« Things I Learn While Shopping at the Grocery Store: An Ongoing Struggle — Self-Checkout | Main | Roots »

Actors

It’s pretty well known that I fucking hate actors. When I was in high school, I used to act a bit. I was on the speech team. Performing was an interesting thing, but I always — for the most part — hated actors. It’s all part of the weird self-hate thing that I have, and I’ll argue that that was when it was at its worst: I enjoyed performing because, even though I wasn’t any good, I felt like it was an opportunity to try to “be” somebody else, which was satisfying since I disliked myself so intensely. But at the same time, I hated everybody around me — sometimes openly, usually secretly — and I’d be one of those “mysterious” actors who sat in a corner, brooding, while the rest of the people were shrieking at each other to demand attention.

But what it really boils down to is, all actors hate themselves equally. They all want to be someone else because they’re so insecure, they can’t take who they are, or maybe they’re too afraid to get to know who they really are, so they escape into a character. Since many actors fucking suck, this maybe isn’t 100% true, but I think there’s quite a bit of truth in it. No matter how bad an actor is, he’s trying to be somebody else. Otherwise, why the charade?

But actors are full of charades. Most of them are so hungry for attention, they dominate the conversation, they launch into “funny” stories or characters. They all want to be the party’s Robin Williams, and even Robin Williams’s shit got old 25 years ago. So you get a bunch of actors who want to be the center-of-attention-bundle-of-energy at a party? Shit, let’s go smoke some weed in the backyard, because it’s just obnoxiousness overload.

And that was the thing I never figured out, and that was the thing that made me bow out of performing altogether after high school (we’ll ignore the fact that I sucked, because while I sucked, I could still get parts). I’m misanthropic and depressed (and depressing) because I internalize my insecurities. I hate unleashing that shit on the world. It’s not fair to everybody else that I’m so insecure I have to keep talking talking talking, be the center of the conversation, be the noisy firecracker. I became very aware of how fucking annoying that kind of person can be, and I made a conscious decision to not be that way. I always prefer being the guy who sits quietly in the back, observing and mocking (orally and mentally) what’s going on. That’s how this blog was born.

With that said, I was filled with anxiety and dismay when I learned an acting class would be coming in today, and we had to come in prepared with a few short scenes (no more than eight pages), which they would rehearse a bit before performing. I was dismayed because, shit, they’re actors, and they’re gonna be coming in with their actor shit and ad-libbing all over town because it’s so “in the moment” and “true,” and just kill me now. I was anxious because I did really want to hear some of the scenes allowed, just to hear the rhythm and to see whether or not people get the jokes. I hear them in my head and I say, “I can play every single part, even the female sexpot in her 50s,” because I understand the speech pattern and the timing…

…but I’m not everybody, and despite getting some pretty good notes yesterday from this development guy who read my script, I’m still unsure of its comic worth. A comedy writer came in a few weeks ago and told us, “A joke isn’t a joke until someone laughs,” and while I don’t agree with that philosophy 100%, in this case I do, because these are words on a page, and if I’m the only one laughing at them, there’s a problem.

I picked out a few short, dialogue-heavy scenes that I thought would be interesting to hear aloud. One, I feared, was far too melodramatic. The second was just a brief exchange that I wasn’t sure was as amusing as it could have been. The third was kind of a longer, more complex scene, which I chose to see if those kinds of long, multiple-person scenes work well.

And they were off. A really attractive Latina actress and a guy all the writers kept referring to as “the prettyboy” were playing, respectively, a dour bride-to-be and her accountant fiancé. In the scene, he accuses her of having a “mental and emotional” affair with the main character, because she can’t have one physically. He has this whole monologue, which is very Aaron Sorkin and (in my opinion) quite cheeseball. I’ve always aspired to write high-quality, Sorkin-esque dialogue, but this is like late-fourth-season West Wing — it’s no “Two Cathedrals.” It’s what happens when eunuchs try to write dialogue about relationships.

But this actor, playing the accountant, saved the entire scene. He was actually a really good actor (the less said about the attractive Latina, the better). He hit all the right notes in the first reading, then I asked him in crappy actor-speak to “bring up the rhythm.” I don’t even know what that means, but it sounded appropriate. And he completely reinvented the performance on a dime, so I totally respect that. What I respect even more, though, is the way he handled the end of the scene, after the melodramatic monologue, when his fiancée responds, and he sits back down and launches into a dull job story…the dude started ad-libbing hilarious dialogue, and the melodrama of the previous monologue evaporated, leaving a scene that is actually legimately dramatic.

See, folks: actors aren’t all bad.

The second scene is the very first exchange between the accountant fiancé and the main character, who is hellbent on stopping the wedding. The accountant is smarmy and condescending, almost giving the impression he knows who this guy is and is just fucking with him for fun, so he’s instantly both likable and dislikable. It’s intended to be a brief, amusing scene.

The guy playing the main character was bust-a-gut funny, and if he hadn’t been about 30 years too old for the part, were I to produce and direct this screenplay on my own, I would’ve cast him. The guy playing the accountant, different from the actor playing the same character in the first scene — he was one of those “actors.” He started ad-libbing very badly, and then quickly going back to script to salvage his ruining of a scene I’d written.

I’m not a big “the words are God” kind of guy. I love writing, but my feeling is, if I want the words I write to be 100%, iron-clad text, I’d be writing a fucking novel. Nobody’s gonna to go to the movies and just read each page of my screenplay for two hours, so the words don’t mean shit. However…I do like to think I know what I’m doing, and I write the words for a specific reason. If an actor has a more interesting interpretation of the text, more power to him. If, however, he plays with the words and just fucks them up, that drives me crazy.

And yet, the guy playing the main character redeemed the scene for both of them by being unbelievably funny. He had the timing, he got the jokes, and he made my day. He was The Guy. This was a scene where the other actors watching actually applauded (they didn’t with the other two), and the teacher of the class leaned over to me and said, “Great scene!” Great scene!

Finally, the last scene. This wasn’t terribly complicated, but it involved three characters instead of just two (gasp!), along with characters entering and leaving. Unfortunately, the actor playing the “Jeremy Piven” best-friend role was not exactly giving it his all. He was driving the scene, and his character was supposed to own most of the beats, so it kind of just sat there like a wet noodle. The guy playing the main character was the same as before, and he was still hilarious. Meanwhile, the third character — the main character’s mother, who is sleeping with Jeremy Piven — was that same Latina. During their moments together…it was pretty painful. And yet…the dialogue got laughs anyway. You know why? Because even with the worst reads in the world — drumroll please — the dialogue is funny.

I hate it when I get all pleased with myself, but this was one of those times. I was really thinking, “Shit, maybe I’m not such a bad writer after all.” I dunno, I think little doses of confidence like this are good, because if and when I’m in the position to pitch it, I’ll have these moments to think back on to muster up the passion to really believe in the fact that the script is good, and not just for a first-draft written in 12 days. It’s by no means perfect, but considering the conditions under which it was written and the newness of it — it’s just good.

That’s right, I’m a genius and everybody loves me. Allow me to become very shallow and self-absorbed and ramble on about how great I am.

Maybe I should go back to acting!

Posted by Stan on May 4, 2005 5:39 PM  | Permalink | Career-Based Rambling | Digg It