Rashidi-Devereaux Cinema: The First Three Feature Films

 

Closure of Catharsis (100 Min HDV Stereo B/W UK & Ireland 2011)

Idea & Director: Rouzbeh Rashidi

Synopsis: ”A man (James Devereaux) sits on a park bench talking to the camera, trying to weave together a thought that won’t cohere while commenting on passers-by, his ‘guests’… Mysterious images intervene, overturning the serenity of the park-bench monologue. Rouzbeh Rashidi’s new feature proves as engagin as it is elusive.”

 

HE (122 Minutes DSLR Stereo Colour/B&W Ireland 2012)

Idea & Director: Rouzbeh Rashidi

Synopsis: HE, the latest work in the ongoing collaboration between Rouzbeh Rashidi and actor James Devereaux, is a troubling and mysterious portrait of a suicidal man. Rashidi juxtaposes the lead character’s apparently revealing monologues with scenes and images that layer the film with ambiguity. Its deliberate, hypnotic pace and boldly experimental structure result in an unusual and challenging view of its unsettling subject.

 

Boredom of the disgust & monotony of the tediousness (95 Min DSLR Stereo B&W Ireland 2012)

Idea & Director: Rouzbeh Rashidi

Synopsis: Rashidi continues his collaboration with actor James Devereaux in this unsettling and ultimately touching portrait of an isolated actor possessed by film history.

The Great Acting Blog: "A True Actor-Director Collaboration - Boredom Of The Disgust Part 3"

 

Boredom Of The Disgust is a film made up of a series of scenes but there is no through-action – they are linked because each of them is about cinema itself. The film has documentary scenes (as discussed in Part 1), and it has fiction scenes (including a film noir scene about a man trying to escape from some people he owes money to, and the imaginary argument discussed in the last blog), so it was only natural that the film should culminate in a scene that was both fiction and documentary.

Set in the screening room of The Guesthouse in Cork, I was to play an affable, if eccentric, film lover, who had built a cinema with his own hands, in order to screen the films he loved, and here was opening night, and he was explaining his intentions for the cinema. The cinema did not exist of course, not in the sense that I was talking about it in any case – at one point, I introduced Le Samourai as the next film of the evening to the audience, but there was no audience, and I had no intention of screening Le Samourai.  So much for the fiction then. During the improvisation, Rashidi would interject and ask me to speak about my thoughts on cinema generally, about my favourite filmmakers, and what kind of films I loved. Essentially, I gave truthful answers (ie – my actual thoughts rather than made up ones for the character) - I spoke about my penchant for discovering obscure masterpieces, and my preference for personal, idiosyncratic cinema (or auteur cinema) – watching individualist cinema, is, for me, like entering a secret garden. I also spoke about an idea which is important to me: that the richest way a film can be experienced is at the movie theatre, infront of a massive screen (and if you're skeptical about that; watch a film at home on DVD firstly, then go to the theatre to watch the same film). For this whole scene, I was really just riffing – letting ideas form in my mind, in response to the few notes I had been given - it was “playing” in the truest sense. However, I put on a slightly upper class voice, and behaved in a rather stiff manner, along with displaying a certain affability – these are all externals which I applied in order to help create the illusion of character (another example of an external, would be a limp). Of course, this kind of characterization makes perfect sense for the fictional parts of the scene, but is strange when you think I maintained this character while I was explaining my actual own ideas. If the actor is the truth at the heart of the filmmakers artifice, then we can also say he is the truth at the heart of the artifice of characterization – now I think of Charles Laughton in The Hunchback Of Notre Dame, where he uses externals masterfully for sure, but it is undeniably the force of Laughton's spirit underneath

 the prosthetics and the make-up, which truly moves us.

 It has been a joy to be given a platform to expound my ideas on acting, and then to put those ideas into action in the same film – and it is a testament to Rashidi's love and respect for acting, that he decided to give the craft such focus within the film. Further, as the role of actors is diminishing all the time, Rashidi is to be commended for striving to give responsibility back to the actor, and, by offering challenging work, offers the opportunity to unlock his true creative potential, and all this takes place within his own personal, cinematic aesthetic. The actor, for his part, must not waste the opportunity, but rise to the challenge, and stretch every sinew in service of the film.

Boredom Of The Disgust & Monotony Of The Tediousness, is the fruit of a true actor-director collaboration.

 

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The Great Acting Blog: "The Paradox Of Acting - Boredom Of The Disgust - Part 2"

Check out the trailer for our new feature film, part video essay, part fiction.

 

Having completed the documentary scenes for the film, we moved on to the fictional scenes. First up, I was to have an argument with somebody who wasn't in the room, but I was to create the illusion that I was talking to somebody, so all the audience would hear are my responses to this imaginary other person, and if that wasn't enough, Rashidi decided to make it a little bit harder by turning a radio on in the room, blasting only white noise, and no actual music - an actual antagonist as oppose to the imaginary. Again, there was no rehearsal, so I just had to pick a task and back myself. More and more as I get older as an actor, I put my faith in my imagination rather than my powers of reason, largely because the imagination will always cough something up which I can use, whereas my reason can create self-consciousness and cause me to dry – acting technique then, is about intentionally liberating the imagination when under pressure. And my imagination did cough something up: I had arranged a party which was very important to me, but my (invisible) other half was refusing to attend, because the restaurant in question didn't have the kind of chicken she likes, so the improvisation became about me trying to convince her to come to the party – that was the literal action (ie - the fiction of the scene) – however, the essential action (ie – the concretely doable task I was to give myself for the scene) was to “get a loved one to come through for me”. Of course, I didn't think of this whole situation right at the beginning of the improvisation, I just made a start, and the picture gradually emerged, with my imagination feeding me data. Throughout the scene, I executed the action in different ways; to reason with, to persuade, to cajole, to plead, to beg, even to mock (using my special reverse psychology techniques, of course), to lay down the law was another, and all the while trying to deal with Rashidi's mischievous radio and it's fluctuating volume. This scene involved the exploration of a nice, clean line of action, which is such a joy to perform. Having now watched the completed film, I had completely forgotten that Rashidi had been torturing me not only with a radio, but also with his lighting scheme: sometimes a strobe, sometimes creating a shadowy, noirish world, and finally cutting the lights entirely near the end of the scene, so that I was left standing in total darkness, shouting abuse at my non-existent scene partner; “you're f**king nuts, you're a f**king lunatic....”

Essentially then, this scene is a real summation of the acting techniques that I regularly discuss on this blog: eschewing characterization for action, and a proper commitment to doing the actions will lead to a truthful performance, and then the illusion of character is created in the mind of the viewer – and here the paradox of acting is revealed to us: that a truthful performance helps the viewer to believe a fiction.

 

The Great Acting Blog: "Boredom Of The Disgust & Monotony Of The Tediousness - Part 1""

 

As I arrived in Cork,  the ever prolific and hardworking Rouzbeh Rashidi informed me that in addition to HE, we were to shoot some scenes for another feature film he was putting together (in collaboration with Maximilian Le Cain), and he did so in a tone of voice which suggested that shooting two feature films simultaneously was a perfectly reasonable thing to do, the obvious thing to do infact.

He said he wanted to explore on camera some of the ideas I have been developing on this blog over the months, aswell as create fictional, improvised scenes, then finally explore my attitude to cinema generally, in scenes which would be both fiction and documentary. However, as the scenes progressed and as we accrued material, it was decided that the footage would form a feature film of it's own: “Boredom Of The Disgust And Monotony Of The Tediousness”.

5 OF THE BEST

Firstly, Rashidi asked me to write down my five favourite actors and actresses, on a piece of paper, and then discuss what I liked about them, or why I thought they were great. Normally an easy task – I always love a good list, and walking down street lost in my thoughts, I could probably reel off one name after another, but when someone asks you to name names, suddenly the mind goes blank. However, after some thought, I did manage to come up with five actors – (in no particular order) Charles Laughton, Marlon Brando, Michel Piccoli, Jack Nicholson and Jean Gabin (on my reserve list were Alain Delon and Robert De Niro). For actresses, I decided on: Tilda Swinton, Emmanuelle Beart, Irene Jacob and Delphine Seyrig, and ran out of time before thinking of my fifth (which would have been Monica Vitti). I then offered my reasons for including each. Obviously a lot was said about the excellence of each actor's technique, but, in the end, what we respond to in each actor is their personality, each of them is intrinsically compelling – and I'm not talking about them playing compelling characters, it's something in them, call it energy, call it spirit, there's just something about them that is alight....Of course, as I write this blog, I can think of many, many others I could add to the list (Dirk Bogarde anyone?).

GURU

The next set up had me expounding my theories on acting more broadly (never needing to be asked twice to do so of course) – many of which may be viewed as “controversial”, such as the fact that there is no difference between stage and camera acting, but that a lot of people make a lot of money by inventing a difference: then charging good money to explain what the difference is, then charge again to "teach" the actor how to "adapt" accordingly. The wider point, of course, is that a whole industry has sprouted up around the idealism and the ambition of young people who go into acting – and this industry is made up of “business people” who create a problem for the actor and then offer themselves as the solution (in the same way cigarettes create an aggravation for nicotine in the smoker, which can only be soothed by smoking). A classic example, is the “career guru”, who charges actors £50 an hour to assess the marketing effectiveness of their materials (ie - headshots, CVs, covering letters etc). During this hour, the actor is subjected to a comprehensive criticism of all that he has been doing to “get work”, and at the end, the guru gives him list of things to change (whether it is an improvement is moot of course). What else is the guru to do? Imagine that the desperate actor entered the guru's den, hoping to find out “where he's going wrong”, but, after only 10 minutes, the guru simply turned round and said; “congratulations! I've checked your stuff, and everything seems in order – keep doing what you're doing and success will soon be yours”,  then ushered the actor out the door? Wouldn't the actor feel cheated out of his money? Isn't he paying for the guru to criticise him?....With the £50 spent on the guru, the actor could have gone onto Amazon and bought a Flip HD camera and started making his own films.....I didn't put it this way in Boredom Of The Disgust & Monotony Of The Tediousness, but my point is the actor should remind himself that all he wants to do is offer a presentation to an audience (and hopefully delight them in the process) – this way of thinking will keep him fitted for the task - all else should be kept in perspective. If our work becomes simply a marketing mechanism, it will not be long before the lies breed an all consuming self-loathing, and then what?

The next part of the Boredom Of Disgust & Monotony Of The Tediousness blogs, which look at the fictional improvised scenes we created.

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