The Great Actin Blog: "Fear Of Failure"

Commitment is a tricky thing. At the moment just before we need to commit, our minds suggest all kinds of alternatives as preferable to the thing we are about to commit to. One of the reasons commitment is so hard, is because we are putting our good opinion of ourselves on the line: if it all goes wrong then there are no excuses, and it hurts. Note how distraught elite sportspeople get when,  despite giving absolutely everything, they lose a big match. Rarely do we see them shrug during such a moment, they would only shrug if they  didn’t care, and hadn’t spent themselves. However, when we fear failure, we don’t give  a proper effort or we don’t try at all, so as to avoid the pain failure may bring. The trouble with this approach is, the failure becomes self-fulfilling, because our lack of effort ensured, from the outset, that we would fail.

Creative endeavours are rarely, if ever, as cut and dry as the sports field, and, in acting, the symptoms of fear of failure take very, very subtle forms, so subtle infact, that sometimes they may even be mistaken for great acting. What I’m talking about here is undercutting the scene with a cutesy bit of humour, or with some “characterization”, or a bit of emotion, or even something oh-so ironic. This usually happens when something unforeseen moves the actor internally, something rears itself which had not been part of the actor’s cosy, little plan for playing the scene. What was this terrible unforeseen horror? Why, it was the truth of the moment of course. The courageous actor, doesn’t flinch from that moment, instead, he grapples with it no matter how unnerved by it he may be, he sticks to his task ruthlessly, and does the best he can. The phoney actor denies the truth of the moment, he tries to defuse the potential of the unplanned, he tries to suffocate it,  for he must always be seen to be in control, superior to the scene, superior to the audience, and cannot bear anything which threatens that control, threatens that feeling of superiority. He tries to masque the truth with a lie, he tries to render the truth imperceptible. But this phoney bit of behaviour, often extorts a moment of admiration from the audience, and well it might, for that was it’s original intention, that is, the actor uses a bit of cleverness to distract the audience from the fact that he is not flawless.This actor is scared, scared of criticism,  scared of being hurt, and protects himself with empty trickery. The truthful actor is like the sportsman, he gives everything even though he knows that by the end, exhausted and drenched in sweat, he may still come up short.

 

The truthful actor commits fully despite his fear. This is called courage.

The Great Acting Blog: "Robert De Niro Notes"

 

De Niro offers practical advice here, which means alot coming from an actor of his stature, and especially him I suppose, because so much theoretical voodoo has grown up around his work, in order to explain away his performances - the truth is, acting requires skill and technique and a little bit of aptitude. For me, the central theme of De Niro's view, is that it's about getting the work done and getting on with doing it, aswell as respecting the scene at hand.  

 

• De Niro says acting is not about neuroses and playing on your neuroses, it's about doing the character - "the tasks of the character".
• He says don't go about it as though the character was you and how you would do it - it's about the character.
• Be faithful to the text/script. 
• Says it's about script analysis, seeing something for what it is, breaking the play down - not fictionalising but taking whatever you get from the analysis, and making your choices based on what you pick up from the analysis - "the talent is in the choices" - Stella Adler.
• "Earn the right to play the character" -  make it your own and feel comfortable in doing it by researching the character, try to be close to the character, so if you have to improv or ad lib, you have an idea about what the character would do in that situation.
• Acting is about having an action, like "to sell something."
• He says you've got to get up and do it - the sooner you get to knowing you've got to get up and do it, the sooner you'll do it.
• He says he had a problem when he was a young actor : he was afraid to make a move "I have to feel it, and I have to do this".- but says you've got to sometimes jump in - "if i jumped in I arrive at that place" (where he is playing the scene) - whereas before he thought he had to do all sorts of weird preparation before he could arrive at that point.
• Says, don't pamper yourself, you've got to get out there and do it, and if you make a mistake, you do it again.
• Never comment on the character, never put the character down.
• While working on Mean Streets with Scorsese, they improvised scenes, but it was set and structured by the time they did it in front of camera.
• For Godfather 2, he studied and studied Brando's performance to find the boundaries.
• Says he doesn't like to expend a lot of energy on the set: does the scene then goes back home and rests.
• Says the last thing he wants to do is worry about the scene, because then his action becomes "to worry!"
• Says Scorsese has great respect for actors, which is important to get the best out of them.
• Listening is essential in acting - says actors have problems just listening, trusting themselves, but if there's nothing to do don't do anything.
• Says the notion that if actors look at the dailies it creates a problem, is a myth. Doesn't subscribe to it.
• Says he and Scorsese understand each other, that's why they're able to work with each other so many times and have a good time.. Says they have the same sensibility, says you have to be very honest with each other, about how you feel about things.
• Says he always wanted to direct, that's why he made Bronx Tale.
• Says do authentic work, regardless of how you think people may react. That'll distinguish you from other people.

The Great Acting Blog: "Exquisite - Tony Curtis In Monte Carlo Or Bust"

Monte Carlo Or Bust is a wonderful, light fluffy affair, and contains an ensemble cast which includes the delights of the likes of Terry-Thomas, Peter Cook and Dudley Moore. It's about an international car rally, where the drivers must reach certain check-points stationed across Europe, and of course, all sorts of chicanery ensues, on and off the track so to speak. Curtis plays Chester Schofield, an energetic, idealistic, if slightly nerdy, American, set in contrast to Terry-Thomas' spoilt, upper class trustrafarian, who prefers to knobble the opposition rather than compete with them fairly and squarely.

Curtis' performance is an absolute joy – when we first see him he is wearing spectacles and a dandyish check coat, listening to jazz as he bops his way towards an exasperated Terry-Thomas - we are charmed straight away. But crucially, he is not commenting on what he is doing, what wins us over is his total commitment and honesty, and that he seems to have made an acting choice he genuinely relishes. With Curtis here, the character is always present, this is mostly because he is doing some old school characterization work which we don't see very much anymore because too many actors these days think they something to say, or if we do see it, then it's done in an oh-so ironic way, the actor appears to separate himself from the characterization, as though mocking it. Curtis is living it, and having a good time too, which in turns creates an enriching experience for the audience.

Curtis' performance however, is at it's most sublime in his scenes with Susan Hampshire, who plays his love interest. There is a moment when he sees her for the first time, and he clumsily removes his glasses, and then the camera cuts away to Hampshire, and when it comes back to Curtis, he is holding his glasses in his hand and sort of pressing them against his chin, as if he is trying to masque the embarassment his immediate feelings for Hampshire are causing him, but it also shows us the awe in which he holds her. Curtis is able to express complex feelings simply, and all in a brief moment. Throughout his scenes with Hampshire, Curtis nevers indicates to us how “sensitive” and “deep” he is, he never tries to find a little moment near the end of a scene where he lets his lip quiver so we can feel sorry for him, that loathsome practice which seems to be so common these days. There is no cutsiness from Curtis (nor from Hampshire, to be fair), he simply plays the scenes, commiting to the actions, doing them as fully and honestly as he can, and consequently, his relationship with Hampshire becomes moving and fascinating to us, and all this in what is apparently a souffle comedy.

Tony Curtis is an exqusite actor, if I hadn't written about Monte Carlo Or Bust, I could easily have written about The Defiant Ones or Sweet Smell Of Success (and I may still do so) to name but two. Sure he has movie star charisma, but he also has generosity, he wants to give the audience something. He's honest. He is totally commited to the scene he is playing, and this is turn energises him, and helps him to use his personality fully. He also enjoys acting, and enjoys the acting choices he makes in scenes. Tony Curtis acts from the heart, and, as they say, what comes from the heart, goes to the heart, and I for one am thankful that.

Tony Curtis, what an example.

The Great Acting Blog: "The Joy Of Acting"

 

The characters in my latest short film, Will It Stop Raining In Summer (currently in post-production), are all written “in the style of”, or at least the male characters, Maurice and Roger, are. Roger is having an affair with Maurice's wife, and the syle of the character is that of “The Lover” - impetuous, selfish, passionate, and a little bit dashing. While Maurice is “The Cuckold”; amiable, eager to please, uncool, slightly bumbling. There is no attempt to pretend that the characters aren't their roles. Of course, one of the reasons this is done, is because it is fun to play archetypes – the actor certainly plays the actions in the script, but the pronounced layer of characterization in this situation enables the actor to be larger than life, not simply living the role, but commenting on the role, commenting on acting from the past, and commenting of life itself. The actor enters into a playful discourse with the audience who revel in recognising the archetypal traits of the characters and seeing them at work. It's similar to that experience the audience feels when they see a moment on screen which is true to life, but this time it's true to other films and stories they have seen.

However, for this approach to have an effect, the context within which the artist works needs to be considered – we in the UK have certain expectations about what content films contain, we have those shared cultural experiences from the past which enables certain characters to be archetypal in the first place, and therefore, creative choices can be made with that expectation in mind (and subverted, as the case may be). Creating characters “in the style of”, also acknowledges the artificial nature of proceedings, it acknowledges that what is unfolding before us is a performance, as oppose to entering into a phoney contract with the audience, pretending that the content of the film is “real”. Once that layer of guff has been removed, then whatever artistic richness lays within the material, can be mined and expressed freely, without shame or embarassment. In some way then, employing archetypal traits in a character is an expression of joy about acting itself, and about cinema itself.

 

The Great Acting Blog: "Will It Stop Raining In Summer"

Possile location for Will It Stop Raining In Summer

 

 

Will It Stop Raining In Summer will be our next short film. It's a love triangle thriller, about Roger, who is having an affair with Beryl, but every-time they meet-up, Beryl's husband, Maurice, shows up co-incidentally, apparently oblivious to his wife's illicit trysts. The film came about when a jumble of images popped into my mind and I tried to make sense of them. The film owes something to those suburban British films from the '50s and '60s which would be on telly on those days when you were home sick from school. This is not an homage or even a reference however, I couldn't tell you the names of these films, I can't remember their plots or who was in them, it's more a feeling that the images of these films absorbed themselves into my sub-conscious and now they have filtered back through my imagination to create something new. I could also hear the feint sound of another echo in Will It Stop Raining In Summer, and that is of benign middle class sitcoms, which were prevalent in the 1980s (I unknowingly lifted the name of Beryl from No Place Like Home, a sitcom which starred William Gaunt). I have no specific affection for such sitcoms or any real interest in the sitcom as a form, but again, they created images which have been locked in my sub-conscious for years, but which are now rattling their chains. So, Will It Stop Raining In Summer is my imagination's regurgitation of these films and shows, giving them a new darkly ironic form.

 

And what of the acting then? Again, I will play opposite John Giles, and we are currently working on finding an actress to play Beryl. The script is full of characterization (ie - how the character does something, rather than what he does), for example; the character of Maurice, is a cuckold written in the style of a cuckold, bluff and amiable, and this, coupled with the context of the scenes, means that the actor never needs to show us that his character is a cuckold (which is how most modern acting is done: “hi, I'm a serial killer”), the script has already done that work, so the actor need only concentrate on doing the actions called forth in the scene. We will again be aiming for performances which are direct, simple, forceful, and truthful. Filming will begin over the next month, and I will post regularly about the film on here and on the Drifting Clouds Cinema blog. Finally, for me, I will once again be directing and acting in the film, and I will strive once again to perfect the process of switching between those two roles – I'm still too reliant on will power, but want to get it down to a science, and I will of course share my findings on this blog, in the form of a repeatable and transferable technique.

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.

 

RELATED

Fruitful Collaboration

Drifting Clouds

A Very Real Mystery

Hunchback

Exclude The Meaningless

 

The Great Acting Blog: "There Is No Such Thing As A Transformational Actor"

 

“There is no difference between what I experienced, and what is on screen”. Emmanuelle Beart on her work in L'Histoire De Marie Et Julien.

 

Emmanuelle Beart has long been one of my favourite actors – if she's in something, then I'll watch it – infact, I think she is one of the finest actors working anywhere today. Beart perhaps lacks the credibility of a Juliette Binoche, because of her reputation for going nude, and she lacks the street cred of that charismatic one-trick pony, Beatrice Dalle, largely because she hasn't brushed with the law in the way Dalle has*. However, I would proffer that Beart possesses greater innate acting talent than either of her two contemporaries. And if anyone is in any doubt about the calibre of her CV, may I suggest her two masterpieces with Jacques Rivette, La Belle Noisuese and L'Histoire De Marie Et Julien, L'Enfer for Claude Chabrol, plus two brilliant films for Claude Sautet, Nelly & Monsieur Anaud and Un Coeur en Hiver, plus films for Andre Techine, Raul Ruiz, Francois Ozon, Olivier Assayas, Danis Tanovic, et al, and you get the picture – what we have here, is a serious film artist. The mystery really, is why Beart is not celebrated more.

 

Beart has a wonderfully complex screen persona. Her great beauty is offset by a certain moodiness and a certain lonliness, the sense that something has been lost forever, at times she is vulnerable. On the other hand, she's intense, she poses a threat, there's an edge, a lack of sentimentality and a ruthlessness. We're not entirely sure whether she can be trusted, yet we want to follow her story anyway. The through line which enables these qualities to hang together, is that she is constantly wrestling between the intuitive and the intellectual (I'm talking about during her performance here). There's a tension which arises from wanting to understand what is happening in the scene during the moment, analysing it, and the need to keep the scene moving forward by just doing the thing. This tension gives rise to a certain energy, and it's interesting to observe her when she is not speaking lines but listening to her scene partner: she is full of energy, and often unsure where to put that energy, sometimes it is dealt with by handling an object, or a movement of the eyes. There is a scene in The Story Of Marie And Julien where she silently observes Jerzy Radziwilowicz reading a letter, she has such restless energy it's actually quite shocking, and when I say restless I don't mean tickish or skittish, she is actually quite restrained, it is more the case of the small movements within this restraint which are compelling, and help to create her intensity. The important point about Beart however (and herein lies her talent), is that she allows her inner conflicts to express themselves while the scene unfolds, she doesn't try to pretend they aren't there, or try to portray herself as a person-without-flaws (which is what characterization is all about) – this is why her work is intense and compelling, this is great acting.

 

There's no such thing as a transformational actor: when an actor appears in a film or a play, what you get is that actor, what they are, the actor does not “become” somebody else**. A “constructed” performance, ie – one where a character is designed and applied by the actor, smoothes out and hides the actors' true personality, they are trying to repress the true complexity of their personality, and, in so doing, try to sell us the idea that they are fully in control of everything. But they needn't do so. We are all complex, which means we are all interesting, and the truth of the actor's personality will always be more compelling than a constructed personality. However, it requires great courage to reveal our true nature publicly, but if we can learn to do so, our performances will be far richer, as will the audiences experience of them.

 

*Yes, any kind of allusion to crime by an artist, is seen as a sign of “authenticity” by our closested and ivory-towered upper middle-classes – as if breaking the law were the same as genuine artistic endevour.

 

** The character exists from the audience's point-of-view, as an illusion which they willingly buy into.