Cameo Role
A Cameo Role (often shorted to just 'cameo' or 'ego-feeding') is when someone famous appears in a film, television show, or other performing art, for an extremely short amount of time as either a miscellaneous character or themselves. These people are typically unrelated famous actors, artists, musicians, celebrities, important members of the film crew or Stan Lee.
History[edit]
According to the Oxford English Dictionary, a cameo roll was originally a kind of small French pudding, commonly served with raspberry sauce and walnuts. In recent years, the term has come to mean a short appearance by someone recognisable, i.e. an actor/actress who played the role previously in the original (and usually better) version of the show, hence the changing of the spelling.
Etiquette[edit]
The person in question is normally not credited, meaning that anyone who is watching the film must declare to their immediate surroundings (even if they are completely and utterly alone) something along the lines of:
"Wasn't that (Insert Stan Lee Here)?"
"I'm not sure, pass us the remote."
"Why?"
"I'm going to rewind and see who it was."
To this, there is only one appropriate response:
"Shut up and watch the bloody film like a normal person!"
(It must be noted that if the second person actually tries this, instead of just sitting back, shutting up, and watching the bloody film like a normal person, then under Section 5 of the Geneva Convention, it is considered a war crime.)
Famous Examples[edit]
Directors
Quentin Tarantino has appeared briefly in multiple films, including Pulp Fiction, Reservoir Dogs, all those ones about someone killing (and judging by the number of sequels, failing) to kill some chap named William, and as something cowboyish in one of his many, many cowboy films.
Peter Jackson once ate a carrot in The Lord Of The Rings, and people liked it so much that he did it again in the now giant, convoluted, ridiculous mess known as the Hobbit trilogy.
And Roman Polanski once pretended to be Chinese so he could try to stab Jack Nicholson. He missed, and got away with it by pretending that it was part of the plot.
Actors and Writers Writers often try to get cameos in movies so they have an excuse not to do any work. There aren't any famous examples, because frankly nobody knows what the writers of popular films and television actually look like, because no one cares.
On the other hand, for an actor, a cameo role is a welcome and increasingly vital method of gaining some attention. Without such opportunities to be noticed and reminded of, many actors are forced to turn to crashing private events or using physical violence in public places.
Real People
Docudramas or other pieces of work based on real life events often feature the people who actually experienced the events taking place on screen. You can normally spot them as the people who look slightly like the lead actor(s), only uglier and less interesting.
Stan Lee
Stan Lee now actually lives inside the marvel universe, and can occasionally be seen there, pottering about, doing odd jobs, often yelling something mildly offensive and occasionally deeply racist towards the main protagonist, normally out of a train or cab window. Strangely, people still seem to think it's funny.
Face it, Marvel, he's never going to die. He's slowly been sucking the life force out of mildly nerdy Millennials since the first Iron Man; there's nothing you can do to stop him now. We have damned our souls to a far worse fate that what lies in the depths of hell. We may as well just give up now, and hail him as our worldly ruler, as he slowly consumes the universe via perpetual anecdotes about 'the good old days' and being just congenial enough to be a little but creepy.