The Myth . . .

Ever since I began teaching acting to boys and girls looking at the “sport” with stars in their eyes, I’ve been assailed by an unassailable truth. The myth. Here’s the myth. Film acting must be real. That in itself is absolutely true. So what’s the myth?, you ask. Ah ha. I’ll get to it I promise, but it requires noodling around a bit.

Reality is relative. As I’ve said many times before – there’s your every day eat breakfast, go to work, be bored, go on a date, be bored reality and there’s Leo DiCaprio’s reality in “The Departed” or “Blood Diamond.” Different kettles of flounder, wouldn’t ya say? So why do beginning actors (and failed older actors) substitute reality number one for reality number two?

The myth. At last. The myth tells the unwise that in order to be viable for film, you have to dumb down for the camera. Back off, be smaller than you are on stage. Vibrant emotional attack on text is movie actings Ebola. The virus’ll kill you dead. Well, how silly is that? I wanted to say “stupid”, but that’s inflammatory. So – wanting to be Hollywoods next best, biggest thing, the hopeful Wattses and LaBoeufses reduce text to a dish as boring as scrambled eggs without the yolks. Young actors doing an elderly care facility version of, say, “Fargo” just isn’t on! “Oh. Let’s throw Buscemi into the wood chipper, but lets not get too excited about it. “ Balderdash.

Okay. Let’s get real, so to speak. The camera is a magnifying glass. It puts certain constraints on the size of what you can do in the frame. There’s a microphone 8 inches or less from your pie hole – which puts additional constraints on your vocal output. But that’s no license to kill via eye drooping boredom. It is your absolute responsibility to forget your own less than scintillating reality and bring yourself up to the emotional demands of the dramatic text. It’s simply not negotiable.

The camera, that ‘ole magnifier, wants to see every twist and turn in your inner process – as many shifts as the text allows. Without resorting to the 7 year itch, the more shifts, the more interesting the performance. The camera wants to see the fire boiling in your belly and shooting out of your EYES. The eyes, if you didn’t realize it before – you better get it now, are the primary tool for generating and focusing the heat and importance of the emotional beat.

En fin. I ain’t just a pretty face. Erudition, friends, erudition. You compress the physical attributes of your performance to fit the frame. You compress the emotional vibrancy of the performance to fit the frame. But you dare not go in with an empty tank, thinking that a bare recital of the words will carry you through. For those of you still in doubt, revisit DiCaprio in “The Departed.”