CHAPTER 20
ACTORS' PROBLEMS
Sartre said “Hell is other people,” and working under high pressure with a range of temperaments shows how true this is. This chapter is about the mines in the minefield of human relations—concentrating on actors who are the director's main concern. Their job is far from easy, and they will present you with difficulties, most of them interesting and rewarding to solve. You will be unlucky indeed if you hit much that can't be solved with goodwill, but you should be alert to one or two ticking time bombs.
PERCEPTIONS OF ACTING
The public, seeing accomplished performances as a matter of course, assumes acting is easy and pleasant. But actors' work places them under a physical and psychic scrutiny that is rare in ordinary life. The attention that is the profession's initial allure also leaves actors vulnerable. Faced with a demanding part and an unwelcome self-image, actors may dread their ability to even function. Under such conditions it is regrettably human to deny, evade, or blame others.
THE IDEAL
The ideal actors are ready for these trials and are not on the defensive. Their training taught them humility, self-knowledge, and self-discipline with almost religious fervor. They maintain emotional and intellectual flexibility during criticism and do not try to hide the nature or degree of problems. They stand still to confront the worst rather than finding ways to resist the director's demands. Few actors, especially those available to the low-budget filmmaker, have this degree of training or spiritual evolution. And there is no one walking the face of the earth who does not have lapses.
MERE MORTALS
Resistance to the work at hand is a remarkable human constant and takes many forms. You will need to treat it (in crewmembers or actors) with understanding and respect because it almost always arises from self-doubt and not ill will. Make no mistake, acting is a demanding and self-exposing craft. It aims to expose human nature, and the vulnerability of the actor is never far from that of the character being played. That said, one person's needs and insecurities cannot dominate those of the group or threaten the viability of the project. Your tough-love ability to take actors beyond what they consider their limits will earn you their love and respect. They know when your work has helped them to grow and become more employable.
TENSION
Tension is the most common and insidious problem and saps the actor's confidence. It should dissipate after the initial period of uncertainty when everyone is becoming acquainted. As actors come to know each other, the crew, and their director, they are increasingly able to move between play and work without freezing up. For your part, being willing to attend to the actor's problems and always giving a series of playable objectives will help a lot.
NOT LISTENING
Actors who don't listen to other players during a scene are a serious problem because they are in isolation and giving nothing back to co-actors. The actor is often quite unaware of this and responds to help, especially when you make use of an improvisation game. Not listening often comes from anxiety over knowing lines. Once actors get used to playing the scene rather than the lines, the insecurity (and insecurity's deafness) departs. Another way to press actors into listening is to get them to speak their characters' thoughts by identifying the subtext in the other players' lines before speaking their own. Thus their motivation comes, as in life, through the nuances of how others are acting upon them.
LINES AND INSECURITY
Sometimes actors claim to need the book long after they should have learned the lines. This is a common insecurity symptom and completely arrests a scene's development. If at a subsequent rehearsal and after due warning the same individual still claims to need the book, simply take it away and ask him or her to improvise the scene. The difficulty and embarrassment of floundering through a scene in this way normally motivates the actor to come thoroughly prepared the next time. Insecure actors usually find it liberating to deal with the spirit of a scene rather than feel they are being tested to the letter.
When an actor again claims to need the book I say, “Well, you know what the scene's about so you'll just have to make something up so we can rehearse the scene.” The actor first looks appalled, but the results are often surprisingly good. Either the actor knows the scene better than he or she thought or, compelled to improvise from a general idea, takes a heightened interest in the text. This strategy should not be undertaken punitively, however irritating the behavior, but used as necessary to get on with the rehearsal.
CLINGING TO THE LETTER OF THE SCRIPT
Clinging to the letter of the text or to “what we already decided” is another form of resistance. The actor who is afraid to think, feel, and explore in character will often take refuge behind a structure of perceived “rules.” These may be what the actor thinks he or she learned from mentors elsewhere, and the implication is that they are greater than you. Rightly, you will take this as a challenge to your authority and must deal with it as such. Stick to what you want, and be clear and unyielding about it. Let the actor get there in his or her own way, or if that fails, get another actor.
FEAR OF CHANGES
Sometimes your request to alter the performance in some way or to change something previously set will trigger an irrational unwillingness to adapt. Some people have a pattern of discomfort with authority figures (of which you are now one) and always have to rebel. Bear with this person—he may be scared and doing the best he can. However, he may also be testing you in the only way he knows how.
One way to disarm people with patterns of rebellion (or patterns of any kind) is to name the pattern, as affectionately as you can, when it next appears. “Uh oh, Anne's having another attack of existential doubt!” The company will laugh delightedly, and if you are lucky Anne will admit her problem instead of blaming the screenwriter. To carry this off, you need to be sure the actor is insecure rather than angry.
ACTING IN ISOLATION
An actor who doggedly carries out what he or she has prepared regardless of the nuances of other performances is wound too tight to listen, watch, and work from life going on around. This actor will not feel the cup in his or her hand, smell the morning air, or feel the touch of his or her lover's lips. Holed up inside a set of mental constructs, he or she will reconnect with the here-and-now only through listening fully to acting partners and physical experience of right detail. It is particularly dangerous to let this person learn lines too early because internalizing the text is part of the armor. This person is afraid of improvisation and badly needs the relaxed security that having “played around” can bring.
OVER-INTELLECTUALIZING
The tendency to intellectualize is another way an actor puts off the fearsome task of experiencing the character's (and his or her own) emotions. The actor who wants to debate every point feels safer discussing than doing, and may try to involve the whole cast in arguments about niceties of interpretation. These are delaying tactics, a bid to wrest control from the director, or both. Keep returning the cast to work if this is happening.
THE ANTI-INTELLECT ACTOR
This actor scorns discussion and the search for underlying structures and may be someone intellectually insecure (lacking formal education, for instance) or someone unusually intuitive. It will be important to prevent this person, whose aura of conviction can be very influential, from intimidating other cast members who work differently. As the director, avoid debates on method and stress the individual's freedom to use whatever method delivers the goods. Avoid the authority struggle that some actors seek and remain accepting of each actor's different needs.
CONTROL BATTLES
The actor who tries to control scenes, manipulate other actors, or resist directorial criticism is probably afraid to place trust in working partnerships of any kind. If you do not set limits, this person may absorb a disproportionate share of everyone's energies. This individual will try to direct other actors or to challenge the director's authority in public. Such a challenge in private can make a truly creative contribution, but it depends on the underlying spirit. Genuinely creative personalities sometimes overflow their territory and may need and want a firm hand to contain them. Combative energy of all kinds is not necessarily bad because it usually gets the company's adrenaline flowing. Control battles sometimes happen when the director mistakes informality for friendship and lets professional boundaries drop.
PLAYWRITING
The actor who playwrites is one who acts against the flow of either a scripted or improvised scene, manipulates other actors, introduces inappropriate material, or in other ways undermines the validity of what others are doing. How you assert your authority will be important. Again, there may be a responsible spirit here who is working in inappropriate ways. Be careful not to be crushing.
INAPPROPRIATE HUMOR
Humor is usually the precious elixir that gets people through difficult circumstances (hang out with nurses and you'll know what I mean). But jokes or other diversions that disrupt the working atmosphere are often a means of delaying and diffusing a situation the actor finds threatening (like working without the book). When you are certain that sabotage is what is happening, cut into the saboteur's rigmarole and sharply rally the cast to work.
WITHDRAWAL
The actor who repeatedly deals with problems by going into withdrawal may be asking for special consideration or may habitually evade the responsibility for solving problems. Try holding a one-on-one meeting and naming the pattern. Confrontation, when sympathetic, sometimes releases the actor to talk about a more serious underlying problem. You can only resolve what you know, so this can be a most positive development leading to greater mutual trust. As in any important relationship, if the actor will only withdraw under any kind of criticism and refuses discussion, you should recognize that he or she is using antisocial control tactics and should be replaced.
UNPUNCTUALITY AND COMMITMENT PROBLEMS
This is a very, very serious pattern and something only a Marilyn Monroe can get away with. Take such offenders to a private place, look them in the eye, and name stringent conditions for retaining them. If an actor puts up a stream of explanations, tell him or her that “people only accomplish what matters to them.” Do this early and without compromise, and make everyone else aware of the conditions you have set.
Retaining an unreliable person devalues the commitment of others and daily hands increasing leverage to the offender. If the actor mends his or her ways after the warning, be warmly supportive of the accomplishment and cross your fingers.
Never go along with an actor or crewmember who shows a poor respect for the film but intimates that he or she wants to do you a good turn. Invariably this pale motivation runs out at the least convenient moment.
ROMANTIC ENTANGLEMENTS
As Truffaut's Day for Night (1973) shows so well, romances or other excluding alliances in the cast, or between cast and crew, can be very damaging. They tilt what should be a level playing field of professionalism and tend to incubate jealousies and intrigues that can threaten the production. Suicidally destructive is an open romance between director and cast member. Now instead of being the cast's director, you have conferred the ultimate mantle of favor on one actor at the expense of the others. Work will become a jealous hell for everyone, especially your inamorata.
PROFESSIONALS
Committed actors are the best company—the warmest, most intelligent, and most vibrant people in the world. They love their profession and give up many good things in life to pursue it. Appreciate them, be good to them, and they will treat you royally.