posted
I really wish he had written more, because I'm very curious to hear what he has to say. I'm not a believer in Method acting, as I've said elsewhere, but I found a lot of what he was describing in this column to be too vague for me to apply it to my own acting.
Of course, I could go out and buy the book he was describing . . .
But I'm actually more curious about his own root beliefs than about this book he felt resonated with them.
Isn't it inevitable that we will lose spontaneity as we rehearse lines and blocking to the point where we have them memorized?
As an actor, how can you be more spontaneous than your direcctor will let you be?
My problem with Method acting is that I think people fool themselves into thinking that they will be any less stiff by trying so hard to get "into" character, and often they end up completely into the character . . . of a person stiffly spewing lines. But if you don't put enough forethought into what you are going to do, wouldn't you tend to end up just as stiff?
How can you avoid losing spontaneity? My only thought, an admittedly nebulous one, is that it lies in keeping sight of the fact that you're supposed to be having fun, and that when nobody is having fun the director is not doing a good job. I think that might make one more spontaneous because it becomes less about recitation and more about play. I think maybe spontaneity can't happen in the presence of a great deal of pressure.
But maybe I'm full of it on that score.
I wonder how OSC goes about encouraging spontaneity in himself as an actor and in others as a director. I hope he writes on this topic again, or that someday I hear him speak on it.
And I would absolutely love to hear him apply this to writing!
Posts: 1001 | Registered: Dec 2002
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posted
I'm reminded of what I took away as the theme of OSC's "How to write SF/F", simply put, You'll succeed unless you don't stink. Or you stop yourself with fear. Some of us hold the illusion that this is somehow different from actually stinking.
I'm thinking of the sample kiss in "Matrix Reloaded". I kept waiting for him to say "but you're not her, so if I can kiss you and you think it's like being her, that means I don't really have what you want." But maybe I'm not reading enough into it. Maybe everything would have made sense if I hadn't skipped over the sex scene.
Posts: 11017 | Registered: Apr 2003
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posted
Nothing would have made any more sense by watching the sex scene. We watched it in the theaters where we couldn't just skip the chapter.
I've been reading and rereading your paraphrase, pooka. To restate, did he say that unless you stink, you won't succeed? (Sometimes, at least when it comes to television, I wonder if it is a requirement to stink...)
Posts: 3495 | Registered: Feb 2000
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