You Can Act on Camera

by D. W. Brown

  D.W. Brown: Yes, I use her as, if not giving full lie to, then at least a very clear exception to the idea that tremendous talent has to be born of tremendous personal turmoil. I saw an interview with her where she was asked if she would like to do a play and she said that she’d love to do theater, but the required nights away from home would be unacceptable because she had two teenage daughters. The interviewer thought he was merely confirming the situation when he then asked, “Your daughters would be upset to have you away that much?” and she said, “No, they’d love to have me away that much, but I’m not going to be.”

  John Patrick Shanley: Ah ha ha, yeah. She is just terrific.

  D.W. Brown: What do you think the job of the actor is, essentially?

  John Patrick Shanley: Well, you know an actor is comprised of many things, and only one of those parts is a real problem. That is their ego. The ego is very necessary to wake up the inner psyche. But, basically, with acting you’re replacing your ego with somebody else’s ego. Everything else is you. Your consciousness, your intelligence, your facilities, your shortcomings. The one thing that is not helpful is your ego. You can’t play your career, you can only play the role that you’re handed. Get out of the way and play it.

  D.W. Brown: You’ve been intimately exposed to both stage and film acting. What are the essential differences in those styles of acting?

  John Patrick Shanley: One of the differences is that stage actors must allow for the contribution of the audience. The audience is a character. The stage actor makes room for this character to express its response. On film, the actor must subtly include the camera in his or her performance, and this inclusion is different. The film actor must perform a visual dance of revelation and withholding. It’s a conversation with the lens, complete with secrets unrevealed. If the film actor holds on to no secret, it’s a failed performance. Whereas a stage actor has to adjust their performances to include the audience, a film actor doesn’t have to do that. They might just be playing for the director.

  AN ACTOR’S MANIFESTO

  Enter the fictional world with a sense of belonging, like a fish in water, seeking closer contact with the events of the imaginary at the height of Universal Truth, freely responding with an expectation you will be intimately received. Let it all flow in and all flow out. Delight in what is humorous and take everyone seriously, finding nothing unreasonable and little confusing, stillness and silence your sacred foundations. Play without thinking.

  Be a tuned-in, vulnerable egomaniac with massive empathy. Release yourself from concern about how clever or put together you look, aware that dissociation and anticipation will constantly be corrupting you to appear that way. Entertain without apology, celebrating the primitive and the sublime both, doing interesting things and letting interesting things be done to you. Combine humility for your craft with audacity in performance. Aspire to be known, especially those parts of yourself you think most shameful. Care and don’t care. You have nothing to prove.

  All the while you are applying your maximum level of concentration to what’s taking place within the imaginative sphere, permit another aspect of your nature to be conscious of your audience as an open-hearted, fellow traveler being lead by you into the beautiful and terrible, unknown world of the play. Accept the responsibility of being this sacrificial tour guide knowing that, not only will the audience perceive the journey differently than you do, but aspects of your experience should properly be kept private from them.

  Live with the same ferocity and abandon you did when you were a very young child and carve deeply into make-believe with specificity. Strive always for more ease and simplicity in everything you do. Execute your plan and follow inspiration, but do not believe any conscious expressions of your personality have merit; your ideas and moods are contaminants and obstructions to the flow of the truth. Shut up and get out of the way.

  Before performing, daydream vivid experiences that your character has had with the other characters (and objects) so they automatically dictate your behavior in their presence. Visualize images of your Objectives being gained or lost so they will live in you and be stimulated by your successes and failures. Allow that your Objective might only be to have your experience appreciated by someone (often a situation’s outrageousness), and be open to responding and delivering lines while profoundly stunned.

  Determine the ways that your character is different from yourself (if any) and seek to habituate the way they speak, move, the functioning of their faculties, and the methodologies they use to get what they want. Adjust your responses to events appropriate for your character (where necessary), making these things either more or less strange and significant than they would be for you, then connect to the resulting Objectives at their greatest degree of consequence to your character’s needs and Life Drive. Be conscious where you should be conscious (in your homework before acting and on the moments while acting) and unconscious where you should be unconscious (abandon knowingness).

  Know what you’re saying and express its core truth, speaking to hearts, not to heads. Every line of dialogue you utter must serve your excellent Action, and you must not permit the seduction of the values seemingly inherent in the words to distort the thrust of what you’re doing (usually impressing upon, relieving, or seducing). Always be closing. At the same time, your Actions in the playing should be constantly infused, and even challenged, by each new event, including the emotional associations brought about by any historical material introduced by others or your own recounting. Keep connected to your Objective and play the moments.

  When preparing for a role, study and apply yourself to the aspects of the character’s life in all its important details in order to honor the fullness of their humanity, and, no matter how wretched they appear to others, you must believe every character you portray to be someone you have to live up to. Dare that your audience will confuse you with your character . . . indeed, wish it!

  Consider yourself a student of the human condition in general (rich/poor, brutal/lovely, large gestures/tiny gestures) and, specifically, how it expresses itself in you. Be acquainted with the great works of art and those who created them. Learn from, and copy freely, the techniques of the masters and the novice next to you, alike. Everything, particularly what you cannot pin down with a name, nourishes you.

  Because your job is the expression of peak human vitality, it will be necessary for you to keep your instrument in excellent health. Because you will need your psyche as pure as possible to concentrate and make available your gifts, you must keep your spirit uncluttered by personal turmoil. To this end, cultivate a just, lively, grateful nature, and a gentle superiority over misfortune. Do your work and let life happen.

  You are part of a tradition that goes back to the earliest beginnings of civilization and has consistently provided a moral compass leading to improvement in the quality of life on earth. It is your responsibility to honor those who have come before you, just as you are entitled to expect the best of those who follow.

  CHARISMA REVEALED

  It’s said of some actors that “the camera loves them,” that they have “star quality.” Performers blessed with this charm make us feel we know them and they induce us to live vicariously through their experiences. We want something from them, but we don’t know what it is. The very charismatic can make us feel both large and small, pleased and aching, simultaneously. I’m guessing you’d like some of that quality when you’re on camera, and here’s my best advice for how to get it: Be very average.

  It’s my belief performers display that kind of magnetism, not by being so freakishly different from the rest of us, but because they so closely hit the universal mark for how we all truly are in essence. It’s the reason some of our most captivating actors (Jimmy Stewart, Jack Lemmon, Tom Hanks, etc.) get referred to as an “everyman.” We sense their values are close to that sweet spot for what we average as a culture.

  I developed my theory of charisma from studying koinophilia, the term fo
r the evolutionarily preference animals have for mates with a minimum of unusual features. We know when people are presented with computer-processed composite faces, using morphed photographs of actual faces, that an image created from the greatest number of faces—the most average face—is considered the most attractive. This favoring, observable in the extended looks of infants only six months of age, is clearly an instinctive preference for common features proven to be successful. I’ve simply extrapolated this phenomenon to be applicable to human personality traits as well.

  There may be different personality types who have different I.Q.s and Life Goals. They may range from Tom Hanks in Forrest Gump to Tom Cruise in Jerry McGuire, but all charismatic characters hold very similar, basic orientations with respect to what they feel is good behavior, bad behavior, and borderline behavior.

  Charismatic characters are capable of doing something sinful, certainly, but they nevertheless feel exactly how bad it is in relation to the norm. If they act with cruelty, for instance, this wickedness hurts them in its commission as much as any good person, but is endured because it either serves the greater good, is superseded by a powerful craving, or because it delivers a masochistic delight in itself, like the sting from a shot of whiskey.

  The charismatic individual exhibits a balance (their Brown Rating) between caring too much or too little in five spheres of ethics and the expression of seven personality traits.

  Ethics

  Fairness (concern for justice)

  Loyalty (value on faithfulness)

  Purity/Sanctity (desiring cleanliness and holiness)

  Respect (deference for the pecking order and tradition)

  Safety (avoidance of injury to oneself and others)

  Personality traits

  Adventurousness (enthusiasm for action)

  Consistency (steadiness and honesty)

  Frugality (use of resources)

  Humor (delight in absurdities, especially about oneself)

  Scope (sense of magnitude, humility)

  Tempo (rhythm of experience)

  Vulnerability (emotional sensitivity)

  What this means is you must not seek to be different by being on the fringe, but rather by being so especially central. You are a totally unique thing in the history of this universe, that’s a given, but you share with your intended audience a current life force. To really shine you must work to be in unity with that. The attainment of the proper condition is rather how Rumi spoke of love when he said, “Your task is not to seek love, but merely to remove the barriers within yourself you have built against it.”

  The truth is there are many artists who assume a charismatic persona in performance they do not genuinely possess in life (seen in singers who even adopt a different accent when they sing), because they intuit how this created incarnation will better connect them with their audience. If you need to do that—to take on the aspect of a man of the people, a tuned in, primal, archetype vessel for personhood, no matter the character work you then overlay on top of that—do it.

  Go to the theater. Not just to study the acting (as if that weren’t enough), but to sense how a crowd responds to things presented in a fiction. An audience in a theater enters into a kind of sacred pact, and sitting there with them (or, of course, performing) you will become educated about what they are like according to the better angels of their nature. From the collective exclamations of approval and groans of disapproval, you learn and affirm the deep average response of that society. Being exposed to various kinds of group laughter teaches you the dimensions of present-day humor.

  An audience tends to be smarter than any single member of it. This is called the “wisdom of crowds” and is probably why civilizations moving toward enlightenment have placed a significant value on theater. I’m afraid you’re just not going to get the same effect watching your little handheld screen by yourself. The influence exerted on an individual by the power of an audience responding to fictional events can align them to values previously distorted by an insular upbringing.

  With a little such encouragement it’s possible your natural inclinations, which are naturally much more consistent with the charismatic average, can reassert themselves and—free again as you came into this world—you will be charismatic. Not by working to be different, but by being true to your deepest self. Let me say this again: whether it’s a classic or something new, conventional or avant garde, writ large or writ small, big theater, small theater . . . go to the theater.

  GLOSSARY

  Abby Singer: The next-to-the-last shot of the day.

  above the line (also used: “below the line”): The people who contribute to the creative aspect of a project and their related costs; including (but not limited to) the screenwriter, the actors, the director, and the producers.

  action: The specific thing being done, the objective of this moment, and how the character intends to achieve it.

  “Action!” The signal to begin acting a scene.

  ad-lib: To improvise words not in the text.

  ADR (also called “looping”): Automatic Dialogue Replacement. When actors dub their own dialogue in a studio after a scene has been filmed.

  apple box: Flat wooden boxes of varying sizes used as single-hand portable platforms.

  arc shot: A shot where the camera moves in a circle around the actor(s).

  aside: The act of breaking the fourth wall to speak to the audience. This dialogue is not heard by the other characters on stage, and is done as the action is unfolding, as opposed to narration of action seen as a flashback. The aside relationship to the audience is as someone who is a friend, although possibly slightly below oneself in authority.

  Assistant Director(s) (aka A.D.): Person(s) responsible for coordinating and executing technical matters pertaining to logistics and personnel (titles are 1st A.D., 2nd A.D., Second Second, then Additional Second in descending order of authority).

  “Back to one.” A command to get ready to start a shot again from the beginning.

  base camp: A place where most of a production’s facilities can be maintained, usually set up as close as possible to the site of the majority of the filming.

  Best Boy: Assistant to the head electrician, aka “Gaffer.”

  block shoot: To shoot a series of different scenes from one prepped angle, although perhaps changing costumes and set decoration (necessitating the actors then shoot their coverage out of sequence). Done for time efficiency.

  blocking: Where an actor stands and what he does physically during a performance.

  boat truck: Scenery on wheels.

  boom (aka fish pole or fishing rod): A microphone on a pole.

  breaking: Coming out of the performance so as to reveal the personality of the actor. (This is the worst sin, unless skit-playing where it is, within limits, permissible.)

  broom: To remove something from the set.

  a build: Anything that is made especially for the movie.

  call sheet: A paper issued prior to the next day’s shooting that details the scenes that will be filmed, the personnel required to film them, and when those personnel are expected to be at the location.

  Camera Operator: The person responsible for the technical requirements of the camera itself, including the focus.

  cans: A headset.

  cheat: A move made solely to improve the visual presentation for an audience. (So named because it is a sacrifice that cheats the natural truth of the actor.)

  chewing the scenery: An actor making a spectacle of himself at the expense of the production.

  chiaroscuro: High-contrast lighting.

  choker: A close-up with the actor’s full head in frame.

  clapper board, clap stick: A flat board held up to be filmed which makes a sound so that the editor can synchronize the sound and the picture. Usually has pertinent scene information on it.

  clean: Shot without anyone or any thing in the foreground of the frame except for who and what is mainly featured.