Marlon Brando would intentionally do a crappy take early on in the making of a movie, and, if the director didn't catch it, he would write off that director and ignore his directions thereafter. While making The Score, he said to Frank Oz, co-creator of The Muppets before becoming a feature director: "I know you wish you could stick your hand up my ass and work me like one of your puppets." Producer/writer Art Linson wrote that while making The Edge, Alec Baldwin had a conflict about his beard before shooting began (portrayed in the Linson screenplay "What Just Happened?") and Baldwin never spoke a word to director Lee Tamahori for the entire shoot. You might have seen the video of director David O. Russel and Lily Tomlin having a blow out on the set of "I Heart Huckabees;" I know a crew member on "Three Kings" who told me he saw that same director wrestled to the ground and thumped on by George Clooney when Clooney took exception to the director's treatment of an extra. You might want to avoid becoming one of these stories because, while it's true, good performances have been turned in by actors dripping with contempt for the people making the movie, it does make it less likely that's going to happen; and, besides, who needs that kind of gut-twisting atmosphere on the set?
Firearm Demo on the set of On The Inside.
(If you have to use these to get your actors' respect, you've already lost the war!)
Here's what I think the problem is: When I made my first feature (On The Inside,"starring Nick Stahl and Olivia Wilde) one of the things that, in my naiveté, most surprised me was how few artistic people there are working on a movie. Apart from our scenic designer, virtually everyone had the orientation of a bureaucrat, with efficiency being the most prized of outcomes. In such an environment, it's very easy for an artist to get the impression that their job, by definition inscrutable and unwieldy, has everyone thinking: "This would all run so smoothly if our damn actors would just do the ideal performance on the first take the way I'm expected to nail the focus, or have the props at hand, or get my invoices in on time."
Nick Stahl, Tariq Trotter, & Me on the set of On The Inside.
Uncertainty about performance, the wild card, can become the unspoken focus of a movie company's anxiety; and that anxiety, in this high pressure, oh-so-professional environment, makes the actor clearly the culprit for this stress. The actor knows this, feels this, and, usually with the same lame-brained misconception about talent that everybody else has, how it ought to just snap-to on command, starts judging themselves harder than anybody. Now the performer gets stressed, which rarely will this self-doubting nature ever be conducive to good work, so things get worse, and then they start looking for a culprit, and, hey, it just might be you.
Busy sets can make directing difficult.
Some directors mistakenly think the way to get an actor's respect is to demonstrate firm leadership; and, while leadership skills are key for directors and producers, by itself (and a subject for another article that's more instructive in addressing problems of factionalism and the making of one's days) demonstrations of leadership are not the answer to winning over an actor.
Actors themselves may even tell you that leadership is the key thing, because, again, they are generally just as clueless as everybody else about the process. They may think it's the powerfully projected vision of the filmmaker that provides the secure structure for them to work within, but, unless we're talking about some kind of film genius (count them on one hand), that firm structure will usually at some point either crunch a toe as it firmly marches forward, or ring false as it excludes the actor's contribution; causing the feeling that Brando had of being treated like a puppet. So, get over the idea that you can impress an actor with your strength, and watch out if you have an inflexible idea as to how something should be played. I think the kind of leadership an actor is really looking for is an enthusiastic person who seems secure enough to deal with whatever comes up.
Me with my scripty on set of On The Inside.
Here's the deal:Can we all stop pretending like we know what we're doing?
This isn't making a machine that performs a set function; it isn't rendering a service that gets a fixed result; this is art. Simone Weil said: "We are drawn toward [art] without knowing what to ask of it. We do not desire anything else and yet we still desire something. We do not know in the least what it is."
Admitting we don't even really know why we're entertained by these fictions, we should never lose sight that the entire enterprise of filmmaking is based on something very intangible, and that the actors are the ones out in the frontier of this mystery. If you can communicate this sensibility to your cast, that you know the wildness that they bring always has to be met it on its own terms, and it is because of its unpredictability that we love it so much, they will be relieved and they will respect you.
I'm guessing the director of The Edge would have had better luck in his relations with Alec Baldwin if he'd approached him the same way he did the guy who was wrangling the grizzly bear they used on the movie. He then might have said words to the effect: "This is how I'd like it to go, do you think anything like that is going to be possible or maybe we could get something even cooler?"
I'm an actor, I teach acting for a living, and I've always had a tremendous time with actors. If there's any crankiness that comes up, whether projected at me or, more frequently, at themselves, I am quick to laugh, quick with over-the-top flattery, and quick to point out that nobody has the right to insist that the grizzly bear stand up and wave his paw for the bureaucrats. Not me and not them.
(For more information on acting, you can check out my book, You Can Act!)
D.W. Brown is the head instructor at what’s commonly considered Los Angeles’ premiere acting school, The Joanne Baron/DW Brown Studio in Santa Monica. D.W. has written a definitive book on acting, You Can Act published by Michael Wiese Productions (“Shot By Shot,” “The Writer’s Journey”), and is in post production on the feature film On The Inside, that he wrote and directed, starring Nick Stahl, Olivia Wilde and Shoreh Ahgdashloo.
