Yum, scenery

[Slartibartfast]

So I keep hearing the expression "chewing scenery" or "there were teethmarks in the scenery". It has something to do with actors, so what the heck does that mean?

[Companion Cube]

So I keep hearing the expression "chewing scenery" or "there were teethmarks in the scenery". It has something to do with actors, so what the heck does that mean?

I was under the impression that it means overacting, but I don't really know.

[Dalton]

I've never run across this term in any of the video or film shoots I was on.

[Drewcifer]

These took a little while to find, but here it is:

to chew the scenery
usage: Very informal
part of speech: Verb phrase
definition: Make an ostentatious and inappropriate display of emotion.
source: Theatrical metaphor for overacting.
example: Has anyone ever chewed the scenery like that?

source

Chew (up the) scenery means 'to act melodramatically; overact'. Usually, it's in the context of a play or movie, but it can refer to an aunt of yours who is a frustrated actress. The connotation, either positive or negative, depends on whether the overacting is appropriate to the role or occasion. Here's a recent review from the Topeka Capital-Journal: "Jeff Montague was surely Captain Hook in another life. He minces and chortles, preens and roars and chews the scenery. He is wonderful. It is the best work I have ever seen him do. It is, most likely, the most fun he has ever had on stage --- and it shows." And here's a review of the 1994 film Interview With a Vampire: "While Tom Cruise chews the scenery as the irredeemably evil vampire Lestat, [Brad] Pitt quietly infuses the picture with a powerful melancholy."

[...]

Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase and Fable and a couple of other sources attribute chew the scenery to Dorothy Parker, the writer and humorist. In a 1930 review she wrote: "...more glutton than artist...he commences to chew up the scenery." But Random House Historical Dictionary of American Slang has a much earlier (1894) example from Coeur D'Alene, by Idahoan novelist Mary Hallock Foote....

source

[Slartibartfast]

Thanks Drew.