Just caught a comment in the Drinker’s monologue: the writers lack the life experience to write believable masculine characters. That’s profound: the characters are pusillanimous pansies because THE WRITERS are pusillanimous pansies.
Yep. Like how in the recent Star Wars movies the relationships between the characters were ruined, divorce, etc. This is because the writers and directors are amoral hacks who can’t hold a relationship together themselves. And can’t stand the thought of anyone else doing so.
I suspect this is right about the writers. Beyond that, two elements about male actors: many in the past were veterans of the military, including wartime. They knew things from experience in the real world that most writers could not imagine. Capable of projecting a convincing male, because they had been there. Second, many of the great male actors began their careers on stage, where attention to whole body presentation in full view was demanding and detailed. No editing, no face closeups, no retakes to make it easy. Bogart, Tracy, Olivier, Burton. Many others—stage actors all.