The Great Acting Blog: "Strive To Be Great"

A forthcoming Daniel Day-Lewis performance is always turned into a huge event by the media - we were told his turn in PT Anderson's There Will Be Blood was the performance to define cinematic acting for all time. Then there is the psychophantic reporting about the lengths Day-Lewis went in order to “research the character”, and that he “stays in character” between takes. All of this stuff of course, has helped to create a mythology around Day-Lewis, a mystique, a narrative, and which has become self-perpetuating. When Day-Lewis quit the run of Hamlet early, claiming that the death of his own father weighed too greatly on his performances (others juicily claimed he actually saw the ghost of his father on stage), this only added to his legend. Whereas most actors would have been branded incompetent and unreliable for quitting, for Day-Lewis this was seen as an example of just how far he is willing to go to give a truthful performance. His failure is held up as his commitment to his art (quitting is a sign of commitment in our topsy-turvy modern world). On another occasion, Day-Lewis disappeared to make shoes in Italy somewhere, and again this was cited as evidence of his commitment; he'd spent so long in the blazing furnace of creation, he just needed to get away from it all, and make shoes. Perhaps the most remarkable aspect about all this however, is the fact that Day-Lewis has been able to maintain the intensity of the attention on his work for so long - the only comparable actor I can think of is Robert De Niro during the 70s and early 80s, a far better actor than Day-Lewis, but focus on his work has faded as his career has worn on.*

 

Whatever you may think of Day-Lewis, the sheer ambition of his acting choices is an example, and should be an inspiration. Few other actors these days strive to give something extra, something remarkable, in the way that Day-Lewis does. The great explorations of acting, the will to deliver a performance of force, the longing to express, the love of art, the desire to thrill, seems to be broadly lacking in contemporary acting. Any actor who strives to be an artist is sneered at, brand names on the CV are all that count, few take the technical and aesthetic aspects of acting seriously. That's generally why acting and actors are less exciting than they were, less fun, and in turn, less loved.

Actors now see the audience as an appendage to their career, rather than the object of it. This has been evidenced in recent years by the spate of incidents in theatres where actors have broken out of character and told the audience to shut-up whenever their mobile phone has rung or when they eat crisps. I can't help but feel that in the old days, actors like Donald Wolfitt or Anew Macmaster would have rendered such distractions irrelevant and quelled any noise by the sheer greatness of their performances. Infact, Harold Pinter tells the story about when he was a young actor touring Shakespeare in MacMaster's company, they were doing Othello in some Irish village, and the 2000 strong audience were drunk and bawdy to the extent that the actors on stage couldn't hear eachother speak, that is, until MacMaster entered, and who, by the end of the play, held the audience in rapt silence – you could hear a pin drop – but he didn't ask or tell them to be quiet, he stunned them with his brilliance. That's what we should be aiming for in our work.

 

 

 

* Day-Lewis has a much lower output than De Niro, making only 6 films in the last 15 years, while De Niro has made 44 in the same timeframe. This may go some way to explain why the intensity of attention on Day-Lewis' work has endured.

The Great Acting Blog: "Actor As Individual Creative Artist"

The notion of the actor as an individual creative artist, is a notion I often advocate on this blog. That is; the actor taking responsibility for his work, defining an aesthetic, not “standing around in the dark, hoping to be picked”. The benefits of such an approach are myriad, not least among them is that the actor can build the body of work he wants, work with people he likes and who share his concerns, and also, the actor can maintain self-respect by being self-reliant and rewarding himself for his efforts. In short: the actor-auteur.

 

It's difficult to find a better exemplar for this approach than the great Steven Berkoff, who went and wrote and staged his own plays, and the plays of others, back when nobody was striking out on their own. Berkoff's aesthetics are his own, strikingly individualistic. And so it is then, I have decided to publish some take-aways, from Berkoff's recent five minute interview with the BBC, in order to further the conversation on this matter.

 

 

• Berkoff says that theatre matters, that it's the last form of communication between people, where you can express the most fundamental thoughts, ideas, and emotions, and do so instantaneously.

• Althought Berkoff writes and directs, he's says he is first and foremost an actor, because acting is something he can do immediately, and because he can also dip into other writers. If he was only a playwright, then he couldn't express himself in Shakespeare, Wilde, Sheridan etc.

• He says that acting, writing and directing are all part of the same tree.

• Says all actors should, at one time, be writers and directors – Shakespeare was an actor and a writer. He says it makes a richer compost if people are expressing the three elements together.

• Says that when you're directing yourself you're not actually directing yourself, but that the audience response, ie – their attitudes, their silence, their laughter, will tell you and teach you.

• Says he did one man plays because he didn't want to wait until he gathered a whole group of actors together, with attendent costs and logistics, casting, agents, and dealing with the temperaments of 8 or 10 actors. He says a one-man show is a unique communication – it gives the actor greater scope because he doesn't have to deal with other actors.

• Says his own plays are poetic and expressionistic, not naturalistic.

• Says “Total Theatre” is use of the imagination. Modern theatre has returned to Victorian theatre with huge sets and flying people. Says that Total Theatre is the ability of the actor to express the genius of the body, express the story without set.

• Says you need to be a good actor to play a villain. Says the best actors play villains.

  
  

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The Great Acting Blog: "Keeping Your Independence"

Gielgud as Hamlet

 

"To be, or not to be, that is the question:

Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer

the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,

Ot take arms against a sea of troubles,

And by opposing end them..."

 

Actors are idealist types functioning in a pragmatic world, they are dreamers in a real world. So, for the actor, life is about balancing off the dreams which fuel him, against dealing frankly with the reality placed before him. Not easy to do in the lifestyle of an actor, where fortunes may fluctuate dramatically – one minute sat home alone, ignored and underemployed, the next, a phone call or meeting which could literally change the actor's game, and when that meeting or phone call doesn't change the game, then it's back to being at home, until the next thing comes along which may not change the game but may offer an exciting opportunity, and so on and so forth …. you catch my drift.

So how to survive this emotional roller coaster? Of course, learning to adapt one's mindset would be a useful but not infallible system to use, and not infallible because we cannot always control what we think. No, the way to handle the situation is to acknowledge that the effect certain events may have upon us is superficial, the effect quickly vanishes, the effect is not real, we need not give it too much meaning. Instead of letting the rollercoaster throw us into a state of flux, or cause us to behave rashly, we should recourse to those things which are permament in our lives, which are profound, which never desert us no matter the situation, but which improve us and make us stronger – we should recourse to aesthetics, ie – to the system of art we have chosen to operate by, to the technique of acting which has become a way of life. Commitment to this technique, means that every single moment of the actor's life is contributing to his growth as an artist, because eveything he does becomes a practice of the technique, thus refining, thus strengthening and improving the technique, which naturally impacts performance – and the improvement itself, aswell as the act of improving will provide the actor with an endless source of joy, and a healthy self-respect to boot. This commitment will help the actor to endure, over the long term, the slings and arrows which may come his way.

So the next time an almost certain victory is usurped by defeat, or you get demoralised by an unforced error, or you receive an outrageously good piece of news, rather than allowing yourself to be ravished by the feeling created in the moment, gently place your mind onto those things which are important to you, and will still remain with you regardless of the situation you find yourself in, and all will be placed in healthy perspective, and you will keep your independence.

 

The Great Acting Blog: "The Insecure Actor"

I was stunned recently when a colleague of mine, whom I had had a very good relationship with until this point, casually slighted me in public. At first, I was in disbelief because the slight apparently came out of nowhere, and then my survival instinct kicked in as I undertsood the slight to be an attack, and so defended myself. Why did my colleague jeopardise the well being of a hitherto frutiful professional relationship in this way? Because he is insecure about the value of himself and his own work, and his spontaneous insult was merely a symptom of this deeper, underlying fear. The insult itself, the slight, was merely an attempt to bring this value deficit to balance (if only for a fleeting moment). Moreover, it implies a lack of seriousness on their part: a lack of seriouness about themselves, their career, and about our relationship, for what else can this casual sabotage of a professional connection mean? Personally, I would never jeopardise a personal or professional relationship for such a meagre, transient reward.

There can be healthy competition between actors, the sort which innvigorates and inspires, which drives you on to ever greater heights of excellence, and then there is the other sort as described above, which masquerades as the competitive spirit, but is infact the opposite – it is anti-competitive, an attempt to scag everybody, dragging everyone down into misery, sapping the true creative spirit, and in the process excusing oneself from the need to be better.

Stick to the healthy competition and get rid of the unhealthy.

If the actor does infact want to get rid of the unhealthy, then he needs to take responsibility for his work and life – get to grips with the technical aspects of acting, and develop sound philosophy, this in turn creates independence, which means understanding the value of you and your work. It all stems from having a proper grip on the fundamentals of acting. Once this is in place, the actor may become more generous toward his colleagues, seeing that everyone tries to do the best they can, enjoying and being inspired by the success of others' rather than being threatened by it. Understand that your own personal well being is linked to the well being of the production as a whole, understand that the art and craft of acting is far, far greater than any single individual and that you are there to serve it and not for it to serve you. Treat people in the way you yourself wish to be treated. You do not have to be best friends with the rest of the cast, but an environment of trust, mutual respect, and co-operation, is a happily creative environment, which, co-incidentally, leads to stronger work.

 

The Great Acting Blog: "The Future Of Acting"

“we have to be optimistic. The moment actors start thinking otherwise, they're dead. You simply have to believe you have a future.” - Peter O'Toole.

 

Peter O'Toole is a god of acting, he is a great actor, his performance in Becket is one of my favourite of all time, so when he speaks, I listen. However, I was quite shocked by the statement above, it never occurred to me that somebody as fabulously successful and bravura as O'Toole ever had to worry about having a future as an actor, certainly I would never have guessed that he would ever have had to place his chips on being optimistic.

 

I've never really liked “optimism”, it's similar to “being positive”, it just seems desperate, as though we are powerless and can only accomplish anything because of luck, or because of some outside force doing us a favour. I much prefer to try to see things as they really are, then plot a course of action in response to the conclusions of my analysis, and proceed from there. Optimism is linked to the frustrations of the casting process, where the actor is having to appeal to someone, whilst knowing there are dozens of other actors lined up behind him, waiting to do exactly the same thing – then after the casting, the actor is left hoping he is the one who will be picked, and if he is passed over on this occasion, then he must hope something else turns-up, and the process starts all over again. The actor copes with being demeaned in this way only because it is the accepted norm. The point is however, we can easily see how the actor is reduced to sitting around trying to be “optimistic” about the future. The trouble is, optimism is only a hop, skip and a jump away from wishful thinking, and wishful thinking is, we know, the opposite of hard thinking – but wishful thinking is what keeps people volutarily participating in a system which does not necessarily serve their own best interests, ie: “I have absolutely no control over what is happening to me, but I'm sure something'll turn up”. Wishful thinking is thinking that one day you'll have a career like, well, like Peter O'Toole, even though you may not possess the capability to actually make it happen. As I mentioned in my blog on Why Actors Quit, without a concrete and energising goal (and for the goal to be concrete and energizing, accomplishing it needs to be within the actor's power), the actor will not be able to overcome the obstacles he will inevitably encounter – he needs powerful reasons to keep fighting – optimism, positive thinking, wishful thinking, self-help mantras, vague hope, are not concrete, and they are not energizing, they may, like cigarettes, seem to offer momentary relief, but ultimately they are empty and lead to self-deception

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For my own view, the acting world has changed radically from the days when O'Toole was coming up. The last 10 years has seen an explosion in the number of people going into acting, and arguably there has been a dimunition in the volume of work available. Like the rest of our culture, getting a decent education and working hard is no longer enough. We are moving into an era when eveyone needs to be an entrepeneur, and that includes actors. Infact, in the case of acting, I think we will see the emergence of more and more “actor-auteurs”, wherby the actor is the unmistakable author of the work, such as Charlie Chaplin or Woody Allen. This will happen largely because of the reason I mentioned above, that there is just so much more traffic on the old career paths than there used to be and actors will be forced to be more innovative, but also it will happen because it's now doable: the cost of production has been coming down and down and down to the point where a professional quality feature film can be produced with a literally zero budget, and then we have the emergence of micro-distribution, where an audience can be found and nurtured. The actor doesn't need to believe he has a future, the actor needs to create one for himself.

The Great Acting Blog: "I Think I Let Him Play A F****y Vampire" - Mario Mentrup Q & A - Part 2

In part two of my Q and A with actor-filmmaker Mario Mentrup, he talks about the response to his feature film, I Do Adore, elaborates on his ideas about the art and biz of acting, and offers some advice to young actors. If you missed the first part of this Q and A, you can read it here.

TGAB: I suppose the notion of the actor-manager, or the notion of the actor being responsible for an overall aesthetic in the way, say, Chaplin was, appears to be out of fashion, or actors don’t think of themselves in this way anymore. Nowadays, it seems, actor are more like employees, submitting to the casting process, and they are brought into projects purely for functional reasons. As you say, there is suspicion towards actors who make their own stuff. In almost any other art form, or business, we admire those who strike out on their own, but that doesn’t apply to actors. Would you have a view on that? Or, what response did the fact that you acted in and directed your own feature, receive?

MM: Most actors see themselves as employees who just do what they are told. Their worker's pride is to serve. Especially male actors usually aim to come across as hard working men, but anyway the technicans get laid by all the cool ladies on set.  Actors are frustrated in all ways: No work, no play(with ladies or boys vice versa).To compensate they must pump iron or fuck their brains out like Sasha Grey- i mean it seems, that  fucking-for real is the new method of our time, isn't it, Michael Fassbend-me-over (his nickname in the blogosphere since "Shame") ?

Seriously, the big problem is that this business is so damn anti-intellectual.

Nobody dares to be a Chaplin or Buster Keaton or Charles Laughton or Orson Welles. Or  John Cassavettes. Or Jaques Tati or Jerry Lewis. Or Marlon Brando, apart from being this great crazy pain-in-the ass for the business or Coppola, this mad big man has directed a great Western: "One -eyed-Jack."

The Servants of today forgot or do not even know that the director's job is actually a new invention of the last century, and  the real tradition is the actor directing himself and his performance.

Since ages Shakespeare and Tchechov and a few new well -made-plays are the basis for actors to imitate "Art" and TV and Film is to earn money by imitating a cop and a nurse, that's it . Most Actors , here in Germany for example, would laugh in your face, if you would say that it is art what they are doing. Same with the directors. At this point i must say that the Pranks by American actors or performers who irritate their audiences is an interesting aspect; by doing they create at least  a conceptual piece of art.

Crispin Glover is an example for this, who, apart from his pranks ,is  financing and producing  his 35mm Celluloid Films and avoids any digitalisation; he is touring all over to screen his films in the tradition of a vaudevillan. Of course Vincent Gallo has to be mentioned, whose provocations among the Net and Magazine- Communities made him so special, that it got really fascinating watching him in "Essential Killing" transformed into a Taliban who spoke absolutely nothing  the entire film. Director Jerzy Skolimowsk said, it had been  Gallo’s idea not to say any word at all. Guys like Joaquin Phoenix or James Franco also try hard to be crazy Pranksters, but that is another and more boring story. Paz de La Huertas is still very interesting. I like her ad-campaign for the Lingerie- Company "Agent Provocateur" and on an advice that she should avoid playing nudes scenes in future she said : That's good advice, but I'm telling you, typecasting is typecasting. And I mean, look at Charlotte Rampling. She's a brilliant actress, and she's still getting naked for films. If I look like that at her age, I'll flaunt it.“

That is an actor-auteur. Balls. Balls, that is what most people in this job are missing.

I go over now to your question what response the fact that i acted in and directed my  own feature, received.

People simply avoided to talk to me about my acting in this film. They talked about everything else, a lot about the other actors to me.  Some times i heard "Beautiful Pictures , but where is the story?"My answer is, that the pics are the story and that it was in my script and that i developed the storyboard together with Volker Sattel. By saying this i only gained disbelief. But still, most of the time the crowd is fascinated and pleased, having seen a movie like this. And although i cannot think of going a tougher road these days, where we see the glory of Script-Doctor-companies and 27- or 48- hours -Filmproducing -competitions all around the globe, with the horrible result that Film became an empty  Party- event, there is bunch of actors and filmmakers who enjoy to go our ways. Christoph Bach, a TV- actor- award winner for his impersonation of  "Dutschke" and internationally known for his part in "Carlos" by Olivier Assayas is very into the idea that acting should be art and an actor should be an auteur. And Christoph is fighting like a  lion. I worked with him for my short film:"Der Adler ist fort" ("The eagle is gone") in 2010. We will continue working together. I can mention her  RP Kahl, an actor-auteur- director who already made some Films and who made the controversial "Bedways" last year, which is distributed worldwide.

Or Nicolette Krebitz, you British people will know her as the cover-girl of a NEW ORDER album back in 2001. She has made two features yet and as far as i know, she battles for her new one against all odds and Business.

TGAB: It seems the situation here is very similar to Germany. I have actually been laughed at by my peers for suggesting that they should think of themselves as artists, back in my younger days when I was more naive. Also, the notion of the director being a 20th century invention, is extremely important - actors didn't even used to rehearse together necessarily, the lead actor would rehearse alone then slot into the company at the last minute. . Fascinating aswell, that people didn't really talk about the fact you were the main character in I Do Adore - perhaps they take your acting for granted, whereas perhaps making a feature is a rarer accomplishment... You make many points that we could explore further. But i would like to look at the idea of the "actor-auteur". You mention your contemporaries, and you seem to be saying that if you've got balls and determination, it can be done. Having been through it yourself with I Do Adore, what advice would you give to a young actor reading this, who maybe is starting to think of himself as an artist, but is not necessarily in an environment which encourages this.

MM: First i suppose you are right concerning the response to my acting in my own film, the people seem to take it for granted.   It suddenly appears to me that i already could have become an "actor-auteur"  over 20 years ago with the first Feature i was starring in and i had co-written .But at those days me myself and the circumstances around me were not quite right. Now that  i shall give an advice to younger actors who start to think of themselves as Artists , i will switch  from gloomy to light now.

Yesterday an actor-friend of mine, who had been casted 8 years ago by old Guerilla Filmmaker Klaus Lemke and acted in 4 of his Features premiered his own written and directed Low Budget Feature- in which he also  is starring- in  Berlin and it was a blast. Of course  he had been nervous. In the process of nearly 2 Years he had screened slightly different versions of the film two or three times to me and some friends. I always told him quite the same: your film is crazy indeed, and of script-doctors will miss the plotline-and twist on minute so and so, but i saw funny and astonishing situations and refreshing ideas, who the fuck says you have to make 

a masterpiece? And maybe it is....

The premiere the night before yesterday was a blast, and he is very very happy.

Actually , and not to forget, a good way is to start or join a Theatre Group with Actor and Writer and Musician  and to focus on improvisational or new forms of theatre. A lot of groups are doing exactly this and even if you OFFOff doesn't mean you cannot get recognition. If you tend to listen to everybody or to harsh and frustrating  acting teachers or maybe your parents or your depressed colleagues  whoever, i would rather tell you to try find another profession. 

There is this guy , who had  a small but important part in my film.  In the 90s he had had quite a quick start at age 18 when he played the  Turkish-Berlin kid that he was in two main roles in a row. Then nothing worked out  for him for ages, 7, 8 years no film,  no nothing.  He tried to become  a director, no Filmschool wanted him. He did not give up. Meanwhile he was doing his thing in Metalbands, banging the guitar and his head and walking around with attitude. Finally 2005 a theatre asked him to direct a play. Since this day he writes and directs and acts in his own Theatre Play. This year his second self produced and written Microbudget  Feature will be premiered at Berlinale. Guess what, Volker Sattel is the cameraman. More advices?

More Advices, get content. Read. Interviews with actors you admire or do not admire read Novels, Autobios, Philosophy, Religion, Sociology, get into Mathematics, Metaphysics, even Esoterics. But read. Now as i write this down, i remember Werner Herzog, who did good challenging work the last years, is preaching this like a mantra: Read.

TGAB: I totally concur about reading. Has enormous impact.

I think watching movies away from the mainstream, or prescribed "independent films", is also very important for the actor.

Having watched your film, I could see in the aesthetics that it was made by cinephiles, ie - people with a broad and diverse knowledge of cinema, and an acute appreciation of it. In my experience, it is unusual for an actor to be a cinephile, and to want to make, let's say, auteur films. Here in London, few actors would even have heard of somebody like Godard, and it can be a real problem attracting actors to arthouse productions, especially when budgets are low. In my experience, a lot of actors are unnerved by anything other than industrial production processes. I wondered if the situation was similar in Germany? Also, I think screenings of important auteur films should be part of an actor's training, partly to awaken him to alternative forms. Would you have a view on that?

MM:

Hilarious statement, it reminds me of Susan Sonntags famous essay about "Camp" and her prognosis that the "method" of Marlon Brando would be seen as "Kitsch" in the future. Marlon Brando was very aware of this, but Klaus Kinski was overrated for sure. I mean did you see his directorial Actor-Auteur's Debut and last film ever: "PAGANINI"? Oh i can imagine Stewart Home, who claims to be inauthentic will love it for its Mega-Kitsch.Realism and Authenticity in Films is surely overrated like Lars von Trier is surely "kitsch"  nearby in the future. I am  a cinephile because i hung out more with filmmakers, filmbuffs, artists, writer and nerds than with actors. Nowaday i got some actor's friends and it is the directors who bore me now in freetime. And narrative Films bore me more and more. Since 10 years, I am more into experimental and Artfilmsor  in the films  and writings of Jean Epstein. The  hysterical craziness in  early Phillipe Garrell or Werner Schroeter Films, the dark eroticism of  Frans Zwartjes  or  a music label like  "Family Vineyard"  are more thrilling for me than to watch the next nominated OSCAR Film or Arthaus Flick. But that is obvious. These new Films are not made for me, i am neither a kid nor a senior You wrote: "screenings of important auteur films should be part of an actor's training, partly to awaken him to alternative forms." I totally agree, but it should be a must for producers in particular and directors too. And not only Films by Godard, Antonioni or Fassbinder but also Films by Dario Argento, Tinto Brass, Alain Robbe-Grillet (do you know: "Transeuropaexpress"?), Val Lewton, yes and why not Jean Rollin or Porn by Radley Metzger?  Fuck taste and what is a masterpiece anyway?  Eric Rohmer was once claiming to watch films and not "masterpieces".  Okay , Dario Argento is boring today but so is Scorsese. You wrote that actors are unnerved by anything other than industrial processes. Yes because they only think of feeding their divorced wifes or husbands and families and to keep their lifestyle established.

But i tell you such an actor was begging me, when we met at a dinner party, to write a part in one of my poor Films for him because he couldn’t stand the painful bullshit of acting in a TVseries, Main part actually, any longer.

I think i let him play a "fucky" vampire in an Jean Rollin inspired Movie.

If you would like to find out more about Mario's work, please visit www.mariomentrup.de

By the way, remember  MADE IN BRITAIN as being a motor for me a 19year old German kid secretly aiming to work for Film?  My friend Stewart Home, a London-based writer and novelist just titled movies by Alan Clarke like "Meantime", "Scum" "Made in Britain"  as luvvie style-staging. (here in  a hilarious bad review on Steve Mcqueen's HUNGER  which i didn't watch out of sheer ignorance: http://stewarthomesociety.org/blog/archives/508)

The Great Acting Blog: "A Tragic View"

 

 

“I like the futility of effort – the uphill road to failure is a very human thing” - Jean-Pierre Melville

My penchant for Samurai films has lead me to Masaki Kobayashi's 1962 masterpiece, Harakiri. The film is set in the world of the 17th century samurai, and centres on the notion: “the honour in death – and the death of honour”. Tatsuya Nakadai plays an impoverished samurai, who  visits the House of the Iyi Clan, and requests he be given somewhere to perform harakiri  (the samurai ritual suicide by disembowelment). Just before Nakadai  is to kill himself however, he begins to recount his fate to the surrounding clan, and here the film cuts to the past. It transpires that Nakadai has fallen into abject poverty, ironically because Japan is at peace, a peace Nakadai helped to forge by fighting in the civil war,  but because of that peace, demand for the samurais' services has slumped, and many are forced to wander as ronin (masterless samurai), looking for work (unfortunately, the samurai cannot take normal jobs, because it may cause trouble). Despite his poverty however, Nikadai refuses to give up his beautiful daughter to a clan because she will be turned into a concubine, instead, he encourages her to marry the honorable but equally impoverished and unemployed samurai, Motome Chijiiwa, played by Akira Ishihama. They have a child, but the mother falls ill, and soon the child does to, catching a fever. In general, the film is about the individual who stands alone, who refuses institutional comfort, preferring a true and singular life, even if it means additional toil. Crucially, Harakiri is a film which acknowledges that life is tragic, that we humans are flawed, and no matter how hard we try, more often than not we are doomed to fail. There is one heartbreaking scene in Harakiri which reveals this, where Nakadai, at his wits end, is explaining to his grandson who lays in coma, that they have run out of options, that they have sold everything they own in order to keep the boy alive, but now they have nothing left (the boy's father, Motome, has even sold his two samurai swords, replacing them with bamboo facsimiles – the swords are deemed to be the samurai's very soul).  The tragedy is the fact that this situation could have been avoided, the choices Nakadai made to safeguard his family, have infact lead to it's destruction: he decided his daughter should marry the samurai Motome, a pauper,  who now cannot afford a physician to keep his child alive. Watching this scene, I dropped my head as I felt shame, then looking up again, I felt sorrow – seeing this good and noble warrior beg his unconscious grandson for a forgiveness which can never be forthcoming, was hard to bear. Luckily though, it is only a film, and so Nikidai experiences these trials and tribulations in the land of make believe. The point is, tragedy enables us (the audience)  to see that we are not perfect, that we can come up short, and damningly so at times. Tragedy strips us of our intellectual arrogance (if only for a moment), and offers us  a chance to acknowledge our helplessness. We are not perfect. That's why I have never been interested in disaster movies or superhero movies – they're a comforting lie – we don't have the power to re-direct meteors heading toward Earth, and we can't put on a pair of underpants and fly to Mars. It's also why I've always loved film noir, the protagonist is an ordinary person with an accomplishable goal, but he often fails, or at least, if he succeeds, it is at a far greater cost than he could ever have imagined.

Since writing “Create Precisely The Body Of Work You Want”, I have started to think a tragic view of the world can help us do just that. A tragic view enables us to be braver, to stand alone, to identify those things we want to fight for, and go out and fight for them. It is a concern with perfectionism which holds us back . Someone responded last week that “success” differed from person to person – well yes, but I would go even further and say that success and failure are highly ambiguous, whatever your definition of them. The perfectionist view implies that there is a perfect result, and any outcome other than that perfect result is a disaster. So, with the perfectionist burden too heavy to bear, we trundle along on the prescribed path, regardless of how meaninglessness and fruitless it may be – it's numbing, but at least we'll feel no pain. Perhaps you have an idea about precisely the kind of work you want to do, but you're not being offered anything like it, so you may need to step out and create it yourself – and creating it yourself is difficult because you will be criticised for not being attached to an established institution, and in any case, your precious creation could fall apart, and you could be left with nothing other than the ridicule of your peers. Absolutely. And so what? Nakadai could have made  his life considerably easier by sending his daughter away to become a concubine, but he refused on a point of principle. That your decision to employ your principles (and an aesthetic is a principle) may lead to disaster, is not an excuse to not employ them. How serious are you about doing precisely the kind of work you want? The tragic view encourages us to go for it because it accepts that we may fail miserably, and so the perfectionist burden is removed. If we do infact fail in our task, fine, but that failure will not destroy us - we'll live to fight another day.

Creating precisely the work you want to do, is, on the one hand, liberating, because you seize control of each action step, you're not relying on somebody else to come through for you (which happens almost all the time if you are an actor), but on the other hand, it is more frightening, precisely because you are controlling the steps – if it should all fall apart, you've got nobody to blame but yourself, and that can be a very lonely place. However, if we accept the tragic view of the world, that, despite our very best efforts, we may still fall short, then we may make braver choices, and seize that thing we want from the fire.

The Great Acting Blog: "Create Precisely The Body Of Work You Want"

I've always been fascinated by Hollywood mythology, so it's surprising that it took me until this week to watch Sophia Coppola's 2010 film, Somewhere. The film charts the empty, lonely life of Steven Dorff's movie star, Johnny Marco, who lives at the Chateau Marmont, moving from encounters of meaningless casual sex, to meaningless promotional work for his latest blockbusting action flick. The paradigm of Dorff's life shifts when his daughter from a previous relationship comes to stay with him (not as icky as it might sound, as it turns out). Somewhere is a film made up of delightful moments, as when Dorff, who almost exclusively eats take-away, picks up an apple from a fruit bowl, and looks at it as though it had just landed from Mars. One of the things that struck me about Dorff's character though, was how useless he is, how impractical, and how he lacks drive, lacks passion, he just goes with the flow, he doesn't seem to care about anything, although this manifests itself as amiability rather than anything demonstratively destructive. In some respects, Coppola romanticizes Dorff's empty existence, fuelling my suspicion that she has disdain for us little people. There is however, a neat little scene, where Dorff, at a party, is engaged by a nervous young actor who asks him what “school” of acting he subscribes to, to wit Dorff shrugs, and responds that he doesn't subscribe to any school, adding that when he started out, he got an agent and “just went on auditions”. 

I was also taken by surprise this week, by people who came out and not only defended ass kissing, but passionately advocated it after I had criticized it in last week's blog. If you haven't read it, I said that you shouldn't use your work to kiss ass, but simply let it speak for itself. One person came out and said that actors should kiss as much ass as possible, another said that ass kissing was an actor's only means of “getting work”, and another, a theatre producer, said that the actor who has the attitude that they will not kiss ass, goes straight in the “trash”. Why this advocacy for the loathsome toadyism? Well, ass kissing is a form of schmoozing, which is to say that you want someone to give you something but you have nothing to give in return. The ass kisser believes that one can become an enormous success without engaging in the nasty unpleasantness of actually learning a demonstrable skill, ie - without hard graft. This is not merely a point of view for the ass kissers, it's actually crucial to their psychic well being. Why? Because progress without effort enables the ass kisser to maintain their delusion that they are simply “special”, that they're not like us little people. For what else can success without effort mean? When, as happens with the vast majority of those who go into acting, they learn that the life of the actor is mostly about toil, we see them freak out, unable to cope with the shattering realization that they may need to put in a shift at some point, they flee the business altogether – hence the preposterous drop-out rate (in many respects, it's these wannabees who give acting a bad name – for sure, actors spend a lot of time working on themselves, but that's not because we think we're special little creatures, but because we use ourselves in our work - do we criticize professional sports people for being “obsessed” with their bodies?). In the end, that's what the ass kisser desires: the Stephen Dorff/Johnny Marco lifestyle, an unconstrained life, effortless and useless, where every whim and urge is catered for, the entire world their playground – not only is it success without effort then, but it's success without responsibility – and the ass kisser is rewarded with all this for the mere fact of their existence.

I'm advocating that the actor take responsibility for his work, and put in some graft so that his work is actually worth the attention of an audience. I'm advocating that rather than try to preserve our well being by ingratiating ourselves, the actor should cultivate a rational self-esteem through hard won accomplishments which require no outside validation. Don't “just go on auditions”, but define your ideal work, and apply yourself to the things within your control in order to construct precisely the body of work you want*. All this is an immense task of course, which will be spread out over many decades, and requires constant self-improvement such that we can work ever more productively, and for longer, necessary in order to get everything done. Understanding how and why you are making progress, boosts confidence and self-respect, which in turn becomes a self-perpetuating process of ever greater accomplishment. That doesn't seem to me, to be a bad place to be.

 

*I'm reiterating this point, because although people responded to my ass kissing comment, nobody responded to this comment – actors are constantly being told they should be grateful for whatever scraps come their way, but why not aim for something more?