellas. We need stage painters to emulate the likes of Chuck Norris, the guy who progressed from anonymous stunt man to star. Give the guy gilding the door to Phillip Marlowe’s new office in 1974 more to do than gild. Why not give him some lines and teach the private dic how to paint his own name?
And what a trick they missed in the Devil’s Advocate – why couldn’t they have included an instructive 5-minute demo, showing the paperhanger applying 0 paper to the walls of Keanu Reeve’s bedroom? That could have raised trade standards world-wide in a heart beat.
But no, what do Hollwood and TV moguls do? They highlight the worst examples of painting and decorating practice, and leave it to underpaid over-worked professionals like myself to write and blog and work ourselves to a standstill, showing how to paint and decorate the right way!
So, removing tongue firmly embedded in cheek, when you watch a movie or TV, what do you find you zone in on, and tut at, because of the technical inaccuracies?
Andy completed City & Guilds Advanced Craft in 1984. Scraping off wallpaper, rubbing down woodwork & re-decorating every square inch of a 5′ x 10′ panel, he never realised how lucky he was to learn the old school way – till now, when he draws on all that training to hand-paint kitchens & advise on decorating. Luckily he is still learning & enjoying the trade and can be found chatting and swapping ideas with fellow professionals and other great people on Twitter
The second single to be taken from 1991′s Stars album. A live favourite and one of the songs that helped Stars become the only UK album ever to be the biggest seller two years running (1991 & 1992)
