On My Directing of Actors

Hi -

I have noticed that in the previous two posts I used the expression "I can smell the barn" - ha ha!  Repetition lends emphasis, I guess.  I love this expression -- and clearly use it too often -- because I actually have experiences with a couple different horses that make me feel the accuracy of the allusion.  So it's very visceral for me. 

Anyway -- YES:  we are close!!

I have now finished (always rough) Scene 61 -- Bill's coming out scene!!  

Yayy!!!

Disappointing coverage on this scene.  We didn't get CU on Bill for his whole schpiel -- e.g. when he says "How could leave me??" and "I don't know what I would have done if you had died." 

What?  NO CU??  Who directed this movie?????

I think I thought that the big moment would be the "I'm gay" moment, but I was wrong.  The big moment is the confrontation.  We should have been able to see his process, the catalysts, the internal workings -- that's what CU are for:  the internal workings (see: Les Miserables).  Darn.  Oh well.  

But Kevin did a really good job, very committed.  Good on you, Kev.  There's one take where his voice catches -- I love it. 

Unfortunately I totally let Christine down in this scene.  She does fine -- I think I pieced together a scene that is cohesive and decent.  But this scene is a prime example of how over my head I was -- by which I mean:  by this time I had largely given up on trying to communicate what I wanted.  I had let the actors get comfortable in the characters they had created, and I no longer felt it would be productive to give a lot of character-direction.  If I didn't give her any guidance, she would do something that matched the rest of the movie, which I thought would be a good thing.  And that's what she did.  She made the same choice(s) about Marissa that she'd been making, completely consistent and reasonable, and I let her.  Little did I know that I would be searching ever single take (in every single scene) for traces of the character that I wanted (that I thought I had written). 

Bill says after much visible angst, "I'm gay."  

Marissa answers, "I know."

This is supposed to be >funny.< 

Instead, Christine thinks she's supposed to show Marissa's love and acceptance of Bill by being mothery and nurturey -- she thinks, because she knows that Mariss is on the mend here, that she's going to be full of inner peace and wisdom, and all that crap, and she wants to embody/show that, so she says her line softly and gently with a kind of angelic smile on her face.  And I let her.  That's what kills me now -- not that Chistine made these choices (they were intelligent choices), but that I let her do it that way, take after take, that I didn't even see how wrong it was for the movie, OR, if I did see it (and I don't remember doing so), I didn't say anything. 

This kind of delivery on this line, of course, makes the next few lines much harder to do, emotionally, for both the actors, because those lines don't come from that sort of peaceful, soft breezes place as written; they're supposed to come out of what had been a break in the tension (i.e., which we never got!).  The next lines are:

Bill:  "How long were you going to let me go on?"

Mar:  "I don't know.  I'm just kind of winging it."

So the actors sort of try to play those casually, as the language in them seems to call for, and yet they have to also keep up the drama-flow from the previous moment because It Was Never Broken! 

Aaaghhh!!!  WHO WAS DIRECTING???  Was there NO DIRECTOR there?????

Ugh. 

It has been one of the most important lessons for me:  "respecting an actor's choices" does NOT mean letting them do whatever they want!  I have seen again and again in the big emotional scenes that I let my poor actors flounder at times:  I did not direct them. 

Let me say it now:  I apologize.  I really am sorry.  I let you down.  Bummer.

AND -- the actors were all REALLY COMMITTED, and this shows up in their work.  The performances that I have been able to pull out through editing are deep and moving, and I am grateful that everyone worked so hard to make this possible.  Thanks, guys.

And now I will move on to the "hospital" interiors -- the last two pages of the script!