you like a lot of notes?” All those questions are completely fair to the professional actor. You just set up the scenes accordingly.
When you’ve got your actor on the phone, that’s the time to ask if they have any questions or concerns about their part, wardrobe, or dialogue. You don’t want to put them on the spot or embarrass them in any way, you just want to get them thinking. If you didn’t get to meet them in person, you are putting a voice to your name. It’s a critical first step in bonding with the actor, who wants to know that you are looking out for them and will take care of them to get their best work. They’ll come to work feeling someone is there for them.
Allan Arkush: That whole sense of protecting the actor just really makes them be so much better. They end up trusting you so much that they feel they can’t make a mistake, and that if they do make a mistake, you’ve got their back. Obviously, with series regulars, that’s a lot.
This is the easiest phone call you will ever make, and it will only take a few minutes. Of course, the best is meeting in person over a meal, but I’ve made calls from tops of mountains, from the van during tech scouts, or at 3 a.m. to talk to Bryan Brown in Australia. Anywhere. Just get it done; you’ll be glad you did.
Elia Kazan: As a director, I do one good thing right at the outset. Before I start with anybody in any important role, I talk to them for a long time. The conversations have to do with their lives, and before you know it, they’re telling you all about their wives, their mothers, their children, their infidelities, and anything else they feel guilty about…. They’re dying to tell you they tried to kill their brother once. They’re eager to tell you their problems with their father…. I veil it. I make it sound like chatter. An actor will tell you anything in five minutes, if you listen…. By the time you start with an actor, you know everything about him, where to go, what to reach for, what to summon up, what associations to make for him. You have to find a riverbed, a channel in their lives that is like the central channel in the part…. You’re edging toward the part so that the part becomes them.5
If you’ve not been fortunate enough to have had extended rehearsals before shooting — and frankly, very few directors are so fortunate these days — you will have to do it on the day of shooting. Rehearsal is viewed by bean-counting production executives as either some arty perversion designed to cost them money or an opportunity for the actor to undermine the script. The truth is quite the opposite: Rehearsal saves them money because most of the script problems, actor questions, and staging concerns get explored, even in brief periods of rehearsal. Sidney Lumet proved this film after film, year after year. He would consistently shoot his films in four to five weeks when every other director was taking ten weeks for the same kind of film. In rehearsal, a thirty-minute discussion is no big deal. A thirty-minute discussion on the set on a tight shooting schedule is a disaster. And when is the shooting schedule not tight? James Cameron, after two thousand days of shooting on Titanic and Avatar, still says he needed more time. If there’s a protracted disagreement about a scene, not only is shooting time lost, but the tension of the situation causes tempers to flair. Producers get frantic — angry, even; directors smell hot cigar breath on their necks, and actors wonder, “What’s the big deal? I just asked a question.”
There is an art to proper rehearsal. Take a look at Judith Weston’s excellent book Directing Actors, which has a terrific section on rehearsal. As Jessica Lange said in her Academy Award acceptance speech for Blue Sky, “I want to thank our director Tony Richardson for giving us permission to play in rehearsal.” Or Harvey Keitel: “When I met Scorsese, the work between us was never ‘you walk over here and then turn around.’ It was about finding what we were searching for in my own being.” These are not the kinds of things you hear from actors when they get jammed through the process.
On the Day
So you’ve not had the benefit of rehearsal beyond what you might have gotten done in the auditions and callbacks, beyond what you worked out with the actor over dinner. You’re now standing on the set promptly at call time, 7:30 a.m.
That’s your first mistake.
You will be seized by the AD (assistant director) and frog-marched to the DP (director of photography), who wants to know about the first shot. You don’t know, do you? Because you haven’t rehearsed with the actors. Then the prop man comes over to ask if you want a ballpoint pen or a lead pencil in the scene, and the line producer comes up with a heart-stopper: They’ve lost the next location.
When will you talk to the actors? Oops. Too late! The juggernaut is rolling. You may have an idea of camera placement, but you really need to pull the cast out of the makeup trailer to work it out, find the marks, show the crew, and send the cast back to get dressed.
Oh, stop right there! Don’t ever think you don’t need the actors on set to place the camera. I’m telling you. Even if the star sends word that they’ll stand wherever you tell them, don’t believe it. They will screw you. They’re not evil, they’re not out to cause a problem; it’s like the scorpion and the frog, it’s just in their nature. When you’re all lit and they get called to the set, they’re guaranteed to look at the mark you set for them and say, “No, I wouldn’t stand there.” Argue with them you will… and lose, you will. Now you’ll have to wait through a little relight, a big loss of momentum, and a couple of layers of enamel being ground off your teeth.
If you think I’m kidding, you have been warned.
Instead, get to the set early. Forty-five minutes before call ought to do it. Go to the makeup trailer and corner sleepy actors in their chairs. What you’ll talk about doesn’t have to start out with anything more than a “Good morning, did you sleep okay?” kind of hello. Then look in their eyes. What do you see? Relaxed people? Confident people?
Do you see frozen grimaces? Thousand-yard stares? Their eyes will tell you all you need to know. The grimace and the “deer in the headlights” looks are sure signs they’re worried about the day’s work. No matter how confident they looked on other days, today’s scene is probably the scene that scares them. This is when you get to play therapist, coach, and friend.
Very importantly, never neglect the day player who is there for only one or two scenes. They are more nervous than anybody. They may only have one line, but they are Jell-O inside. They probably don’t know the other actors. If you got to audition with them, you at least are a friendly face. You are their lifeline. Ask them how they see their scenes today. Of course, they will try to do it any way you want, but ask for their thoughts. They’ve agonized over it quite a bit and may, just may, have something worthwhile to contribute. They are a collaborator, too. You cast them because they had a good handle on the part. Take advantage of what they bring to the party. Listen to them.
“How are you feeling about the scene today?” is always a safe question. “When you were thinking about the work last night, how did you see playing it?” You hope their vision agrees with yours. If their thought is different from yours, there are three possibilities:
1. It’s really interesting, and you can use it with your idea or instead of your idea.
2. It actually is the same idea, just spoken in different words.
3. It’s a terrible idea for any number of reasons.
Whatever you do, don’t panic. Remember, this is just a discussion, not a demand. Most of the time, it’s an idea that the actor thought of last night or this morning and just wants to discuss. The best thing you can do is listen with interest. You want to stay open-minded and keep remembering the thought, “What if it’s a good idea?”
