Wednesday 31 August 2011

The Great Acting Blog: "Crissy Rock In Ken Loach's Ladybird Ladybird

Ladybird_ladybird

 

"If a director plays games, an intelligent actor is likely to become irritated" - Peter Brook

 

In Ladybird Ladybird, Crissy Rock plays Maggie Conlon, a woman who has had four children by four different fathers. One evening, Rock locks the children in their home while she goes out to her local to sing karaoke. While onstage, Rock learns that there has been fire at home, so she races back to discover her children have been taken to hospital, one of them burnt across his chest and shoulders. The social services, deeming Rock to be an unfit mother, take the children away from her. Rock is a woman whose great love for her children is undeniable, but her tragedy is that she is incapable of caring for them: unemployed, poorly educated, at the mercy of her own considerable bad temper, ( with a special vitriol reserved for The State, upon whom she is completely dependent) and drawn to violent, abusive partners. The scene where Rock reaches out to her burnt child with the intention of comforting him but only succeeds in hurting him by touching his wounds, is emblematic. However, a new chapter in her life opens when she meets Jorge, who has moved to Britain from his native Paraguay in order to escape persecution there. Jorge, kind, gentle and intelligent, surprisingly falls in love with Rock, and commits to helping her win her kids back, even ripping up his return ticket to Paraguay (thus making him an illegal immigrant) to show his commitment to her. Rock, after failing to win back any of her four children, takes a flat with Jorge, and has a baby with him, which is taken away from her by social workers after the baby has been home only a few days (at this point Rock is breaking the law by having custody of a child). Unperturbed, Rock and Jorge decide to have another, and Rock, through fear of having yet another child taken from her, almost refuses to push the baby out while giving birth at the hospital. The scene where this baby is taken from her by social workers, before Rock has even left the hospital this time, is among the most harrowing in all cinema, and Rock's will to keep hold of her baby is incredibly moving, if not gut-wrenching, as she is doomed to failure.


Crissy Rock's performance in this film is truly astonishing. Her emotional intensity is unbearable at times, spending so much of the film at the extreme end of human experience, whether it's her rage at the injustice she perceives is being meted out to her by the authorities and those around her, or the hideous anguish of a mother who has her children taken from her, or protecting herself from violent boyfriends (there is a scene where one of them, played by Ray Winstone, throws her to the ground and lashes abuse at her, Rock's expression of fear is so true that it is heart-breaking, a miraculous piece of acting). This is real powerhouse work from Rock, the essence of her performance is Shakespearean in it's sheer emotional scope, but embodied of course in Loach's milieu of everydayness. My first thought about Rocks's performance was that she must have been utterly exhausted playing this role, yes it's true that she rants and raves throughout the film, but that's not that unusual in itself, what is is the sheer force and intensity with which Rock does it – she absolutely throws the kitchen sink at it, her commitment is total, her intensity at full throttle, she is giving everything she's got here, and it's coming from the heart. My second thought about Rock's performance is that it is very difficult to extrapolate any practical lessons from it, to infer anything general from the particular. Rock's work has a rawness to it, it lacks the precision and definition of, say, Peter Mullan's performance in My Name Is Joe. After a little bit of research, I was not surprised to learn that Rock was a non-actor (ie – this was the first time she had acted), her emotional rawness is difficult to maintain over the course of a career, but can sometimes be found in the debuts of non-actors: a one-off genius performance. That is not to diminish Rock's accomplishment in this film, nor to downgrade the powerful experience of watching it, I merely suggest there is very little an actor seeking constant self-improvement can extrapolate to aid his own work, practically.


I thought it useful to look a little deeper into Loach's working methods in order to understand better how Rock arrived at her performance, and since Loach is soon to have a retrospective at the BFI, it wasn't difficult for me to find out more. The following is taken from Kira Cochrane's profile of him in The Guardian recently :-


Of actors... “They don't tend to see a full script in advance, and move through his films as confused as the audience about what lurks around the next corner. I ask Loach which surprise was most memorable, and he laughs incongruously through a few examples. He talks about an incident when an actor walked through a door, on-set, to discover his co-star in a bath, her wrists apparently slashed. “Surprised is the hardest thing to act”, says Loach, “and his response was just very true”.


This way of manipulating* actors may be suited to working with non-actors, but is, I believe, problematic for the experienced actor, because, crucially, it strips him of his own creative turf within the overall production, it denies that the actor is an individual artist, and, furthermore, it denies that there are good and bad actors, but says that all actors are the same: all are equally false, so they require a director to step in and use his special technique in order to “draw” a performance from the actor. However, this does not necessarily mean that the director's intentions are anything less than pure, infact, in Loach's case, his whole production methods are designed to help the actor do his best. Here's Loach again:-


“we thought that what happened in front of the camera was more important than the camerawork, so in order to get the best out of what was happening in front it we had to find a very simple way of shooting. It became observation rather than chasing.”


Furthermore, Loach uses only a single camera always positioned at eye level, apart from close-ups, and placed as far away from the actors as is practical. Loach also asks those crew members who are not needed during a take to keep themselves out of sight, and asks those who remain to hide their eyes from the line of the actors' vision. So Loach is obviously someone who has the highest regard for actors and understands the importance of their work, and obviously, the methods he has devised over the years are to aid the actors in giving barnstorming performances such as Crissy Rock's in Ladybird Ladybird. However, manipulative methods (and others like them, the Method being the most obvious) are not useful to an actor attempting to construct a body of work, they are not practical in the broader world, and such methods will not help an actor sustain a career* – I doubt Crissy Rock has come anywhere close to this performance in her subsequent work (generally it's very rare for non-actors to follow up a powerful debut with anything of similar force). For me, however, the playing of tricks in order to gain a response from an actor is a fundamental subversion of the form, regardless of the results, for the end does not justify the means. Perhaps then, it works best with non-actors, who maybe more amenable to directorial manipulation (may even be grateful for it in the absence of a concrete technique of their own), and who rarely perceive themselves as creative artists, as they are often plucked from the street and employed because they “seem real”, as oppose to being employed because of the merits of their already existing body of work. I'd be interested to know if tricks were played on Peter Mullan, a consummate actor-artist, during the filming of My Name Is Joe, and if so, how he responded.


From an audience perspective however, I say that if they have enjoyed the film or the play at hand, then the actor has done his job, and by that standard then, not only has Crissy Rock done her job, but done it brilliantly, giving us a performance of heart and soul, and in the process, delivering one the most harrowing and moving portraits of humanity in turmoil. Rock is the very embodiment of truth in this film, and that's something all actors must aspire to.


*This kind of manipulation is very to different to a director adding a stimulus in order to aid the development of an improvisation – because the manipulation is a trick to momentarily confuse the actor into thinking that the palpably untrue is indeed true, thus gaining a reaction, while in the improvisation, the actor is a conscious participant, creating something.

 

**The logical extension of this is: “oh, let's REALLY make the actors have sex in that love scene”, as though this could be anything other than obscene and humiliating. Perhaps one day we will see actors REALLY shooting eachother.


Sunday 28 August 2011

Nuts4R2's Review Of Almodovar's The Skin I Live In

SKINS OF THE FATHER

The Skin I Live In (aka La Piel Que Habito)
2011 Spain
Directed by Pedro Almodóvar
Screening at UK cinemas

There are no spoilers in this review as such. That’s because there’s not a heck of a lot I could give away and the one big twist in this movie (which in a way is the only spoiler I could give... the fact that this movie does indeed have a twist)... is quite a major thing and, itself, gets revealed about two thirds of the way through the movie. I didn’t figure out what it was myself until about 20 minutes before it was revealed during a series of flashback sequences and I blame my own assumptions and expectations from seeing the trailer and some publicity stills for not getting there way sooner (more on that in a moment) like most people would.

One thing I will say though is that I’m kinda glad, in a way, that I wasn’t aware of the nature of the twist before going to see the film because the subject matter holds no interest for me and I would have simply not bothered going to see this if I’d known. Which would have been a shame because I’ve found myself inadvertently following this director’s career since I first saw Tie Me Up, Tie Me Down (aka Átame!) at the Lumiere cinema back in 1990. That was also the last film that Antonia Banderas worked on with his muse Almodóvar before “going international” and becoming something of a Big Hollywood Movie Star. His return to the Almodóvar brand, and it really is a brand at this point, is very welcome and although I had trouble with certain aspects of the movie, Banderas is his usual, brilliant self in this film.

Now when I saw the trailer for this movie and some of the beautiful stills from it, I immediately assumed this movie would be a dual homage to both Jess Franco’s 1961 movie The Awful Doctor Orloff and Georges Franju’s 1960 movie Eyes Without A Face... and I suppose in some ways it’s lineage could certainly be traced back there. However, the film lacks the post-modernistic referencing I get from most movies these days... that is to say, Almodóvar’s homage in this particular instance was a lot more subtle than I thought it would be... I think I’ve become brainwashed by the blatant eclecticism of lots of modern American movies to appreciate the low-key homage that is going on here. Almodóvar quite rightly serves the story first and foremost... and not the collective geekiness of people like myself.

The pre-publicity also got me thinking that the movie would be serving as a continuation of the long tradition of masked heroes and anti-heroes established in early 1900s French pulp literature and it’s influence... you know, Eric from Phantom of the Opera, Fantômas... maybe even a little of the Italian Diabolik thrown in for good measure. Not to mention characters such as Kriminal and Satanik! Alas, although certain elements of the style of the imagery from these does find it’s way into this movie, this is in no way intentional (I believe) and is just another symptom of the visual devices used to service the story... which, of course, is exactly what it should be.

Now Almodóvar is a bit hit and miss for me but, in recent years, he’s been far more hit than miss and I have to say that the trailer didn’t sell this as being your typical Almodóvar movie (if there’s such a thing as a typical Almodóvar movie... and I think there is). Certainly, for a while there after the film started, it didn’t quite seem to be what I would associate with Almodóvar, outside from the characteristic clean and bright visual style, of course. But as the film snakes along at a fairly cracking pace, you begin to recognise the key Almodóvar trademarks like the extended flashback sequences and the way they change your perceptions of the characters you’ve been living with for the last three quarters of an hour. It seems, after all, that we are on typical Almodóvar territory after all and I was almost disappointed at this turn of events in some ways but I really don’t know what I’m complaining about.

It’s certainly not boring and the colours and cinematography are absolutely cracking. There’s some absolutely brilliant stuff of Banderas giving a presentation at the start of the film via a computer where that particular light source (given a little help from the on-set lighting no doubt) gives him a severe case of sinister, old school 1930s Universal Horror lighting and this, combined with Antonia Banderas’ riveting performance, harking back to a long line of “mad scientists” of the motion pictures over the last 100 or more years, will certainly hold you in rapt and contemplative attention. All the performances in this movie, in fact, are of the usual high standard you would expect from the players in this director’s works... and that’s a big positive reason for giving this one some of your time.

A negative I had is that the musical cue so prominent in the theatrical trailer, and which gave the images on screen such a sinister and off-beat feel, only materialises briefly to score a small part of one sequence. It is not typical of the rest of Iglesias’ score throughout the movie which, although serviceable, was not really as stand out as I was expecting it to be... at least not within the context of supporting the film itself at any rate. I’m not sure how it will play outside of the film as a stand alone work.

My conclusion to this experiment is, thus, simple. The Skin I Live In is a double revenge movie. I’m not going to say why or how but you’ll realise why it is about halfway through seeing it. It has elegantly framed, clean shots with nice, bright colours and is leisurely edited, as you would expect from this director. I was personally left a little empty and uninspired by it and I think that was, more than anything, due to the impossible expectations I’d put on it. I can’t do anything, however, than recommend this fine movie to anyone who’s interested in it. Definitely worth a watch if Almodóvar is one of your directors of choice.

To view more reviews by Nuts4R2 please visit www.nuts4R2.blogspot.com

Saturday 27 August 2011

Trailer For Athina Rachel Tsangari's Attenberg

Heard about this today, apparently it's part of the "weird wave" of Greek cinema along with Dogtooth. Well, I loved Dogtooth & think this looks interesting.

Wednesday 24 August 2011

The Great Acting Blog: "The 52nd Post"

 

Many of us become actors because we want to dedicate our lives to something that has a purpose, and so lead meaningful lives. However, the vast majority of actors find themselves under pressure because work is so hard to come by, and, as a result, we attend meetings more out of habit than desire, often for work that doesn't particularly interest us, reading unactable scripts and miming ludicrous situations in strange rooms, life becomes a numbers game, but hey, we need a job – the search for meaning becomes a bewildering immersion in crass commercialism. And so the purpose is lost, and our lives inadvertently fold in on themselves and become the meaningless routine we sought to avoid in the first place. Is it worth it? That has to be the question. Contrary to the public's perception, life for the vast majority of actors is tough: acting is a hopelessly oversubscribed profession, there is no security day-to-day, month-to-month or year-to-year, and this way of living requires enormous fortitude and constant self-improvement (I, for one, however, am grateful for the lessons life as an actor has taught me so far), it is an unending process of struggle, there is only a brief moment of rest once a work has been completed. Furthermore, the actor is rarely in the position to enjoy the routines of mainstream culture like the couple of weeks holiday every few months, weekends off, no, acting is twenty-four seven, it's not a job but a way of life, and, to put the cherry on top, few people do jobs where they are regularly held up to public inspection in the way actors are (and I'm not just talking about performance here, where the audience generally loves actors despite our weaknesses – I'm talking about the endless job interviews indicated above) – I don't care what anyone says – the life of an actor is an exacting one. Is it worth it? Well, some might ask: what's the alternative? But then again why do so many actors quit? Why do so many turn against it, becoming hacks and holding contempt for the work? Why are so many actors dissatisfied with the work they are doing? Is what you're aiming for worth the struggle?.... Perhaps we should turn the question around a little bit, and ask: what is worth the struggle? And: who do you want to be?


I only discovered blogging last year, and when I started The Great Acting Blog, I was told by those in the know that if ANYONE read it then I could consider it a success. I didn't know what to expect, most of my thinking was taken up by the demands of delivering something worth reading each week, I didn't give much thought to who would actually read it, I suppose in the back of my mind I thought if a few of my friends did, then I would be happy. Well, we've gone way beyond that, there is definitely an appetite out there for a more serious discussion about the art and craft of acting. Furthermore, I have won many wonderful new friends through the blog, and truly, without the responses from people – whether that is sharing it, or commenting on the blog directly or on the various platforms I post it, or sending me messages privately – it would have been much much harder to maintain my weekly output and find the will to try and improve it. And this has not only come from actors and directors and the like, but also cinephiles and enthusiasts (dare acting become hip again?), and this was always my intention by cross pollinating my acting work with my interest in cinema – I wanted it to be broader and more entertaining than an actors-only industrial blog. Some have even remarked (as indeed did film blogger Nuts4R2) that their understanding of acting has improved after reading The Great Acting Blog, and that they have a better appreciation of the actor's work and contribution to a film. This kind of comment means an enormous amount to me, and is hugely satisfying because it has always been an important objective of the blog: to draw attention to great performances and the importance of actors beyond the hysterics of celebrity - actors are rarely seen as serious people (not even by actors themselves a lot of the time), and their contribution can be ignored (we live in an age where directors apparently “draw” performances from actors, a preposterous notion but nonetheless popular). I think The Great Acting Blog can become a real resource for, and conversation about the aesthetic, philosophical and ethical precepts of acting, an understanding of the actor as an artist, that his work is noble, and infact crucial to the well being of our society, and that it is indeed preferable strive to become an artist rather than be a jobsworth, to not be frightened but to have the courage to draw your own conclusations, and to develop the strength to act upon your perceptions, and do so to satisfy your own good opinion of yourself. My hope is that if there is a young actor out there, kicking his heels round town, confused and frustrated, and longing for more, then he may stumble upon this blog, and that it may aid him in his thinking about his himself and his work.


Over this next year, I am going to dig deeper, work harder, become more prolific in service of this blog. I want to broaden the conversation and push it further, so I'm going to be looking for guest posts, anyone with interesting ideas, or anyone who wants to share a technique, or perhaps shed some light on some aspect of the craft, or perhaps you have a review you want to offer, do get in touch (and it does not matter what clubs you belong to, or which brand names are on your CV, what does matter is that you've got something to say and you know how to say it). I plan also to link The Great Acting Blog into Drifting Clouds (a film society that promotes independent film and offers film screenings), so that combined they may become a platform for collaboration, and ultimately originate and present work. In the end, that's what it's all about: the work, the blessed work. All those hours of toil, of keeping as many facets of our personality alive as possible, the endless voice exercises, the hour upon hour of learning how to analyse a script correctly, the ignoring the cynics and the second guessers, battling the “when will I EVER work again” torment, all of it, all of it, is there to make sure that when the call comes, we are ready, we are ready to give everything. This is what those who have never truly felt the exhilaration of creation will never understand. And that it what this blog is all about: what is worth the struggle? Who do I want to be? What do I do to become the actor I saw in my dreams? How can I construct a body of work which I will look back on with pride in my old age?

 

 

I hope you've enjoyed reading.

James

Monday 22 August 2011

Drifting Clouds Recommends Marek Losey's The Hide

http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/movies/2011/08/sean-penn-vs-terrence-ma...

I missed this film when it was part of the ICA's British season back in 2009 (although I did catch Simon Welsford's excellent Jetsam, shot for two and a half grand on a Sony Z1), but finally managed to catch it on DVD this week. There's a wonderful script adapted from a stage play, and a great central performance from Alex McQueen as an ornithologist. Overall, this a tight thriller shot in just 9 days.

Sunday 21 August 2011

Man Crossing Street (short film)


Man Crossing Street is a No Wave short film about the individual amid the turbulence of the city. The film is set on a route I walk all the time, and when I had the idea for the film, I was thinking about Bresson's notion of photographing something that hadn't been seen before, and so, I hope what I present here is a personal and dramatized account of a mundane action. Also, if someone somehow stumbled upon this little film 50 years from now, they would get a brief glimpse of what life might have been like in our time. I hope you enjoy. James.

Saturday 20 August 2011

Untitled

"Actors, by the nature of their calling, have a simpler, purer conception of art. They have dedicated their lives to individual, personal expression—to what you are calling “holding onto your mind’s eye view”—against all the bureaucratic and social forces leagued against it, attempting to level and homogenize it" - Ray Carney

Thursday 18 August 2011

The Growth of a Film Artist: Part II - Ray Carney Interviewed

The Growth of a Film Artist: Part II
Ray Carney Returns to MovieMaker (Part II)
by Shelley Friedman | Published October 13, 2002


This article is a continuation of Shelley Friedman’s interview with Ray Carney, author of Cassavetes on Cassavetes.

Shelley Friedman (MM): What qualities must a moviemaker embody to be considered an artist?

Ray Carney (RC): All that matters is that you tell your own personal truth. The world the way you see and feel it—not the way anyone else does; not the way any other movie has ever shown it. And there is no right or wrong way to do it. Your movie can take a trillion unknown, undiscovered forms. It can be about anything: showing us how strange and miraculous our lives are, how weird society is, how extraordinary ordinary people are, how heroic everyday life can be, depicting the love and kindness that never make the news, or the mystery of what we are. The important thing is to copy no one.

Forget every film you've ever seen, everything you've been taught in film school. Film school is a curse. The one thing we know for sure is that the next great work won't look at all like the last one. I don't want to see another Citizen Kane. I saw that movie already. I don't want a moviemaker who makes Cassavetes or Leigh or Ozu or Tarkovsky movies. Those filmmakers didn't become who they were by imitating someone else, but by throwing chunks of reality up on the screen in their own unique ways.

MM: Some critics talk about sentimentality as a by-product of an industrial society, unable to feel without "emotional guideposts." (Like we have to be told where to take pictures at Disneyland!) What to you distinguishes genuine emotion in art from fake emotion, i.e., genuine human empathy from manipulated sentimentality? How do we get back to the genuine in film—free from guideposts? Isn't all film a manipulation?

RC: I've written so much about the "guidepost" issue and devoted so many classes to it, that I'll skip it if you don't mind. Anyone interested can just read one of my books. As to the other part of your question: You want me to tell you how to tell fake emotion from real? You should be asking Charlotte Beck, not me. She's a Zen master who has written books about the subject—beautiful books. I'm not as smart as she is, but I'll take a stab at an answer by saying something that may sound weird: As far as I am concerned, 99 percent of all of the emotions we experience in life and in Hollywood movies are what you are calling "fake."

Our culture is a machine for creating false feelings—a whole panoply of petty, personal, egoistic demands: our greed and obsession with possessions and appearances, from houses to cars to clothing; our need to keep up with the latest gadgets, trends, news and events; our concerns about glamour and charm and what other people think of us; our feeling that we need to fight, struggle and compete to get ahead—and a million other self-destructive fears and insecurities. They are everywhere. And they are all unreal. Made up. Crazy. Cuckoo.

We put ourselves on an emotional hamster track we can never get to the end of. And we love the whole insane race. The push and pull of the bustling, grabbing, self-centered ego has become our substitute for the soul, which we ball up and jam into an hour at church or synagogue once a week. There are good emotions—truer, deeper, more authentic ways of being—but the problem with Hollywood and television and the rest of the media is that the whole system is devoted to presenting, manipulating and exalting the self-destructive, self-centered feelings—not the valuable, good ones. In fact, as far as I can tell, movies organized around ego-centered emotions are the ones people love the most. Just like they love football games more than they love ballet. That's because they feed into a whole cultural system of programming. For more than you want to know about this subject, read the introduction to my Leigh book.


If limited to teaching the same three-hour class, Carney would make Elaine May’s Mikey & Nicky (1976); and Ozu’s Late Spring (1949) required viewing; As for directors who are making a difference today, Carney claims that actors like Tim Roth, on the set of The War Zone (1999), are producing the best work.
But let me add that I've discovered that when I call these feelings "fake," my students get confused. They say people really feel these emotions. Their pulses really beat faster during the ending of The Matrix. They really cry at the end of Titanic. They really care who wins in Erin Brockovich. They really feel elated when a villain gets blown up in the Star Wars movies. They really got choked up when they wore a yellow ribbon during the Gulf War, or when they attached an American flag to their car more recently. And my students are right. To the people who experience these feelings, they are real. But that doesn't mean they aren't fake. Maybe it would be better to call them "mental" emotions, since they are created by our thoughts. They are in our heads. That's what's wrong with them.

They represent postures, stances and attitudes that make us feel good about ourselves. Even as we torture ourselves by casting ourselves in this endless, draining struggle, these emotions flatter us. They inflate our importance. We struggle so we can feel we are getting ahead. We keep up with the Joneses so we can feel superior to them. Even as it hurts them, people love to create self-justifying emotional dramas this way.

It doesn't have to be that way. Bad movies play on our emotional weaknesses, but great ones can move us beyond these clichés or show us their limitations. But don't look to Hollywood for that kind of movie. Look at Dreyer's Ordet or Gertrud. Look at Bresson's L'Argent or Pickpocket. Look at Cassavetes' Faces, which critiques the reliance on business values for personal interactions. Look at Mike Leigh's Abigail's Party, an absolutely brilliant dissection of the emotional role-playing we imprison ourselves within. Look at Tom Noonan's The Wife. These films reveal how unreal and self-destructive these feelings are.

MM: Sometimes it seems like so many films are becoming more like roller coaster rides of stimulation rather than windows into human experience. Even so-called "art films" many times gloss over the interior life of their characters and become cynical reflections of the moviemaker's unwillingness to grapple with deep questions. Why do you think this is?

RC: How beautifully you put that. I couldn't agree more. Of course, cynicism never goes by its own name. It is always called something else: smartness, stylishness, coolness, playfulness, wit. Look at L.A. Confidential, which David Denby thought was one of the best films of the decade. Or Pulp Fiction, which every critic in American had multiple orgasms over. Or the complete works of John Dahl and most of what the Coen brothers have done. All those hard, tough, mechanical film noirs. Look at Mulholland Drive. All those smart-ass tricks and games. Big friggin' deal. That's the best we can do with a couple million dollars? I don't care how the New York critics revel in it; it's cynicism.


“Look at Mulholland Drive. All those smart-ass tricks and games. Big friggin’ deal. That’s the best we can do with a couple million dollars?” asks Carney
of David Lynch’s film, starring Laura Harring (l) and Naomi Watts.
You wouldn't need all the emotional backflips and narrative trapdoors if you had anything to say—if your characters had any real souls. I always think of something Robert Frost's students said he used to repeat over and over again: "Is this poem sincere?" Robert Graves had a similar bullshit test. He used to ask, "Is this poem necessary?" Those are not bad questions to ask about any work of art.

The issue of whether you feel something or not is not a sufficient test of the value of a work. Our feelings are too primitive, too simple. I can get excited by the final minute of a Final Four playoff game, but I don't mistake it for a work of art. I tell the boys who want to equate Michael Jordan with Suzanne Farrell that they have to ask what they learn from the experience. Does it change or enrich their understanding of life? Or does it just play into their preexisting emotional clichés? Does it leave them thoughtful and deeper, or just breathless and excited? If they want that, you're right, they might as well go on a roller coaster ride. Great art is not about revving us up. That's what a sales conference or How-to-Make-a-Fortune-in-Real-Estate seminar is for. The greatest art is more likely to take us through an experience that humbles and abashes us—that chastens, bewilders and hushes us into silence at what we suddenly realize we have failed to see and experience up until then. That's pretty different from a video game or a roller-coaster ride.

Inner life is everything. What else is there? The rest is capitalism and cars and houses. You're sick if you care about those things. I'm not opposed to some of the multiculturalist and feminist agendas, but it's something that filmmakers who focus on sociological issues and institutions need to ponder—that our imaginations, our dreams, our emotions are the only things that really matter. You can have all the equal-pay-for-equal-work statutes in the world, but if your imagination is impoverished, you are poorer than a ghetto kid squealing in the spray from a fire hydrant. Treasure Island and The Arabian Nights have more to say to a child's soul than a whole library of I Have Two Mommies books. We need films that recognize that what a teenage girl thinks and feels and dreams is far more important than the clothes she wears or the car she drives.

“If I were limited to teaching one two or three-hour film class for all eternity—my one shot to change the history of American film—I wouldn’t show any movies!”
Even most of the children's films I've seen have adopted our culture's depraved adult values. The kids in them are just little adults. Their minds and hearts do not represent an alternative to adult values, but just a miniaturization of them—right down to the smutty adult leers the little boys have for the little girls. The emotions are just as meaningless and self-destructive as the ones in adult movies. The kids are just tiny capitalists and the goal is to turn the kids watching them into little consumers, too—as they run off to McDonald's to collect the mugs, action figures and stickers.

MM: What does the future hold for indie moviemakers with the rise of desktop moviemaking? Do you see any interesting moviemakers out there working in digital video?

RC: All of the young filmmakers I know are working in digital, since they can't afford film! Well, maybe not all, but most of them. The advantage of digital is that you can massively over-shoot. I just got off the phone with a friend who told me he shot 30 hours of footage for his new movie. It would have been out of the question to buy and process that much 16mm film.

The downfall of most low-budget indie work is the acting. By necessity, young filmmakers usually have to use students, relatives and other non-actors in their work. If they are limited to one or two takes because of the cost of film and processing, the results can be embarrassing. Massive over-shooting allows them to compensate. They can shoot until their actors are too tired to "act," or put down their actorly mannerisms and start being real. My friend said he even shot some stuff like a documentarian, filming his actors when they weren't acting, when they didn't realize they were being filmed. Cassavetes did the same thing. It can make a real difference. As Renoir said, the whole scene is saved when the girl playing the servant thinks the shot is over and lets out a sigh.

Having a smaller crew and less equipment can also make things less intimidating. The mood is different. You can improvise. You can do a scene over and over again. You can take chances. You can have fun, play around, experiment. Chaplin shot this way and it's always good for the work. And, of course, the PC has revolutionized editing, to take away a little of the time pressure and cost from that part of the process.

But I'm convinced that, no matter how cheap filmmaking becomes, there won't ever be a glut of masterpieces. Technology does nothing by itself. Better, smaller, cheaper cameras don't make better art; better artists do. In 17th-century Holland, oil painting was a cutting edge technology, but it took Rembrandt and Frans Hals to do something amazing with it. The digital revolution will probably quadruple the number of feature films made in a given year, but most of them will still be garbage, just like most of them are now.

Look at the first video revolution 10 or 15 years ago—when Beta and Hi-band 8 became cheap. What is its legacy? Porno flicks. There won't be any more artists born in a given year just because movies become cheaper to make. That particular form of insanity is in your DNA, and you either have it or you don't. Pen and paper are the ultimate low-budget technology, but how many great novels and plays and poems are written every year? I don't see a stream of Shakespeares being produced just because writing is inexpensive. Emotional clichés still lurk like landmines waiting to destroy you. As a violinist friend used to say, it's a poor musician who blames his instrument. A real artist can use whatever is available. Picasso could have created masterpieces with a burnt stick and a piece of chalk. In fact he did; we call them charcoals. Cassavetes could have used a cheap, old-fashioned VHS camera and created a scene that was worth watching. In fact he did. In the last 10 years of his life he used to film scenes at home that way just for the fun of doing it. Michael Almereyda made three amazing movies with a Pixel-cam—one of those $69 dollar video cameras for kids that records on audio tape that they used to sell at KB Toys: Another Girl, Another Planet, The Rocking Horse Winner and At Sundance, a documentary about the Sundance Film Festival.

It's a faulty analysis that locates the problem in the cost of the production. The harder nut to crack for young filmmakers is distribution. How does a young, unknown filmmaker get a movie into a real theater or on mainstream TV (the Internet doesn't count), no matter how it is made? The rub, of course, is that the more original the work is, the harder it will be to sell it to the corporations that run those enterprises. It might offend someone. It might not be "entertaining" enough. It might require you to think a little. It might be different! The distribution problem won't go away.

The life-or-death struggle every artist fights is not with technology, but with our commercial culture. The businessmen, the accountants, the advertising guys always want to get their fingers in the pie—suggesting cuts, trying to speed up the pacing, pandering to some imaginary demographic—and it's the death of personal expression. If anyone ever tells you to do something because someone else won't understand what you've done, you know they are talking nonsense. Generic truth—what "they" want, need or feel—is not truth anymore. Truth can only be what you feel. The more personal your work, the more idiosyncratic and eccentric, the more truth is in it. Don't ever let anyone talk you out of that.

I don't have an answer to the distribution question. All I can tell you is that every week I have videos sent to me that are better than anything broadcast on HBO or PBS, accompanied by letters describing how the filmmakers can't get them screened or how, even if they have won an award at some festival, they can't get distribution. The indie films that get lucky, the ones you hear about, are almost always picked up for the wrong reasons. Not because of their intrinsic merit, but because they deal with some flash-in-the-pan controversial theme, have sexual content or appeal to a special interest demographic (gays or blacks or feminists or whoever). If you don't play to a special interest, forget it. When The Believer gets picked up, it's not a vote for art; it's a business calculation of how many talk shows the distributor thinks the director can get onto because of the "hot" issue. That's why most of the people who claim to want to help the indie movement are actually part of the problem.

MM: You explain in Cassavetes on Cassavetes that Cassavetes had this "mind's eye" view of himself, which is defined as how you perceive yourself before "society forces compromises or self-censorship on you." Which moviemakers today seem to hold true to their mind's eye view?

RC: My hope is in the actors. Some of them have become filmmakers by default, usually out of disgust with the roles offered to them in mainstream movies. Others are willing to work for nothing in an independent film written and directed by someone else, just for a chance to be able to do something really interesting and creative for a change.

I trust both groups of actors. Face it, most born-in-the-bone directors are rhetoricians. They are seduced away from truth in the pursuit of flashy, razzle-dazzle, special effects. Look at David Lynch's work or that of the Coen brothers: it's all rhetoric. Actors, by the nature of their calling, have a simpler, purer conception of art. They have dedicated their lives to individual, personal expression—to what you are calling "holding onto your mind's eye view"—against all the bureaucratic and social forces leagued against it, attempting to level and homogenize it.

That's why many of the best contemporary directors are actors. I'm thinking of people like Tom Noonan, Steve Buscemi, Sean Penn, Vince Gallo, Tim Roth and Gary Oldman. Their work is really good.

MM: In this time of economic hardship, what do you recommend for people just entering a career in moviemaking?

RC: I'm always uncomfortable with the notion of a "career" in anything. American society is structured so that it opulently rewards certain roles (lawyers, doctors, celebrity actors and athletes, wheeler-dealer businessmen, stockbrokers, producers) and ignores or financially penalizes others (teachers, nurses, mothers, caregivers, ministers, artists).
That never changes, in good times or bad.

I think we focus too much on the financial side. That's Hollywood thinking. If you're a real artist, you can make art with no money:
Red Grooms used house paint and plywood to make his art. Paul Zaloom sets up a card
table and moves toy soldiers around. Todd Haynes used Barbie dolls. I had a friend, Freddie Curchack, who made shadow puppets on a sheet. An artist who complains about not having enough money is not an artist, but a businessman.

MM: If you could make one film required curriculum for American film audiences, what would it be and why?

RC: If I were limited to teaching one two or three-hour film class for all eternity—my one shot to change the history of American film—I wouldn't show any movies! I'd have the students listen to Bach's Double Violin Concerto and ask them to try to get that into their work. Or read Stanley Elkin's Greatest Hits. Or look at Degas' paintings. Those are things I already do in my classes, and I'm convinced that many of the students learn more from doing that than they do from looking at any movie.
If you absolutely required me to screen something, I'd use my three hours to show short films. They're better than most features, and would at least demonstrate that a movie doesn't necessarily have to tell a stupid "story," be "entertaining" or any of that other rot Hollywood would make us believe.

MM: What would you show?

RC: Bruce Conner's Permian Strata, Valse Triste and A Movie; Jay Rosenblatt's Human Remains, Period Piece and Restricted; Su Friedrich's Sink or Swim and Rules of the Road; Shirley Clarke's Bridges-Go-Round; Mike Leigh's Afternoon, Sense of History and The Short and Curlies; Charlie Wiener's Rumba. And any 10 minutes from Tom Noonan's What Happened Was, Caveh Zahedi's Little Stiff, Mark Rappaport's Casual Relations, Elaine May's Mikey and Nicky, and Ozu's Late Spring.

The least the students would learn is that a film doesn't have to look like a Hollywood movie. that Hollywood is a tiny and ultimately unimportant rivulet flowing away from the great sea of art. The really smart ones would learn something about artistic structure and how the greatest movies use something other than action to keep us caring and in the moment—that the worst way to make a movie is to organize it around a sequence of events. Plot is the biggest lie we can tell about what life is really about. MM

Ray Carney is Professor of Film and American Studies at Boston University and the author of more than fifteen books on film and other art, including the critically acclaimed Cassavetes on Cassavetes and The Films of Mike Leigh. He runs a web site devoted to independent film and other art at http://www.Cassavetes.com.


 


 

The Growth of a Film Artist: Part II - Ray Carney Interviewed

The Growth of a Film Artist: Part II
Ray Carney Returns to MovieMaker (Part II)
by Shelley Friedman | Published October 13, 2002


This article is a continuation of Shelley Friedman’s interview with Ray Carney, author of Cassavetes on Cassavetes.

Shelley Friedman (MM): What qualities must a moviemaker embody to be considered an artist?

Ray Carney (RC): All that matters is that you tell your own personal truth. The world the way you see and feel it—not the way anyone else does; not the way any other movie has ever shown it. And there is no right or wrong way to do it. Your movie can take a trillion unknown, undiscovered forms. It can be about anything: showing us how strange and miraculous our lives are, how weird society is, how extraordinary ordinary people are, how heroic everyday life can be, depicting the love and kindness that never make the news, or the mystery of what we are. The important thing is to copy no one.

Forget every film you've ever seen, everything you've been taught in film school. Film school is a curse. The one thing we know for sure is that the next great work won't look at all like the last one. I don't want to see another Citizen Kane. I saw that movie already. I don't want a moviemaker who makes Cassavetes or Leigh or Ozu or Tarkovsky movies. Those filmmakers didn't become who they were by imitating someone else, but by throwing chunks of reality up on the screen in their own unique ways.

MM: Some critics talk about sentimentality as a by-product of an industrial society, unable to feel without "emotional guideposts." (Like we have to be told where to take pictures at Disneyland!) What to you distinguishes genuine emotion in art from fake emotion, i.e., genuine human empathy from manipulated sentimentality? How do we get back to the genuine in film—free from guideposts? Isn't all film a manipulation?

RC: I've written so much about the "guidepost" issue and devoted so many classes to it, that I'll skip it if you don't mind. Anyone interested can just read one of my books. As to the other part of your question: You want me to tell you how to tell fake emotion from real? You should be asking Charlotte Beck, not me. She's a Zen master who has written books about the subject—beautiful books. I'm not as smart as she is, but I'll take a stab at an answer by saying something that may sound weird: As far as I am concerned, 99 percent of all of the emotions we experience in life and in Hollywood movies are what you are calling "fake."

Our culture is a machine for creating false feelings—a whole panoply of petty, personal, egoistic demands: our greed and obsession with possessions and appearances, from houses to cars to clothing; our need to keep up with the latest gadgets, trends, news and events; our concerns about glamour and charm and what other people think of us; our feeling that we need to fight, struggle and compete to get ahead—and a million other self-destructive fears and insecurities. They are everywhere. And they are all unreal. Made up. Crazy. Cuckoo.

We put ourselves on an emotional hamster track we can never get to the end of. And we love the whole insane race. The push and pull of the bustling, grabbing, self-centered ego has become our substitute for the soul, which we ball up and jam into an hour at church or synagogue once a week. There are good emotions—truer, deeper, more authentic ways of being—but the problem with Hollywood and television and the rest of the media is that the whole system is devoted to presenting, manipulating and exalting the self-destructive, self-centered feelings—not the valuable, good ones. In fact, as far as I can tell, movies organized around ego-centered emotions are the ones people love the most. Just like they love football games more than they love ballet. That's because they feed into a whole cultural system of programming. For more than you want to know about this subject, read the introduction to my Leigh book.


If limited to teaching the same three-hour class, Carney would make Elaine May’s Mikey & Nicky (1976); and Ozu’s Late Spring (1949) required viewing; As for directors who are making a difference today, Carney claims that actors like Tim Roth, on the set of The War Zone (1999), are producing the best work.
But let me add that I've discovered that when I call these feelings "fake," my students get confused. They say people really feel these emotions. Their pulses really beat faster during the ending of The Matrix. They really cry at the end of Titanic. They really care who wins in Erin Brockovich. They really feel elated when a villain gets blown up in the Star Wars movies. They really got choked up when they wore a yellow ribbon during the Gulf War, or when they attached an American flag to their car more recently. And my students are right. To the people who experience these feelings, they are real. But that doesn't mean they aren't fake. Maybe it would be better to call them "mental" emotions, since they are created by our thoughts. They are in our heads. That's what's wrong with them.

They represent postures, stances and attitudes that make us feel good about ourselves. Even as we torture ourselves by casting ourselves in this endless, draining struggle, these emotions flatter us. They inflate our importance. We struggle so we can feel we are getting ahead. We keep up with the Joneses so we can feel superior to them. Even as it hurts them, people love to create self-justifying emotional dramas this way.

It doesn't have to be that way. Bad movies play on our emotional weaknesses, but great ones can move us beyond these clichés or show us their limitations. But don't look to Hollywood for that kind of movie. Look at Dreyer's Ordet or Gertrud. Look at Bresson's L'Argent or Pickpocket. Look at Cassavetes' Faces, which critiques the reliance on business values for personal interactions. Look at Mike Leigh's Abigail's Party, an absolutely brilliant dissection of the emotional role-playing we imprison ourselves within. Look at Tom Noonan's The Wife. These films reveal how unreal and self-destructive these feelings are.

MM: Sometimes it seems like so many films are becoming more like roller coaster rides of stimulation rather than windows into human experience. Even so-called "art films" many times gloss over the interior life of their characters and become cynical reflections of the moviemaker's unwillingness to grapple with deep questions. Why do you think this is?

RC: How beautifully you put that. I couldn't agree more. Of course, cynicism never goes by its own name. It is always called something else: smartness, stylishness, coolness, playfulness, wit. Look at L.A. Confidential, which David Denby thought was one of the best films of the decade. Or Pulp Fiction, which every critic in American had multiple orgasms over. Or the complete works of John Dahl and most of what the Coen brothers have done. All those hard, tough, mechanical film noirs. Look at Mulholland Drive. All those smart-ass tricks and games. Big friggin' deal. That's the best we can do with a couple million dollars? I don't care how the New York critics revel in it; it's cynicism.


“Look at Mulholland Drive. All those smart-ass tricks and games. Big friggin’ deal. That’s the best we can do with a couple million dollars?” asks Carney
of David Lynch’s film, starring Laura Harring (l) and Naomi Watts.
You wouldn't need all the emotional backflips and narrative trapdoors if you had anything to say—if your characters had any real souls. I always think of something Robert Frost's students said he used to repeat over and over again: "Is this poem sincere?" Robert Graves had a similar bullshit test. He used to ask, "Is this poem necessary?" Those are not bad questions to ask about any work of art.

The issue of whether you feel something or not is not a sufficient test of the value of a work. Our feelings are too primitive, too simple. I can get excited by the final minute of a Final Four playoff game, but I don't mistake it for a work of art. I tell the boys who want to equate Michael Jordan with Suzanne Farrell that they have to ask what they learn from the experience. Does it change or enrich their understanding of life? Or does it just play into their preexisting emotional clichés? Does it leave them thoughtful and deeper, or just breathless and excited? If they want that, you're right, they might as well go on a roller coaster ride. Great art is not about revving us up. That's what a sales conference or How-to-Make-a-Fortune-in-Real-Estate seminar is for. The greatest art is more likely to take us through an experience that humbles and abashes us—that chastens, bewilders and hushes us into silence at what we suddenly realize we have failed to see and experience up until then. That's pretty different from a video game or a roller-coaster ride.

Inner life is everything. What else is there? The rest is capitalism and cars and houses. You're sick if you care about those things. I'm not opposed to some of the multiculturalist and feminist agendas, but it's something that filmmakers who focus on sociological issues and institutions need to ponder—that our imaginations, our dreams, our emotions are the only things that really matter. You can have all the equal-pay-for-equal-work statutes in the world, but if your imagination is impoverished, you are poorer than a ghetto kid squealing in the spray from a fire hydrant. Treasure Island and The Arabian Nights have more to say to a child's soul than a whole library of I Have Two Mommies books. We need films that recognize that what a teenage girl thinks and feels and dreams is far more important than the clothes she wears or the car she drives.

“If I were limited to teaching one two or three-hour film class for all eternity—my one shot to change the history of American film—I wouldn’t show any movies!”
Even most of the children's films I've seen have adopted our culture's depraved adult values. The kids in them are just little adults. Their minds and hearts do not represent an alternative to adult values, but just a miniaturization of them—right down to the smutty adult leers the little boys have for the little girls. The emotions are just as meaningless and self-destructive as the ones in adult movies. The kids are just tiny capitalists and the goal is to turn the kids watching them into little consumers, too—as they run off to McDonald's to collect the mugs, action figures and stickers.

MM: What does the future hold for indie moviemakers with the rise of desktop moviemaking? Do you see any interesting moviemakers out there working in digital video?

RC: All of the young filmmakers I know are working in digital, since they can't afford film! Well, maybe not all, but most of them. The advantage of digital is that you can massively over-shoot. I just got off the phone with a friend who told me he shot 30 hours of footage for his new movie. It would have been out of the question to buy and process that much 16mm film.

The downfall of most low-budget indie work is the acting. By necessity, young filmmakers usually have to use students, relatives and other non-actors in their work. If they are limited to one or two takes because of the cost of film and processing, the results can be embarrassing. Massive over-shooting allows them to compensate. They can shoot until their actors are too tired to "act," or put down their actorly mannerisms and start being real. My friend said he even shot some stuff like a documentarian, filming his actors when they weren't acting, when they didn't realize they were being filmed. Cassavetes did the same thing. It can make a real difference. As Renoir said, the whole scene is saved when the girl playing the servant thinks the shot is over and lets out a sigh.

Having a smaller crew and less equipment can also make things less intimidating. The mood is different. You can improvise. You can do a scene over and over again. You can take chances. You can have fun, play around, experiment. Chaplin shot this way and it's always good for the work. And, of course, the PC has revolutionized editing, to take away a little of the time pressure and cost from that part of the process.

But I'm convinced that, no matter how cheap filmmaking becomes, there won't ever be a glut of masterpieces. Technology does nothing by itself. Better, smaller, cheaper cameras don't make better art; better artists do. In 17th-century Holland, oil painting was a cutting edge technology, but it took Rembrandt and Frans Hals to do something amazing with it. The digital revolution will probably quadruple the number of feature films made in a given year, but most of them will still be garbage, just like most of them are now.

Look at the first video revolution 10 or 15 years ago—when Beta and Hi-band 8 became cheap. What is its legacy? Porno flicks. There won't be any more artists born in a given year just because movies become cheaper to make. That particular form of insanity is in your DNA, and you either have it or you don't. Pen and paper are the ultimate low-budget technology, but how many great novels and plays and poems are written every year? I don't see a stream of Shakespeares being produced just because writing is inexpensive. Emotional clichés still lurk like landmines waiting to destroy you. As a violinist friend used to say, it's a poor musician who blames his instrument. A real artist can use whatever is available. Picasso could have created masterpieces with a burnt stick and a piece of chalk. In fact he did; we call them charcoals. Cassavetes could have used a cheap, old-fashioned VHS camera and created a scene that was worth watching. In fact he did. In the last 10 years of his life he used to film scenes at home that way just for the fun of doing it. Michael Almereyda made three amazing movies with a Pixel-cam—one of those $69 dollar video cameras for kids that records on audio tape that they used to sell at KB Toys: Another Girl, Another Planet, The Rocking Horse Winner and At Sundance, a documentary about the Sundance Film Festival.

It's a faulty analysis that locates the problem in the cost of the production. The harder nut to crack for young filmmakers is distribution. How does a young, unknown filmmaker get a movie into a real theater or on mainstream TV (the Internet doesn't count), no matter how it is made? The rub, of course, is that the more original the work is, the harder it will be to sell it to the corporations that run those enterprises. It might offend someone. It might not be "entertaining" enough. It might require you to think a little. It might be different! The distribution problem won't go away.

The life-or-death struggle every artist fights is not with technology, but with our commercial culture. The businessmen, the accountants, the advertising guys always want to get their fingers in the pie—suggesting cuts, trying to speed up the pacing, pandering to some imaginary demographic—and it's the death of personal expression. If anyone ever tells you to do something because someone else won't understand what you've done, you know they are talking nonsense. Generic truth—what "they" want, need or feel—is not truth anymore. Truth can only be what you feel. The more personal your work, the more idiosyncratic and eccentric, the more truth is in it. Don't ever let anyone talk you out of that.

I don't have an answer to the distribution question. All I can tell you is that every week I have videos sent to me that are better than anything broadcast on HBO or PBS, accompanied by letters describing how the filmmakers can't get them screened or how, even if they have won an award at some festival, they can't get distribution. The indie films that get lucky, the ones you hear about, are almost always picked up for the wrong reasons. Not because of their intrinsic merit, but because they deal with some flash-in-the-pan controversial theme, have sexual content or appeal to a special interest demographic (gays or blacks or feminists or whoever). If you don't play to a special interest, forget it. When The Believer gets picked up, it's not a vote for art; it's a business calculation of how many talk shows the distributor thinks the director can get onto because of the "hot" issue. That's why most of the people who claim to want to help the indie movement are actually part of the problem.

MM: You explain in Cassavetes on Cassavetes that Cassavetes had this "mind's eye" view of himself, which is defined as how you perceive yourself before "society forces compromises or self-censorship on you." Which moviemakers today seem to hold true to their mind's eye view?

RC: My hope is in the actors. Some of them have become filmmakers by default, usually out of disgust with the roles offered to them in mainstream movies. Others are willing to work for nothing in an independent film written and directed by someone else, just for a chance to be able to do something really interesting and creative for a change.

I trust both groups of actors. Face it, most born-in-the-bone directors are rhetoricians. They are seduced away from truth in the pursuit of flashy, razzle-dazzle, special effects. Look at David Lynch's work or that of the Coen brothers: it's all rhetoric. Actors, by the nature of their calling, have a simpler, purer conception of art. They have dedicated their lives to individual, personal expression—to what you are calling "holding onto your mind's eye view"—against all the bureaucratic and social forces leagued against it, attempting to level and homogenize it.

That's why many of the best contemporary directors are actors. I'm thinking of people like Tom Noonan, Steve Buscemi, Sean Penn, Vince Gallo, Tim Roth and Gary Oldman. Their work is really good.

MM: In this time of economic hardship, what do you recommend for people just entering a career in moviemaking?

RC: I'm always uncomfortable with the notion of a "career" in anything. American society is structured so that it opulently rewards certain roles (lawyers, doctors, celebrity actors and athletes, wheeler-dealer businessmen, stockbrokers, producers) and ignores or financially penalizes others (teachers, nurses, mothers, caregivers, ministers, artists).
That never changes, in good times or bad.

I think we focus too much on the financial side. That's Hollywood thinking. If you're a real artist, you can make art with no money:
Red Grooms used house paint and plywood to make his art. Paul Zaloom sets up a card
table and moves toy soldiers around. Todd Haynes used Barbie dolls. I had a friend, Freddie Curchack, who made shadow puppets on a sheet. An artist who complains about not having enough money is not an artist, but a businessman.

MM: If you could make one film required curriculum for American film audiences, what would it be and why?

RC: If I were limited to teaching one two or three-hour film class for all eternity—my one shot to change the history of American film—I wouldn't show any movies! I'd have the students listen to Bach's Double Violin Concerto and ask them to try to get that into their work. Or read Stanley Elkin's Greatest Hits. Or look at Degas' paintings. Those are things I already do in my classes, and I'm convinced that many of the students learn more from doing that than they do from looking at any movie.
If you absolutely required me to screen something, I'd use my three hours to show short films. They're better than most features, and would at least demonstrate that a movie doesn't necessarily have to tell a stupid "story," be "entertaining" or any of that other rot Hollywood would make us believe.

MM: What would you show?

RC: Bruce Conner's Permian Strata, Valse Triste and A Movie; Jay Rosenblatt's Human Remains, Period Piece and Restricted; Su Friedrich's Sink or Swim and Rules of the Road; Shirley Clarke's Bridges-Go-Round; Mike Leigh's Afternoon, Sense of History and The Short and Curlies; Charlie Wiener's Rumba. And any 10 minutes from Tom Noonan's What Happened Was, Caveh Zahedi's Little Stiff, Mark Rappaport's Casual Relations, Elaine May's Mikey and Nicky, and Ozu's Late Spring.

The least the students would learn is that a film doesn't have to look like a Hollywood movie. that Hollywood is a tiny and ultimately unimportant rivulet flowing away from the great sea of art. The really smart ones would learn something about artistic structure and how the greatest movies use something other than action to keep us caring and in the moment—that the worst way to make a movie is to organize it around a sequence of events. Plot is the biggest lie we can tell about what life is really about. MM

Ray Carney is Professor of Film and American Studies at Boston University and the author of more than fifteen books on film and other art, including the critically acclaimed Cassavetes on Cassavetes and The Films of Mike Leigh. He runs a web site devoted to independent film and other art at http://www.Cassavetes.com.


 


 

Wednesday 17 August 2011

The Great Acting Blog: "Year 1 Filmography"

Lesamourainew

 

As the The Great Acting Blog approaches it's first birthday, I decided to compile a filmography of all the films mentioned in blogs during that year. As soon as I glanced over the list, I was immediately struck by the number of big hitters not on there - Jean Gabin, Robert De Niro and Emmanuelle Beart immediately sprung to mind. Lists are always fun, and I hope this one may inspire you to watch some of the films on it -  many contain performances which offer an object lesson in how to act, and vary radically in aesthetic, from the frantic emotionalism of Per Oscarsson in Sult, to the cool minimalism of Alain Delon in Le Samourai. However, what they all have in common is the ring of truth.

 

I've listed the film title, followed, in brackets, by the director and the actor focussed on, and then the title of the blog in which the film was mentioned. I always try to encourage dialogue on here, so please feel free to add your suggestions in the comments section below, especially when you feel the film contains performances worthy of note.

 

The continual viewing of great work inspires us to do better.

1. Streetcar Named Desire (Elia Kazan, Marlon Brando), Love Your Work.

2. Orlando (Sally Potter, Tilda Swinton), Become That Person You've Been Looking For .

3. I Am Love (Luca Guadagnino, Tilda Swinton) Become That Person You've Been Looking For + 10 Favourite Performances Of 2010.

4. The Hunchback Of Notre Dame (William Dieterle, Charles Laughton), Hunchback.

5. Waiting For Godot (Michael Lindsay-Hogg), Waiting For Godot.

6. Hoffa (Danny DeVito, Jack Nicholson), Singlemindedf**koffedness.

7. Krapp's Last Tape (Atom Egoyan, John Hurt), Mr Hurt.

8. The Hit (Stephen Frears, John Hurt), Mr Hurt.

9. Dead Man (Jim Jarmusch, John Hurt), Mr Hurt.

10.The Limits Of Control (Jim Jarmusch), Mr Hurt.

11. 44 Inch Chest (Malcolm Venville), Mr Hurt.

12. The Proposition (John Hillcoat), Mr Hurt.

13. You Can Count On Me (Lonergan, Mark Ruffalo), Commitment.

14. L'Eclisse (Michelangelo Antonioni, Alain Delon), Alain Delon.

15. Le Samourai (Jean-Pierre Melville, Alain Delon), Alain Delon.

16. Strangers On A Train (Alfred Hitchcock), From Fake Independence To A True Artistic Culture.

17. Shadow Of A Doubt (Alfred Hitchcock), From Fake Independence To A True Artistic Culture.

18. Cyrano De Bergerac (Michael Gordon, Jose Ferrer), Work For Your Own Satisfaction.

19. Sult (Henning Carlson, Per Oscarsson), This Then That, + My 10 Favourite Performances Of 2010.

20. Down Terrace (Ben Wheatley, Robin Hill), The Exhilaration Of Creation, + My 10 Favourite Performances Of 2010.

21. M (Fritz Lang, Peter Lorre), My 10 Favourite Performances Of 2010.

22. The Headless Woman (Lucrecia Martel, Maria Ornetto) My 10 Favourite Performances 2010

23. Dogtooth (Giorgos Lanthimos, Christos Stergioglou) My 10 Favourite Performances 2010

24. The Cremator (Juraj Herz, Rudolf Hrusinsky), My 10 Favourite Film Performances 2010

25. Distant Lives, Still Voices (Terrence Davies, Pete Postlethwaite) My 10 Favourite Film Performances 2010

26. The Ape (Jesper Ganslandt, Olle Sarri), My 10 Favourite Film Performances 2010

27. Le Mepris (Jean-Luc Godard, Michel Piccoli), The Discreet Madness Of Michel Piccoli.

28. Le Doulos (Jean-Pierre Melville, Michel Piccoli), The Discreet Madness Of Michel Piccoli

29. Jardins En Automne (Otar Iosseliani, Michel Piccoli), The Discreet Madness Of Michel Piccoli.

30. La Belle Noiseuse (Jacques Rivette, Michel Piccoli), The Discreet Madness Of Michel Piccoli.

31. Les Noces Rouge (Claude Chabrol, Michel Piccoli), The Discreet Madness Of Michel Piccoli.

32. Les Chose De La Vie (Claude Sautet, Michel Piccoli), The Discreet Madness Of Michel Piccoli.

33. The Diary Of A Chambermaid (Luis Bunuel, Michel Piccoli), The Context And It's Work.

34. A Single Man (Tom Ford, Colin Firth), Gobbledegook?.

35. The English Patient (Anthony Mingella, Colin Firth), Gobbledegook?.

36. Tyrannosaur (Paddy Considine), Actor-Filmmakers.

37. Walkover (Jerzy Skolimowski), Actor-Filmmakers.

38. Love Is Colder Than Death (Rainer Werner Fassbinder), Actor-Filmmakers.

39. Faces (John Cassavetes), Actor-Filmmakers.

40. Touch Of Evil (Orson Welles), Actor-Filmmakers.

41. Hannah & Her Sisters (Woody Allen).

42. The Crossing Guard (Sean Penn), Actor-Filmmakers.

43. Nil By Mouth (Gary Oldman), Actor-Filmmakers.

44. Orphans (Peter Mullan), Actor-Filmmakers.

45. Night Of The Hunter (Charles Laughton), Actor-Filmmakers.

46. Hannah-Bi ('Beat' Takeshi), Actor-Filmmakers.

47. The Liar (Mika Kaurismaki, Aki Kaurismaki), Actor-Filmmakers.

48. A Nos Amour (Maurice Pialat), Actor-Filmmakers.

49. Blast Of Silence (Allen Baron), Actor-Filmmakers.

50. The Unloved (Samantha Morton), Actor-Filmmakers.

51. God's Comedy (Joao Cesar Monteiro), Actor-Filmmakers.

52. Closure Of Catharsis (Rouzbeh Rashidi, James Devereaux), First Response.

53. The Birth Of The Goalie Of The 2001 FA Cup (Mike Leigh), Never Compromise.

54. Late Spring (Yashujiro Ozu, Chishu Ryu), Chishu Ryu In Late Spring.

55. My Name Is Joe (Ken Loach, Peter Mullan), Peter Mullan In My Name Is Joe – Acting Is Poetry.

56. Army Of Shadows (Jean-Pierre Melville, Lino Ventura), The Ventura Conundrum.

57. Le Deuxieme Souffle (Jean-Pierre Melville, Lino Ventura), The Ventura Conundrum.

58. Touchez Pas Au Grisbi (Jacques Becker, Lino Ventura), The Ventura Conundrum.

59. I'll Sleep When I'm Dead (Mike Hodges, Charlotte Rampling), Charlotte Rampling's Example.

60. Paranoic (Freddie Francis, Oliver Reed), Enjoy Your Work.

61. The Passion Of Joan Of Arc (Carl Theodore Dreyer, Maria Falconetti) The Face Of Great Acting.

62. Victim (Basil Dearden, Dirk Bogarde), Symptom Of A Lie.

63. The Servant (Joseph Losey, Dirk Bogarde), Symptom Of A Lie.

64. The Accident (Joesph Losey, Dirk Bogarde), Symptom Of A Lie.

65. The Night Porter (Liliana Cavani, Dirk Bogarde), Symptom Of A Lie.

66. The Damned (Luchino Visconti, Dirk Bogarde), Symptom Of A Lie.

67. Death In Venice (Luchino Visconti, Dirk Bogarde), Symptom Of A Lie.

68. Devil & The Deep (Marion Goring, Charles Laughton), Exclude The Meaningless.


Friday 12 August 2011

Drifting Clouds Recommends Joe Lawlor & Christine Molloy's "Helen"

Who said British art film was dead? This is a wonderful film about a girl called Helen, who is asked to perform in a police reconstruction of the disappearance of a local girl. Helen gradually drifts more and more into the lives of the people in the missing girl's life, which leads to some wonderfully strange scenes. This is also a very good example of how effective having little exposition is. And check out the minimalist aesthetic, particularly the acting which may be a good expression of the debate we had on minimalist acting on The Great Acting Blog - "Exclude The Meaningless", last week. http://thegreatactingblog.posterous.com/the-great-acting-blog-exclude-the-mea...

Cheers, James.

Wednesday 10 August 2011

The Great Acting Blog: "Trial & Error"

 

When rehearsing a scene for the first time, it is important to make a start. I used to find this blindingly obvious notion extremely difficult, and couldn't bear to walk across the stage until I was solidly off-book and confidently understood the meaning of the scene, for fear of experiencing that horrible feeling of falsity (I remedied this problem by learning my lines before the start of rehearsals, and improved my script analysis powers as I became more experienced). Anyway, at some point we have to make to start, when the director asks you to move from the sofa to the armchair, move we must, regardless of how we feel. And that's the point isn't it? If we waited until we felt “ready” then we probably never would make a start, actors don't need to be asked twice not to act, a cup of tea and a catch up with the week's gossip is far more preferable to the turmoil of actually creating something, perhaps we may even ask the director to explain his latest acting theory, and hope he forgets that we are actually in a rehearsal, then we can all go home, and perhaps we never will have to act if we can keep the ruse going long enough. Despite the aforementioned cosiness, we all know that, in the end, the turmoil of creation is what it is all about, the pressure, the stakes, the potential to damage your own self-regard, the fear of failure – or to put it another way – we should be setting our bar high enough that it is a real struggle to reach it, or it should be no certainty that we will. The struggle is not a bad thing, the sweat, infact, it is out of that struggle our creation is, in the end, borne, and the greater our struggle the greater the creation. Trial and error is a step into the unknown along the path of creation, we have a go at it, then look at what we did then try to improve it. But how much can you bear? At many points you will have to step into that unknown until you master it and get on a secure footing (as secure as you can in art), and once you get onto that secure footing, you must inch forward once again, and the process is repeated. Before you can provide an answer to the new question brought forth, you must first be able to formulate the question, and hope you have formulated the correct question. It is a relief when you actually have something that can be improved. As I write this, I start to think any great piece of work requires a miracle in order to bring it into the world, certainly the odds on it happening must be extremely long. And this is in stark contrast to the National Lottery, which creates the illusion that something is at stake, which is why we feel foolish and degraded after realising we have not won – there was nothing at stake after all. Thirteen million to one is certainly long odds. But the odds in the creation of a piece of work must be infinite. Something stirs in the imagination, perhaps it touches off a series of associations, and we slide into the groove of blessed inspiration. But it cannot last, and we cannot rely on it, and so we develop technique in order to give our work some order, some structure, to help us out of a jam. Technique is the difference between the serious person intent on becoming an artist, and somebody chancing their arm, or just having a go. Technique also helps us move beyond trial and error, when we have a clearer vision of what the work at hand might eventually become. That's why I like the technique of theatrical action so much: it gives us something absolutely concrete to work with, and helps us to make decisions when there seems to be innumerable possibilities open to us – if I go into the scene with, say, the action of “selling the other guy a great idea”, I've got something to hang my hat on. Yes, it's still trial and error, perhaps I find that “selling the other guy a great idea” doesn't work in the scene after I've tried it, then I can change the action to “convincing the other guy to come through for me”. But without technique we will lack the strength to probe rigorously, to improve the product, to open it back up again after we think we finished it, just to make it that little bit better. A true artist will always rouse himself to new effort, especially when he knows it's obvious that something can be improved, it's the difference between producing something excellent and something acceptable (or not even that). The hack will do the minimum to get by, technique to them is merely a well worn formula, selecting the appropriate off-the-shelf characterization, and making the scene at hand fit into it – no turmoil of creation for him – and it is unlikely that he will continue probing for ways to improve.


The true artist faces upto the turmoil of creation, and continually seeks to improve himself in order to face the turmoil  better.


Thursday 4 August 2011

Drifting Clouds Recommends Joanna Hogg's Archipelago

This is the best British film I've seen this year by a country mile. Hogg's beautifully pared back visuals allow us to observe and capture the hidden meaning of the characters' apparently innocuous behaviour, but which masque seething resentments among the Leightons on a family holiday. The conflicts are unbarable at times, and the tension among the family members is white knuckle. See this film. James.

Below I have reproduced Philip French's review of the film in the Guardian.


Archipelago – review, by Philip French, Sunday March 11th.

Joanna Hogg's excellent second feature revisits the English middle classes, this time on a tense farewell family holiday


Two years ago the British writer-director Joanna Hogg made her feature debut with Unrelated, a highly promising movie about a middle-class woman in her mid-40s leaving her husband in England to spend a holiday with a party of well-heeled, highly disagreeable friends at a grand Tuscan villa they've hired for a summer vacation. Her second film, the defiantly art-house Archipelago, is a variation on the same situation: a family holidays in the Scilly Isles and the father doesn't turn up. It's a confident advance on the earlier picture and one of the three most formally interesting British movies of the past few years, all directed (or co-directed) by women, the other two being Christine Molloy and Joe Lawlor's Helen and Clio Barnard's The Arbor.


Production year: 2010
Country: UK
Cert (UK): 15
Runtime: 114 mins
Directors: Joanna Hogg
Cast: Amy Lloyd, Christopher Bake, Christopher Baker, Kate Fahy, Lydia Leonard, Tom Hiddleston

As with the Japanese master Ozu, Hogg never moves her camera, each shot being carefully composed and long held. There are no close-ups until near the end, at which point there's also a single camera movement when one character comes down the stairs and startles us by rushing across a room to open a letter of farewell. There's no music in Archipelago, and like Eric Rohmer, another film-maker she evidently admires, Hogg has a preference for natural light and the particular tones and atmosphere it creates. In addition, much of the dialogue appears to be semi-improvised, reproducing the hesitancies and broken rhythms of everyday speech. Finally, she joins Julian Fellowes in consciously restoring to our cinema middle-class life as a proper subject for serious film-making and bringing to bear on it a knowing and critical eye.

The film takes place on Tresco, one of the Scilly Islands off the coast of Cornwall, and the title suggests a connection between the group of islands and the fractured nature of the Leighton family who've rented a house there. But Patricia Leighton, the mother (Kate Fahy), and her children, Cynthia (Lydia Leonard) and Edward (Tom Hiddleston), both in their late 20s, are not here for a jovial summer gathering.

This is one of those out-of-season films that provide a suitably sombre setting for contemplation. The holidaymakers are long gone, the choppy sea is uninviting, the sky overcast, the locals are shooting pheasants, and the visitors are wrapped up against the searching wind.

The precise time is marked as late October, early November, when Edward picks up what we think to be a brooch to pin on the sweater of Rose (Amy Lloyd), the pretty cook hired along with the house. It turns out to be a Remembrance Day poppy, though the feeling of it being an affectionate, probably mildly erotic gesture remains.

The family finds itself in this familiar place, where they've often spent holidays together, to mark the departure of Edward, who at 29 is about to give up a lucrative job in the City to spend a year in Africa as a voluntary worker, advising villagers on Aids and safe sex. It becomes clear that his mother and sister have doubts about his career change, which Cynthia mocks as a delayed gap year, and gradually we become aware of fissures breaking the smooth surface.

Initially, nobody ever says quite what they mean during their small talk and their dinner-table chat, though certain problems are brought into focus by the presence of Christopher, a mild-mannered minor artist who gives lessons to Patricia and Cynthia. He explains to them that to him the art of painting resides in producing well-ordered works into which a certain element of chance and chaos is allowed to enter. This becomes a metaphor for their middle-class life, though dangerous to embrace.

There are some wonderful moments, a number of them painfully funny, as the family, their cook and the painter friend interact. Cynthia and Patricia, for instance, turn against Edward when his newly found egalitarianism and sense of social duty compel him to treat Rose as an equal, inviting her to dine with them. In an exquisitely timed and observed scene of escalating embarrassment, they all lunch at the otherwise empty restaurant of a local hotel. Under Cynthia's direction, they change tables until finding the right one and the proper seating order. Then Cynthia, who combines insecurity with social assertion, criticises the food and demands to see the chef. As the others cringe, he politely explains to her that guinea fowl should be a trifle underdone. Later there's a touching moment when Edward seeks to cheer up the depressed Cynthia by speaking to her in nursery language using a glove puppet held around a door.

Archipelago is a subtle film of sensed absences. The father, whose pompous manner Edward mocks, never arrives. Edward's girlfriend, Chloe, who won't be allowed to accompany him to Africa, has not been invited to the reunion. As Cynthia condescendingly and revealingly tells her brother, Chloe is "not family, just someone you're attached to". Then there's the absence of a picture removed from above the living-room fireplace, leaving a rectangle of unfaded wallpaper. What is it the family can't bear to contemplate?

Well, it has to do with the chaotic, uncontrollable character of the natural world, and the painting's eventual return to the wall is part of the film's satisfactorily open ending. There's also another absence we experience. The screen is often unpopulated as people enter and leave the frame, and we're invited to think of Bishop Berkeley's philosophy of "immaterialism", the belief that the world only exists as we feel and perceive it, and of Dr Johnson's brutal refutation of this belief.

And here's a link back to the original page for this review. http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2011/mar/06/archipelago-philip-french-review


Wednesday 3 August 2011

The Great Acting Blog: "Exclude The Meaningless"

Charleslaughtondevil

 

Devil And The Deep is an old Marion Gering film from 1932, and stars Charles Laughton as a submarine commander who is insanely jealous of any attention given to his wife, played by Tallulah Bankhead, so insanely jealous infact, that he drives her into the arms of his first officer, Gary Cooper. The film is a model of simplicity and precision, in contrast to much of contemporary cinema which is so often drenched in design and camerawork, that it's difficult to see the film itself. Not so Devil And The Deep – everything is in service of the film. The story is told economically, using largely static shots, uninflected and objective, without explanations like handheld camera work (which so often for me, indicates a lack of conviction on the part of the filmmaker), Gering and his crew don't explain the film to us, they simply let it take place, thus allowing us to participate and create the film for ourselves. So, the filmmaking in Devil And The Deep, has a wonderful combination of humility and beauty. And in terms of the performances, I finally came to understand something which I have felt but never really been able to articulate about minmalism in film acting.


Now, the art and craft of acting has been in steady decline over the last 50 or 60 years, even to the point where famous directors publicly denigrate the form (“I hate actors and their bag of tricks”), and we've got movie stars openly ridiculing acting while simultaneously trousering millions of dollars. Any attempt at a serious discussion about acting is derided as pretentious, and actors have their “value” measured by whether they have been successful in the industrial arena as oppose to the artistic. The acting in Devil And The Deep is sublime, especially from Laughton: the extraneous is cut away and only the essential is included, so that what we see is a precise, true and vivid performance, shockingly vivid at times, and further, every movement serves a precise purpose (much like the script and camerawork). Laughton's performance delights and compels us, and his generosity is enormous – as when we hear his garrulous laugh after catching only the punchline to his jokes - he warms us, like a log fire does. In short: Laughton is truly expressing himself. It's the sort of performance that today would be dismissed as “stagey”, and Laughton ridiculed as a mere “luvvie”. Why? Because he does not subscribe to the pinchfistedness laughingly described as “naturalism”. But I say this “naturalism” - the fidgeting, and the meaningless gesturing, the fake stuttering (which is an artificial affectation applied by the actor) is a repression of a crucial aspect of human nature, ie – to play, to perform, to express, to try other people's clothes on – and in attempting to repress it, we are infact attempting to repress the truth, and in it's place we put the crocodile tears and verisimilitude of “naturalism”, and wrap it up in do-gooderism in order to justify the lie. But performing is an essential aspect of our lives, that's why actors exist: TO PERFORM, hence we write scripts, build stages, and turn our cameras upon them in order for them to do so. Why deny it? Why repress this need to see the drama of our lives played out infront of us? Why pretend that what we are witnessing is not a performance? Do ballerinas pretend they're not dancing?


The irony of minimalist acting in cinema is that it is theatrical, and the more minimal it is the more theatrical it is. I think of great filmmakers like Yashujiro Ozu, or Robert Bresson, or Aki Kaurismaki, (the acting in whose films is often quite brilliant) who ask their actors to pare back their performances in order to serve the film, and to exclude the meaningless. But what is this paring back? This exclusion of the meaningless? It is a cutting away of the non-essential, and in so doing, a theatrical style of film acting is brought forth, it draws attention to the fact that the actor is performing, afterall, he is supposed to be performing – that's the whole point – what we see infront of us is a deliberate creation, a deliberate arrangement, a work of art, and, as such, we, the audience, witness performances of great beauty, and which bring us great joy.