Directing Actors (Book)

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DIRECTING
ACTORS
Digitized by the Internet Archive
in 2022 with funding from
Kahle/Austin Foundation
https://archive.org/details/directingactorscOO00west
To
Evelyn M. Weston
1924-1994
DIRECTING
ACTORS
CREATING MEMORABLE PERFORMANCES
FOR FILM AND TELEVISION
JUDITH WESTON
COLD SPRING HARBOR LIBRARY

COLD SPRING HARBOR, NY 11724
631-692-6820 FAX# 631-692-6827
Published by Michael Wiese Productions
3940 Laurel Canyon Blvd.# 1111
Studio City, CA 91604
tel. 818.379.8799
fax 818.986.3408 “% 6
[email protected]
www.mwp.com
Cover Design: Art Hotel, Los Angeles FSC

Book Layout: CopyWrite Media Design .
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Editor: Bernice Balfour Product group from well-managed
forests and other controlled sources
Printed by McNaughton & Gunn, Inc., Saline, Michigan Cert no, Swe COC 002283
Manufactured in the United States of America © 1996 Forest Stewardship Council
© 1996 Judith Weston
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means without
permission in writing from the author, except for the inclusion of brief quotations in a review.
Note: The information presented in this book is tor education purposes only. The authors are
not giving business or financial advice. Readers should consult their lawyers, accountants, and
financial advisors on their budgets. The publisher is not liable for how readers may choose to use
this information.
When You Comin’ Back, Red Ryder? Copyright 1974 by Mark Medoff
Caution: The reprinting of When You Comin’ Back, Red Ryder? included in this volume is reprinted
by permission of the author and Dramatists Play Service, Inc. The amateur performances rights
in this play are controlled exclusively by Dramatists Play Service, Inc., +40 Park Avenue South,
New York, NY 10016. No amateur production of the play may be given without obtaining in
advance, the written permission of the Dramatists Play Service, Inc., and paying the requisite fee.
Inquiries regarding all other rights should be addressed to Gilbert Parker, c/o William Morris
Agency, Inc., 1325 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10019.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Weston, Judith
Directing Actors: creating memorable performances for film & television / Judith
Weston
p. cm.
ISBN 10 0-941188-24-8
ISBN 13 978-0-941188-24-1
1. Motion pictures--Production and direction. 2. Television--Production and direction.
I. Title
PN1995.9.P7W45 1996
791.43°0233--de20 96-25539
CIP
Books from
MICHAEL WIESE PRODUCTIONS
Directing Actors
Persistence of Vision
The Digital Videomaker’s Guide
Shaking the Money Tree
Film Directing: Shot by Shot
Film Directing: Cinematic Motion
Fade In: The Screenwriting Process
The Writer’s Journey
Producer to Producer
Film & Video Financing
Film & Video Marketing
Film & Video Budgets
The Independent Film & Videomaker'’s Guide
DIRECTING ACTORS:
CREATING MEMORABLE PERFORMANCES
FOR FILM AND TELEVISION
BY JUDITH WESTON
TABLE OF CONTENTS
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
INTRODUCTION
Directors in Jeopardy
Actors: The Mysterious “Other”
The Craft of Directing
The Actor-Director Relationship
What Do Actors Want?
What Is In This Book?
I. RESULT DIRECTION AND QUICK FIXES

Ten Examples of Result Direction
Adjectives
Verbs
Facts
Images
Events
Physical ‘Tasks
Questions, Questions, Questions
II. MOMENT By MOMENT

Fear and Control
Risk
Honesty
Moment By Moment
Idiosyncrasy
Freedom
Concentration
HI. LISTENING AND TALKING
ACTORS’ CHOICES
Questions
Opposites
Judgment
DIRECTING ACTORS/ Weston
Need 98
Spine 99
Objective 102
Action Verb 103
Unconscious Objectives 103
Choosing Objectives 105
Images 107
Obstacle 114
Facts 119
Sense Of Belief 121
Adjustments 122
Subtext 124
Physical Life 126
What Do You Mean “Specific”? 130
V: STRUCTURE: TRANSITIONS, EVENTS

AND THROUGH-LINES 133
VI: ACTORS’ RESOURCES AND TRAINING 141

Memory (Personal Experience) 141
Observation 143
Imagination 146
Immediate Experience 147
Sensory Life 150
Feelings 152
Teachers & Gurus 153
Stretching 157
Stage Acting vs. Film and Television Acting 158
Professionalism 159
VII: SCRIPT ANALYSIS 163

Preparing For The First Read 165
The Writer-Director 166
Editing Stage Directions 167
First Impressions: Chart 1 183
Owning The Characters 185
Paraphrasing 185
“It’s Fust...” and “I Assume...” 187
The Technique Of Three Possible 188
The Reality (Fact) Behind The Words 190
More Reading Ideas 190
The Immutables: Facts and Images: Chart 2
Facts and Evidence
Questions
Research
Images and Associations
Imaginative Choices: Chart 3
History/Backstory
What Fust Happened
Objective/Intention/Need
Issues/What’s At Stake/The Problem/The Obstacle
Action Verbs
Adjustments
Subtext
Physical Life
Events: Chart 4
What The Script Is About
Spine
Summary
VIII: CASTING
IX: REHEARSAL
Rehearsal Plan
Full Cast Read-Through
Scene Rehearsal
Opening Remarks
First Reading Of Scene
Through Lines
Layers
Working In Beats
Rehearsal Guidelines
Improv
Blocking: Physical Objects and Physical Activity
Resistances
Episodic Television
Summary
X: SHOOTING
EPILOGUE
APPENDIX A: CHILDREN AND

NONPROFESSIONAL ACTORS
xi
DIRECTING ACTORS/ Judith Weston
APPENDIX B: COMEDY 296
APPENDIX C: 302
SHORT LisT OF ACTION VERBS
SAMPLE SIMPLE OBJECTIVES
MORE ACTION VERBS
FILMOGRAPHY 308
BIBLIOGRAPHY 311
FURTHER ACKNOWLEDGMENTS 313
Xl
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This book would not exist without some five hundred or so direc-
tors who have taken the Acting for Directors course and the Script
Analysis and Rehearsal Techniques workshops. It takes courage for a
director to study acting, to allow himself or herself to be on the other
side, to partake in the vulnerable condition of the actor. I am always
moved that students put themselves in my care and allow themselves
to go places and do things they may have never done before. Even
when I was completely unknown as a teacher, they were trusting and
eager to learn. They constantly pushed me to define everything and
to create tools that would be specifically useful for directors. They
have truly taught the teacher as least as much as I taught them. I love
and thank each one of them individually.
All the wonderful actors I have worked with as colleagues or

taught as students have contributed mightily to this book as well, as have all the
students in my Acting for Non-Actors classes, especially the first one.
T want to thank the teachers from whom | studied acting and

directing: Jean Shelton, Wendell Phillips, Robert Goldsby, Angela
Paton, Gerald Hiken, Lillian Loran, Jack Garfein, Harold Clurman,
Stella Adler, Paul Richards, Jose Quintero. Especially Jean Shelton,
my first teacher, the one who made me fall in love with acting. Her
fierce insistence on the truth of the moment, her interdiction of
"pedestrian" choices, her love of good writing, her passion for acting
and for actors, imprinted me forever. She made me understand that
finding and illuminating the truest truth in a moment on stage or film
was a calling of the highest nobility — that it was worth doing, that
it increased the value of life on our planet. And she encouraged me
xill
DIRECTING ACTORS / WESTON
to believe that I might have something to offer the world as an actor,

director, and teacher.
Soon after I started teaching Acting for Directors, students began

encouraging me to write a book. Frank Beacham was the first with
this idea. A number of students — including Paivi Hartzell, Cathy
Fitzpatrick, Esther Ingendahl, Joe Syracuse, Lesley Robson-Foster
and Peter Entel] — shared with me their workshop notes as support
and assistance toward the notion of a book based on my workshops
for directors.
Frank also introduced me to David Lyman; this began a long and

fruitful association with the Rockport Maine Film and Television
Workshops. In Rockport J met Claude (Pico) Berkowitch and Bertrand
Theubet, who brought my workshops to Europe, and pushed me to
bring my coaching for directors to the "second level” with workshops
in Script Analysis and Rehearsal ‘Techniques.
But none of this was anything like a book until Michael Wiese
came along, and | thank him from the bottom of my heart for every-
thing — for being the genuine article, for trusting his intuition, for
believing in me, and especially for his patience and support when the
writing took a little longer than we thought it would. Ken Lee, of Michael's
office, was a constant source of assistance, enthusiasm, and tact.
I received tireless, generous, insightful, invaluable feedback from

those people who read all or part of the book in manuscript: Amy
Klitsner, Irene Oppenheim, Claudia Luther, Polly Platt, Pico
Berkowitch, Bruce Muller, Leslee Dennis, Wendy Phillips, Joy
Stilley, and John Hoskins. Lisa Addario and Joe Syracuse also gave
me crucial notes on the manuscript and helped in about a hundred
other ways as well, as did Sharon Rosner. John Heller made a tape of
one of my workshops, which was incredibly useful.
Finally, | am grateful to Dr. CarolS. Stoll, my family, all my

friends, and most especially my champion, the source of my happi-
ness and light of my life, my husband, John Hoskins.
xiv
INTRODUCTION
INTRODUCTION
DIRECTORS IN JEOPARDY
“T knew exactly what I wanted, but I couldn't verbalize it clearly." "I
thought I was describing it exactly as I wanted it, and the actor said, 'Yes, I
understand,’ and then he didn't do anything like what we'd talked about.
So I just kept repeating the direction and the performance got worse and
worse.” "The actor was a star and she wouldn't rehearse, wouldn't take
direction. She did it her way and that was that." "How do I establish cred-
ibility with the actors on the first day of rehearsal?” "Sometimes I can tell
that something is untruthful or not working, but then I don't know what to
do.” “How much should I tell them? How much should they tell me?"
"Sometimes under the pressure of being on the set, it's hard to see the per-
formance — I can't see what's happening in front of me." "The production
and financing problems took up so much of my energy that, once I got to the
set, | was exhausted, I had no energy for the moment." "On a television
series, the regulars already know their characters, they won't take direc-
tion." "How do I keep performance consistent, get them there and keep them
there?" "T think I talk too much. It's easy for me to direct someone right
out of the role, tell them too much." "I think I overdirect." "How do you
rehearse? When do you say what?" “I need to know how to give the actor
an on-the-spot solution, the one word that brings his performance to life."
"Where is the button you press to achieve results fast?” "What do you do
when you give a direction that worked in rehearsal and now that it's time
to shoot the scene, the performance doesn't work anymore?” "The actors
loved me and I felt very comfortable on the set, but when I got to the editing
room it was all crap." "I think I overrehearsed." "When we don't have
time, where should we put the main energy?” "I didn't want it to go that
way, but I had no chotce."
Directors want short answers to these questions, but in order to

learn to direct the short way, you first need to learn how to do it the
long way, then practice a lot until you can do it faster. Arriving at
simple solutions takes a lot of work. If you happened to do it well the
first time and thereafter you struggle, it may mean you had no craft,
only beginner's luck. Or it may mean that you are in the grip of the
learning curve — which is always two steps forward, one step back
(unless it is one step forward, two steps back!).
There really aren't shortcuts. There isn’t any kind of blueprint

for working with actors that you can decide on ahead of time, and say,
"I'm going to do exactly this and exactly that and it’s all going to
work." But there are principles, there is a craft, there is a lot of exhil-
arating, arduous preparation — and then you get to jump off a cliff
without any expectations about whether it’s going to work or not,
ready to be in the moment when you get the actors there, ready to
throw out every scrap of your preparation if you need to.
ACTORS: THE MYSTERIOUS “OTHER”
Directing film or television is a high-stakes occupation. It cap-

tures your full attention at every moment, calling on you to commit
every resource and stretch yourself to the limit; it's the white-water
rafting of entertainment jobs. But for many directors, the excitement
they feel about a new project tightens into anxiety when it comes to
working with actors.
The entertainment industry is conflicted in its attitude toward

actors — actors are both fawned over, and looked down upon. Actors
are an irrational and baffling “other.” Many directors come from a
technical background and know very little about how actors work.
Directors who have come up from the production side of film may
even have a prejudice against actors. There is often a feeling on film
and television sets that, compared to the expertise and long hours
required of the crew members, what actors do is not really work.
After all, anybody who can walk and talk at the same time could do
it, right?
INTRODUCTION
Writers who turn to directing often become troubled and impa-

tient with actors because the lines when spoken don't come out
exactly as the writer imagined they would. Directors who are highly
gifted visually and completely at ease with the camera are sometimes
uncomfortable with dialogue, and hence with actors. And I am sorry
to say that it is my observation that students can graduate even from
prestigious film schools, knowing nothing about techniques of
directing actors.
Indeed, most people seem to believe that directing actors can't be

taught, that it's a matter of instinct and intuition, that you either have
it or you don't. I find that many directors I meet, including talented
and successful ones, are practically rudderless when it comes to
directing actors, and worse, embarrassed about asking for help.
Most directors know that they could benefit from better commu-
nication with actors. The horror stories of breakdowns in communi-
cation between actors and directors are legion. It's easy to see how
this can happen when inexperienced directors are paired with experi-
enced, high-profile actors. I heard one story of a major star with a
tough-guy image who, every time the director took him aside, would
look up and say, loud enough for the crew to hear, "You want me to
suck what?" Now maybe the veteran actor was trying to relax the
young director by teasing him out of some of his earnestness — or
maybe he was crudely letting the poor fellow know how stupid he
thought the director's input was.
It's not unusual for actors to be dismayed at how little directors

know about them. First-time directors typically put a lot of care into
getting the most production value for the money they have available,
but very little care and preparation into guiding the performances; as
a result, the worst thing about low-budget films is usually the acting.
And communication problems are not limited to low-paid, inexperi-
enced directors. Sometimes well-known actors and directors are dis-
appointed when they finally work together. Why? Because, with the
exception of the handful of filmmakers with a background in theater
or live television, who have had rehearsal experience, most do not
have a reliable technique for working with actors.
DirecTinG AcTors/ Weston
THE CRAFT OF DIRECTING
Directing actors can be taught as a craft. It does not need to be

mystified. Over the years that I have been teaching my courses in
acting, script analysis and rehearsal techniques for directors, I have
evolved a set of principles and an assortment of tools which are the
subject of this book. These principles and tools are simple, not in the
sense of simple = stupid, but in the sense of simple = basic. They are
not esoteric or fuzzy-headed; they are objective and usable. If you
wish you can think of them as a set of rules — they are that follow-
able. They are not meant to be a cookbook, however; they are meant
to open up for you your own priceless intuition.
There is no cookbook. You've got to completely let go of doing

things "right." This is hard for a lot of people; it seems to go against
all of our education. Although I've been teaching mainly in Los
Angeles, I've also taught throughout the country as well as abroad,
and have found that children everywhere basically are taught to
please the teacher, do well on tests, and impress their classmates.
I want to change your minds around a bit. When I teach my

class I take the students through a series of exercises, first with a
monologue and then with scenes, and I ask them to be patient with
me, to go with me, even if something seems a little strange. Because
with each exercise we isolate some element of acting technique and
examine its usefulness for directors, one at a time. Sometimes
people get worried. They're looking for results, they're looking for
performance, they're looking for the way to do it right, to not make
a mistake.
You have chosen a profession where mistakes are not always bad.
For brain surgeons or airplane pilots, mistakes are nearly always a bad
thing. But for those of us lucky enough, foolish enough, to follow our
dreams into the entertainment industry, a mistake can be a blessing in
disguise; it can jolt our attention away from preconceived ideas and
into the present, it can open us to a new creative path. Sometimes a
mistake is our subconscious speaking, and we ought to listen to it. If
anything, an artist needs to get kind of excited by mistakes.
INTRODUCTION
You will make mistakes. We are mistake-making creatures; we

were built that way. What you as a director, the person in charge,
must learn how to do is to bring creativity and a positive approach to
mistakes, your own and others’.
Artists tend by nature to be dark, worried, superstitious creatures.

This is not bad. It makes you perfectionist, it makes you care.
Moreover, the ability to see the darker side of life is an asset not just
for directing dramatic and tragic movies, but also for directing
comedy, since comedy often has pain inside it. Buta director who is
negative or who projects his own insecurities onto his actors is very
bad news. I often tell my students that whatever problems their
actors present them with — whether the actor is objecting to a line
of dialogue or a piece of staging or the color of a wig or is forgetting
his lines or hates her costar — they should say to themselves, "I'm
glad this happened!" And mean it!
I offer you the exhilarating prospect of never again saying these

four words: "I had no choice." Our jobs in the entertainment
industry always allow us creative choice. If you want a rehearsal
period, you can find the time and money for it; you might have to
give something up for it, you might have to sacrifice a special effect
or an expensive location, but you have a choice. If the producer of
vour feature film tells you she can't get the money for the project
unless you accept a certain actor in the lead role — perhaps an actor
you think is wrong for the part — you must make the choice to work
with that actor or give yourself permission to walk off the project.
Not that I encourage you to renege on your promises or give your
word frivolously, but tackling disappointments with the sensibility
that you are sticking with it owt of choice gives you your freedom. And
without freedom there can be no creativity.
Some students tell me that the ideas and techniques I put forward
seem at first radical and destabilizing. One young writer said she
found the things I was saying “counter-intuitive.” At first I was sur-
prised, but then I realized that many people mistake opinion for intu-
ition. Opinions are easy to have; they require no reflection.
Sometimes people think intuition is the first idea that comes to you,
that intuition requires no reflection. This is not the case. In order
wa
DIRECTING AcTorRSs/ Weston
to access your intuition, you need to get below your preconceived

ideas and access your deepest resources. You need to recognize and
reject pedestrian and obvious and clichéd choices.
I don't intend to dampen or make you distrust your intuition.

You can't be a good director without good instincts. There is no
recipe I can give you that will guarantee you'll have a good movie.
Every rule I will give you can be broken, and should be broken if
breaking it makes the movie better. Technique is not an end in itself.
The purpose of technique is to prepare the ground for inspiration.
Everybody knows what to do when inspired! That's true by

definition. But you can't decide to be inspired. And if you try to
be inspired, the strain of the effort only creates tension, taking
you farther and farther away from the effortlessness that charac-
terizes inspiration.
Technique does two wonderful things: it gives you something to

fall back on, something to do while you are waiting for inspiration,
and it aerates your brain, makes you think, makes you choose — and
then you are ready for inspiration, should inspiration decide to strike.
When you are working well, you are in the safest place for trusting
your instincts.
When you are not working well, you may confuse intuition with
assumptions, you may mistake prejudice for vision. So I invite you to
break habit; I invite you to question conventional wisdom, to get
beyond your prejudices and assumptions, to go below the surface, and
awaken your intuition at a new, deeper level. In other words, learn
the rules. Then forget them.
This takes work, probably more work than you realized was
involved in directing. But I'm going to take you through it, step by
step. Once you get on the inside, you will feel liberated. And if you
are among the happy few who already have a directing technique that
works, then you already know how important it is to keep learning
and growing; for you, the proposals and exercises of this book are
intended to challenge, retresh, and stretch your skills and imagination.
INTRODUCTION
Just one warning: I'm not going to teach you how to be “com-
mercial." Trying to be commercial is just an excuse for not doing the
hard work of being original. No one knows what's commercial
anyway, not until the weekend box office figures are printed in the
newspaper on Monday morning. In this business, people who claim
they can assure you commercial success are not to be trusted.
THE ACTOR-DIRECTOR RELATIONSHIP
The very best actors make it look easy. Their technique is invis-__
ible, they seem to “become” the character, they seem tospeakand a |
move out of the character's impulses and needs, their feelings well up
strong and apparently unbidden. They don't look rehearsed, they
seem to be speaking their own words, they seem to be improvising.
To the general public it probably looks as though the actor must be
just like the character and must not have had to do any work to play
the role. To people knowledgeable about the demands of per-
forming, such a seamless portrayal is a touch of the divine, a miracle.
Rigorous technique and careful detail go into such performances.

One of the things this book will do is to investigate the actor's world,
his tools, resources, and training.
Sometimes directors ask me why I want them to know so

much about actors. Is the director supposed to monitor the actor
in each and every choice? Is the director supposed to guide the
actor through Method “emotional memory” exercises? If the
actor is having problems, should the director give acting lessons
on the set? How much responsibility does the director have for
the performances?
Acting and directing are two very different jobs. It is exactly because
I think the director and the actor each should be — must be — free to
do his own work that I believe directors should know more about
actors and acting. This is why even actors themselves don't automat-
ically know how to direct other actors. They are two separate skills.
DiRECTING AcToRSs/ Weston
Here is the crux of this sometimes painful, often frustrating but

potentially exhilarating relationship: the director is the viewer and
the actor is the viewed. The actor is exposed, vulnerable. The suc-
cess of his contribution hinges on his ability and willingness to allow
himself to be viewed without being able to view himself. This means
he must surrender completely to feelings, impulses, and simple
choices without knowing whether they are working or not. If he
watches himself, the relationship of viewer/viewed is broken and the
magic is lost. He depends on the director to stand in for the audience
and to tell him whether his efforts succeed; he cannot evaluate his own
performance. His central paradox is that this dependence frees him.
You are the one who gets to say, who has to say, "Yes, that's okay.
Print,” or "No, let's take it again.” It's a giant responsibility. It's hard
for a director who has never acted to understand its magnitude. You
are the protector; only you can say whether the work is good enough.
You must make sure the work is good and that the actor looks good,
and so you have to know what is good work and what isn't.
Sometimes very intelligent actors hold back until they decide

if they can trust your taste, intelligence, and knowledge. If the
actor determines that the director can't tell good work from bad
or doesn't understand the script or doesn't know how to tell a
story with a camera, the actor retreats from the actor-director
relationship and starts to monitor his own performance. He
watches himself, he directs himself.
This is not good. Because if he is doing someone else's job as well

as his own, he can't surrender his full attention to his own job. This
is especially poignant because his own job precisely is to surrender, to
live truthfully moment by moment in a structure of created circumstances;
and the act of self-monitoring distorts what is monitored. If he
watches himself, it shows. Experienced actors working with a bad
director are aware of the dilemma and make a choice, either to follow
poor direction or to direct themselves. Inexperienced actors sub-
jected to poor direction often flounder.
INTRODUCTION
If you understand the script, know how to tell a story filmically,

can tell good acting from bad, and the actor is floundering anyway,
it's not actually your job to make the acting better. It's the actor's job
to find his performance and to adjust it if you ask him and to make
those adjustments believably.
But if you are the viewer and they are the viewed, shouldn't you
be able to tell actors when their performance is not good enough?
And if you saw them floundering, if you saw them having trouble get-
ting where they need to go, and if you knew how to help them —
wouldn't that be great? You could help each other. For example,
blocking (i.e., staging the physical movements of the actors) is part of
the director's job but a lot of times the actors will help you with
blocking. They'll say, "I have an impulse to move over there on that
line,” and you'll say, "Wow, that solves all kinds of problems."
The director's main responsibility — and prerogative — is telling

the story. This means finding a structure to the script and setting up
the events so that they are at once surprising and inevitable. You give
the actor direction in order that the actor's actions and interactions
illuminate and create those events. The actor has a responsibility —
and prerogative — to create truthful behavior while following direc-
tion and fulfilling the requirements of the script. Actor and director
must respect each other's creative territory.
On a practical level this could mean that an actor agrees that your
direction is logical and apt, and wants to please you, yet cannot find
a way to execute it and still be truthful to her impulses and under-
standings. This is because we are not dealing with chemistry for-
mulas here; we are dealing with human beings.
At this point the actor and director can clash — or they can col-
laborate. I don't like to use the word "compromise" because that
suggests that both of you are settling for something less than what
you desire and believe in. It's more like a synthesis. Actor and director
are thesis and antithesis; each prepares, each brings to the table his
best understanding of the script and his own sovereign imagination;
they face each other and give each other everything. Then something new
DirecTiInG AcToRs/ Weston
comes out of that, ideas for the characterization that are perhaps
better than either one of you thought of separately. The happiest
response an actor can make to one of your directorial suggestions is,
"That gives me an idea for something to work on."
This is the good stuff. Unlocking the subworld of the script,

making discoveries, going places. Actor and director can do this work
together, in rehearsal, or separately, and surprise each other; they can
keep secrets from the other actors, even from each other, they can
establish a level of communication at which only a word need be
spoken. You may come up with the insight that turns a competent
performance into an indelible one — you may be present and mid-
wifing the creation of a character who continues to live in the audi-
ence's mind long after the movie is over. This can be addictive,
working with talented actors on a high level of creativity, sparking
and challenging each other's ideas and imaginations.
The level of trust required for this work is breathtaking. Jessica

Lange, in a Los Angeles ‘Times interview: "Actors are always at the
mercy of the integrity of the director. It's a leap of faith, and some-
times you leap into the abyss and it doesn't pay off." Or Donald
Sutherland, also in the Times, on the actor-director relationship:
"T've often described [it] as sexual. I'm his concubine."
Actors refuse direction at their peril; they'are throwing away the

potential for an unself-conscious performance. And directors, once
they cast an actor, should surrender the role to that actor; you must
cease judging; it's time to engage. Sometimes you have to adjust or
even let go of your ideas about the character if they finally don't sit
truthfully on the actor. Always you must let actors know that what-
ever level of risk you are asking of them, you are willing to take yourself.
People who are fearful of intimacy and confrontation should prob-
ably not become directors.
WuatT Do AcTorRs WANT?

Here are the things that actors need from a director.
First, knowing when to say "Print.". They want you to know
when to say "Print" and not give up until you get there, and that is
10
INTRODUCTION
to say when the performance has life, and when what the actor is
doing tells the story. To a really good actor, the worst sin a director
can commit is to be satisfied with less than the very best the actor
has to offer.
Equally important, the actors must have confidence that you

understand the script, and that the characters and the events that
befall them spring to life in your imagination. In other words, they
must feel that your ideas are intelligent and imaginative and that you
know what the movie is about.
Then, your understanding must be communicated: they need

clear, brief, playable direction. If any. Perhaps it would be more
accurate to say that they don't want vague, confusing direction.
Actors are usually better off left on their own than trying to follow
confusing direction. In any case, they need freedom and permis-
sion to explore the implications of your direction and to make it
their own.
Last but best, they want to be pushed, to grow and to learn. A

director with actual insight is a bonus, it's icing on the cake; actors
don't expect it, but they love it. The highest praise an actor can give
a director is to say, "I learned from working with her," or "He got me
to do things I didn't know I could do."
Wuat Is IN THIS BOOK
Understanding the script and giving actors playable direction and

freedom to explore and permission to make your direction their own
are the main concerns of this book; I plan to give you simple, eftec-
tive tools that you can use immediately. It isn't a question of merely
memorizing a jargon. The techniques and principles I will outline
have to do with understanding human behavior and applying that
understanding to scripts and rehearsal situations. They are all geared
toward making your direction briefer and more loaded.
11
DIRECTING ACTORS/ Weston
For directors with extensive technical background, setting aside

decisions about F-stops and special effects and dipping into these
areas can be intimidating. It is easy to find yourself setting aside time
for script analysis and ending up staring at the page with nothing
coming to you. My techniques will give you some simple, practical
alternatives to procrastination and despair. I even have charts that
you can fill out if you find them helpful, but the purpose of this work
is not to fill out charts. There is no cookbook. We are looking at
ways to trigger your understanding, insight and ideas; to awaken your
powers of suggestibility and invention.
Knowing when to say "Print" is something I don't think you can

learn from any book, but this book will give you some food for
thought, and ideas for what to look for as you practice and study and
make mistakes and develop this skill.
Of course actors also need you to know where to put the camera
and how to tell a story filmically. Where to put the camera is not
dealt with in this book at all; Iam going to assume that you already
have some knowledge of the technical side of filmmaking.
Scaling the heights of the actor-director relationship, learning

how to collaborate and challenge each other and grow together —
that is, becoming an "actor's director" — will mean taking everything
you learn from me and from all your other teachers and from every-
thing you know about life, and making it your own and believing in
your gift and giving your actors everything you have to give, with
love, with passion, with humility — and then, having some talent and
some good luck.
You don't have a choice about how much talent you are
born with — that's already been taken care of. You do have a
choice about whether or not to develop the talent you have.
12
RESULT DIRECTION AND QUICK FIXES
The biggest complaint I hear from actors is that directors don’t

know what they want. I expect this to come as a surprise to many
of you, because I think most directors think they have a very clear
picture in their minds of exactly how they want the movie to look
and sound.
The problem is directors who don’t know how to prepare.
Most people while reading a script watch a miniature movie ver-

sion of it projected on the inside of their foreheads. They see with
their mind’s eye the face of the character (usually that of a particular
A-list actor), they hear in their heads the lines read with a certain
inflection, they project specific facial expressions and movements.
No matter how many times they read the script, they see the same
expressions, inflections, and movements. They call this their “vision”
of the script, and they consider the time spent in such fantasy their
“creative preparation.” Then they get down to the “real work” of
making budgets and deciding on lenses.
Why is this so bad? Because it limits you to the images of the

script that fit onto a flat, four-cornered movie screen. It’s like
insisting that the earth is flat and that people (characters) who walk
off the edge just disappear. It causes you to look at a line and say to
yourself, “How can this be made dramatic?” or “How can this be
made funny?” rather than “What clues does this give me to what the
movie is about and what the characters are doing to solve their
predicaments?” It causes you to make your artistic choices based on
what you know about other movies rather than on what you know
13
DirnectiING AcTors/ Weston
about life. It denies any life to the characters beyond the four edges
of the script’s pages.
It also leads to directing the actors with what is known as “result”

direction. Many directors have heard of result direction and been
terrorized by warnings of its evils, but are not really sure what it is.
Result-oriented direction attempts to shape the actor’s perfor-

mance by describing the result you are after, i.e., how you want it to
end up looking or sounding. The close kin to result direction is gen-
eral direction. The preferable alternative to result direction or gen-
eral direction is specific, playable direction. These terms are slippery.
They are difficult to define. I remember that when I was first
studying acting, it was years before I really understood what was so
bad about being “general.” And the problems of definition are com-
pounded because within the acting and directing communities, the
terms are sometimes used differently. Perhaps the gamest way to
tackle the issue is to start by giving examples.
Okay. Here are ten examples of result direction:
1) “Can you make it more quirky?”
Telling the actor what effect you want him to have on the audience
is a perfect example of directing by describing a resu/t. Instructions
of this ilk — such as “This scene should be funny,” or “I need you to
be more dangerous,” or “Can you give him an epic quality?” — make
an actor’s heart sink. The director wants him to do something dif-
ferent from what he is doing — what can it be? From this point the
actor-director relationship dissolves into a guessing game, because
the direction is so vague. The actor tries something — is this it?
Usually it never is, because the actor has begun to watch himself, to
worry about how he is doing, and what the performance looks like. It
is death to an actor's gifts to put his concentration on the effect he is
having on the audience.
Describing to the actors the “mood” of a scene or the movie falls

into this category; e.g., sultry, distant, electric, etc. Paradoxically,
14
actors who try to play a mood can end up evoking exactly the oppo-
site of what the director was hoping for: efforts to “look” serious
often produce an unintentionally comical eftect; efforts to “be” light
and frothy can prove heavy-handed. This is because the attention is
wrongly placed; the actors’ eagerness to please you by coming up
with the desired effect has caused them to concentrate on the effort
itself; consequently the effort itse/fis the effect that finally reads.
Tf you want the actors’ help in evoking a particular mood, you

might try instead an imaginative adjustment. An adjustment can be
an “as if.” For example, if you wanted a “chilly” atmosphere in a
family dinner scene, you might ask the actors to play the scene “as if”
the first person who makes a mistake in table manners will be sen-
tenced to a prison term.
Sometimes very experienced actors have worked out sets of pre-

arranged adjustments that they can produce at will. They have a
facility for coming up with a precise mood or some other result on
demand. Directors are relieved — the actor has “nailed it.” But such
facility can come to substitute for a genuine, moment-by-moment
connection to the material and the other actors. Actors call this
“pulling out the old bag of tricks.” An extreme example of an actor
overusing her bag of tricks might be an actor typecast as a stock char-
acter old maid in movies of the thirties and forties playing every role
pursing her lips as if she is constantly sucking on a lemon. If we want
a performance of freshness, surprise, and insight, we want to ask the
actors for more than what is facile for them.
ly
» 2) “Can you take it down?” Or, “Can you give it more energy?”
These are the commonest requests actors get from directors.

What’s wrong with these directions is that they are vague or general.
“Take it down” may mean that the actor is overacting, not listening
to the other actors, or should make another choice. “More energy”
could mean that the acting is flat, without inner life, or the actor is
not listening or needs a different choice. But who knows? It’s too
vague — too general — to be sure what the director is objecting to.
15
And actors, when responding to these directions, can fall into bad
traps. Asking for “more energy” can cause them simply to add
emphasis to the uninteresting choice they have already made. “Take
it down” may be interpreted as a request to flatten their affect or say
the line in a monotone, and dampen their expressive fires. How can
that be a good thing for an actor to do?
3) “Don’t say, ‘You always do that.’ It should be, ‘You always

do that.”
This is called giving the actor a line reading, that is, telling the
actor what inflection to give to a line. For the line “You always do
that,” there are at least four different line readings, because there are
four different words you can inflect: “You always do that,” “You
always do that,” “You always do that,” or “You always do that.” And
the different readings make the line mean different things.
What's wrong with giving line readings: Well, one problem is

that the actor might obey you, and repeat back the line with the new
inflection but without any life behind it. Of course it is their job to
give it life, but sometimes the line reading makes no sense to the
actor; if he asks you what it means, you want to be able to do more to
clarify the direction than just repeat the line reading over and over.
The meaning of the line, not the inflection, or result, is what the
director should be communicating to the actor. It is the actor’s pre-
rogative to create the delivery that conveys the meaning that the
director wants. The worst problem with giving line readings is that
they may signify that the director doesn’t really know what the line
means, or what the intention of the character is, or what the scene
is about.
4) “I think [the character] is disappointed.”
‘Telling the actor what feeling the character should be having, or

what state of mind to be in — for example, angry, disappointed, worried,
annoyed, excited, in love, frightened, resentful, disapproving — is a
16
very usual way that direction is given. It may seem radical of me to

tell you not to do it.
But it is not actually a playable direction.
As soon as an actor fries to have a feeling, or produces a feeling

on demand, he looks like an actor, not a real person. People in real
life often find our feelings are obstacles to what we want to accomplish;
we would prefer mor to feel nervous at an important meeting, not to
feel upset when an ex-lover and new spouse appear unexpectedly at a
party, not to feel angry and disappointed with our loved ones. An
actor caught trying to have a feeling is not believable. Watching an
actor crank up his feelings is stressful to the audience and distracts
them from the story.
A playable choice must be choosable, and we can’t choose our feelings.

This idea is sometimes very hard for people to take in, but I want you
to think about it: We don’t get to decide how to feel. For some reason
we humans don’t much like this about ourselves. Bad actors, as well
as much of the general population, go to great lengths to make the
world believe they feel something that they don’t actually feel, but
most of the time no one is fooled. Of course feelings can be hidden
or repressed, but we can’t selectively shut down just one feeling;
when one feeling is held back, all feeling gets shut down. Clearly, this
is not a desirable condition for an actor. Actors need to have their
feelings available to them.
Emotion and impulse are the very province of the actor. The
ability to be emotionally free and available to many subtleties of
feeling is central to her talent. But feelings are pesky critters, crop-
ping up inconveniently, and then disappearing just when you want
them. And the thing both terrible and wonderful about feelings is
that they change. You have seen it in real life; a person can be crying
one minute and laughing the next. In fact the more you let yourself
feel whatever you are actually feeling, the more available you are to a
new feeling. This goes double for actors.
17
DiRECTING ACTORS / WESTON
The director is in a position to do violence to the actor’s delicate

emotional mechanisms. It can have a shrinking effect on actors to tell
them their emotions are wrong, as in “Don’t play it so angry.” When
actors try to have “less” feeling, for example in response to the direction
“Don’t play it so angry,” they may simply shut down or become cau-
tious. When they try to have “more” feeling, as in response to a
direction to “be more nervous,” the temptation is to push, to overact.
Whenever they try to have feelings because they think the character
should have them, or because the director tells them that the char-
acter should have them, there is a danger of their acting becoming
indulgent and actorish. At the very least a smidgen of self-con-
sciousness is bound to creep into the performance. They may not
believe it themselves — they may even ask you what emotion you
want them to have — but as soon as you start envisioning the char-
acters in terms of what emotion they should be having, you are losing
the chance for a genuinely exciting emotional event to take place.
The character’s emotional life is not off-limits to the director.

The emotional events of the script and each character’s participation
in them are very much within the province of the director. It will be
a major purpose of this book to suggest ways to approach that emo-
tional life that are not so result-oriented as telling the actor what
feeling to have.
5) “When she tells you that she doesn’t have the money, you
get angry.”
This is an extension of telling the actor what emotion to have —

telling her what reaction to have. Again, the notion that one can
decide on, aim for, and deliver a particular reaction simply because
one wishes to do so is at variance with our life experience. In real
life we may wish we could plan our reactions — we may wish we
could react calmly to bad news, or laugh merrily when a client or
boss tells an unfunny joke — but it is the very nature of such occur-
rences that they take us by surprise, however gracefully or subtly we
may manage to deal with them.
18
nna In a script these little or bigsurprises are the emotional transi-..

aan henaeee
___ tions of the movie. For an actor, the character's transitions — her
reactions to the emotional events — are the trickiest part of acting.
It is the place where the acting is most likely to go sour and start to
look like acting — when the transitions are labored, or forced,
anticipated, telegraphed, indicated — or flat. not there. It gives a
pertormance the texture of real life when the reactions are spon-
taneous and idiosyneratic. Whenever we (the audience) catch the
actors working on their next reaction, it takes us out of the story.
Getting to the emotional transitions of a role cleanly, economi-

cally, believably and fully is the actor’s most difficult task. In a movie,
the characters don’t know what is going to happen to them, so they
don’t know what they are going to do or say when it does. The
actors, of course, do know. When the director, out of his prearranged
idea of what the scene 1s supposed to look like, tells the actor to react
this way or that on a certain line so it can look like the movie he has
running in his head, the actor is being asked for a result at the very
moment that connection to a process instead of a result would be the
most valuable for her.
6) “When the scene starts he is worried because she is late.

He is relieved when she arrives, but then disappointed
because she hasn’t got the money, and then he becomes sus-
picious that she might be holding out on him.”
This is what I call a fully loaded emotional map, outlining all the
feelings and reactions you have decided the character is supposed to
have in the scene.
Mapping the emotional terrain of a character is my own term for

what is sometimes called explaining the character or psychologizing
the character. Emotional mapping, or explaining the character's
psychology, commonly passes for an understanding of what the
script is about.
19
~
po a iy a ! y
DIRECTING ACTORS / WESTON. * | i) ~ ( rel
~ Ta —
At first glance, emotional maps look innocuous enough. You may
be asking yourself, what could be wrong with this? How else would
you describe a character’s behavior? Everybody talks about charac-
ters this way, don’t they?
In fact, people in real life talk about each other like this too. It’s
called gossip. Now gossip in real life can be harmless and fun, but it
is not productive, and it can be harmful. Gossiping about characters
— i.e., mapping their emotional terrain, or explaining their psy-
chology — is likewise, at best, an uncreative waste of time.
Emotional mapping causes so many problems! First of all, it is

tedious and long-winded. Directors need always to be concerned
with ways to save time. Actors respond best to direction that is simple
and to the point. I want you to learn briefer, more muscular ways to
evoke characterizations than the convolutions of emotional maps.
Emotional mapping is almost always a superficial analysis of the

script, usually no more than a regurgitation of the plot or dialogue.
When actors try to follow an emotional map, the performance degen-
erates into an emotional connect-the-dots drawing, contrived, pre-
dictable. It can’t flow, because it has no through-line.
The through-line is the way that actors believably connect to the

character’s emotional reality. One of these keys actors use to connect
to their character's through-line is a sense of objective, or simple
~intention.T willbe talking Tots more about intention and objective,
~~ or need, later. But briefly, an objective is what the character wants
from the other character, and the intention is what he is doing to get it.
Rather than drawing an emotional map, a director can better

serve the actor by discussing the character's intention or objective.
I'd love to give you an example of how this works, but because this is
a book, let’s pretend that the imaginary emotional map I outlined in
the heading of this section (“he is worried because she is late,” etc.) is
a real scene and think about some possible objectives that might make
it work. (All we can do here is come up with candidates for appropriate
RESULT DIRECTION AND QUICK FIXEs
choices of objectives. We can’t decide which ones will work unless we

try them out with actors.)
At the moment, we don’t have a script, or even a set of facts, from

which to make a proper scene analysis, so I’m going to refer you to a
list in the Appendix called Sample Simple Objectives. Let’s take two
possible interpretations of the imaginary scene. In the first interpre-
tation, let’s say the woman is not to blame for the missing money and
the man is taking out his frustrations on her. Using that interpreta-
tion, the female could have the objective “to get him to put his arms
around her,” and the male “to get her to hit him.” In a second inter-
pretation, the man wants to trust her but she doesn’t care much about
him, and perhaps has betrayed him. In this scenario, the female
could want “to make him cry,” and the male “to get her to take care
of him.”
The purpose of this simplistic example is only to begin discussion

about the difference between direction that is experiential, such as an
<
understanding of what the character needs or wants, versus direction
~that is result-oriented and intellectual, such as emotional maps. If the
actor’s transitions become rooted in intellectualization rather than
experience, she starts to telegraph them, or push; the work becomes
forced or mechanical. The actor falls into what is called “indicating,”
that is, sowing the audience the character’s inner life rather than
living it, A director who is interestedin having good acting in his _
movie will do everything he can to prevent this.
7) “This is how I see the character...”
Talking about the character in terms of “what the character ts

like” is unproductive. This kind of direction is both result-oriented
and general.
In the same way that we don’t get to decide how to feel, we don’t
get to decide how or what to be. Just think of New Year's resolutions:
sometimes people make a resolution that they are going to become
“a nicer person,” or “more decisive.” It never works, does it?
eyo. -—
fo 7?
af iw) gc, | .
‘e {!
21
DirRecTING ACTORS / WESTON
If you have ever studied communication skills, you already know

how ineffective it is to criticize someone’s character; in other words
to tell someone, “You're a bad person.” It is more helpful (and indeed
Ee] more accurate) to say, “You did a bad thing.” Yau are giving them the
opportunity
to change._
Although people cannot change who they are, they can change
what they do; they can pay attention to detail. To use our New
J Year’s resolution example, a person could resolve to write more

thank-you notes, and at the end of the year he might feel like a
“nicer” person. Our indecisive person might need to do some
research into decision-making skills. The good self-help books are
very task-oriented. The ones that do nothing but exhort the reader
to have more self-esteem are worse than useless; they add strain and
self-doubt to the reader’s burdens.
Likewise for an actor, trying to be “what the character is like”

usually produces stress and self-doubt. Acting becomes an oblig-
ation, a burden. The character becomes sqme sort of Platonic
ideal, a “character in the sky” that the actor feels she must live up
to or become. I don’t even like the term “in character” because it
sounds static. SO
The actor and director need to break down their ideas about the
character into a series of playable tasks. This takes insight and
knowledge of human behavior, and it takes time. It is the actor's job
to translate the director's result-oriented direction into playable tasks.
But if actors keep getting result direction thrown at them just before
the camera is about to roll, there may not be time to make it playable.
So it helps a lot if the director gives direction in playable terms.
N
8) “Can you play him aggressive, but pleasant?”
You could call this the fine wine direction — “This character is
frightened, but determined.” “She is in love with him, but doesn’t
want to hurt her sister.” “He is defensive yet vulnerable.” “She is
catatonic, yet curious.”
22
Directors think that by giving a direction like this they are calling
attention to the complexity of the character, but in reality they are
asking for something completely confusing and unplayable.
People are surely complex, but they are not actually able to.do
two things at once. ‘They may say one thing while doing another. Or «
~they may rapidly alternate what they are doing from one thing to _
another. But that’s not the same thing as being “cautious yet
cheerful” at the same time.
An actor can’t play two things at once. The two things cancel
each other out. Or the actor ends up faking one or both of them.
Now, of course there isn’t only one way of creating complexity in a
character — after all, it’s complex. We'll investigate this issue more
fully in Chapters on Actor’s Choices and Script Analysis.
oe
YY 9) “He’s a punk.” Or, “She’s self-destructive.” Or, “He’s a
Vowc
nebbish.” Or, “She’s a castrator.” Or, “He’s stupid.”
~
) Lo. ;
These are negative judgments on the character. Judgment is the
most dangerous consequence of deciding “what the character is like.”
who, like all of us, has both good and bad sides; they approach the /
character experientially, placing him in a situation, allowing him to
have needs and make choices — and not judging him.audience
The = __
__gets to make the judgments, to decide who is weak, strong, ambitious,
lazy, etc.
This idea is central to the artist-audience relationship. And it

to an audience.
applies to all genres of movies. Suspense is delicious
The basic posture of the audience is what happens next? This is true
even if we know that the hero is going to win, or the lovers are going
to get together — even if the movie is a “character piece” and all its
23
events are private and emotional. When the actor judges a character
and telegraphs to the audience, “I’m the good guy,” “I’m the loser,”
or “I’m the villain,” he is playing a caricature — who can care what
happens to him? When the director directs by telling the actors:
“You are the hero,” and “Y villain,” he is setting up a situa-
rem war .
suspense, jn which the actors will be

a en
tion in which there ca

showing us the end of the movie at the beginning. This is boring.
~The audience wants to participate in the emotional events of the
movie, to feel something happen to the characters right in front of
them. This is more likely to happen if there is in the characters some
complexity and ambiguity.
But, you may say, what about comedy? fantasy? action-adven-

ture? — where there is fun in the stereotypes and in the certainty
that the hero will prevail. Well, this is exactly why people say that
comedy is harder to do than drama, because you must have the
“style, energy, and s ecial skills needed for the particular genre, _
essing the neg of the characterization. Even if you
are directing physical comedy or live-action characters based on
cartoon figures, it is just as important to find a central humanity to
the character as when you are directing naturalistic drama. The
performances of Michelle Pfeiffer as Catwoman in “Batman
Returns” and of Claus Maria Brandauer as the villain of “Never Say
Never Again” show that it is possible to meet the demands of a
genre movie without caricature.
And of course serious drama loses any opportunity for insight or

revelation when good and evil are portrayed without ambiguity.
Villains portrayed as recognizably human are far more frightening
than cardboard cutouts. Heroes whom we see making choices and
coping with problems are more appealing than formula heroes. This
accounts for the success of the movie “The Unforgiven”: Gene
Hackman plays the cruel sheriff as a regular guy who is doing his job;
Clint Eastwood portrays the hero as a man with many misgivings
about the rightness of his actions.
It is very disappointing for a good actor to work with a director

who judges the characters. It may cause an instant loss of faith in the
24
director or, at the least, a slow erosion of any chance to collaborate

and create. The director, in his preparation, should approach each
2°" “character as if he were going to play that character himself: he allows
himselfto believe in each character's reality. When he speaks to each
actor, hetakes the side of that character; he allows each actor to pre-
pare a fully realized character, allows the characters to honestly con-
_flict with each other, and trusts the script. .
.9 10) “Let’s give [this character] a hostile edge.”
iy I'm talking here about attitude, deciding the attitude, talking

about the character in terms of his attitude. People often think that
deciding the character’s attitude is the way to develop the relation-
ships of the script; for example, deciding the character has a wary atti-
tude toward his brother, a tender attitude toward his sister, a hostile
attitude toward his father, etc. This is vague and general. Characters
and relationships
iene eeecreated this way na
tend to be generic
- and formulaic.
_ _
The very grave danger in asking actors for an attitude is that in
attempting to do as you ask they may start “playing attitude.” By
“playing attitude” I mean the difference between doing something
and showing something. Playing attitude is playing at the character.
Playing attitude is analogous to talking at,someone rather than
talking tg’ someone. When actors play attitude they are posturing,
they are showing us their performance.
They aré not listening tb each other. Nothing makes a perfor- _

mance look more amateurish than a failure to listen and engage with
~~ the other actors. The first thing a director should learn, and the first-
~~
Jast-and-always thing he should look for from his actors, is whether
_they are listening; that is, whether they are genuinely affecting each
e other in the moment, or whether they are just saying lines at each
——— other, overlaying their words and movements with a predetermined,
canned attitude or unction.
People confuse attitude with “edge.” Edge has become a catch-

all phrase. My impression is that most often when people talk about
“edge,” they are referring to something exciting and unpredictable.
25
DirecTING ACTORS / WESTON
The way to create an exciting and unpredictable performance is ot

__by playing attitude,_—— but _by getting under the Characters’ skins and —
“into their subworld, and by setting up an atmosphere of creative trust
at
and freedom where the actors can engage and play off each other.
* * *
When you ask for a general result, the worst thing that can
happen is that you might get what you have asked for: a generic
brother-sister relationship, a clichéd villain, actors emoting, pos-
turing, telegraphing the dramatic moments and forcing the humor,
with no connection to the other actor or to the words or situation
of the character.
Most of the time when directors give result direction or general

\ —
.
direction, it means that the only ideas they have are clichés} They
haven’t gone beneath the most obvious, surface possibilities of the
script. The choices themselves are pedestrian and uninspiring.
Whether your ideas are superficial or profound, if you frame

them in terms of result, you need to understand that you are asking
the actors first to figure out what you meant, and second to translate
your wishes into something playable. If you are going to give result
direction, it’s very helpful at least to give the actor enough time to
make the translation, perhaps to mention, “I know I’m asking for a
result here and you're going to have to find something playable,
something that works for you.”
[f, on the other hand, you want to save time on the set, it is vitally _
important that you spend time ahead of shooting to prepare and to
know your script and characters inside and out, and to learn how to
give direction in playable terms. It’s not just a question of vocabulary,
it’s a different way to approach a created reality.
my
But I can give you a quick way to spot general, result direction in
the way you talk to actors about their characters: train yourself to
notice when you are using adjectives and explanations; ~ ~~~ >
First, a quick grammar review. Adjectives are modifiers of nouns,

and adverbs, their close kin, are modifiers of verbs. They describe the
26
thing (noun) or activity (verb) itself. Examples of adjectives are:

happy, sad, seductive, angry, beautiful, sweet, vicious, casual, bitter,
abrasive. Examples of adverbs are: happily, sadly, seductively,
angrily, beautifully, sweetly, viciously, casually, bitterly, abrasively.
Now, what’s wrong with adjectives?
ADJECTIVES
Adjectives are static, they describe someone else’s impression of the

character. The essence of a person is not other people’s descriptions of
her. What other people see is only the tip of the iceberg. Many direc-
tors, because their script analysis has consisted of passively watching
the movie in their head, have only such superficial descriptions of the
characters available to them. In order to create an alive, believable
characterization, the actor needs insight into how the character expe-
riences life, in language that is experiential, not descriptive.
Adjectives are subjective, interpretive, and therefore not ideal

communication tools. Using adjectives to describe a character may
tell the actor more about your personality than about the char-
acter’s. We know from real life that people’s interpretations of
behavior vary widely; for example, behavior that one person con-
siders “friendly” may be seen as “sexual” or even “aggressive” by
someone else. So you can see how communication can get all bol-
lixed up if people rely on adjectives.
You can easily get off on the wrong foot with an actor by cri-
tiquing his performance using adjectiv es, for example by telling him,
“No, not like that. Play it sexy.” What if the actor thinks he already
was playing it sexy? If so, he will have one of two reactions. Either
he will start to doubt himself, thinking, “I’m not sexy enough for this
role. The director doesn’t think I’m sexy.” Or he will make a mental
note about you: “What's wrong with this guy? He doesn’t know sexy
when he sees it.”
27
Adjectives are generalizations. They serve our social needs to

summarize, to intellectualize emotion, to categorize experience.
They are a shortcut, a social necessity, a step removed from primary
experience. Primary experience is the experienee of our five senses,
what we see, hear, smell, taste, and touch. When we are in the middle
of an earthquake we hear very specifically the sounds of breaking
glass, car alarms; we feel the bed move under our bodies; our eyes
strain in the pitch darkness to pick out shapes; we may suddenly drench
in sweat — our sensory life is alive to detail. For about four months
after the 1994 Los Angeles earthquake, Los Angelenos would
describe their earthquake experiences to each other in great sensory
detail. After about four months, it became socially gauche to go into
such personal detail; so now when someone asks us about the earth-
quake we summarize the experience by calling it “scary” or “weird.”
But the actor needs to access exactly such primary experience, so

instructions that summarize or intellectualize primary experience
lead the actor away from the tools of his trade.
It’s a good idea to be suspicious of adjectives (and adverbs), and

even to avoid them altogether. Likewise explanations. Explanations
(emotional maps, psychologizing) have all the bad attributes of adjec-
tives: glib, subjective, static, superticial, intellectualizing, and catego-
rizing. And besides they are too logical, too dead-on. They are not
creative. Lawyers and accountants should explain things; artists are
here to suggest, illuminate, juxtapose, and let the audience draw their
own conclusions.
Good direction, that is, playable direction, generates behavior in

the actor, so it is active and dynamic rather than static, sensory rather
than intellectual, and objective and specific rather than subjective and
general. Instead of adjectives and explanations, I want to start vou
out with five powerful tools you can use to shape performances —
verbs, facts, images, events, and physical tasks.
28
Now I call this chapter “Quick Fixes” because verbs, facts,

images, events, and physical tasks are the quickest fixes I can think of,
and also because I wanted you to read the chapter and I knew a
chapter titled “Quick Fixes” would be the first thing you would read,
no matter where I placed it in the book!
Verbs, facts, images, events, and physical tasks are more playable
than adjectives and explanations because they are choosable and
repeatable. They are more specific than adjectives and explanations.
They work because they are active (verbs), objective (facts), sensory
(images), dynamic (events), and kinetic (physical tasks).
I shouldn’t give you the impression that result direction never

works, because sometimes it does. But when it works it usually works
just once. The actor “nails it” in rehearsal or on the first take, but
. (t4 . 7) :
then another take may be needed for some other reason, and the per-
formance vanishes. Everyone involved is mystified and depressed.
Specific, playable choices can also stop working unexpectedly,

but they are less likely to. And if they do stop working, the situation is
less hopeless, because verbs, facts, images, events, and physical life,
in addition to being good language for direction, are useful script
analysis tools. They help your imagination kick in. They are keys
to the characters’ subworld. Once you are alive and active in the
subworld of the script, you will have new ideas to replace the ones
that don’t work.
VERBS
Anyone who has taken a writing course has heard the teacher say
that writers should whenever possible select verbs over adjectives and
adverbs. Why shouldn’t the same be true for directors? Actions
speak louder than words. Verbs describe what someone ts doing, so
they are active rather than static; they describe experience rather than
a conclusion about experience.
29
Not all verbs are helpful in this context. State-of-mind verbs,

such as to like, to resent, to fear, are not necessarily any more helpful
than adjectives. The helpful verbs I call “action verbs.” An action
verb is a transitive verb, a verb that takes an objeet, something you do
to someone else. Typically, an action verb has both an emotional and_
aphysical component.
For instance, to believe is a verb, but not an action verb, because

what I believe is a description of my state of mind, not something I
do to someone else; even “to believe in” someone, although there is
an object, is still a state of mind, a condition; believing in someone is
not something that I do to him, it’s more how I feel about him. To
walk also is a verb, but although it is an activity, in this definition it 1s
not an “action verb,” since it isn’t something you do to someone else;
it doesn’t take an object. (I suppose a case could be made that “
walk [someone] through [a new task or exercise]” is an action verb.)
The words defensive and angry are not verbs (they are adjectives).
Si To accuse |is anexample of an actiononverb.verb, It, takes an object; you

accuse someone else of something, of lying, of underhanded behavior,
whatever. It has an emotional component in that accusing is an emo-
tional transaction between two people, rather than a physical one. So
>>that “to strike” functions as an action verb in this context only if it is
done with the voice and subtext, not if it is done physically. (Physically
striking another person, in a theatrical context, is not an action verb; it is
a piece of blocking or “business.” Actually it’s a stunt. Stunts must always
be carefully choreographed and staged, whereas an action verb is some-
thing that when it works has great spontaneity.)
But the action verb “to accuse” does also have a physical compo-
nent, in that it is something you do in the other person’s presence.
What if, during a conversation with B, A raises the accusation that C
has stolen money from him? Although A is accusing C, since C is not
present, we still have work to do to figure out A’s action verb toward
B, which will tell us what is the emotional transaction of the scene.
Of course we know from life that sometimes when a person is mad at
someone who is not present, he takes out his anger on the person who
is present. So the action verb for A toward B might be “to accuse,’
30
but it also might be something else. 70 convince, to beg, to complain, to

punish, to tease, to soothe —all are possible action verbs for this situation.
There are two lists in the Appendix, a Short List of Action Verbs
and a list of More Action Verbs. Let's say you find yourself inclined
to describe a character by saying he is “being defensive.” See if you
can translate that into a verb by consulting the Short List. Now you
might say that the right verb is not on that list; you might find your-
self inclined to say that the appropriate verb translation for “being
defensive” is to defend or to protect or to deflect. ‘These are verbs and
they do take an object, so they are candidates. They are a little bit
intellectualized, however, and not quite as muscular and immediate as
the verbs on the Short List.
So I might suggest, in place of the direction to “be defensive,”

one of the following: to complain, to belittle, or to warn. You see, | am
thinking about the defensive behaviors I have seen in life (including
of course the ones I have committed myself). When people are
feeling defensive it is usually because something is coming at them
that they don’t Jike, perhaps information they don’t want to face. So
they try to deflect attention from the information that is coming in.
There are different ways they might accomplish this: they might
complain about being picked on unfairly; they might be/itt/e the source
of the information; they might warn the person conveying the infor-
mation not to persist. That’s how I came up with those ideas, out of
my imagination and my life experiences. Of course when we have the
script and can make a proper script analysis (Chapter VII), we will be
even better positioned to pick suitable candidates.
I certainly don’t claim that the Short List (or even the longer list
of More Action Verbs) comprises all of human behavior, but I have
found it helpful to ask students, when they are learning to use more
verbs, to start with the Short List and at least for a while restrict
themselves to it. It’s like a musician sticking to scales when she is first
learning a new instrument.
Do you see how these verbs are specific? How in a situation

where time is short, they could fix a performance? The great thing
31
about verbs is that they focus the actors’ attentions on their scene
partner. This allows the actors to affect each other and thus to create
the emotional events of the scene.
Hy
Verbs can be used as a quick fix, but they are also important to the
basic understanding of a character. Verbs belong to the constellation
of through-line, need, objective, intention and are a very useful way
to structure a characterization as well as a way to structure a scene. I
will be talking more about structure in later chapters. Here I want to
give you a short list of ways that verbs can be alternatives to common
result directions.
= Use a verb instead of an emotion.
Although we can’t decide how to feel, we can decide what to do.

This makes the verb, something that we are doing, a playable choice
and a playable direction. The action verbs describe an emotional
transaction; when people do things to each other, something happens;
hence action verbs create an emotional event. , Using action verbs
instead of adjectives is a way of approaching the emotional center of
a scene in a way that is experiential and playable rather than descrip-
tive and result-oriented.
What we do affects our feelings and can create feeling. In an

exercise I use in my Acting for Directors classes I ask the students to
practice action verbs from the Short List, using improv and gibberish.
When, for instance, I have them play the action to accuse, if they do
it honestly, they are often surprised to find themselves feeling some-
thing. It could be hurt, anger, self-righteousness — one can’t always
predict what the feeling will be.
‘The audience is not drawn to a story by what an actor is feeling,

but rather by what the character does with the feeling, in other words,
what happens next. ‘Vhe audience wants to feel things themselves!
That's what they pay tor! It’s not what Jessica Lange is feeling in
“Blue Sky” that makes her performance so thrilling; it’s what she is
doing. I had an acting teacher who used to exhort us: “You're actors,
damn it — not feelers!”
32
How about remembering it this way: We can be put in jail for

our actions, but not for our feelings, because what we feel is not our
fault; we can’t control it, whereas we can control what we do.
> Use a verb instead of an attitude.
A critical point: When the actor is playing an attitude, his con-

centration is on himself; there is a tiny voice running in his mind, a
subtext, thus: “Am I being sexy enough?” Or, “Is this enough
anger?” When his concentration is on himself, his acting becomes
self-conscious and stagy.
Superior actors will not be harmed by your using verbs instead of

adjectives, and less experienced actors may very well be helped. An
actor who is floundering may find the right track, and a scene come
alive, right before your eyes! So instead of asking an actor to “play it
sexy” (adjective), you might ask him “to flirt” with her (verb); instead
of asking an actor to “be more angry” (adjective), you might suggest
that she “accuse” or “punish” him (verbs). This shift in concentra-
tion allows and encourages the actors to listen and to engage. It also
allows vou the director to be more active in the collaboration. When
you are active and alive in the process, you will be better able to bring
the script to life and guide and shepherd your vision.
Use a verb instead of “take it down” or “give it more energy.”
cActors actually hear directors saying things like, “Yes, you should
be mean to him, but not that mean.” Can you hear how hard it would
be to interpret this direction? Verbs can help. You may notice,
though, that it will take more thought on your part to articulate pre-
cisely what it is that you want using verbs instead of adjectives. The
extra mental exertion is good for you! Directing is not supposed to
be easy.
Now, do you want the actor to punish? to warn? to complain?

Each of those verbs would give a different level of intensity to the
line; punish might be the most intense, and complain the least intense.
Again, you can’t be sure until you try it. It’s not a chemistry formula,
33
where “x” milliliters of hydrochloric acid combined with “x” milli-

liters of bleach will always turn the litmus paper a certain color.
Asking an actor to coax rather than demand might be another way

to getting them to “take it down.” It can sap actors’ energy to be con-
stantly told to “take it down” instead of a more specific direction. It
can make them feel that you don’t care if they commit, that you don’t
want them to engage.
Sometimes, of course, “take it down” is exactly the right direction

when it is given as a permission not to push or force, as in “It’s okay to
relax, to let it happen; let it all be there; you don’t need to show us
what you are feeling.” And sometimes an actor is “hovering” over his
performance and needs to let it go, in which case “Give it more
energy” would be almost the right thing to say. My point is that these
two phrases are overused and actors, when they hear them over and
over in situations that are not at all alike, may start to feel that the
director does not really know what he is talking about.
Use a verb instead of describing “what the character is like” or

“how I see the character.”
I had an acting teacher who used to say, “If a man is standing on

his head in the middle of the road, nobody asks if he’s the type!”
Actually, this statement, which he repeated often, was a riddle to me;
I pondered it without understanding for a long time. What I know
now years later is that actors and directors waste a lot of energy and
time gossiping about the characters, arguing over whether the char-
acter “would do” such and such a thing. If he does it, then he would
do it! We are what we do.
Actors sometimes resist this idea. You'll hear them say: “My
character would never manipulate — she’s too nice.” Or, “My char-
acter wouldn’t flirt — he’s uptight about his sexuality.”
News flash: Uptight people flirt! Nice people manipulate!

Proud people beg! Shy people brag! People are complex. In real life
we do lots of things that are inexplicable to others and to ourselves.
34
Actors and directors who get bogged down in “what the character
is like” miss entirely what a tangle of opposites humans really are.
Indeed, actors and directors who get bogged down in explanations
have a terrible time when they want to describe a complex char-
acter. They psychologize the character to death, piling convolution
upon convolution.
What makes a character complex is that he does different things

at different times. Gene Hackman is a master at this, changing inten-
tions (verbs) in the wink of an eye. He can charm, challenge, whine,
demand, seduce — not all at once but in very quick succession. This
makes his characters complex and unpredictable.
Don't waste time wrestling over what the character’s personality.

__ is; just do it, _
Use a verb instead of a judgment.
Instead of denouncing a character as manipulative, give some

thought to the specific behavior of a manipulative person. Perhaps
she cajoles, begs, goads, and finally punishes (for example, Bette
Davis in — well, in a lot of her movies, but let’s say opposite one of
her worthiest adversaries, Claude Rains, in “Deception”.
Use a verb instead of a line reading.
Harold Clurman, in his book On Directing, describes this tech-

nique. What I have called giving a line reading, he calls “demon-
strating” for the actor, and he disarmingly admits to demonstrating
“more than I believe fitting or desirable.” Of course this happens to
all directors, and Clurman even treats us to a private conversation he
had on this subject with Constantin Stanislavsky himself. But
Clurman is careful to point out that when he demonstrates a line to
an actor, it’s not because he wants the actor to say the line with the
inflection he gave it, but that he wants to communicate to the actor
a sense of the intention of the speech.
35
An intention is another term for what I have called an action verb.

Now, coming up on the spot with the appropriate action verb when
you are in the thick of rehearsal or shooting is not always possible.
There are good directors who are not verbally quick. Sometimes a
line reading is finally the only way you can convey the meaning of the
line. Line readings are not actually so very bad as long as you do
understand what the line means, i.e., what intention it carries.
Although I believe that adding more verbs and weeding out

adjectives from your vocabulary will help you articulate your ideas, I
don’t want you just to get slick at translating adjectives and line read-
ings into verbs. The important thing here is not that you are
required to come up with and articulate the correct action verb for
every intention that you want the actor to express, but that you can
give more specific, more followable direction when you understand
that what you are looking for is not really an inflection but the inten-
tion of the line.
FACTS
Directors and actors all too often underestimate the power of

facts. They have a tendency to want to embellish them with expla-
nations. Explanations weaken facts because explanations are subjec-
tive, interpretative; facts are objective. The power of an explanation
rests with the persuasive abilities of the explainer. Facts speak for
themselves, and often they are more eloquent than explanations.
There are two kinds of facts that are useful to directors and
actors: facts that are in the script, that is, factual backstory and the
events of the script; and facts that are not in the script, that is, imag-
inative backstory choices.
Determining the facts that are in a script is an important focus

of Script Analysis. Script Analysis is something that many directors
fear and avoid. But script facts of all kinds — backstory facts that
are stated in the script, backstory facts and events that can be
deduced from the script, and imaginative backstory choices that
36
develop the skeleton of backstory facts into a rich, created

universe — can be truly magical.
Use facts instead of psychologizing.
Saying that a character “can’t express his feelings” is an example

of a psychological explanation. Even if it is true (and to me the
phrase is glib and lacks the ring of truth), it is not playable. A more
helpful place to start our explorations into this character would be to
note as a fact, “He doesn’t express his feelings.”
She wrote a letter to her mother every day of her honeymoon. That's
an example of a fact. Doesn’t that fact evoke her nature more vividly
than the psychological description that “she is very attached to her
mother”? Even a full explanation of the origins of this attachment
would just get long-winded and intellectual. The honeymoon letters,
unadorned, are more eloquent.
Don’t embellish the facts with explanations.
I was working with two acting students on a scene from the movie
“When Harry Met Sally”; Sally and her friend Marie are discussing
Marie’s married boyfriend. I asked the actress playing Sally what she
thought were the facts of the scene. She said, “Sally’s best friend is
dating a married man, and she disapproves.” (I have added italics to the
unnecessary embellishment.) Every woman I know, if her best girl-
friend was dating a married man, would have some reaction, without
needing to be instructed to have one. Adding the embellishment waters
down the direction. The situation itself is more vivid and evocative
than its embellishment. Directors often think they are sharpening
the focus by adding the explanation of the character’s state of mind,
but actually they are blurring it.
Use facts instead of “what the character is like.”
In one of my courses at the Rockport Maine Film and ‘Television

Workshops, I decided to screen for the class the movie “On the
37
Waterfront.” In the class discussion the next day, we were going over
the events of the movie in order to determine the spine of the char-
acter Edie (Eva Marie Saint). We were listing some facts of Edie’s
background, e.g., that she has been kept from the world of the docks
by her father, who used his savings to send her to Catholic schools.
There is a scene about half way through the movie in which

Edie comes up to Terry’s pigeon cote on the roof and they have a
conversation; the scene ends in a kiss and a fade-out. I mentioned
to the class that one of the facts we had to look at concerning Edie
is that she has sex with Terry when she actually has only known him
a short time. Students took issue with me. Several insisted that the
scene in question had not ended in sex, because Edie was “not like
that,” that a girl “like Edie” in middle-class America in the 1950s
“wouldn’t do that.”
But look at the evidence. The next scene after the fade-out has
Terry coming to talk to the priest. The priest mentions that Edie has
an appointment with him and is on her way. . Here is the fact we
should look at: the next day they are both coming to talk to the priest!
This is evidence that something happened on the roof that was trou-
bling. If we look back at the scene and decide that nothing troubling
happened in the scene, then something troubling must have hap-
pened after the scene ended. At this point we look at Edie, educated
by nuns, sheltered by a doting father, and realize that a girl with that
background might, the morning after her first sexual experience,
make an appointment to meet with her confessor.
There is evidence, later in the movie, that I think closes the

book on this bit of detective work. When Terry breaks down her
door to see her, she is in her slip. She screams at him to get out, but
never tries to cover herself. Since she does not seem to fear the loss
of Terry’s respect, what does that suggest has already been lost? Of
course having Edie wear a slip in that scene may not have been in
the original script; it may have been a directorial choice. This is in
fact how directorial choices are made; they are based on evidence
and deduction.
38
Facts are a potent weapon in script analysis. The great thing

about facts is that, as the saying goes, you can’t argue with ’em. If you
have a disagreement with an actor, go over the facts of the scene
together. You may be able to find out how the actor arrived at his
choice, and then be able to discuss the problem more fruitfully.
Use facts instead of a judgment.
Instead of describing a character as “a bitch,” you might invent a

backstory fact, say that “she poured paint on the windshield of her ex-
lover’s car.” Instead of saying, “He’s a likable guy,” you might say,
“After he asks a question, he listens to the answer,” or “He looks you
right in the eye,” since those are factual statements of behavior that
many people find likable. It takes more thought, more imagination,
to think up facts that describe a character.
Use facts instead of attitudes.
ately hear in their mind an attitude and tone of exasperation. You

shouldn’t jump to that conclusion. What you should get from that
From there, you may ask questions: How many previous con-
versations? What was actually said? Under what conditions? Did
character B, who was told the information and yet is asking about it
again, not believe character A? Or not listen? Was she distracted by
some other secret concern? Facts and questions will begin to create
a set of given circumstances that generate behavior that implies a
point of view. Fresher, more vivid performances will result.
Coming up with facts can lead us into interesting areas. Once

you decide that the line “I already told you that” doesn’t connote any
particular attitude, but only means that a previous conversation has
taken place, then you start to have some curiosity about this previous
conversation. It dawns on you, from your own experience and
39
understanding of life, that people don’t always remember a previous

conversation accurately; the speaker may think he spoke on this par-
ticular subject, but really only skirted the issue, expecting a hint to
be understood as a request. You start to come up with ideas that may
lead to insight.
Once you’ve described a character by saying, “She poured paint

on the windshield of her ex-lover’s car,” instead of “She’s a bitch,”
your statement opens the door to some questions. Could she have
had a good reason for pouring the paint? Maybe she’s not a bitch at
all! At least that’s what you want the actor playing her to feel. The
audience can decide for themselves.
Imaginative backstory facts are sometimes called adjustments.

An imaginative adjustment can be used to add a layer or a twist to the
inner life and imagined given circumstances of the character. In this
case it might be phrased as a “what if?” .Let’s take as an example a
scene in which an employee is told by his boss that he has been ter-
aa
\
minated. Let’s say that the boss only appears in this scene. You could
add texture to a sketchy characterization of the boss by asking the
question, “What if her own father had been fired from his job when
she was a child?”
—_
IMAGES
By images, I don’t mean only visual images, but the experiences

of all our five senses, what we see, hear, smell, taste, and touch.
Images (as well as facts) are the tools of the storyteller. A successful
storyteller is one who can make images come alive, who by adding
sensory detail can make us feel as if we are actually there where the
story is happening.
The director’s image, the picture he wants to convey to the audi-

ence, while an important part of filmmaking, is not useful to the actor
because it is a result. If you want a certain shot to convey to the audi-
ence an image of, say, loneliness, telling the actor this will not be
helpful, because you would be asking for a result. It would be more
40
RESULT DIRECTION AND QUICK FIXEs
helpful to put the character in a situation (a set of facts) that might

produce the behavior you want to photograph.
The kinds of images that speak to the actor are 1) the images of
the text, that is, the images created by the words of the script, and 2)
the images that the actor brings to the script, which become the
images of the script’s subworld.
‘To give you an example of images in the text, let’s take this line
(from Arthur Miller’s “Death of a Salesman”): “To suffer fifty weeks
of the year for the sake of a two-week vacation, when all you really
desire is to be outdoors, with your shirt off.” This line is full of
images: “outdoors” is an image, with sensations that include sound
and smell and tactile sensations as well as visual information; “shirt
off” is an image with many associations; “two-week vacation” is an
image with memories of many emotuonal colors for most people;
even the two verbs “desire” and “suffer” carry images. In later chap-
ters [Il talk more about how exploration of the images of the text can
deepen and expand vour understanding of the script.
Here are a few ways that directors can use images that spring
from the character’s subworld to open up and tap into the actor’s
emotional resources and help her connect her own imagination to
the imagined world of the script.
Use images instead of asking for emotions.
Sensory memories are powerful evokers of emotion and subtext.

The memory of the smell of baking bread can whisk us back to the
kitchen of our youth; a phrase from an old song can return us to the
delicate yearnings of a long-ago love; reading the news can make us
weep or rage if we allow ourselves to see and touch the misery we are
reading about.
Images can call forth expressive behavior from an actor and make
his deep emotions available. For example, I was directing for a work-
shop a scene from “Orpheus Descending” by Tennessee Williams
(made into the movie “The Fugitive Kind”). At the beginning of the
41
scene Lady, who thinks she is alone, says, “T wish I was dead.” Val,
who has overheard her, steps out of the shadows and says, “No you
don’t, lady.” After a few rehearsals | was not happy with what the
actor was doing with this line; it kept sounding like a line in a play,
rather than anything a person was actually saying to another person.
When I mentioned to him that I thought the moment was not yet ful-
filled, he began to speak the line with more emphasis, which only
made things worse; he was adding a fake urgency to a moment for
which he had not yet found an emotional reality. Finally I took him
aside and, on an impulse, looked him in the eye and asked, “Have you
ever seen a dead person?”
His eyes shifted, inward it seemed; he said quietly, “Yes.” I said,

“Let’s run the scene.” After that his delivery of the line was honest,
direct, and emotionally full. We did not discuss it again, so I don’t
know what interior adjustment he made. But I know that for myself,
the first time that I saw the dead body of a friend, a person stull young
— not all made up in a funeral casket, but lying on a gurney in an
emergency ward — created an unforgettable image. Picturing it in
my mind would make it easy for me to assure someone that it was a
state that one does not really desire.
Use images instead of explanations.
Let’s say you are directing a movie with a main character whose
backstory is that at the age of four she was left with an unpleasant rel-
ative for six months during her mother’s hospitalization for polio.
You might find yourself wanting to explain to the actor the character
in terms of the psychological effects of her abandonment — with-
drawn, suspicious, self-destructive — whatever. But instead of
spending hours psychologizing (intellectualizing) the character's deep
emotions, you could invoke an image, perhaps that of the door
closing on the child’s father as he leaves her there, or the last light of
his attempt at a smile.
Such images live with people (characters) the rest of their lives.
Summoning the images associated with important events much more
closely approximates the workings of these events on actual human
42
psyches than explaining their effects. Access to such images is one of

an actor's most important tools. Directors who can communicate
with actors on the level of these images can get actors to do anything.
Use images as imaginative adjustments.
The term adjustment is used differently by different people.

Sometimes it is misused. Sometimes it is confused with attitude; it’s
possible, even common, to hear a director telling an actor to use “a
cheerful adjustment.” But cheerful is an adjective, an attitude, not
really a plavable adjustment. What about this: “The adjustment is
that you realize that she has betrayed you and you decide to kill
her.” This is definitely not a playable adjustment, but a disguised
emotional map.
A way to use an adjustment if you want the actor to play the char-
acter with more “cheer” might be to suggest that she take the adjust-
ment that everything the character opposite her is saying is really
good news.
In addition to the “what if?” imaginative backstory adjustments

described under “Facts” above, an adjustment can be a junior image,
a brief metaphor, a quick fix. It often takes the form as if’ For
example, a love scene: you might ask the actors to play it as if it is a
business deal. Or you might ask actors to play a business meeting as if
it is a children’s play sword fight. Or you might speak to the actors sep-
arately and ask one of them to make an adjustment as if the other
character has bad breath. A quick imaginative adjustment of this type
can bring spark to a scene that is playing too dead-on.
EVENTS
Every scene has a central event. The central event of a scene may
be that one galaxy overthrows another galaxy’s way of life, or it may
be that one character makes another character blush. Creating the
43
events of the script is the most important job of the director for
two reasons:
1) Because the events of a script tell its story, and the

director is a storyteller. The events must unfold emotion-
ally and filmically so that they are at once surprising and
inevitable, and so that the audience remains throughout
the movie in that delicious state of anticipation of what
happens next.
2) Because the events of the movie tell us what the movie
is about, and the director is the shepherd and guardian of the
movie’s theme. Sidney Lumet says in his book Making
Movies that what the movie is about — some people call this
the movie’s theme — is the central thing a director needs to
feel and understand; every decision she makes about the film
must be based on what the movie is about.
What I mean by “event” is not the same as plot or incident, but

is more like an emotional event, such as a fight, a negotiation, a
trick, a healing, a seduction. I will discuss event and theme further
in the Script Analysis chapter, but for now I want to mention that
talking about the event of a scene is a useful way of communicating
with actors.
Telling the actors that the scene is about a fight between two
people who used to love each other can help them rally the personal
and imaginative resources they need to create the poignancy you are
looking for in the scene, whereas telling them you want the scene to
be poignant or giving them an emotional map will be subtly less
exciting and less generative of good acting. It takes imagination and
insight and thinking to change your perception of a scene from an
adjective or an emotional map to a sense of event. Luckily the
process itself is invigorating and stimulating.
Even when you know how to articulate the events, bringing them
to full and vivid life is not necessarily easy. A director needs to be on
the lookout for the fake confrontation, the clichéd apology, the
“movie” love scene. We don’t want to indicate the event; we want to
44
make it happen in the here and now and let the audience in on it. [’ll
be talking more in the next chapter about ways to ask for, recognize,
and encourage the honest, moment-by-moment acting that creates a
genuine and dynamic sense of event.
PHYSICAL TASKS
The thrust of all these alternatives to result direction has been to

look for ways to ask the actor to do something rather than to ask him
“tobe something. Becausé then the actor concen
can trate
on what he ~
is doing, and allow himself to be in the moment, so his behavior can
be natural and spontaneous.
And the simplest thing you could ask an actor to do would be a

physical task. When the actor or actors are concéntrating on a phys-
ical problem or task, their concentration can give the scene a sense of
its emotional problem. A physical task takes the actor’s concentration
off the lines, because he lets the lines come out of the physical task.
Concentration on the lines — on remembering them or on deliv-
ering them the “right” way — makes a performance stiff, rehearsed-
looking. Concentration on an imaginative task, such as a verb, fact,
or image, takes the actor off the lines and into a created reality. The
actor lets the lines come out of the imaginative task rather than out of
a preconceived idea of how they should sound. But if the imagina-
_tive task gets too intellectualized or self-conscious, then a physical
_task may be useful.
I was told a story of one director of a major motion picture who

was having trouble with a direction to an actor: She wanted him to
play the scene less seductively. She kept telling him so, to no avail.
The scene was stuck, too dead-on to the lines, emotionally stagnant
in the actor’s predetermined idea of how the line should be said.
Finally (the scene took place in a kitchen) the director said, “Why
don’t you go to the refrigerator and look for a snack during this conver-
sation. And let’s let the refrigerator door be a little stuck.” As soon as he
had a physical problem — the stuck refrigerator door — to put his
45
DirectinG AcToRS / WESTON
attention on, the words were freed from the actor’s preconceived
notion, and the scene played simply and naturally.
At this point I ought to talk about verbs again. Verbs are an emo-
tional and imaginative extension of physical tasks. The more physical
the verb is the better. If you want to punish someone, getting him to
feel punished is a task, like making a sandwich or potting a plant, only
it is a psychological task, not a physical one. A measure of how skilled
an actor is is how effectively he can make that psychological leap so
that an imaginative choice has a sense of task. Even if he is getting
result direction, he automatically translates the result into a playable
task; for example, if told to be angrier, he starts punishing the other
character; if told to be sexier, he seduces the other actor. He works
moment by moment, putting his concentration on the other actor.
Afterward he feels tired, just like after a demanding physical task.
Whenever actors are struggling, it is helpful to make your direc-

tion as simple and as physical as possible. Having a very simple, phys-
ical thing to do brings down the level of stress so they can rally their
concentration and confidence. .
QUESTIONS, QUESTIONS, QUESTIONS
“Do you want it seductive? I can do seductive.”
Directors are not the only ones who give actors result direction.
Actors do it to themselves! Actors routinely come into casting ses-
sions and immediately ask, “What's this character like?” In rehearsal
or on the set you might give a solid, specific direction that with care
and feeling creates the images and factual circumstances of the char-
acter’s situation, only to have the actor respond, “You mean you want
it more sarcastic?” or “You want me to pump it up?” He has fallen
into “playing the result.”
Don’t be discouraged. Have faith. Don’t allow your idea to be

reduced to its lowest common denominator. Look for the experi-
ence, the process, rather than the result. When an actor asks you a
46
question, even if he asky you for an adjective, answer with | a fact, a

verb, an image, anevent, ora physical task. ~~ —
“
Or a question. Preferably a question.
The very best way to direct is not by giving direction at all, but
by asking questions. All the devices I have been discussing — verbs,
facts, images, events, physical tasks — function best in the form of
questions to the actor: “Do you think these characters have ever™
pulled off a robbery before?” “Do you think he wants to pick a fight
or is he hoping she will stay calm?” “What if the character is lying
when she says this line?” “What if she just received a crank phone
call?” “What does the image ‘cherry orchard’ conjure up for you?” ,
“What's important about this scene?” “Do you have any impulse to
turn away from her when she says that?”
Sometimes “I don’t know” is the smartest thing a director can say

to an actor. Sometimes very smart directors tell an actor “I don’t
know” even when they do know. John Cassavetes was like that —
notorious for refusing to tell actors how to play their roles — but not
because he hadn’t done his homework and didn’t know and under-
stand the characters inside and out himself. Rather because he
wanted actors to find the characters themselves, to make them their
own. He wanted only fresh, unguarded, and emotionally honest
work.
In order to get the use of the full creative potential of your actors
you must be prepared for some of the answers to these questions not
to be the ones you were expecting. You have to give up your char-
acter-in-the-sky and the version of the film you have running on the
inside of your forehead. You can learn how to give direction in such
a way that the actor ends up feeling that his performance is his own,
and yet feels firmly supported by a smart, well-prepared director with
an authentic authority, who can offer the crucial “quick fix” because
she has done the groundwork.
47
MOMENT By MOMENT
MOMENT By MOMENT
"Of course the film director should know acting, its bistory
and its techniques. The more he knows about acting, the more at
ease he will be with actors. At one period of his growth, he should
force himself on stage or before the camera so he knows this
experientially, too.
"Some directors, and very famous ones, still fear actors instead
of embracing them as comrades in a task. The director must know
how to stimulate, even inspire the actor. Needless to say he must also
know how to make an actor seem not to act, how to put him or ber
at their ease, bring them to that state of relaxation where their cre-
ative faculties are released...
"All in all he must know enough in all these areas so his actors
trust him completely." — Elia Kazan
These next chapters will be a journey inside the actor’s world, to

introduce you to the craft of acting and some ways that actors work.
You may feel that I am telling you more than you as a director need
to know. Think of it as bounty. I am a great believer in knowing
more than you need to know. Creativity is bountiful. If you confine
yourself to learning only the things you are sure you will use, you are
running amok of the very first principle of creativity, which is bounty.
My approach is intended for directors with a thirst to under-

stand and build a trust with actors. Interwoven with theory, obser-
vations, and examples will be specific suggestions of ways directors
49
DirREcTING AcTors / WESTON
can connect and collaborate more deeply with actors to make their
movies better and their own job more creatively rewarding.
FEAR AND CONTROL
“Almost every actor goes into almost every picture very fright-
ened. He is positive he really can’t do it. The bigger the star, the
more frightened he is.” — Paul Mazursky
Actors are in an unrelenting existential spin. A good performance

is a thrilling experience — it feels like flying. And it only happens if
they let go and float free. Paradoxically the craving to perform well
and feel this freeness can trick them into holding on, into reserving a
corner of their concentration so they can check on and control their
performance, which exactly makes all chances for a vivid, sponta-
neous performance disappear.
Sometimes asking an actor how she works can be a good way to

begin collaborative discussions about the work at hand. But not nec-
essarily. Sometimes actors don’t want to discuss their methods, espe-
cially with an “outsider,” which is how they often regard the director.
They may be afraid of sounding foolish. Or they may be supersti-
tious about exposing such subterranean material to the light of day —
afraid that once revealed, a technique that has worked a hundred
times won't work any more; afraid of becoming self-conscious.
Self-consciousness is a great problem for an actor, because it

means that he is uncomfortable about being watched. Self-conscious
acting is fussy, strained, thin, actorish; it lacks texture and spon-
taneity. When an actor is self-conscious, he may start to push or indi-
cate. Indicating or telegraphing or playing a result occurs when the
actor pretends to have feelings, reactions, and attitudes in order to
show the audience the feelings, reactions, and attitudes he has
decided are right for the character. Indicating shows up as a “false
note.” It may result from wrong-headed or inadequate preparation,
or from fear that his preparation is inadequate, that he will do it
wrong, or that the audience “isn’t getting it.”
50
MOMENT By MOMENT
The antidote is to put his concentration someplace other than on

himself. Without a compelling focus for his attention, the actor’s
attention turns to his own anxieties. His mantra unwittingly
becomes: “How am I doing? Am I saying this right? Does the audience
get it? Does everybody like me?” Unless the actor finds some other
thing to be gripped by, he will be gripped thus by self-consciousness.
It is important for directors to understand how wildly fright-

ening acting can be, how vulnerable you are when you’re up there,
how painful it is to hear criticism, how easy it is to doubt oneself.
The actor’s face, body, voice, thoughts, and feelings are exposed.
His thirst for a core, existential reassurance and validation is nearly
inexhaustible. He looks to the director for this. Honest praise is
as necessary to him as water. And so is forthright, accurate, and
constructive criticism.
RISK
“I send the actors out to suffer for me every day.”

— Jean Renoir
When actors can’t trust the director for honest and competent
feedback, they may become cautious. Cautious acting is not very
good acting because in real life people incautiously make a lot of mis-
takes. In order to bring a character to life, there needs to be risk, mis-
take, serendipity, idiosyncrasy, surprise, danger. These things give a
performance the texture of real life — and “edge.” When the acting
has risk, it makes drama more moving, comedy more surprising,
adventure more thrilling, mystery more suspenseful.
An actor must allow himself to be watched. Great actors love to

give, love to perform; like an athlete, they live to compete, they are
hungry to perform. A great dramatic actor allows the world to watch
his deepest, most private self, transformed by the created reality of
the script. Lesser actors hide. They refrain from giving over their
whole, flawed, idiosyncratic selves to every role. They rely on for-
mula or cliché in devising their characterizations. They make a safe
51
DirectinG Actors / WESTON
choice. They don’t “put out.” Because here’s one of life’s little
unfairnesses: If an actor takes a big risk and it’ worksit,is much better
acting than cautious acting. But if an actor takesa big risk and it
doesn’t work, it looks much worse than cautious acting.
A big risk that doesn’t work is called overacting. It is so acutely

embarrassing to actors to be caught overacting that many would rather
give a flat performance than a risk-taking one. Good actors are not
offended when a director catches a false note and informs the actor that _
he seems to have lost his center of truth or isn’t listening and has crossed
) line into overacting. They are grateful. They need the director to
tell them these things. If the director doesn’t tell them, they may feel
they must watch the performance themselves, and become cautious.
Success can be an enemy to an actor’s creativity. As soon_as one

has success, one has something to lose and can easily fall into a pro-
tective, rather than a risk-taking stance. Actors can be so afraid of
looking bad that they make choices they know are wrong for the
character. I mentioned in the first chapter the dangers of judging a
character, but it is equally dangerous to sentimentalize a character.
Fear of hurting his self-image with the audience, or reluctance to find
disagreeable behavior truthfully in himself— or plain squeamishness
— may cause him to resist the role.
Shelley Winters, in an interview on the Bravo Channel series “Inside

the Actors Studio,” spoke of the distress she felt on the set of “A Patch of
Blue” when she — in her own life a fierce advocate who had participated
in civil rights marches — had to play a racist and include a line added to
the original script in which she called Sidney Poitier a “nigger.”
“It was physically impossible... I just got to that scene and I

would vomit. And I would come in every day and I would have
some story why this woman got so biased, how she turned out like
this, what could have happened...” Apparently the director could
see that what the actor thought were attempts to humanize the
character were really resistances to the truth of the script and that
she was on the road to sentimentalizing the character by injecting
an awareness of guilt into the character’s behavior. He, together
52
MOMENT By MOMENT
with Poitier, convinced her to take the bigger risk of facing and
finding truthfully the behavior of a person without self-awareness,
without guilt — with the hollow moral center of a bigot. She won
her second Oscar for that role.
A big enemy of risk is the pressure to do it “right.” Movies have

gotten so expensive, television so driven by ratings, that nee X
A making » mistake rules most creative decisions, including those of
actors. Actors are expected — and expect themselves — to “nail it”
right away. They mistakenly put their concentration on making the
producer think they can do it right the first time rather than 6m a cre-
ative choice. Good roles are rare, competition is fierce, and as actors
age the parts get smaller. Directors, it seems, are always looking for
an instant result, and often are lacking in understanding or patience
regarding acting as a process.
Many directors are impressed with an actor’s “bag of tricks” —

an actor who can cry on cue or go from zero to towering rage in
sixty seconds. They may feel their work vis-a-vis acting is done
once they have cast someone whose bag of tricks includes an ability
to hit a set of predetermined emotional notes on command. But I
want to encourage you to look for something deeper, fresher, and
more honest.
“Any director’s job is to make an actor understand that you’re

giving everything of yourself to a part... It’s kind of a love affair, it
really is. You get very close doing movies. It sounds really corny but
it’s true. There’s not a lot that’s left unsaid when you go in the trailer
with them. They’re naked, they’re stark fucking naked. We all are.
As long as you break down the barriers, and are in it together, then
out of that nakedness will come something good.” — Adrian Lyne
The best work happens when actors are caught in unguarded

moments of simplicity and truth, giving a simple, genuine response
fo a question or remark or event. This is not as easy as It sounds.
Whether the script is naturalistic or fantastical, to look like a living
person in a situation rather than an actor in a movie an actor has to
get below the social mask. Even the most ordinary activities, say,
53
DirREcTING ACTORS / WESTON
cooking a dinner, when they are scripted in a movie, in order to read

and come alive on the screen, especially the big screen, require the
actor to perform on himself a stripping of the social veneer. Without
this stripping down to essentials, the actor wil] have no screen pres-
ence. Glenn Close calls this stripping down a process of giving her-
self permission to “disturb the molecules” in the air around her.
Actors often have their own highly private routines to get them-
selves below the social mask and ready to perform, ready to put out,
ready to disturb molecules. Sally Field says that as soon as she knows
she is going to be in a movie — no matter whether it is a big emo-
tional role or a lightweight comedy — she begins a process that she
calls “rawing myself up.” Even if the subject matter- the of
movie is
not painf ul she goes through her emotio
or difficult, and nal
imagina-
tive storage banks to get herself connected to whatever for her.is basic
about life, to separate herself from mundane concerns, such as fax
machines, phone messages, etc. It is a process of disobligating her-
self to the social realm so she can enter the creative realm. It’s a way
of turning off the “automatic pilot” that gets one through the routine
of daily life, so that she can be “in the moment.”
This is the ground on which the director must meet the actor if
he wants to have an actor-director relationship based on trust and
collaboration. After the best takes, the ones in which the actor is the
most unguarded, the actor may feel destabilized and raw. This is a
moment of truth for the director, a time when an insensitive response
can kill your chances for trust and collaboration — or, on the other
hand, when, if you see and acknowledge the actor’s psychic naked-
ness, you can forge an unshakable connection. There is no one thing
I can tell you that is the right thing to say at these times. These are
the times when the director, too, takes a risk.
HONESTY
“You put your energy, your thought, your imagination, your
spirit into something. It’s all rooted in who you are. Your skin
is what you manipulate to create the illusion of being someone
else. And that costs you every time.” — Ralph Fiennes
54
MOMENT By MOMENT
Contrary to popular belief, acting is not pretending or faking.

Actors in their work must be more deeply truthful than what passes
for honest behavior in the regular world. I want to encourage you as
directors to seek out and recognize honesty in_a performance.
eT
The great acting teacher Sanford Meisner has an exercise he
does with a group of students. He asks them to sit and listen for one
minute to the traffic outside the building. At the end of the minute,
he asks them, “Were you listening in character, or were you listening
as yourself?” If you think about this (you can try it yourself at
home), you can see how the idea of listening “in character” adds an
element of strain. Listening as yourself, with your own ears — a
simple task — is relaxing, centering. It keeps the actor from “acting
with a capital A.”
The actor must start with himself, he must hear with his own ears,
see with his own eyes, touch with his own skin, feel with his own feel-
ings. Then from his studyof the script, impulses.and understandings
start to bubble up from inside him. ._He makes the character_his own.
During a superior performance the actor often feels that he inhabits
the character’s skin, i.e., that he has “become” the character. The audi-
ence may feel that too. What this really means is that he is inhabiting
his owz skin, is “in the moment” but has brought choices and under-
standings to the role that create a sense of belief in the script.
Simple, honest acting is the biggest risk, because being honest

means the actor has to use himself, make his work personal. A really
good actor understands that when a director asks him for “more” —
more anger, more grief, more sex, more humor, whatever — what he
really needs to do is get simpler, more elemental, stop “acting with a
capital A.” In other words, do /ess, make it more honest in order to
get out of the way of his deeper resources, which will be the only
place he can find the “more” that the director is asking for. If the
director understands this too, then she can give her direction in the
form of perntission for the actor to go to the places he needs for the
role. Permission is the powerful weapon of the director.
55
A wonderful side benefit is that when actors are working honestly,

they keep coming up with new ideas. Working honestly opens up
corners of his brain and psyche so that memories, understandings,
and inventions start coming to him that he didn’t even know he had.
This is called working organically. Some actors do all their script
analysis this way — connecting in a relaxed way to whatever they
understand about the script and trusting that as they commit honestly
to what they understand, their understanding will deepen without
effort. Other actors prefer to do their script investigations via their
intelligence and then find and fill their organic center. Both Hume
Cronyn and Paul Newman have described their own methods as
being of the latter type (sometimes called “working from the outside
in”) and each has expressed admiration for his wife (Jessica Tandy and
Joanne Woodward, respectively) for working more organically (also
known as “working from the inside out”).
Sometimes directors find actors who work organically disturbing.

Such actors may look, while they are rehearsing and investigating, as
though they don’t know what they’re doing. Their rhythms and line
readings may seem wrong for performance. What they are doing is
organically adding layers. Such work pays off in the end.
* * *.
Some lines are more difficult than others to find honestly. There’
is a monologue I use in my classes from “The Last Picture Show” in
which Lois describes her now-deceased lover, Sam, as the only man
who really saw who she was. Then she says, “I've looked, too. You
wouldn’t believe how I've looked.” Students never have any trouble
delivering that line believably. It contains a sentiment that most
women can find honestly with ease.
On the other hand, actors can easily trip over the line, “I love
you.” I was once directing a young actor in a play in which he had to
say “[ love you” to another character. This particular actor always
worked with scrupulous honesty (he was incapable of lying in the reg-
ular world as well, which caused him to seem somewhat socially
56
MOMENT BY MOMENT
inept); he confided to me that he thought I would have to cut the line

because he knew it would make him too self-conscious to say it in
front of an audience. So I asked him to come early to the next
rehearsal. [ had him stand on the stage, with me in the audience, and
I asked him to tell me how he felt about me. He said, “I respect you.
I think you're a good director.” Then I said, “Now I want you to say
the words of the script, ‘I love you,’ but let yourself mean what you
just said to me. Don’t try to make it mean any more than that.”
When we opened, his performance in that scene was the most beau-
tiful thing in the show. I had given him permission, you see, to feel
that whatever he could bring in his own person was adequate to the
role, even if he had never said “I love you” in real life (as I suspected
was the case). From that point of honest connection, his imagination
could be engaged and his performance became a creative thing.
I want to encourage you to prefer from your actors emotional

honesty over showy emotional pyrotechnics. One way to talk about
this is to ask an actor to keep it simple. “Simple” for actors is a short-
hand for emotional simplicity, by which is meant emotional honesty.
MOMENT By MOMENT
“Fust because they say. ‘Action’ doesn’t. mean. you have to do

anything.” — Marlon Brando, reported by Al Pacino
You’ve probably heard the expression “in the moment” or
“moment-by-moment work” applied to actors. You may also know
the expression in connection with athletics, or certain spiritual disci-
plines or the pop psychology of the seventies.
In everyday life not many of us live moment by moment all the

time. When we watch ourselves, calculating the effect of our
behavior on others; when we censor ourselves and choose our words
and actions to meet social rules and expectations; when something
painful or upsetting happens and we don’t feel sad or angry until later
—— then we are not in the moment. When we are “in our heads”
57
DiRECTING ACToRS / WESTON
instead of in our bodies, intellectualizing our feelings and sensations;

when, while we are involved in one activity, our concentration is on
the anxiety or anticipation we feel toward an activity in the future —
then we are not in the moment. Come to think of it, being in the
moment in real life is pretty rare.
But it is available on a regular basis if you are an actor. For an

artist there are two worlds — the social realm, where we live and
work day to day, and the created (creative) realm. They are separate,
like nonintersecting sets. The concerns and obligations of the social
realm do not apply to the created realm. To enter the created realm
one must be — is allowed to be — free of the social realm, uncen-
sored, in the moment, disobligated from concerns with result, fol-
lowing impulses, obeying only the deepest and most private truths.
_ When an actor is fin the moment,” he is relaxed, confident, and

alert. He is responsive to the physical world around him, to-hts‘own
interior world of impulse and feeling and imaginative choices, to the
words and subtext of the script, and to the behavior of the other actors.
is
Heavail able.
He speaks with a “real voice,” not an “actor voice.”
He inhabits his own skin. There is “somebody home” when you look
in his eyes. “Moment-by-moment” work makes an actor look lifelike
and natural even in an extreme plot situation — like Nicholas Cage in
“Leaving Las Vegas” or Jessica Lange in “Blue Sky.” It makes a per-
formance breathtakingly simple, clean, and unfussy — like Jean-Louis .
Tritingant in “Red” or John Travolta in “Pulp Fiction” and “Get
Shorty.” It gives him ease and watchability — like Julia Roberts in
“Pretty Woman” or Tom Hanks in almost anything.
Moment-by-moment work is responsible for the tiny flickers of

expression that make an actor’s face seem alive in between the words.
When the actor deliberately tries for such flickers of expression,
deliberately tries to hesitate, stutter, wink or grimace, the acting
becomes mannered. Mannered acting, by calling attention to the
affectations of the actor, takes the audience out of the story. But
when such flickers occur “in the moment” they make screen magic,
they create a screen presence, they confer star quality.
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MOMENT By MOMENT
In a 1995 New Yorker interview, John Travolta is quoted: “It

doesn’t take much for a thought to be seen. I keep having to talk
directors out of talking me into overacting. I say, ‘You won't see it on
the set. You'll see it in the editing room.’ I have an ability to be it,
and it will read.” Shelley Winters quotes director George Stevens as
having told her that film acting is “talking soft and thinking loud.” It
seems to me that “thinking loud” has to mean that the actor trusts
whatever he is thinking and feeling to be adequate to the moment.
__ Actors call it “trusting the moment.” __
Of course there is talent involved here, too. An actor’s talent has
to do with the expressiveness of his instrument (i.e., his face, body,
voice, feelings, impulses) and the truth of his instincts. Travolta’s
talent is the well he has to draw from — in his case, a deep well
indeed. But his skz// (skill being different from talent, which is given
to you; skill being what you do with your talent) in “trusting the
moment” while a camera is rolling ensures that his feelings, impulses,
and understandings will be believable on the screen.
“In the moment” for actors has to do with freedom. It has to do

with fearlessness. It has to do with_trust._ It has to do with the actor
not watching himself. It means that whatever preparation an actor
does for a role is done ahead of time. Once the camera starts to roll
or the curtain goes up, the actor lets go of his preparation and allows
_it to be there.
Or not! You see, there’s a risk that the preparation won’t work
and the actor will be out there alone, drawing a blank, just saying
words, with no inner life, with nothing happening. This is where
the fearlessness comes in! Good actors, even after the harrowing
experience of a mid-performance loss of concentration, continue
to work properly, reworking their preparation and then jumping
into the abyss of moment-by-moment work. They continue to
trust the process.
When actors lose trust in the process, they begin to push, force,
reach for, or indicate what the character is thinking and feeling.
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DirRECTING ACTORS / WESTON
They look like actors, and the audience becomes distanced from
them and from the stories they are enacting.
Travolta’s quote earlier suggests that a lot.of directors are in the

dark as to the importance of moment-by-moment work and as to
what it even looks like. It would be ludicrous to suggest that this can
be taught in a book. But I want to open your minds a little, whet your
appetites for further study, and prepare you for the idea that moment-
by-moment work is worth making sacrifices for.
Directors can help actors trust their moment-by-moment con-

nections. I have been fascinated by the articles describing the first
meeting of Quentin Tarrantino and John Travolta, which led to
Travolta’s “Pulp Fiction” role and his return to artistic, critical, and
box office preeminence. Both men have described it publicly, and I
see it as a model for the creative potential of the actor-director rela-
tionship. Tarrantino bombarded Travolta with his detailed acquain-
tance with the minutia of Travolta’s career and with his enthusiasm
for the actor’s talent. “And then,” according to Travolta, “Quentin let
me have it. He said, ‘What did you do? Don’t you remember what
Pauline Kael said about you? What Truffaut said about you? Don’t
you know what you mean to the American cinema? John, what did
you do?’ I was hurt — but moved. He was telling me I’d had a
promise like no one else’s... I was devastated. But I also thought,
Jesus Christ, | must have been a fucking good actor!”
The director here has done three things: 1) he has let the actor
know that he sees him, the real him, his core being and his shining
talent; 2) he has let the actor know he knows the difference between
work which connects with that core and work which does not connect
with that core; 3) he has let the actor know that his commitment is
to that core and to his own core. This type of actor-director com-
munication (as long, of course, as it is heartfelt and tue and not just
Hollywood “love you, sweetie” bullshit) can get an actor “connected
up” to his deepest resources and free him to trust the moment and
not to “act with a capital A.” It gives him a deep confidence.
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MOMENT By MOMENT
Jack Lemmon, in an AXE Channel Biography, gives another clue

as to how a director can help. He tells a story about working with
George Cukor, who kept asking him not to “act.” Lemmon tried to
comply, but Cukor kept exhorting, pleading with him to do less. “1
can’t do less,” Lemmon snapped back. “If I do any less, I won't be
doing anything at all!” Cukor replied, “That’s what I want!”
Moment-by-moment work is lost as soon as the actor “puts any-

thing on it” — my teacher Jean Shelton used to call it an “unction.”
The word “unction” is kin to “unguent” — an oil that lies on top of
something and is not incorporated organically. It means playing atti-
tude or faking emotion — laying the attitudeor emotion on top of
_ the lines, rather than trusting the preparation and letting the lines
“bubble up from and come out of whatever impulse and feeling have
‘been stirred up by the preparation. ~
ae
“The best actors are children and dogs because they’re not acting
at all,” — Helen Mirren ;a
Theactor
who is “in the moment” i:-thinking realthoughts.and
feeling real feelings right in frontof us. This is an extremely radical idea.
Because after all, the actor is playing a character, right? So doesn’t
that mean that she should be thinking the character's thoughts and
feeling the character’s feelings?
Not precisely. I invite you to allow characters to have a subcon-

scious — even to have free will (or at least as much free will as any of
us have).
It is not possible to decide to play a character whose subconscious

mind is doing such-and-such. You can’t make conscious choices
about what to have going on in your subconscious; it’s the very defi-
nition of the thing that it is not conscious and not available to con-
scious control. So the actor must allow the character to borrow herown —
life
SUBCONSCIOUS. Then between the lines can kick in and the actor can
be a bridge between the words which are said and the words which
are not said — the subworld.
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DirpEcTING ACTORS / WESTON
Think of an iceberg. You know they say that what we see of an

iceberg is only ten percent; the other ninety percent is below water.
People are like that, too; the words that people say represent about
ten percent of what's going on with them,. what they’re thinking,
feeling, and doing. The other ninety percent is the subworld. In
order to have full-bodied characters, we need access to that subworld.
In bringing up the subject of free will, | don’t mean to raise a

philosophical argument. Giving a character free will means that the
character makes choices, makes mistakes, takes wins and lossés right
“in the scene as we are watching. The actor, rather than telegraphing
to us that the character has made a mistake or choice or win or loss,
behaves in the moment right in front of us. This doesn’t mean nec-
essarily that the character knows what she is doing; her actions may
come out of the subconscious soup rather than the conscious mind.
It means that the character says a line or makes a movement because
she had an impulse or a need to do so, rather than because the actor
learned a line and rehearsed some blocking.
This does not negate the actor's responsibility to the script. But
I want to open the possibility of connecting to the script not as an
obligation but as an opportunity to be enriched and enlivened by the
facts, images, and events of the script. Then the circumstances and
images of the script can interweave with and be informed by the free
subconscious inventions of the actor. The specifics of the script are
allowed rather than enforced. This exactly means that actors may be
following your direction, and the requirements of the script, and yet
their line readings may still be coming out differently from the way
you heard them in your head.
To keep from freaking out when this happens, you as the

director must feel and believe in the independent life of the charac-
ters. When a director does his script analysis homework deeply and
properly, he is not threatened when the actors breathe life into the
characters. And he has ways to guide the performance in another
direction if he wishes.
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MOMENT By MOMENT
IDIOSYNCRASY
“The good actors, the professional actors — usually those are

synonymous words — are like trained racehorses. They’re nervous
and skittish. They’re high-strung. It’s my job to make it as easy as
possible for them and to try and get their complete confidence in
me.” — Ralph Nelson, director of “Requiem for a Heavyweight,”
“Lilies of the Field,” “Charley.”
I was a young adult in the seventies and I remember well its

emphasis on being “grounded,” living “in the here and now” — “in
the moment.” I knew I was one of the many middle-class intellec-
tuals who lived “in my head.” TI tried to will myself into the
“moment,” but the effort of will never got me there. When I became
an actor, I began to experience being in the moment. It was exhila-
rating — a high more powerful and more enchanting than any drug.
I expect it feels something like what athletes describe as being “in the
zone.” You are not consciously in control, but you are not out of con-
trol. You feel deeply relaxed and confident. You are not thinking
about your next line, and yet you know you are going to say it. I was
hooked. When the thing was working, when I was “in the moment,”
it was the nearest thing to a state of grace.
Of course, it wasn’t always working. I soon found out that it

was hit-or-miss, and the more I tried to be in the moment, the less
likely it was to happen. How does one stay in the moment? Here
are four suggestions:
___J) Be strict about following your whims.
It was actually only when I became an acting teacher that I fully

understood this. From the very first class that I taught, I always fol-
lowed the whim of the moment. I always did, precisely and faithfully,
exactly what I felt like doing, and said exactly whatever popped into
my head — and it always worked out. Being “in the moment” means, _
for one thing, that you follow your whims without any concern about
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DirecTING AcTorRS / WESTON
whether people will approve of you — and then they approve of

you anyway!
Good actors are disciplined about following their whims. This

can make them difficult to be around. People who do not follow
their whims sometimes feel threatened by people who do.
Technicians on a set can be ruthless in their condemnation of actors
who don’t meet social norms, who are standoffish or touchy or loud
or engage in bizarre rituals to make themselves ready to work. This
is terribly unfair.
Now I do not feel that actors or anyone else on a set or in any line
of work should be indulged if their behavior is abusive. On a set it is
up to the director to set the tone, to draw the line as to what behavior
will be permitted for the sake of creative freedom and what will be
discouraged or diverted so that everyone can be relaxed and undis-
tracted in the performance of their jobs.‘ In interviews most of the
directors that I respect say that it is important to them to maintain a
set free of tension.
But maintaining a tension-free set does not mean allowing the

atmosphere to be dominated by social concerns. It does not mean
allowing the —~" apy oo
allowing the concerns of the shoot to revolve around whether every-
body likes each other or is unfailingly “nice.” The proper concern of
the shoot is always the work. And our work centers not in the social
realm butin the creative realm, which permits free and unconven-
tional behavior when it will further the work.
= f
a Y~s 2) Feel your feelings. /
\ ‘lo be in the moment, the actor needs to be connected to his own

. (
feelings. Sometimes, unfortunately, the only feeling an actor has
o honestly is anxiety. This can be horrifying for the actor, who may fear
Co that stage fright will make him look unprofessional.
Directors often panic at any sign of insecurity on the part of the

actor. In order not to worry the director, an actor can fall into
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MOMENT BY MOMENT
wishing or pretending to feel relaxed and confident when he does

not. This is not helpful. It only makes him more tense. Tension
causes a constriction of all reflexes and sensation, including our inner
vision, or insight. When an actor is tense or in denial of his feelings,
he can’t possibly go “moment by moment” because his sensory, intu-__
itive, and emotional resources are not available to him. This is what
actors are talking about when they say, “I’m just not there.”
But feelings are energy. Suppressing or manipulating real feeling

does nothing to release the actor’s instrument from stasis. Quite the —
“contrary. In order to stay responsive to stimuli that are appropriate
to the performance the actor must take the whole kaboodle and stay
responsive to stimuli that are not appropriate. Even fear can be used.
Deep-seated, buried pain, anger or fear, which in normal life

reveals itself as neurosis, can, with the tools of the actor, be turned
into energy and finally artistry. This is the famous joke about actors:
“Use it!” In the midst of terrible personal tragedy, the actor
brightens up: “I can use this when I play Miss Julie!”
Sometimes, while the camera is running, something unusual hap-

pens — a line is dropped, a prop breaks or is missing, a sneeze comes
on. Strangely enough, this untoward, unexpected event brings all the
actors to life. It is important to make it clear to the actors that no
matter what happens, you want them to keep going until you say
“Cut,” that you make this request because you wish and intend to
allow them to be alive and responsive to life in and around them, and
that you are watching their performances so they don’t have to. Not nec-
“essarily because you are going to use the take with the sneeze
(although who knows?), but because an event/mistake could happen
to the actor interiorly — a memory, an association, an idea could come
to him right in the middle of the performance — and you don’t want
him to stop when this happens! This is gold.
If an actor comes up to you and says, “I feel terrible. I don’t know

what I’m doing,” the best response is, “I’m glad this happened!” If
you can’t manage that at first, try “I’m glad you told me.” All fears,
all resistances, are potential energy. Even if an actor is very tired, this
VLiveeersy FC
65 pe dtu. Ld ©
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DirecTiING AcToRS / WESTON
can be a good thing. When people are very tired, they often loosen
emotional armor and are and in the moment.
ableto be more.relaxed
Sometimes to get the juices going, to break through the armor

that is blocking his feelings, the actor does calisthenics or breathing
exercises or yelling. Or sometimes he goes off quietly by himself for
introspection in order to locate his real feelings — this is what is
meant by getting “centered.” These approaches may work if the
actor gives himself — and is given — freedom; they won’t work if
their secret purpose is to manipulate or force a particular feeling.
__—— 3) Don’t move or speak unless you feel like it.
This idea is not the same as allowing the actor to wait around or
torment himself until he is “in character,” that is, until he feels the
feeling he has decided is “right” for the character. And I am not sug-
gesting that scripts should be improvised on camera or that blocking
and camera moves should not be set and the actors allowed to roam.
This notion of not moving or speaking unless the actor feels

like it rather has to do with giving the actor permission to follow
an interior sense of timing and impulse. The idea is that the actor
speaks because he has something to say, moves because he has
somewhere to go, rather than because it is in the script, because
the director told him to, or because it is his turn. As a way of
encouraging the actor to follow impulses, I find it very helpful to
remind students before scenes they present in class: “Don’t say
the lines unless you feel like it.” In fact, I find it helpful to make
this reminder every single time. I find that they don’t get tired of
hearing it. It relaxes them. It gives permission.
4) Forgive yourself for mistakes.
What is risk but freedom to make mistakes? We are mistake-

making creatures. A mistake is a moment when we see the abyss open
beneath our feet. In beginning acting classes often the best moment
of a scene is the moment when a student forgets a line. The look of
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MOMENT By MOMENT
concentration on his face is real — possibly the only real moment of

the scene.
Good actors use these moments, these glimpses of the abyss, to

ground themselves in the here and now. And directors can help by
giving actors unconditional love and freedom to make mistakes. I
often find that when an actor is having a hard time remembering
lines that | know he has worked hard on learning, as soon as | tell
him, “I don’t care if you get the lines right,” if he takes my permis-
sion to heart, he can remember them easily.
* * *
Staying in the moment takes a lot of courage and faith on both

the part of the actor and the part of the director. Staying in the
moment is not for sissies.
The main reason why I am taking so much time to suggest ways

to stay in the moment is that directors should do it too. During one
“Acting for Directors” session in Europe, I was suddenly overcome
by a spell of homesickness and despair. I allowed myself this thought:
“If it is really important to me to do so, I could quit. I could give
them back their money, change my plane ticket, and go home
tomorrow.” As soon as J said that to myself, I relaxed. I didn’t quit,
of course, but I felt my real feelings. Allowing myself to fee/ as
though I could quit was rejuvenating. And it made me know that I
was staying out of choice, not obligation.
FREEDOM
“On the set, [Woody Allen] leaves actors alone, he’s always about
loosening it up, and I tried to do the same. I don’t like too much
direction myself, it stops me from thinking or feeling... If somebody
talks to me too much I clam up.” — Diane Keaton
In order to work well actors need a tremendous amount of
freedom. In order to trust their impulses they need support. “Phey
need to be relaxed, free of tension, free of obligation.
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DirecTinG AcTors / WESTON
Obligation is absolutely always the enemy of art — how could it

be otherwise? One of my acting teachers years ago, Wendell Phillips,
used to say, “Dare to be boring!” We students made fun of him
behind his back for such a ridiculous precept, but when I became a
teacher myself | saw how profound it was. He was inviting-us to
release ourselves from the obligation to entertain; only then could we
surrender fully, deliciously, to the moment. ~ ~~
It turns out that obligation, the need to do things “right,” servicing

the script is so inappropriate to acting that it is better for an actor to
place a full, relaxed concentration on the “wrong” thing than a tense,
strained concentration on the “right” thing. Let’s say an actor
playing Hamlet suddenly starts noticing that a wrinkle in his sock is
rubbing irritatingly against his foot during shooting. Giving his full
inner attention to the discomfort of the wrinkle, in other words let-
ting the words come out through the sensation of the wrinkle, might
actually result in a better performance than if he tries to ignore the
sensation and struggles to look as if he is thinking about his
(Hamlet’s) murdered father! I know this sounds like a bizarre lapse in
concentration. But the only thing really that makes the sock dis-
tracting rather than enriching to the performance is if the actor starts
worrying that the sock is ruining his performance; in other words, if
his attention goes to the audience (do they get it? do they like me?
am I doing this right?), and he starts wishing or pretending that the
sock problem were not there.
A genuine imaginative or personal connection to the situation of

a person whose father has been murdered would of course be benefi-
cial to a performance of Hamlet. It is the reaching for or pretending to
that connection that does the harm. It is the dewial of present phys-
ical reality that takes him out of the moment, not the bad luck of an
“inappropriate” reality.
Now of course, actors need to stay within the camera frame and
make very exact moves so the camera can follow and photograph
them. ‘The freedom I am talking about is an interior freedom, which
is all the more important precisely because the actor has such strict
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MOMENT BY MOMENT
logistical parameters to follow. Paradoxically, it requires a strict dis-

cipline on the part of actors to maintain their interior freedom.
When I was taking classes from Gerald Hiken, and the work was
bad, he would say, “Do it wrong! Whatever you do, for God’s sake,
stop doing it ‘right’! It’s better to do it wrong than to do it right!”
He would then ask the student, “Okay, what's the right way to play
your role?” And she would say (for instance), “Lady Macbeth is very
angry and contemptuous of her husband because he’s getting cold
feet about the murder they’ve planned.” “All right,” Gerry would
say, “let's run the scene again. This time, do it loving and playful.”
And damned if it wouldn’t come out better! Not just a little bit
better, but a thousand percent better. It would have the revelation,
the magic,of a moment-by-moment performance just, because..the
actor, released from obligation to do it right, had nothing to lose.
Disobligation is that powerful; it can make even a sweet Lady
Macbeth believable.
Gerry would constantly egg us on, “Go ahead! Think your most
private, embarrassing thoughts right in front of them!” He meant the
audience. There is a kind of arrogance to the uncensored creativity
of an artist. For an actor, who must say the lines as written, and move
as directed, this arrogance and freedom must apply :vteriorly to his
unspoken thoughts and_feelings. He must give himself what
Stanislavsky called Jsolitude in public} — an unconcern for what
anybody thinks of him. The magnificent paradox is that if an actor
is free and uncensored, uninterested in whether or not the audience
“gets it,” we, the audience, will believe anything he tells us, anything
he does! Freedom gives his voice and person authenticity.
And it allows humor. A performance without freedom is a

humorless one. Anytime in real life that people are loose and free,
humor is bound to bubble up. Nothing is less entertaining than an
actor who is straining to be funny.
Not only that, but sometimes more freedom is the right choice for
a character. If it appears that a character is self-centered, instead of
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DirectiING ACTORS / WESTON
trying to play that judgment, the actor asks himself, What is the
behavior of a self-centered person? Sometimes, since they are uncon-
cerned with the feelings and needs of others, their inner life is very
free and uncensored. nN
[ have seen it over and over again as an acting teacher — that the
solution to most blockages for actors is, more freedom. In order to
inhabit his own body while making choices, i oFdéF to come up with
ideas, in order to access his truest truths, deepest feelings, and most
inventive imagination, an actor needs freedom.
Paradoxically, actors protect their own performance by being com-

pletely free and present and unself-conscious. An actor is more
believable and more engrossing when he is free and present in the
moment, even if his emotion or attitude is “wrong” for the scene,
than when he is tight and strained, desperately holding on to the
“right” emotion or attitude. A director who understands this can get
his actors to do anything because they will know that you are willing
to protect their performance by allowing them to be free and real and
in the moment no matter what else you ask of them.
CONCENTRATION
“I only want to skate a clean program, and to have fun.” —

Oksana Bayul, Gold Medal Figureskating Champion
Actors need concentration, but concentration is not an abstract

item. When a director hears an actor agonizing, “J can’t
get my con-
centration,” it might be helpful to ask him, “What.are you concen-
trating on?” Concentration doesn’t exist by itself. “There is no con-
centration without something that is being concentrated, on. The
point of concentration may have to do with the actor's choices or it
may be something in the here-and-now immediate reality. In other
words, if the actor is playing Hamlet, his concentration may be on
Hamlet's dead father, or it may be on the wrinkle in his sock. If the
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MOMENT BY MOMENT
work is properly done, the audience won't be able to tell which the
actor is concentrating on, only that he is concentrating on something.
When an actor is concentrated on her own private created reality,

the audience will want to get in on it. I don’t know if you’ve ever
tried to get the attention of a child by coaxing, begging, or
demanding that she pay attention to you. It doesn’t really work, does
it? But if you are deeply involved in some task of your own, say fixing
a clock, and if the task fascinates and energizes you, and if you unself-
consciously allow the child to watch and partake of your fascination
and energy, the child will soon come to your side. This is the func-
tion of concentration in an actor’s relationship to the audience. This
is the actor’s solitude in public.
Many people have the idea that you can’t concentrate_unless you
are relaxed, but it’s really the other way around: having a simple task
to
concentrate on is relaxing. A good 'actor thinks 6fher craft not as
something she has to do, but as something she gets to do. Finding a
compelling, singular point of concentration or attention unlocks the
actor’s imagination and opens for her the created reality. It’s like
stepping through the looking glass. Craft — or technique — is the
way the actor marshals her concentration, and finds the thing to
concentrate on. Craft, of course, does not replace good instincts.
Craft does, however, replace superstition and mysticism.
Good acting doesn’t look like acting. When acting is good, no

one can see the technique; the portrayal is seamless, magical. So
sometimes people get the idea that such performances are created
without technique, that on some magical occasions the actor simply
“becomes” the character. Sean Penn, whose performance in “Dead
Man Walking” unquestionably meets the standards of “seamless
acting,” said in an interview for National Public Radio after the
movie’s release that all his work is built on a steady accumulation of
detail that he arrives at through his craft. “I could do nothing
without my craft,” he stated.
When actors do not have a reliable craft they may put their con-
centration on the wrong thing. hey may concentrate on producing
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DirEcTING ACTORS / WESTON
a given effect, such as a mood or emotion or judgment. Or they may

concentrate on their appearance, their clothes, or the image that they
think the audience expects of them. Or their concentration may be
on doing it “right” for daddy/mommy director (that’s you). If they
have done a good audition or good rehearsal or good first take, they
might put their concentration on re-performing that earlier work.
This will be a disaster.
ae ee
““re-performance” will be bad. This is an existential truth. Every
thing that is just not going to happen. If the actor tries to “re-perform”
she will only be straining, controlling — aiming. As a young acting
student, I once heard a radio baseball announcer observe to his
partner, “They’re going to have to take that pitcher out. He’s starting
to aim the ball.” The strangeness of this remark caused it to stick in
my mind. I didn’t know much about baseball, and I kept asking
myself, “What’s wrong with aiming? How can he throw the ball over
the plate if he doesn’t aim?” I sensed somehow that the answer was
important so I pondered it until I realized that it was like acting —
the pitcher works on his mechanics (for the actor, this means script
analysis and rehearsal of playable choices) ahead of time and he cre-
ates a connection to the strike zone (the actor’s “sense of belief in the
created reality”). And then he lets go. Trying to do it “right,” trying
to control the result, to re-perform a good pitch or a good take, auto-
matically makes the performance self-conscious, takes the performer
out of the moment, and causes the pitcher or actor to “lose his stuff.”
Everybody knows what to do when he or she is in the zone, when

inspiration 1s striking. You don’t have to think about what to do; you
feel impulses, and you follow them. A wrong place for an actor to put
her concentration is on trying to be in the zone. When acting is good
and the actors are in the moment, enjoying solitude in public, gripped
by the created reality, they often don’t notice anything outside of that
created reality. It’s almost a kind of altered state. An airplane over-
head, a cough or sneeze of a technician, will go unheard. They may
be playing a hot summer scene in the middle of winter and not even
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MOMENT BY MOMENT
feel the cold. Sometimes actors start to think that the goal of their
preparation 1s to get to that altered state. But you can’t aim for the
zone. Concentration cannot be commanded, only invited.
A good actor follows the rules, concentrating on listening, on

playable choices and on physical life; if he hears the airplane or the
breathing of the camera operator or the creak of his shoes, he lets the
character hear it. He shuts nothing out; he mses everything to keep
himself in the moment and give his performance the texture of life.
If a director observes an actor agonizing because he can’t shut out
present reality in order to feel the created reality, it might be a good
time to take him aside and ask him, “What are you concentrating
on?” Perhaps the image, objective, or given circumstance he has
chosen is not strong or specific enough, and by asking him questions
you can guide him to a juicier choice. Or perhaps the best course will
be to assure him that you would rather have him in the here and now
than torturing and manipulating himself. The performance may well
be fresher and more honest if he lets the distractions in instead of
fighting them.
Now what I said here about not aiming for an altered state may
seem contradictory to what I said earlier about actors needing to go
below the social mask in order to work well. What can I say?
Piercing the social mask frees the actor and is a good thing; aiming
for an altered state creates strain and is a bad thing. Does it sound
like it would be easy to mistake one for the other? Well, it is. This
is (one reason) why the really good actors, who know the difference,
get paid so much.
The reason I discuss this in a book for directors is not because

you are expected to always know exactly what's wrong with a perfor-
mance and be able to tell the actor how to fix it. But I want to give
you some feel for the kinds of things that can go wrong — do go
wrong even for the best actors once in a while — so you have an
understanding that they are failures of technique and not mystical
emanations. Of course, a director who, watching from the other side
of the camera, is able to troubleshoot these delicate areas is, to an
actor, a wonderful creature.
73
DirecTiInG ACTORS / WESTON
When two actors are in the zone together — when they are
“cooking” — they often feel a kind of rhythm to it. In the next
rehearsal or performance or take they may try to play that rhythm.
But a rhythm is not a playable tool for an actor so the relationship will
lose the life it had when they first “discovered” the rhythm. Let me
take just one minute to explain why a rhythm is not playable. It’s
because the actor loses track of what the character is talking about
and why — i.e., his subtext and his situation. This is why many
people find performances of Shakespeare incomprehensible, because
the actors are playing the poetry instead of letting the lines mean some-
thing and playing the situation. When actors play the poetry or play
the rhythm, the audience can’t even make sense of the words.
“Learn the lines and don’t bump into the furniture.”

— Spencer Tracy
When a performance needs to be repeated and lines delivered

over and over again — in rehearsal or in coverage — each trme they
must be spoken as if for the first time. Some actors, like Charles
Bronson or Frank Sinatra, in order to keep their deliveries fresh,
refuse to do more than one take. If the actors started sounding
“canned” or “rehearsed,” director Frank Capra would simply change
the line. Robert Altman, who has an overruling passion for the
honest creativity of actors, does not require the actors to say the same
lines in every setup of the same scene. Marlon Brando no longer
learns lines; he has the lines read to him over an earpiece. He does
this, he says, to keep from getting stale.
These tactics are designed to keep the actors from falling into line
readings — preconceived ways of delivering the lines. The extreme
opposite of working in the moment is to decide ahead of time how
the line is going to be spoken, to orchestrate a performance by
deciding on and then delivering a set of line readings. This makes a
performance stagy, pat. It puts a little frame around each line, sort of
like a person who always seems to be speaking in quotation marks.
Getting stuck in a preconceived line reading is the worst thing that can
happen to an actor.
74
MOMENT By MOMENT
Many actors and directors are opposed to rehearsal for this

reason. If actors use rehearsal to set line readings, then rehearsal is a
very bad idea indeed. Most modern actors do not deliberately set line
readings, but unless they apply craft deliberately not to set them, they
may fall into them.
All of us have a tendency to fit new things into the familiar. We

see the line “You always do that,” and we automatically hear an atti-
tude. Without even realizing he is doing this, an actor may learn the
line with the cadence “You always do that,” (or, “You always do that”)
and after a while the cadence becomes the line for him.
Many actors do their work on a role as they are memorizing their

lines, finding beats, subtext, intentions, adjustments, images, and
associations as they bring them off the page and into their experience.
Doing this is not the same as learning them with a particular line
reading, which gives a set cadence or intonation to the lines. When
the actor repeats a line every time in a set cadence, the line will auto-
matically have less and less life every time it is spoken. It won't have
had much life to begin with either because the set cadence prevents
him from being affected by his partner or by his impulses of the
moment. Sometimes it gets so bad that an actor who habitually locks
into line readings will actually lose his place and think the wrong line
was spoken, if an actor opposite him changes the way she says a line!
Taking the lines off the page includes taking them off their punc-
tuation. In real life we do not pause necessarily at periods and
commas.. We pause when we need to take a breath, or to think of
what to say next. These things don’t necessarily — and in fact don’t
usually — occur at periods and commas. It is necessary to have punc-
tuation in a script because punctuation makes it easier to read. But in
order to bring lines off the page and into life the actor must wrest
from them their punctuation.
If you want an example of how this works, check out Spencer

Tracy’s opening soliloquy in the original “Father of the Bride.” One
of the things people often say about Tracy’s work in general is that he
gave his speeches unexpecced readings and rhythms. What this
75
means is that he put the meaning of the character's images and situation
ahead of the author’s punctuation. If you need further proof that aban-
doning punctuation sounds more natural, eavesdrop on ordinary people
in conversation. a
Overacting can easily follow from getting stuck playing set line read-
ings or punctuation. Because once the line reading is set, if the actor
attempts to give the line more spark he only succeeds in adding emphasis.
Sort of like the stereotypical American who, when attempting to commu-
nicate with someone who doesn’t understand English, merely repeats
himself in a louder voice.
The worst thing about line readings is that they are so often accompa-
nied by a superficial understanding of the line. Unless an actor commits to
the swbworld of the character, he will have nothing he can do with the line
except try to convince us that it is true, and so he falls into protesting or
urging the line on us. Some lines fall especially easily into this trap. In older
movies of the thirties and forties, an example might be, “I believe that truth
and justice will prevail.” It’s easy to see that in a modern movie such a line
would sound foolish or phony unless it was spoken with heavy subtext. But
current movies have their own clichés; my own least favorite is, “You just
don’t get it, do you?” And writers seem never to tire of the line, “You'll
never get away with this!” Any of these lines delivered in order to make us
believe that the information in it is true — in other words, delivered without
subtext — will sound forced and untrue.
Sometimes actors get confused and think they are being honest when
they are really urging the line on us, trying to convince us that it is true.
But in real life, when people are trying to convince you of the truth of
their words, we recognize that they are “protesting too much” — and
probably lying.
Not all actors who choose or fall into line readings pick the most
obvious, pedestrian choice. An actor of greater imagination might make
a more off-beat choice, and an actor with a wide range might be able to
be convincing no matter what the reading. But an actor who works
moment by moment” won't lock himself into a line reading at all.
So how will he know how to say it?
76
LISTENING AND TALKING

"Somewhere along the line, someone — I can't remember who
it was — told me to stop acting with a capital 'A,' not to perform,
not to be big, not to entertain, just to be. And to ... listen to other
people when they're talking. That was probably the most important
thing I ever learned." — Dennis Franz, "NYPD Blue"
Probably the most powerful and also the most readily available
tool an actor has for staying in the moment is the other actor in the
scene. Listening to the other person(s) in the scene gives an actor a
simple task and a focus for his attention. Listening is the best tech-
nique an actor has for anchoring himself in the moment. It also
keeps his choices from becoming mechanical or forced. Listening
relaxes actors. It absolutely prevents overacting. It's what makes a
performance look "natural." Listening allows the actors to affect
each other and thus to create moments — tiny electric connections
that make the emotional events of a scene.
If you are directing drama, and you want the audience to engage
with the characters and their predicaments and adventures, it is
essential that the actors listen. Without listening a dramatic scene is
just "my turn to talk, your turn to talk”; it becomes a scene about two
actors’ performances instead of a scene about a relationship and an
event in that relationship.
If you have a funny script to direct and you don’t want it ruined,
it is essential that the actors listen. When the actors listen to each
other and play the situations, the audience can hear the lines, identify
77
DirecTING AcToRS / WESTON
with the characters and suspend their disbelief in even the most out-
rageous situations. When actors in a comedy are not listening, when
they start to play the punchlines or the schtick instead of playing the
situations, the comedy becomes forced and a terrible strain to watch.
* * *
The words that characters speak to each other are not the scene.
The scene is the underlying event to which the words are clues. We
only have an event — that is, a scene — if something happens to the
characters. When the actors are /istening to each other, something
can happen because they can affect each other. Now it stands to
reason that it is the director's job to make sure that there is a scene
and not just words being spoken. Hence a good director will make
sure that the actors are listening to each other.
In the worst cases of non-listening, the actor may do what is

called “anticipating.” This means she may actually react (with a pre-
decided reaction) to the other actor's line before that actor even
delivers it. You don't see this much in movies that are actually
released or television programs that get aired. It looks so bad that
even if a director is so tense or unsophisticated that he doesn't notice
it (‘anticipating” is one of the acting problems in the movies of
Edward D. Wood, Jr., for example) someone on the set — or in the
editing room — will usually spot it.
"I think that if you have a talent for acting, it is the talent for
listening." — Morgan Freeman
You might think listening would be automatic. The actors hear

each other's lines — doesn't that mean that they are listening? But
we are not talking about ordinary listening. It is a term of art. It's
not just listening for your cue, for your turn to talk, it is a special
attention paid to the other person.
‘The actor is required to listen more deeply than we usually do in

real life. In fact Stanislavsky uses the term ' munion’) to describe
what I am calling "listening." The term "communion" calls attention
78
to the deepness of the experience as well as to the fact that listening

makes the audiencé feel the actors are communicating with each
other rather than delivering lines to each other.
Eye contact is very helpful to listening. In my Acting for

Directors class I begin with a listening exercise; first | ask each stu-
dent to make eye contact with his partner. The eye contact I am
asking them to make is different from regular "looking." When we
use Our eyes in the regular way, we are checking, evaluating, cate-
gorizing — this is not a bad thing to do when you are driving a car,
for instance. But the eye contact I am asking for is a giving and a
receiving; it is using your eyes in the sense that the eyes are win-
dows of the soul.
It is a surrender, a tiny leap of faith. It exactly means that the

actor puts more attention on the other actor than on her own per-
formance. And allows her lines to be informed by that attention, dic-
tated by that attention. The lines come out of her attention to the
other actor, out of her interest in the response of the other actor,
rather than out of a decision how to say them. Now this is key.
Listening is not simply hearing the words the other actor says and
responding to them — it is allowing one's concentration to be on the
response of the other actor, on him physically — on the expression in
his eyes, the little lines around his mouth, on the sound of his voice as
well as the words he is saying, on his body, even on his smell.
This is a subtle distinction that absolutely differentiates really

good actors from mediocre ones. Actors can get stuck selling the sur-
face of the lines if they think listening is merely responding to what
they hear the other actor say. Presumably the scene is written so that
it sounds like the characters are listening and responding to each
other — the lines answer each other. So actors can fool themselves
into thinking that they are listening when they are really only playing
the surface of the lines. They think that as long as they are not com-
mitting the cardinal sin of “anticipating,” they are listening.
When an actor is listening, his facial expressions also come out of

his interest in the response of the other actor. [f the actor becomes
'
79
DirectTING ACTORS / WESTON
concerned with his own response (perhaps in reaction to a result

direction, for example, "I think you should get angry when she says
X") there is a tiny hardening in his face, an invisible veil in front of
his expression. rs
Of course true listening can happen without eye contact, but it is

easier with it. And eye contact is very underrated as an acting tool.
According to his book Making Movies, Sidney Lumet noticed, when
he was working with William Holden on “Network,” that Holden
rarely made eve contact with his acting partners. When it came time
to film his big emotional scene the only direction Lumet gave Holden
was to look in Faye Dunaway’s eyes for the whole scene and never to
look away. Emotion poured out of Holden.
"All you have to do is look at Anthony Hopkins' eyes and you get
so much, your job is cut in half, there's so much in his eyes. He was
lovely, generous, moving." — Joan Allen
"(Candace Bergen] has the most beautiful eyes. And not being a
trained actor, I'll go right into her eyes when I'm lost. I look at them,
and I say the words. It's a wonderful thing." — Garry Marshall
Listening is sure-fire, it is the best tool an actor has. And it is

simple. Whatever her preparation, the actor puts her full attention
on the other actor. But sometimes actors don't listen. Sometimes
they are fearful of being caught staring at the other actor; they worry
that full eye contact would not be natural-looking. Attempting to
give their performances variety and colors, they devise elaborate
affectations of response that bear no relation to true listening.
_ Sometimes actors are working so hard on their inner life that they
forget about the other actor. Sometimes they don't like what the
other actor is doing and think that if they listen to him it will bring
their performance down. Some successful, highly regarded actors
think they have to screen out the other actor in order to maintain the
luster of their individual performance.
80
‘True listening can be frightening to actors. Actors themselves

call a fellow actor who is a good listener unselfish. A reviewer called
Emma Thompson's performance in "Sense and Sensibility" “consid-
erate’ — I think he perceived that she always listens. “Ensemble
acting” is another name for listening. You may have noticed that the
new Screen Actors Guild awards include awards for Ensemble Acting
in every category. This is because actors know, as John Travolta said
in his Golden Globe acceptance speech for "Get Shorty," that an
‘Tracy
actor ‘can only be as great as the actors around him." Spencer Tra
is known as the” ‘actor's actor” because he always listened. |
Mee ee eet
When actors are said to have "chemistry" together, it means that

they listen to each other, they engage, they “play off’ each other.
Romantic leads don't have to sleep together — they don't even have
to like each other — as long as they listen. Cary Grant had chem-
istry with more leading ladies than probably any other actor in the
history of movies — because.
he always listened, always put his full,
relaxed concentration pit bis partner. >
Ensemble acting puts the story ahead of showy individual perfor-

mances, and allows the audience to relax and enjoy the movie. There
can be a nagging fear for actors that by listening, by submitting
themselves to the ensemble, they are giving something up. They
could not be more mistaken. They are caught in the misunder-
standing I described above: that of thinking that listening is no more
than hearing the other actor's lines and inflections. No. It is the
attention, the concentration on the response of the other actor. For
this, each actor bears individual responsibility. Listening does not
detract from an actor's performance — it enriches the texture, sub-
stance, humor, suspense, etc., etc. My best advice to young actors 1s
always, "When-all-else fails, make theother guy look good.” It's the
simplest, surest way-for.an actor to improve his own performance.
But when the other actors are also listening, are also giving, and
are in addition connected up to their simple, honest understanding
of the circumstances of the script — then really superior work can
take place. And without that, without a// the actors giving to each
other, an actor who listens and who meets the demands of the role
81
may stand out and still look good, but really superior work cannot
take place.
You as the director are in a position to turn‘a group of actors into

an ensemble. First of all, you must ask for it. And you need to be
able to spot resistances to listening because if even one of the actors
is not listening you have no scene, only two performances. And the
scene itself turns into a scene about two actors instead of a scene
about whatever the script is about.
Of course sometimes the reason actors are not listening is because

they are trying to follow a result-oriented direction. Result-oriented
direction takes the actor's concentration off his partner and puts it
squarely on himself. The actor starts worrying: "Am I as angry as the
director wants me to be? Did I have the right reaction, the nght
expression? Did I say the line right? Was I quirky enough?" When
his concentration is focused thus on his performance, rather than on
a playable choice, which can connect him to the other actor, his per-
formance is ruined.
It can be hard for an inexperienced director to tell if actors are lis-

tening. Superior listening skills are invisible to the untrained eye.
Actors like James Garner, Peter Falk, Mary Tyler Moore, Spencer
Tracy — all actors of superior listening skills — seem simply to be the
character, with no visible craft.
When John Travolta says that a director "won't see it on the set.
You'll see it in the editing room," it's a bit intimidating, isn't it?
Makes you feel left out. Dennis Hopper, while directing Robert
Duvall in "Colors," was terrified because it didn't look like Duvall
was doing anything! It looked boring! Fortunately he was more
terrified of looking foolish by telling a superior actor like Duvall to
do "more," so he didn't say anything — because in the rushes, it was
all there.
Now that you know about listening, you have the secret! You can
see it on the set, if you know what to look for. The main reason why
directors don't see "it" on the set is that they don't understand about
82
listening, they don't appreciate the source of the tiny emotional

events that read like gangbusters on the big screen.
It is astonishing to me that nowadays so many directors —

including directors who should know better — position themselves at
the video monitor while a scene is shooting. You're not going to like
hearing this, but it's my job to tell you: You can't tell from the video
monitor whether the actors are listening. You must be next to the
camera, watching their naked faces.
In most movies where the acting is bad, the thing that is wrong is
the actors were not listening to each other. In student films and first
features this is the most glaring defect. Problems of pace and timing,
lapses in energy, false notes, lack of "build" to a scene, actors who are
flat, stiff, cold, cardboard-y, "walking through it,” "phoning it in,"
actors who seem to be "in different movies" — all these are examples
of problems that usually are listening problems. Likewise when
actors are overacting. When directors tell "do less" what
they probably should be telling them is to listen more.
alwate a
Of
an eo fee
If the actors are not listening in a fwo-shot of ‘master, the shét

will turn out to be unusable because if there is no listening, there is
no relationship. And if there is no relationship, there is nothing to
watch in a two-shot. But listening is also crucial to a close-up.
People think of the close-up as the chance to see the character's reac-
tions, his inner life, which they figure the actor can create all by him-
self. But a performance in which the actor is acting “all by himself,”
while it may be showy and impressive, takes the audience out of the
story, to watch the impressive acting. So in close-ups equally as in
two-shots and masters the actor must be listening. Listening gives
life and colors and expression to the close-ups. Listening creates the
tiny expressive movements, the sense that the character is thinking
about what to say next, and feels something about what he is saying.
Listening makes the audience care about the characters and what
happens to them.
Sometimes a shot is so tight or so complicated that there is no

room for the other actor tu stand in the eyeline of the actor whose
83
close-up is being shot. Sometimes the director of photography will

tell you that in order to get the two-shot you want, the actors’ eye-
lines will need to be elsewhere than looking at each other. I'm not
saying that you should block every scene so that the actors are
always looking at each other. I'm talking about scenes which are
staged so that the characters are meant to be looking at each other
but, because of technical demands, the actors playing the charac-
ters cannot. Your reasons for deciding to arrange the shot this way
may be important enough to you that you decide to forego the
freshness that two engaged actors (provided they really are engaged,
and are really playing off each other, and not just “acting all by
themselves" even though they are standing face-to-face) can give the
scene. But you should understand that you are making a choice, a
trade-off. If, when you get to the editing room, you don't see "it" —
you don't see the relationship or the emotional events of the scene —
then what? The one thing I don't want you to do at that point is say,
"T had no choice."
Directors often want to know how to work with actors who have
been trained in different ways. The answer is simple: get them to
talk and listen to each other, get.them to put their concentration on
each other, keep each one from acting "all by himself” and screening
the other one out. '
How can directors learn to tell whether actors are listening? No

book can give you this skill. You need to be able to see and feel it.
And you need to be able to see and feel it not just on a movie screen
but while it is happening in front of you. In other words, you need
to be in the moment; you need to be able to listen, too. Your eyes
must be open, relaxed, and soft, able to receive. This is how you will
be able to catch false moments. Sidney Lumet says in his book
Making Movies that he can tell if the acting in a take is good enough
or not by simply watching in a relaxed way. Then whenever his atten-
tion wanders, he knows the actors are not engaged and the take is not
good enough.
84
Here's another way to tell whether the actors are listening: When
actors listen, their performances on each take are going to be slightly dif=
ferent. This idea is frightening to directors. It takes tremendous
courage and skill to trust this process. Each take the actor does of a
scene has to be slightly different if the actor is listening. And there's
more: If the actors are listening, the readings of the lines are likely
to come out differently from the way you.heard.them in your head.
ee
If you want good acting, you must favor listening over preconceived
line
pr
readings. Ttell you
a ae te ae em nee te
this flatout. °
wht 6
"It took me years to understand fully why [my teacher] was right,
and...never to plan how I would say a line, only to. thinkof the situ-
ation, and listen to_the other actors...What is hard, and really bas to
be worked at, is being able to go with whatever comes up from other
actors or the director at each moment of a performance and not to try
to force a repetition of something that went well the day before....The
real work of acting is letting go." — Vanessa Redgrave
Some actors are “naturals,” that is, they are good listeners
without having to think about it. Most actors are aware of listening
as a technique and make a habit of reminding themselves to listen. It
can help a lot if the director, before rehearsal and before each shot,
mentions it in some nonthreatening way, by saying something like,
"No need to push, let's take it easy, just connect with each other.”
Then while you are watching the actors work, you need to mon-
itor whether they are listening. When actors are not listening, you
as the director need to talk to them about it. You may not want to
use the term itself because, as | mentioned above, some actors under-
stand the term "listening" incorrectly. If told that they have not been
listening, they might fall into exaggerated or fake listening. There
are two kinds of fake listening. One is a studied casual attitude; it's
not really listening, it's an attitude of listening. The other is an over-
wrought pop-eyed intense thing; what's,wrong with this is its strain.
There is an ease to real listening; the actors who understand its
magic are truly liberated by the simple act of putting more concen-
tration on the person they are talking to than on themselves.
85
Here are some examples of how to ask the actors to listen more:
"Give the lines to each other.” “Keep it simple." "Stay with each other.”
"It's okay to relax. Let yourselves connect.” "Communicate." "Just talk
and listen.” "Let yourself hear what she's saying.” "I like it when you
play off each other.” "You can pay attention to each other.” "Watch
her eyes." "Play off her energy.” "It's okay to engage, be affected by
her. You can relax. Don't say the lines until you feel like saying
them." This is language of permission rather than enforcement.
Producer Polly Platt reported to me that director James Brooks

says to his actors, "Just remember, everything you are saying Is true.”
Glenn Close, in her interview for the program "Inside the Actors
oh said that Mike Nichols’ words were, "Bring your day in with
These are ways of saying, “Keep it simple. Be a person, not a
character. Don't act with a capital A. It's okay to talk and listen.”
Sometimes actors have a false sense of responsibility: they feel, even
unconsciously, that they're not doing their job unless they hang on to
their preparation, that giving themselves over to the other actor is
neglecting their responsibilities to their character. It's almost a case
of "How can something that feels this good (as listening) be good for
you?” You can be the one to give the actors permission to let go, to
connect. Woody Allen, in a 1994 New York Magazine article, dis-
closed that the reason he uses one wide shot for most of his whole
scenes 1s partly because it is quicker and cheaper, but mostly it is for the
actors, because it is a way to "let them talk,” and to allow overlapping.
If you are more deeply into rehearsal or shooting and the actors
are losing their connection, you might try: “I think this is the kind of
script that only works if we have ensemble playing.” "It's okay to put
your concentration on each other.” "You two have every thing you
need. You can give it to each other now.” “The listening 1 is really all
[care about. I know you can get the rest of it.” "Don't worry about
what you’ re feeling; concern yourself with what your partner is
feeling.” "You don't need to screen her out. You can let what she's
doing feed you." "I believe you but you're keeping it all inside, it's
very internal. Let it out, give it to the other actor. ” “[ think you're
getting worried about your performance. It's all there. You can trust
it.” “Keep your attention on her, check out her response."
86
It can be hard for an actor who listens and gives to work opposite
an actor who is not listening. It's depressing, because the listening
actor knows her chances for a really great performance are going
down the drain. Sometimes she tries to "save" her performance by
pulling back, thinking that relating to the other actor's wooden per-
formance will bring hers down. A director needs to deal with these
situations delicately. Actually she will save her performance by con-
tinuing to give and to listen. And of course the scene itself (the
director's responsibility) will get even worse if she stops listening too.
In a deteriorating situation like this, you might take the more expe-
rienced or better actor aside and tell her frankly your concerns, enlist
her help so she doesn't feel left out to dry by the other actor's
"nobody home"-ness. You need to assure her that if she continues to
work full out and to stay engaged that you will make sure that the
scene works.
And then you have to do it. You need to do something to change

what the other, lesser actor is doing, or the better actor will start to
lose faith in you. Usually the problem is that the lesser actor 1s
"acting with a capital A" and you need to get him to be simpler and
more present in the moment so he can put attention on his partner.
You might do this by changing the interpretation of the character,
even if earlier you had agreed on a certain interpretation. Or you
might be able to say directly (but privately) to him, "You're doing too
much acting. It's not believable."
If you are desperate you might even try an outright trick, such as:
"You're doing great, but I'm worried about your partner. I need you
to help me here. Try to help her stay loose.” Anything to encourage
the actor to relax and stop acting up a storm and instead put his con-
centration on his partner should be done.
It makes me nervous to put such a thing in print, because the last

thing I want to do is encourage arrogance in young directors toward
actors. When I am directing, the only reason why I would engage in
such a tactic is because I love actors and | trust the process. An actor
may hear a flat statement that he is not listening as an accusation,
87
even an attack on his personality; this could cause him to shrink.

When I give direction, | am always trying to make what I am asking
the actor to do sound to him like something he can do rather than like
something he can't do, like change his personality. I believe that the
condition of relaxed and vibrant listening is a natural condition, and
that if I give permission and confidence to the actors they will open
toward it as a flower toward the sun. This belief of mine allows me
to always see their resistances and acting problems as things that are
in the way of their true selves rather than character flaws. And I can
always find a way to give direction that doesn't damage their confi-
dence, even though I am like a dog with a bone when it comes to not
giving up on something I think is important.
When actors are struggling, I always look for the way to con-
centrate on what is going right instead of what is going wrong, to
see the glass half full instead of half empty, to offer guidance and
encouragement instead of criticism and commands. I get laughed
at for the circumlocutions of my "relentlessly positive” adjustments,
but they work.
Inexperienced directors, and even a lot of experienced ones, do

not realize how important listening is. Even as you are reading this,
you may be saying to yourself, "Okay, sure. What's the big deal?" It
is one of those things that is simple but not easy. It can take discipline
on the part of the actors to put concentration on the other actor and
not be distracted from listening by concerns for making the "right"
effect. It takes great concentration and skill on the part of directors
to be able to tell whether true listening is taking place instead of
actors just saying lines because it is their turn. And it takes a director
secure in his talent and skills to be able to put concerns for listening
ahead of concerns for hearing the lines come out the way he expects
them to.
Probably the most important difference between a good director

and a mediocre director is whether she can tell if the actors are lis-
tening. | urge you to investigate this further in your own work and
88
perhaps in a class situation. “Just talk and listen." My own teacher

Jean Shelton used to say this to us until we were tired of hearing it.
Sidney Lumet uses this expression as well. Talk to a person. Listen
to a person. Be a person, Nota character.)
oe ~~
—— ae eee
Listening is the most important element of performance. It is the

most important thing a director should be looking for. Some of the
things I say in this book are controversial, but this is not. Every good
director and every good actor agree on this point. Even if they don't
always do it, they know they should.
89
ACTORS’ CHOICES
ACTORS’ CHOICES
"Most actors' problems, professional or amateur, deal with
tension and there are a lot of devices and ways of eliminating
it. In a very professional actor the tension is because they
haven't made a choice that has taken enough of their mental
interest. In other words, they haven't made a vital enough
choice; it's not up to a level that will engage their imagination
and get them into pretending unself-consciously."
—Jack Nicholson
The last two chapters have concentrated on the "right-brain,”

improvisatory, unpredictable stuff — “in the moment,” listening,
risk, freedom. I’ve been harping on giving up preconceived ways of
saying a line, but now it’s time to talk about structure — choices that
fulfill the material. Directors often want to learn "“actors' language,"
but adding a few “terms of art" or jargon to your vocabulary will not
make you a good director. What's needed is a new way of looking at
behavior.
Constantin Stanislavsky, the actor, director, teacher, artistic

director of the Moscow Art Theatre, and author of An_Actor
Prepares, formulated acting techniques that were objective and quan-
tifiable but could activate the subconscious and mysterious. It
became possible to create structure that made a performance repeat-
able while preserving moment-by-moment reality, ernotional truth-
fulness, and the actor's inner freedom.
91
Before Stanislavsky, acting training consisted of instruc-

tion in voice, movement, and selecting a vocal pattern and ges-
ture deemed appropriate to various character types. Certain
gestures denoted annoyance or rage; a rising or falling inflection
would call attention to the punch line of a joke; a catalog of postures
and gaits identified class distinctions and personalities. For example
stooping and hand-wringing denoted a pitiful character, nose in the air
a haughty character, etc. Stanislavsky charged that this work resulted
in posing, stereotype, and cliché that in no way resembled actual
human behavior.
Stanislavsky's ideas are still brilliant and radical today — radical

both in the sense of going to the root of things and in the sense of
their defiance of conventional wisdom. It is still hard for producers,
directors, writers and even actors to understand and trust that if an
actor commits to a playable choice rather than to a decision about
vocal inflection or facial expression, the movie will be better.
Powerful actors must connect with something powerful in the script

or else they can't commit their imaginations. A good actor who is
uncommitted imaginatively will look like he is “walking through" a role.
It may not be possible for an actor to engage and listen with the other
actor(s) until he has worked out the choices that illumine the emotional
center of the script. For a really professional actor, a poor choice — a
choice that does not fully realize the material — reads as a false note.
That is, when the material offers an opportunity to make a choice and
the actor has missed that opportunity and failed to "fill" the words, there
will be a "dead spot." The scene at this moment will seem slow.
The choices an actor makes activate his inner life. The trick of
an actor's preparation is to find choices that 1) connec
tathe deepest
t
and freshest meaning of the script, and 2) turn him on, capture his
Imagination, so that 3) he can connect to them with emotional hon-
esty and get to the places he needs to go. The actor looks for choices
that are objective, playable, and that engage his own subconscious so
92
ACTORS’ CHOICES
that he can be in the moment, thinking real thoughts and feeling

real feelings.
Imaginative choices are practical and idiosyncratic, not academic.

They are secrets, gateways into the imaginative subworld. They are
not something the audience is supposed to "get." Although they are
inspired by the script and illuminate its deepest reaches, these choices
are not in service of the author of the screenplay; they are in service
of the actor's concentration. If they work and bring the script alive,
they are good ones; if they don’t work, they're bad ones.
Choices create behavior. This is where not having gotten stuck

in preconceived ways of saying a line pays off, because the behavior
dictates the way the lines are said. The lines come out of the choice.
Sanford Meisner puts it this way: "The emotion of the scene is a
river and the words are like boats that float on the river."
An actor's work on the script is to find his choice, a "what is to be

acted," a "something of his own" from which to listen and play off the
other actor. The choice the actor gives himself, the "something of
his own" must be so simple, so compelling, so present that he need
not step out of the moment to find it. Choices that are arrived at
ahead of time are really ideas or probabilities; choices must actually
take place. in the-moment, or they become. forced or mechanical.
Choices must be specific, private, and eccentric to each actor. When
the performances are private, the experience of each audience
member watching the film is a private one. Thus the more the actor
achieves specificity and simplicity, the more the performance
achieves universality.
QUESTIONS
"Finally, you know, I consider that my profession as a director is

not exactly like a supervisor. No. We are, simply, midwives. The
actor has something inside himself but very often be doesn't realize
what he has in mind, in his own heart, and you have to tell him.
You have to help him find himself." — Jean Renoir
93
DirnEcTING ACTORS / WESTON
The best route to making choices is asking questions. It may sur-

prise you in discussion with actors to hear them asking questions with
answers that seem obvious to you. I have seen directors get panicky
and conclude that the actor is at a loss. The opposite is probably the
case. As he works, an actor keeps a performance fresh by continuing
to ask questions, opening up corners and crannies of the character's
world, feeding himself, adding layers. Of course, actors do not always
share their questions with their directors. They may do this work pri-
vately. If they do ask you, as director, a question, don't answer unless
you have an answer you believe in. Not all actors’ questions need to
be answered anyway. The asking of questions is part of a process.
Often the most helpful response you can make to an actor's ques-
tion is to turn it back, to say, "What do you think?" Often actors
know the answer already, but are insecure. Or, sometimes they know
the answer but don't know they know it. Let's say the actor asks,
"Why doesn't my character tell his wife about the letter?" Perhaps
the director says, "What do you think?” and the actor replies, “I don't
know, I haven't a clue,” or even, "It doesn't make sense to me.” The
thing to do next is to look at some possible reasons why a person
might behave that way. Why would a man not tell his wife about a
letter? Maybe he forgot. Maybe the letter contains a guilty secret he
doesn't want his wite to know about. Maybe his wife is ill and he
doesn't want to burden her. Maybe he had something else on his
mind that was so pressing that the letter seemed unimportant by
comparison. It's very helpful to look at as many possibilities as your
imagination offers up.
Now what if the actor asks you a question about the letter, and
you reply, "What do you think?” then the actor responds, "I think it's
a guilty secret” — and you think that answer is wrong! Maybe in
doing your script analysis you have considered the possibility of a
guilty secret but decided that adding a guilty secret to the subtext
would make the movie too melodramatic, and that the lighter choice
of “he forgot" will actually add more to the mystery and suspense.
94
ACTORS’ CHOICES
Well, at this point, you the director have some options. Your
least attractive course would be to contradict him. Saying things like,
"No, I think that's wrong, here is the right answer,” or even, "Here
is what I want" may work if you have a very close relationship with
the actor, but usually they make the actor feel dampened and/or
argumentative. It can be more helpful to say, "Yes, that's possible.
What else might it be?" Or, "Yes, that's possible. Or maybe he
forgot! That happens to me all the time; I forget the real reason why
[ do things, and get into all sorts of trouble." Depending on your
relationship with the actor and your own personal charisma, some-
times just saying, “Well, that's possible” in a thoughtful way might
induce the actor to wonder if there isn't a more provocative choice
and to keep exploring and rethinking.
Sometimes it is tempting to go to the writer and ask the question,

or even demand that the writer put the answer into the script. Try to
resist! The fact that actors have questions is not a bad thing — it is
a good thing. Questions can be truly magical. Sometimes you need
to figure out the answer in order to solve the scene and unlock the
choice that releases the actor's attention. But sometimes just asking
the question is enough. The character may not know the answer
himself! The character may himself be wondering why the hell he
didn't tell his wife about the letter. Characters, like people, most of
the time probably don't know why they do what they do. The actor
can use his own perplexity to engage his sense of belief.
[f you think of answering actors’ questions as an obligation, your

answers will be plodding explanations, probably dead-on the surface
meaning of the lines. You will neglect to look for opposites.
OPPOSITES
people. As anactor,
of de
"I'm interested in the flip side, theB-si
is nge
challe
your gy
of another
to get your mind around the psycholo
human-being — and the bigger the polarity,the more dramatic that
is.""
— Ralph Fiennes
95
Opposites are an actor's best friend. They are a great tool of

script analysis — as soon as you come up with one idea, consider also
its opposite. Whenever you're not sure what to do with a line, find
an opposite. If a scene isn't working, do .it wrong’ An opposite
choice keeps the actor in the moment because it is surprising, even to
him. A good actor keeps himself entertained and alive — in the soup
— by allowing a conflict between the words and his inner life. And
if the actor is alive, the material will make sense even if the inner
choice is not logical.
When a character says one thing and means another, that makes
him complex. Best of all, the duality makes him more real. People
are not especially logical. They often mean quite the opposite of
what they say. We see it in real life: a person who says, "I'm very
open to your proposal,” with arms and legs crossed, looking at you
from the side of his eyes. His body language is saying that he is the
opposite of open.
An actor who gets stuck in the logical, “on the nose” choice will
never look like a real person. The off-kilter, illogical choice is usu-
ally the truest one. People don't know who they are or what they
want, and they don't do the right thing to get it. One actor who uses
opposites constantly and very effectively is Gene Hackman. He often
says a line exactly the reverse of the way it might look on the page:
for instance, "I'm going to kill you," said with a smile (i.e., with the
action verb "to charm").
JUDGMENT
"It's easy to sit back and judge someone, but I am not in a posi-
tion to judge Nixon. As an actor, I can't judge because meral judg-
ment gets in the way of the characterization. If you start doing that,
you end up playing the character like a zombie or a vaudeville vil-
lain." — Anthony Hopkins
Obvious ways to judge a character are to decide that he is a "per-

petual loser," "weak," "vicious," "an anal-retentive type” or "stupid."
96
AcTors’ CHOICES
But there are tiny judgments that creep into an actor's thinking
almost unnoticed: a condescension to the character, an evaluation
that the character is just a little less self-aware, or more naive, or
more weird than the actor herself. Now these evaluations may even
be true, but they are not playable. They cause the actor to stand
outside the character and describe and explain her to the audience,
to comment on her — to editorialize and to play at her — rather
than to live her life moment by moment and allow the audience to
draw its own conclusions. VA wd jhe Je
th. «hea Za
Lili Taylor in the movie “Rudy” had the small role of the high
school sweetheart who wanted Rudy to settle down instead of fol-
lowing his dream. With the words she was given to say she could
easily have fallen into a stereotype of a clingy, manipulative suburban
matron-to-be, and become "the person who doesn't want Rudy to
follow his dreams" instead of a real person with dreams of her own.
Taylor found the character's grit and humor instead of makinga
judgment and managed to make a not very deeply. written character
human and watchable.
ee ee
Really good actors do not ever judge their characters. The imag-
ined world is too fascinating to them, and the opportunity to leap
into it too precious. Glenn Close says that she “falls in love" with
every character she plays. This doesn't mean that she must condone
the character's behavior or abandon her own values or personal
ethics. But it does mean she creates the character's behavior using
her own impulses.
Sometimes a director in my Acting for Directors class complains

to me when J ask him to try a certain adjustment, "But I would never
do such-and-such." Okay, I believe you. What I don't believe is that
you can never know the impulse to do such-and-such. Every one of
us carries somewhere inside us the impulse (perhaps so deeply buried
that it will never. express itself in behavior) to do anything that any
human being has ever done. It is the actor's job to find that impulse
and surrender to it honestly in the created reality. You see he finds
the impulse, not the deed itself. Because it is not real reality, it is cre-
ated reality, an illusion. We, as filmmakers, are not trying to make
97
DirnECTING ACTORS / WESTON
the audience believe that the events depicted in a movie are actually
happening to the actors on the screen.
Ralph Fiennes has said of his performance in “Schindler's List,”

"People are always trying to think that in order to play a sadist you
have to be one. I was not required to hurt [anyone] when I was
playing Amon Goeth. I tried to put myself in a place where | could
imagine what it was like to have a form of prejudice that was so
extreme that certain groups of people became equivalent to cock-
roaches or rats." By not judging the character Fiennes gave us the
revelation that the face of evil is a human face. This made the Nazi
he portrayed far more chilling than the one-dimensional Nazis that
are sometimes found in movies.
NEED
SPINE / OBFECTIVE / INTENTION / VERB
Spine, objective, intention, and verb are all expressions of what a

character (person) needs. All creatures — not just human creatures,
but all living creatures, all living things — move toward what they
need. Plants grow toward the sun. This is the principle behind these
actors’ tools.
The objective is what the character wants the other character to

do, and the action verb is what he is doing to get what he wants.
"Intention" is virtually interchangeable with either term, and is
sometimes called "the emotional intention."
‘The character's spine, or super-objective, is what he wants during

the whole script; you could call it what he wants out of life. It is the
one specific thing that a character needs more than any other, will
sacrifice the most to have. Sometimes people call it the character's
life-need; you may also hear it called his core, his through line, his
98
ACTORS’ CHOICES
want, the red thread, the thing that drives him, what he is fighting
for, what is important to him.
Each character has ove overall spine throughout the whole movie.
In each scene, although the action verb may change frequently, each
character has one objective. In life our needs don't turn on and off
haphazardly. We don't necessarily stop needing something even when
we do get it. And we certainly don't stop needing something just
because we realize we can't have it.
In his "Inside the Actors Studio" interview Paul Newman

referred to "active verbs" which are the same as the “action verbs" |
talk about. Michael Shurtleff's book Audition, widely read by actors,
exhorts them always to connect to "what the character is fighting for"
— this is, by another name, the objective. I have heard actors refer
to a ‘driving energy" or finding the character's "agenda" or "motor"
— also objectives. You can use any vernacular for it. It isn't neces-
sary to use the terms of art in order to take advantage of these tools.
SPINE
There is often confusion between "spine" and "transformation,"

also sometimes called “arc.” Many directors, when I offer them the
liberating and invaluable tool ofkone spine per character per script...
persist in the notion that the character.wants one thing untul "X"
is not a spine;_it is
happens, and then he wants something else.. ‘This
an attempt to describe the character's transformation.
You might hear someone describe a character by saying that

when his best friend dies, he "learns the value of friendship,” that ts,
he transforms from a person who only cares about himself into a
person who is capable of love, or unselfish action, or whatever. It is
helpful for an actor to know the character's transformation; it is def-
initely imperative for the director to know all the characters’ trans-
formations. But it is a big mistake for an actor, after figuring out the
character's transformation, to set out to play "a person who learns the
99
DirRECTING ACTORS / WESTON
val ue ."
of friendship This leads him to playing the end of the script
at the beginning.
Let's take as an example, the character Michael Corleone, played

by Al Pacino in “The Godfather.” What do you think might be
Michael's spine? When I ask students this question, they often sug-
gest that he wants “power” or “control” or "family loyalty” or “to get
revenge for the shooting of his father." None of these will work for
the whole script. When I say that I think Michael's spine is "to please
his father," or perhaps, "to make his father proud of him,” students
sometimes protest that in the beginning of the movie Michael wants
to separate himself from his father and be his own man, and that it is
only after Don Vito is shot that Michael wants to make his father
proud of him.
But look at the facts. In the beginning of the movie Michael is

pleasing his father and making him proud by becoming a lawyer.
Don Vito has three sons: the eldest (Sonny/Santino) is to succeed
him as godfather, the second (Fredo) is to be active in the business,
although his activities must be scaled to his rather severe personal
limitations. The youngest (and favorite), Michael, is to become a real
“American” (he even has the only “American” name) and make his
life and his living outside the family business. Michael's indepen-
dence pleases his father. By the end of the movie Michael is not only
in the family business but has taken his father's place as don; this is
his transformation. The transforming event, I think, is Sonny's
death. After Sonny's death there is no one else (certainly not Fredo)
who can succeed Don Vito. So Don Vito makes his peace with the
notion of Michael heading the family business, and that becomes the
way Michael can please him.
Michael's spine “to please his father" doesn't change even

after his father's death. We know from real life that this can
happen, that a person might still be driven by a need for a
parent's love and respect even after the parent is dead. Perhaps
the theme of “Godfather II” is exactly this: that continuing to
live driven by the need to make someone happy when that person
100
ACTORS’ CHOICES
is no longer alive to respond to one's efforts, robs life of its zest

and creates a hollow in Michael's heart.
— —
[The spine is who a person is. Ae may even be partly genetic. This
is the reason why many actors seem to play every role the same.
Being able to believably play a spine different from one's own is quite
a feat. Some actors who play the same character in every movie are
operating out of a "secret identity” spine, different from their own,
but for some reason easily and deeply accessible to their imagination.
For example, Charlie Chaplin was in real life quite different from the
“little tramp" character he most successfully played, whose spine
might perhaps be described as "to stay out of trouble."
There are several ways an actor uses spine as a tool. One is while
reading a script and deciding whether to take the role. A good actor
when reading a script looks (among other things) for a playable spine
— a hanger or hook from which all the character's actions depend.
When he finds a believable spine he knows that a real character has
been written, not a patched-up plot manipulation.
Once it is found, the actor uses that spine to design the role. This
is the way an actor can play a major, complex role when it is shot out
of sequence. Every decision, every choice made about the character
relates to the spine, including the objectives of each individual scene.
But the relationship may be indirect. For instance in “Last Tango in
Paris,” even though the Brando character in each scene with Maria
Schneider has the objective to push her away, or to hurt or humiliate
her, it seems to me that his spine (super—objective) is to find love.
The pushing away is a series of tests to see if he can trust her. Her
scene-by-scene objectives, on the other hand, are nearly all to get
affection from him, to get closer. And yet I think her super-objective
is not love, but to grow up, to become an adult. She must draw him
closer in order to overthrow him, the father figure. The moment
when he gives up testing and surrenders to her (at the tango parlor)
is the same moment that she gathers strength to reject him (these are
their moments of transformation).
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DirneEcTING ACTORS / WESTON
Must the actor and director agree on the spine of the character?
Yes and no. The choice of a spine must be supported by the script,
but it is a secret choice. Sydney Pollack compares the spine of the
movie to the armature of a sculpture; it keeps the thing together, but
no one sees it. If what an actor is doing works, what does it matter if
the spine she has chosen is different from your idea? But if you are
not happy with a performance, bringing up the subject (via a ques-
tion, such as "What are you thinking of as the spine of this char-
acter?") can be a useful way to begin a discussion about shaping or
changing a performance.
On the other hand, some directors prefer to make all the deci-
sions about spine. Independent British filmmaker Ken Loach, in an
L.A. Times interview, said he doesn't give actors a full script ahead of
time, and instead feeds them a couple of pages at a time, because he
wants them to give a simple, unrehearsed response to each circum-
stance of the script as it arises. I should think that the success of this
approach must depend on the director casting people who have the
same life-spine as the characters.
OBJECTIVE
A character's objective for a particular scene can be very specific

and very simple. For example: I want him to leave the room; I want
him to kiss me; | want him to laugh; I want him to cry. The simpler
it is the more playable it is. The most playable objectives have both
a physical and an emotional component.
The physical component means that, if you achieve your objec-

tive, you will know it because of a physical event — the other actor
would cry or laugh or kiss you or leave the room, whatever. So you
have a point of concentration that is physical and real, a simple
imaginative task.
_ Part of the emotional component means that getting this objec-

uve, or not getting it, will constitute an emotional event in the rela-
tionship, a win or a loss. To be very simple-minded about it, if my
objective is to get someone to leave the room, when he leaves the
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ACTORS’ CHOICES
room, I win; if he doesn't, I lose. In either case our relationship has

undergone a small (or a big) change.
jective. Actors who feel deeply but fail to connect their feelings to
intention can become general or self-indulgent. The simple inten-
tion — an inclination toward having some effect on the other person
— leads to engagement. Although simple listening has already
engaged the actors, endowing the characters with a need to interact
raises the stakes of the relationship. It also makes it possible for the
actors to listen and play off each other even if the characters are not
listening to each other. Objectives make possible conflict and a sense
of event in the relationship, because the actors are doing something to
each other rather than doing something to the lines.
ACTION VERBS
If I want you to leave the room I might ivite you to leave the
room. If that doesn't work, I might demand that you leave the room.
If that doesn't work I might beg. If that doesn't work I might whine,
tease, punish, etc. The intention, or verb, might change often, even in
the middle of the line, or it might be the same for the whole scene.
The verb changes because of the exchange between the two charac-
ters. Complex characters may change their verb often or make wide
swings from, say, soothing to punishing in one speech.
You will notice that the verbs on the Short List of Action Verbs
all carry an intent to have an emotional effect on the other person;
thus they are sometimes called "emotional intentions.” Verbs stimu-
late emotion. Honestly committing to any one of the verbs on the
Short List will put the actor aft risk (in a theatrical sense).
UNCONSCIOUS OBJECTIVES
A director should be able to determine what intention or objective

an actor is playing, even if the actor doesn't know it herself. If an
103
audition, rehearsal, improv, or take has gone exceptionally well, very

often the actor doesn't know what she has done, because she was in the
moment and not watching her performance. It can be very useful for
the director to mirror it back to her. If you want a change in the per-
formance, you might say something like this: "The thing I liked about
the last rehearsal was that you seemed to be putting [the other char-
acter] at ease. This time it seemed as if you wanted his approval.”
Actors can fall into the unconscious objective "to say my lines
effectively." Or “to make the director/producer think I'm a good
actor," or "to remember my lines.” Any of these objectives take the
actor's attention off the work and hurt the performance. Sometimes
an actor intellectualizes his objective and winds up showing us that he
has such an objective instead of allowing it organically to impel | his
words “and movements. In. other words, -he_has_the_ unconscious
objective
"to have an objective.” j- » f woes ay,
af
en
~
Finding the character's objective is preparation. The actor ana-

lyzes the script, finds something playable, and makes it real for him-
self. Then he lets go and plays the moment. If the actor falls out of
the moment or loses concentration, he has something to fall back on.
If his objective is to get her to laugh, he can look at his partner and
ask himself, “Is that a little smile around her lips?) Am 1] making any
headway in getting her to laugh? What shall I try next?” a
What if his objective is "to be forgiven,” and the other actor has
a line late in the scene, "I forgive you"? If he makes his objective "to
make her say she forgives him,” he hasn't got enough to do, hasn't
got an important enough tusk, because she’s going to say the line no
matter what he does. This is called a "soft" objective. To keep his
objective alive he needs to keep his concentration on something phys-
ical, such as her eyes and body language. That's where one really
experiences forgiveness — not in mere words.
So once she says the line, does his objective change? No. We
look for an objective the actor can hang the whole scene on, that can
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ACTORS’ CHOICES
be true from the beginning of the scene to the end. That is the truth
of this tool, and the way to make it useful.
CHOOSING OBJECTIVES
We want to find objectives that are active. Another kind of soft

objective is, in a boy-meets-girl scene, deciding that the boy “wants
her to talk to him.” Unless the actor playing the girl forgets her lines,
she's already going to talk to him! An objective that would be more
likely to work might be that he “wants her to take her clothes off.”
Sometimes students are shocked when | make this suggestion.

But I’m not talking about how to stage the scene but rather an inte-
rior adjustment for the actor. It doesn't mean that he has any notion
that he's going to achieve that objective; it doesn't mean that he is
doing anything overt to achieve it. It's his samer life, it gives him an
inner point of concentration. This particular idea may give the scene
a subtle undercurrent of sexual sizzle. It depends on the actor, how-
ever; for another actor that interior adjustment might make the char-
acter look depressed and anxious.
The objective is not the result. It is not a blueprint for the scene.
Perhaps you were surprised earlier when I suggested that the spine
for Chaplin's little tramp might be "to stay out of trouble," since the
little tramp was always i trouble. The lines or plot contain clues to
the objective, but the objective relates to what is not being said, the
subworld. In the case of the little tramp, humor results from the
incongruity of intention and result.
The interesting thing is that if the character was a real person and
you asked him what he wanted from the young woman, he might
truthfully answer "to talk to her.” His need to be alone and
unclothed with her might be deeper than his conscious intent.
Which intent or need should the actor use in the scene? Whichever
one works. In rehearsal, he can try them both.
105
"Get him to acknowledge you" is a soft objective. Try instead,

“get him to look you in the eye.” Instead of “get her sympathy,” con-
sider, "get her to put her arms around you.” It's more physical and
specific, and closer to the way these situations really feel when they
are happening.
Directors (actors too), when asked what a character's objective

might be, often come up with all kinds of things the character doesn't
want (e.g., "He doesn't want to hurt her"). This is usually a weaker
use of the imagination than phrasing the objective as a positive ("He
wants her to smile").
"She wants this but she also wants that.” Human beings can't do
more than one thing at one time. If an actor tries to want two things
at once, the two will cancel each other out and make the performance
flat. There is always something that a person wants the most, will
sacrifice the most for. It is the skill of the actor or director to unlock
this mystery and find the singular playable key. “He wants X but he
knows he can't get it." A cop-out. Knowing we can't get something
doesn't stop us from wanting it. People want what they want, how-
ever irrational. Don't forget that very often they do the wrong thing
to get it. Sometimes, for instance, a person wants respect but con-
stantly seems to be apologizing for his actions. Avoid the construc-
tion, “He is trying to get her to..." Instead say, "He wants her to."
The word "try" may add a strain.
The most important thing to understand about choosing an

objective is not to get stuck making us believe the truth of the words
spoken. IfI say, "I really want you to understand this," my intention
is probably not to have you believe that I want you to understand, but
to actually have you understand. "I need you to love me" comes out
very differently if my intention is to make you believe that I love you,
rather than if my intention or need is to be loved.
In the film “Last of the Mohicans,” Daniel Day-Lewis has a line

where he tells Madeleine Stowe that he will find her. This moment
was used in all the trailers, but so out of context that it sounded like
a declaration of his intent, as if he were playing the intention "to get
her to believe that he would find her." It seemed to me like a cliché.
106
ACTORS’ CHOICES
Later, when I saw the movie and the line was said in context I could
see that Day-Lewis, an excellent actor, had not made Hawkeye's
intent "to get her to believe that he would find her," which would
have been the hackneyed "movie" choice, stuck on the surface of the
words. Although I have no inside information as to how Day-Lewis
works, it looked to me as though his choice was something more vis-
ceral, perhaps "to calm" or "to soothe" or “give her courage" for the
ordeal ahead.
Sometimes it is helpful for the actor to concentrate on what he is

doing — the action verb — the simple task. Often it is more helpful
for the actor to create for himself a strong sense of need or objective
and then not think about when to change action verbs, but rather let
the changes come out of his interaction with the other actor. Some
actors prefer not to think about objective or intention at all, on the
grounds that the character probably doesn’t know what he's doing or
why he's doing it.
But whether or not the actor uses this tool, the performance, in
order to be believable, must have a through-line and a sense of inten-
tion. The actor doesn't necessarily have to be aware of it or be able
to label it (he may be working some other way), but it must be there.
When the director monitors actors’ performances, this is one of the
things he should be monitoring. If you can discern whether an actor
operates out of a need, can play the verb rather than playing at it, you
will have an invaluable tool for casting. If you become adept at dis-
cerning actors’ unconscious objectives, you may become known as an
"actor's director." The caveat, as usual, is that reading about objec-
tives, intentions, and spines is only a start. In order to understand
and effectively use them, you need to practice and see them in action.
IMAGES
There are images in the text and images behind the text. By
images in the text I mean every person, place, or thing that the char-
acters mention in their dialogue. By images behind the text I mean
the things the characters don't talk about — the people, places, and
107
things that inhabit their subworld. This includes not only visual
images but impressions of all the senses — what we see, hear, smell,
taste, and touch.
“4
An actor when studying a script examines all the images in the
text and makes sure he understands them. He puts them in the con-
text of the facts of the script, of course, but he also makes them real
to himself; that is, he relates them to his personal experience and
observation and allows his imagination to weave through them and be
captured by them. He does this in order to be sure he 1s talking about
something, not just talking about words. This is an important cor-
nerstone of a believable performance.
The content of what someone is saying is not the words them-

selves but the image those words evoke. Let's say the character has a
line, "There was rain today.” To give life to the image "rain," the
actor invests or evdowy it with sensory associations. Of course every-
body knows what rain is, but an actor who works deeply with images
would adopt a “beginner's mind” and not take anything for granted.
She would make a full sensory exploration of all the images of rain
that she could conjure and connect with. This would involve mem-
ories of rain, all different kinds of rain: hard, needle-like rain; soft,
sweet, warm rain; cold rain; rain squishing in your shoes; being
indoors in a rainstorm; the sound patterns as the wind brings the rain
in gusts; the sight of rain streaming down the window; the condensa-
tion on the inside of the pane; mud; the sound of splashing; the taste
of rain; the smell of rain; rain on wool; rain running down one's
collar. Besides memory, the actor might add imagined associations of
rain. Even if a person has never been inside a tiny mountain cabin
during rain, she can imagine it; if she has never stood naked in the
rain, she can imagine it.
As soon as I let myself take some time to think about rain, I

remember my New England childhood, where summer rain was usu-
ally accompanied by thunder and lightning. A warm summer shower
without lightning was a special event, since it meant no danger of
electrocution! My mother would let my brother and me put on our
swimsuits and play outside in the rain. It takes time, but I can
108
ACTORS’ CHOICES
recreate many sensory details of that experience, and what I don't

remember, my imagination easily fills in. And what feelings it
brings back!
This is all preparation. When it comes time for the actor to

deliver the line “There was rain today" in front of the camera, the
word "rain" has some emotional weight; there is an image behind it.
The actor is not working to have the image while the camera rolls, he
is not stopping the scene to remember his image; he has already done
the work and the image will be there. Or maybe it won't. If the image
is not there when the actor gets to the line, that means it wasn't strong
enough, wasn't meaningful enough, wasn't present, private and com-
pelling enough. Or perhaps that it wasn't sensory enough. If the
actor has mistakenly intellectualized the idea of rain rather than con-
nected to the sensory experience of it, then the image won't come
unbidden when the actor arrives at the word. In that case he goes off
by himself before the next take and reinvestigates it.
Dealing with images is a way to give a word emphasis and color.

Michael Richards, Kramer on TV's “Seinfeld,” will give an ordinary
word some strange twist in the way he says it, and suddenly it's a
funny word. I don't know what he does to achieve his amazing
effects, but [ can't help wondering — is it possible that he prepares
by riffing and free—associating in a similar way to the "rain" associa-
tions above? Could he have created some idiosyncratic imaginative
stand-in for, for instance, "beta-carotene"? What I mean is that |
picture him, when he says the words “beta-carotene,” imagining
something other than a vitamin — maybe a person whose name 1s
Beta Carotene, a woman, perhaps petite, with red hair, a great figure,
and very firm opinions!
Images can be imaginative or they can arise from the personal

experience of the actor. That is, the actor can make a substitution. In
a scene in which the character is talking about her ex-husband, who
is not present, whenever she has a line mentioning him, she would
substitute in her own mind the image of her own ex-husband. Of
course she may not have an ex-husband. She may never have been
109
married, but she can still play the role. She can substitute for the ex-
husband someone from her own life.
Substitutions do not need to be exact, but they need to be specific

and strong. They need to capture the actor's imagination, so they can
be surprising, even opposite. Usually I would say that the actor in the
above example, when substituting for an ex-husband, should pick
somebody important in her own life, an ex-lover or ex-friend. But if
the character's ex-husband was selfish, the actor might substitute a
selfish person who is not a man or an ex-lover at all; for example, she
could substitute her mother if her mother was a selfish person. Or
she might substitute her own ex-husband even if he wasn't selfish. It
doesn't really matter what the substitution is, as long as it captures
her and as long as she is talking about a person.
She could even substitute for the ex-husband a person she met in
a store yesterday; that would give the relationship less emotional
investment, and thus a different attitude. This would create an
adjustment that she's gotten over the relationship, or that it was never
very substantial to begin with, or that she is in denial about her true
feelings. The substitution is an emotional parallel to the character's
relationship. The parallel need not be exact if it is done honestly and
simply and with full commitment. The audience will believe the rela-
tionship because they will believe that there is sore relationship, and
they will suspend disbelief and fill in the blanks.
The purpose of substitution is honesty in a performance. If at all

times the actor is talking about something real, then the audience can
hear that in the words. They don't know what the substitution is;
that is, they don't know war truth is being spoken, but they hear
truth being spoken. Lines spoken as lines in a script, without images
connected to the words, have little effect on an audience. So, para-
doxically, when the actor is substituting — that is, in his mind he is
speaking about something other than the words of the script — the
audience can hear and believe the words better.
A few years ago I performed a demanding lead role in a stage pro-

duction in which my character had long monologues on the subject
110
ACTORS’ CHOICES
of ironing her husband's shirts. (She was not ironing on stage; she
was actually in a police station, but she was talking about ironing.)
Although my mother ironed my father's shirts and taught me how, I
had never, as an adult, ironed men’s shirts. In early rehearsals I tried
my best to focus on images of ironing shirts during those long mono-
logues, but they did not carry the emotional weight for me person-
ally that the writing clearly meant them to carry. I was dry. So I
made a wholesale substitution and as I spoke the images of the mono-
logue, which had to do with the steaming ironing board, the texture
and colors of the cotton shirts, I focused instead on a sensory experi-
ence of wrapping a present for someone I loved. (It was my choice
about the character that to her the ironing was an act of love.) I made
my images very specific: a specific gift, a certain person the gift was
for, the wrapping paper, the tape, etc. I quit worrying about getting
the right image, and instead gave myself completely to the substitu-
tion I had found. And eventually, the ironing image did kick in! The
steam from the iron and the crispness of the cotton began to take
hold of my imagination. During many performances, I could feel
the steam on my face and in my nostrils. I did not try to make the
audience believe that I felt the steam, it was just there. The substi-
tution gives the actor a springboard into the imaginative realm —
the "magic as if."
The actor also makes sure that there is an image in place for the
facts or events he is speaking about. In the 1995 version of “Cry, the
Beloved Country,” one of the characters has a line "Tam a cynical and
selfish man. But God put his hand on me.” In order to make this
strange and powerful line his own, the actor must be sure that he is
not speaking in generalities, but is speaking specifically of something
in the character's past that might cause him to say such a thing. The
work of the actor is not to decide whether to say this line piously or
defiantly or sarcastically, but rather to determine what specific events
of this character's life make him call himself cynical and selfish.
Perhaps it is something he did that he knew was wrong but escaped
punishment for. What is it?
There are no further clues in the script as to what this event

might be, so the actor goes to his own imagination, and also to his
111
DireEcTING ACTORS / WESTON
own life and the lives of people he has known. I happen to know
someone who went to jail for manslaughter. Meeting this person
made a tremendous impression on me. Perhaps I would borrow his
experience and substitute it as my own when,it came time for me to
say this line. I would not need to do that of course. [ could recall the
time when I was nineteen and lied to my parents that I couldn't meet
them for dinner because I was sick. In fact I wanted to see my
boyfriend, of whom they disapproved. That evening we were in a
serious motorcycle accident. In the Bellevue emergency room there
was a kind nurse. Recalling her face and eyes might well start me on
the road to creating a reality behind that line.
Besides substituting the things he is talking about the actor can

make a substitution of the person he is talking to. If the character is
talking to a person who has betrayed him, instead of working himself
up into a phony, actorish rage against the other actor in the scene, the
actor can substitute for his scene partner a person from his own life
who has betrayed him. The substitution gives him a truthful need to
speak, and the results may be surprising. “The words may not come
out with rage at all; they may come out with sadness, or even perhaps
with very little emotion.
When a character has a telephone conversation, the actor needs

to create the image (a sound image as well as visual image) of a voice
on the other end that he is responding to. When the actor has a
close-up or eye-line that prevents him from eve contact with the
actor he is playing the scene with, even though they are supposedly
face-to-face, the actor creates an image of the face he is in dialogue
with. These images can come from his imagination or from his own
life. In either case, the more specific and sensory (the wrinkles
around her eyes, texture of her skin, her fragrance, étc.), the better.
Even if there's only one character in the scene, the actor is always
talking to someone. Under what circumstances do people talk when
nobody else is around? Take the “Twilight Zone” episode in which
Burgess Meredith, wearing thick glasses and the only survivor of
nuclear war, finds himself in the ruins of the public library. The
whole script has only one character, and this character speaks out
112
ACTORS’ CHOICES
loud during the whole episode. Why does he talk? He must be

talking to someone. He could be talking to himself, in which case he
imagines himself as a separate person to talk to. He could be talking 1
to objects (the books). He could be talking to an imaginary person,
someone he wishes were there to see him now. This is necessary also <>.
for voice-over narration. Narrators of docurientary (or fiction) films” ~~ °
_ ner 0 five themselves one particular person to whom they are
telling their story. Be om
=
An image can impel an intention. Perhaps Daniel Day-Lewis,

playing Hawkeye, rather than articulating an intention for himself, as
I suggested earlier, instead endowed his line "I will find you" with an
image of Madeleine Stowe's future rescue and safety — the strength
and warmth of his arms around her, for instance — and put his con-
centration on transmitting that image to her, making her see and feel
and share it, to give her courage and hope. This image could be con-
nected to the imaginative circumstances of the frontier setting of the
story. Or it could be personal to the actor — a picture, the sound of
a voice, a fragrance, that conjures up for him safety and love. If the
image is strong, the actor doesn't have to think about his intention,
or even to make a decision as to what it is; he uses the image instead
of an intention.
That's an example of an image behind the words. Other images

outside the writing may be the images of the character's world that
characterize the period and culture he lives in, his social class, and
occupation. If an actor is playing a knight in medieval times, he will
of course be given the appropriate costume, props, and set decoration
for the period. But a thorough actor will also create for himself
images of objects and experiences that relate to his period and occu-
pation, things which he may have no lines to talk about, but which
nevertheless inform his life.
Many actors get emotional colors through images. Images have

a big effect on all of us. If you start thinking about the backyard of
your childhood home, creating a detailed image of the swings, the
hiding places, the tear in the screen door, it's going to have an effect
on you. Even if actors have not been specifically trained to work
113
with images, it's just true. That's why they are such a useful
directing tool. Franco Zeffirelli gave Glenn Close this image for her
portrayal of Gertrude in “Hamlet”: "The walls of the castle are filled
with her perfume." iy
Images are the poetry, the resonating sensory subworld of the

text. A dedicated actor or director will always connect images with
associations that are rich both in personal meaning and in imagina-
tive breadth. She will read extensively, especially biography and fic-
tion, go to museums, concerts, to meadows, mountains and deserts;
she will ask acquaintances for the stories of their lives, talk to
strangers, eavesdrop, spend time with children, in order to constantly
replenish her repertoire of images and associations.
I find that many novice film directors have filled their imagina-
tions exclusively with images from movies and television. This is a
mistake. It's true that there is fun to be had in movies that reference
other movies, if it is done in an original way, but to build a real
career, and to grow as an artist, one must have access to images from
other sources.
Who knows where Vanessa Redgrave got the images for the
shimmering scene in which she describes her memories of Howard's
End to Emma Thompson? Wherever the image comes from, she lets
the words come out of her commitment to that image, without
deciding how she will say them. The more private, specific, and real
her image is to her, the more we (the audience) are able to journey in
our own imaginations to our own Howard's End.
OBSTACLE
An tmportant reason for using a personal substitution is that it

gives the actor an obstacle. An actor might win the role of a person
who after many years of hiding her feelings finally confronts her
father about the distance in their relationship. Actors are usually
thrilled to be approaching such a meaty role. They jump in feet
first, confronting away, acting up a storm. In real life, of course,
114
ACTORS’ CHOICES
confronting one's father about the deficiencies in the relationship is

likely to be a painful experience, one that, indeed, most of us would
put a lot of energy into avoiding. Substituting her own father in the
imagined circumstances of a confrontation that she perhaps has never
experienced will give her the obstacle that can bring emotional truth
to the scene.
Sometimes the productive way to talk about a character's need

is to talk about the character's "problem." y Phe concept of
“problem” incorporates the sense of need with a sense of obstacle.
Concentration on a problem creates a sense of task, and keeps the
actor's attention forward, not focused on whether he is doing the
role “right.”— -
ren as with determining the objective, it is a good idea not t

come too dead-on to the lines of the script. Let's take as an example
| the opening scene of “Driving Miss Daisy.” You might say that Dan
Ackroyd's problem is to get his mother to agree to hiring a chauffeur.
This might work (I’m not claiming any clairvoyance into Dan
| Ackroyd’s mental or creative processes) if he has a good enough sub-
' stitution, but usually the actor will ask himself some questions to lead
himsetfro a problem more under the surface. For example, have they
had this discussion before? (What were those her come
Perhaps her dismissals of his well-meant suggestion make him
feel that she doesn't respect his opinion, that she still treats him like
a child, not aman. This could give him a problem — a grown man,
a successful businessman, who is treated like a child by his mother. A
P
completely different tack might be to give him the problem that he
/ has received complaints (which he knows would upset his mother if
——ghe found out about them) from the neighbors that his mother has
been driving over their lawns. —
These two different imaginings of the character's problem would

be two different character choices. The first one might create a
deeper undercurrent to the relationship. The second one might
make the character of the son more superficial. (Or it might not.
You could add another obstacle that no matter what, he will not
115
expose her to humiliation by letting her know about the neighbors’

complaints. This could add a tenderness to his concern for her.) But
at this point I don't want to discuss the merits of these choices. I
think a director could have reasons for preferring either one.
First of all, | want you to note that they are choices. There is
nothing in the script to prove or disprove either one. Second, I want
you to notice that exploring these choices is different from asking the
actor for these results. If you, as director, ask for the result — for
example, to bring a deeper undercurrent to the relationship, or to
make his character more superficial — you are hoping that he
searches his imagination and experience for ways (such as, though not
limited to, the ones suggested above) to create a believable sense of
problem around your request. But if you are interested, you could
engage in discussion and experimentation with the various ways of
looking at the character's problem.
You should understand that if you engage in the problem with the
actor, the performance might or might not end up with the result you
have in your mind. To work successfully this way, you will have to be
process-oriented rather than result-oriented.
Sometimes actors forget that an obstacle is a good thing, not a

bad thing. Of course an actor needs to be confident about his
choices. But sometimes actors cross the line into wanting to stay in
their comfort zone. Sometimes they make a choice that enables them
not to engage, not to be affected by the other actor. This doesn't
work for a scene. Both characters have to be affected by each other,
even if they struggle against it, even if they struggle to preserve their
composure and keep the other guy from knowing that they are
affected. There has to be something at stake.
Se OS
Sometimes actors make bargains with each other ("If you are
really mean to me in that scene, then I will be able to cry"). Such bar-
gaining drains the scene of life, because the actors are servicing each
other. The concept of "servicing" or “cooperating” is slippery. I have
been carrying on about the importance of listening, of generous
acting, and now I am saying that cooperating is bad.
116
ACTORS’ CHOICES
Cooperating, or bargaining or servicing each other, means the

actors collude on the emotional subtext of the scene. The actors may
have agreed on what lines will be spoken and what blocking, even the
emotional structure of the scene — i.e., the through-line and the beats.
But each actor's emotional subtext must be sovereign, unpredictable, in
the moment; otherwise the scene loses a sense of obstacle, and the
emotional life becomes a connect-the-dots drawing instead of an
event. It is a very good idea to ask the actors not to discuss the work
with each other. When actors discuss their characters together, it is
like gossip — fun, perhaps, but nothing creative can come of it.
Sometimes actors bargain with the director, requesting that

another actor stand closer, of a propbe changed so it is easier to
handle. If you are working with stars, such situations can easily
became political, and sometimes political considerations will force_
you to respond to such requests with political solutions. In the best
~~ of all possible worlds, however, nd to all such
requests in terms of the work, an: sical obstacles San be the best
thing that can happen to the work. € character wants someone
to kiss him, and she is standing way across the room, it could add to
the dramatic tension — or to the comedy — of the situation.
OE a Acer b-—
Or actors may bargain with the writing ("That line is too hard to
say," or "My character wouldn't say that"). This calls for a decision
on the part of the director. Sometimes the writing should be
changed. Sometimes the writing will have a "false note” — some-
thing the writer has put in for reasons other than the inevitabilities of
story and character. A superior actor, one who Is intelligent and 1s
working honestly and organically, will stumble on such lines and be
able to call them to the attention of the director. ‘Vhis can be very
valuable input.
On the other hand, sometimes the writing is solid, and the actor
has not made the connection necessary to see the life in the line. If
you have the time and the skill (the more skill you have, the less time
it takes), you can give his performance a huge boost by insisting that
he find a way to meet the line, enter its subworld, and find a way to
117
justify it. And if you are really skilled, you will be able to give sug-
gestions on how to do that.
Budd Schulberg, in a 1994 GQ article about the shooting of “On

the Waterfront,” reveals that Marlon Brando was unhappy with the
taxicab scene and pestered Elia Kazan for a rewrite. The rumor
reached Schulberg, who insisted he saw no way to change a word.
Kazan called them together for a reading of the scene. Brando's
problem was the point at which Charlie, played by Rod Steiger, pulls
out the gun. Brando said, "I've got all that stuff where I say ‘I coulda
been a contender’ and that my brother and Johnny sold me out, all
those dreams of what I could've been — how can I say all that with a
gun pointing at me?” Schulberg says that Kazan responded, “What
if you just reach out quietly and push the barrel down a little so it's
not pointing at you?"
This is an important story. Anyone who has seen the movie will,
I think, agree that it would have been a mistake to change any lines.
And yet, Brando's point was a valid one. It seems to me that Brando
was objecting to the pitch of melodrama that he felt would result
from the situation of a man pouring out his heart with the obstacle of
a gun pointed at him.
What is the scene about? It's about two brothers. Kazan's direc-
tion goes to the heart of the scene, because when Terry gently pushes
the gun away, we see the inarticulate depth and strange tenderness of
the relationship; we see that whatever failures Charlie has made as a
brother, Terry knows Charlie will not use a gun on him. Pushing
away the gun becomes the transforming event of the scene. After it,
‘Terry opens his heart to his brother, and Charlie is moved to love and
shame — indeed, he then sacrifices his own life. “his was a major
directorial insight, but it was also a correct way of working with a
good actor who is having a problem with a well-written script.
(Interestingly, Brando, in his autobiography, claims to have impro-
vised that whole scene! But to me the two versions of the story are
not really in conflict. The question raised by Brando was central to
solving that scene, and certainly it is fair to say that the actor created,
i.e., improvised, the scene's emotional life.)
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ACTORS’ CHOICES
I think you can see, from the “Waterfront” example, what a mis-
take it would have been for the actor and writer to meet without the
director. It is the director's job to mediate any concerns the actor has
about the writing, or the writer has about the acting. I feel strongly
that actor and writer should never meet without the director present
— even when the writer and director are the same person! If you are
both the writer and the director, when you need to talk to an actor
about script changes, you should do so with your director's hat on,
not your writer's hat.
Sometimes an actor objects to a line because he is resisting some

facet of the character. This used to happen to me. In every role I
undertook, there would be a line, sometimes a whole scene, which I
didn't get, or didn't like. Since I was trained to theater discipline, I
never tried to get the line changed, but often I was secretly sure that
no matter how brilliantly I performed, it would not work, since it was
really the line that was wrong, and not me. But every time, sometime
in rehearsal or performance, I would finally understand, "solve" the
line or moment, and that solution would give me the whole character.
What I had been resisting was a part of myself that was central to the
character. Such resistances carry a lot of energy. When the resis-
tance is pierced, tremendous emotional and psychic energy is
released, and insight and connection result.
Now if you have a rehearsal period, the director can allow the
actors time to work out such resistances at their own pace.
Organically working out the resistances of the actors is one of the
purposes of rehearsal. Without rehearsal, actors may need help from
the director or else sooner or later the line they are resisting will
probably have to be cut or changed, perhaps to something inferior.
Such resistances are not bad, but they are obstacles. When they are
solved they release energy.
FACTS
A character's through-line can come from the facts of the scene.
In that case the actor doesn't have to know the objective. The facts
119
themselves can create a powerful enough sense of need so that it is

not necessary to put the objective into words.
[ll give you an example from an improvisation I use in my

advanced acting classes. I call it "Danielle and the Doctor."
"Danielle" is a female and "the Doctor” is male. (J also have a varia-
tion in which the male and female roles are switched, and one in
which the actors are two women.) First [ ask the female actor to go
out of the room, and I speak to the male actor. I tell him that six
months ago he graduated from medical school on a scholarship, and
has chosen to take his internship in the public assistance hospital of a
large city far from his home. Interns work extraordinarily long shifts,
at low pay, with little time off. He has made no triends in this new
city. He takes extra shifts for other interns when they want time off.
Two weeks ago, a young woman was brought into the hospital in a
coma, with no identification, a "Jane Doe." The staff of the hospital
took to calling her “Danielle.” During those two weeks he found
himself visiting her room whenever he had time off. He would talk
to her. ‘Iwo days ago she woke from her coma, but she still doesn't
speak. “Vhe tests have shown that she can hear and that there is no
medical reason why she can't speak. It is now late at night, his shift
is over, and he has come up to her room.
Then I speak to the female actor alone. | tell her that she woke
up ina hospital two days ago and the people there have been telling
her she was in a coma for two weeks. I tell her she may or may not
remember what caused her coma, that's for her to choose. I tell her
that she can speak, but that for the past two days she has not spoken.
I ask her to find that place within herself from which she might have
no desire or need to communicate. I tell her that many of the hos-
pital staff come into her room, but there is one intern who comes
more often and who calls her "Danielle."
“Danielle” prepares and settles herself and the improv begins.

‘The intern comes in. Sometimes these improvs are quite beautiful,
but every time, guess what objective the actor playing the intern has?
lo get her to speak. [haven't told him what his objective is; | haven't
told him what should happen in the scene; I haven't told him what he
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ACTORS’ CHOICES
feels. I have given him only facts. And, through my instructions to

“Danielle,” [ have given him an obstacle. The facts by themselves are
powerful enough to activate his sense of belief.
SENSE OF BELIEF
"[Acting] is basically a simple exercise of living life truthfully

under imaginary circumstances." — Bryan Singer, director of
“The Usual Suspects”
If an actor has a line to the effect that "this is the first letter I've
ever received,” as does the title character in “II Postino,” the actor,
who has undoubtedly received letters in his own life, must create the
given circumstance that justifies the facts behind that line; i.e., create
a sense of beliefin the situation. What would it be like to be a person
who has never received a letter? How would I feel, who would I be,
if / lived in a tiny village all my life, had no education, and had never
received a letter? These are questions an actor might ask himself in
order to create a sense of belief in the given circumstances of the
character. “Given circumstances” is another way of saying the char-
acter's situation, or his predicament. Writers and producers tend to
call it backstory. I like to call it the facts.
Some actors are in touch with their imaginations enough to sur-

render themselves to an unself-conscious sense of belief in the situa-
tion no matter how improbable. The wonderful film actors of the
thirties and forties, who were working before the teachings of
Constantin Stanislavsky took hold among cinema actors, would
commit themselves to the circumstances of the story, no matter how
silly or far-fetched, and were able to infect the audience with their
sense of belief. Since the fifties, when the early work of Marlon
Brando, Montgomery Clift, James Dean, Geraldine Page, and Kim
Stanley seemed to tear open the envelope of the emotional depth an
actor could give the audience, we now demand of our dramatic film
actors an inner life and moment-by-moment authenticity of feeling
that the film stars of the thirties and forties did not always have. But
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DirReEcTING AcToRS / WESTON
they had a great sense of belief, a great will to believe in their char-
acters, and a will to make us believe with them.
All actors, no matter what techniques of script analysis and prepa-

ration they favor, to one extent or another, exercise beliefin an imag-
ined reality. All other techniques, such as objectives and substitu-
tions, are really means to an end, which is to kick in the sense of
belief. If he does not allow himself to believe in the scene on some
simple level, he is likely to fall into the trap of trying to prove to the
audience that he does.
A wonderful example of a pure sense of belief at work, it seems to

me, is the performances of Tom Hanks and Tim Allen in “Toy Story.”
Now I don't know how they worked; maybe they mapped out
through-lines and beats and adjustments and subtext, but somehow I
doubt it. They seemed to make a wholesale imaginative leap into
their created personas. That the characters are not even people, but
toys, seems only to have made the imaginative leap all the more
graceful. I can picture these two talented men allowing themselves
an effortless imaginative journey back to childhood, when acting out
the inner lives of their toys was daily bread.
ADJUSTMENTS. }
Some people use the term "adjustment" to refer to any choice or
shading of a performance. For instance, a director may say, "Let's try
a different adjustment. Let's say that you want to pick a fight with
him." ‘That's really an objective, right? But sometimes people call it
an adjustment. There's nothing wrong with that. When I gave the
“Driving Miss Daisy” example of adding an obstacle for the son, that
could be called adding an adjustment.
An adjustment arises as a way of interpreting facts. In Tennessee

Williams’ “Orpheus Descending” (the movie “The Fugitive Kind”),
there is a scene in which Lady and Val first become acquainted. Val
had arrived in town that afternoon, stopping briefly in Lady's mer-
cantile store, leaving his guitar there. It is now the middle of the
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ACTORS’ CHOICES
night. He has returned to the store and he is standing in shadow as

Lady, who that afternoon brought her invalid husband home from the
hospital, descends the stairs to place an emergency call to the druggist.
She hasn't slept in days and has lost her sleeping pills. They surprise
each other in the dark store and their acquaintance begins.
There is a fact central to this scene: Val was in the store earlier
in the day when Lady arrived with her husband from the hospital.
The only words the husband spoke were words of criticism toward
Lady. One way to approach playing the character of Val would be
to look at that fact; he first saw her while she was involved in the task
of getting her sick, demanding husband upstairs to bed and keeping
her business running.
How does he perceive her, based on the events of that afternoon?

There are several possible choices, based on the facts:
1) He perceives her as a woman in trouble who needs help;

2) He perceives her as a woman with power who owns a
store, commands respect and could help him (he has no job);
3) He perceives her as crazy, a difficult, dangerous woman;
4) He finds her attractive;
5) She is the same age as his mother.
Making a choice about his first impression of her that afternoon

(if you go back and reread that scene, there are no clues about this
and that means the actor can make a choice) will give the actor an
adjustment to the other actor that creates a relationship between the
two.
Adjustments can be a way of adding imaginative backstory to the

facts of the script — a "what if?” Using the “Driving Miss Daisy”
example, the idea that the neighbors might have complained about
tire tracks on their lawns is an imaginative backstory idea. It's not in
the script. It's a "what if?” as in "What if one of his business associ-
ates lives next door to his mother and made a nasty joke during a
meeting about Miss Daisy's driving habits?"
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DirReEcTING ACTORS / WESTON
Adjustments are ways of talking about the character's behavior

without using adjectives. Instead of saying that character A is
"respectful" toward character B, you might say his adjustment is that
"B is an important man," or, if you want to raise the stakes, the adjust-
ment could be that B carries a weapon, and has been known to shoot
people he feels are disrespectful to him. This is an imaginative
adjustment; it is used for a script in which B does not in fact carry a
gun or have anything to do with guns. The imagined gun is a secret
the actor playing A gives himself in order to justify the relationship
and the need to speak. [t can also be phrased as an “as if’ — “as if B
is carrying a gun and will use it if he perceives any sign of disrespect
from me." You see how this could create the same effect as deciding
to be very, very respectful (or deciding that the character is irra-
tionally paranoid), but it puts the actor's attention on the other actor,
not on himself.
If you feel the need to discuss the character's emotion with an

actor, you make the direction less result-oriented if you connect it to
a metaphor-type adjustment. So you might say, “It’s not like the rage
you would feel if a drunk driver killed your child. It's more like when
the phone company won't come out to fix your service until next
Thursday and insists that you be there all day."
The actor can make an off-the-wall imaginative adjustment to

justify a difficult line. The actor in “I] Postino,” in order to say believ-
ably the line about receiving the first letter in his life, might make the
adjustment that what he is really saying is, "This is the first letter I've
ever received from the President of the United States." You could
also call this an imaginative subtext.
SUBTEXT
Subtext is the thing that is not being said. If the line is, "Please
shut the door," there can be several different subtexts to it: "Please
shut the door (you stupid ass). "Please shut the door (so we can
begin our business meeting).” "Please shut the door (so we can
finally be alone together, darling)." "Please shut the door (and keep
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ACTORS’ CHOICES
that maniac out)." The line itself would be the same each time, but
it would come out in different ways depending on the subtext. Ina
sense the different subtexts give it different line readings.
Subtext is what the person is really saying, what she means. It

happens in regular life all the time. "You got your hair cut (finally —
it was looking like hell)" vs. "You got your hair cut (I wish you hadn't,
it looked better before)." It can be the reverse of the meaning of the
lines. I’m sure we have all occasionally heard an "I'm sorry" whose
subtext was "I still think it was really your fault."
Subtext is useful as another way to create a sense of intention or

need. On the Short List of Action Verbs I have put what I call
anchoring subtexts next to each verb. If you want the actor to play
the verb to belittle, for instance, you might say, "The subtext is,
"You're worthless."
Sometimes I tell actors to play a whole scene as if everything they

are talking about is really about sex. I tell them to be specific and
graphic, but not to say it out loud, to let it be the subtext. This works
especially well if the scene has nothing whatever to do with sex. My
intention is not to actually make the scene be about sex, but to keep
the actors interested in the scene and alive to each other.
There are scenes with interaction between characters but no dia-

logue; for example, the scene with Cary Grant and Deborah Kerr at
the ship railing in “Affair to Remember.” They have no words, and
yet their facial expressions make it clear that they are communicating.
They are communicating with subtext. If you want the actor to give
a "look" to another actor, say a skeptical look, and if you want to
avoid the adjective, you could use subtext — "Are you serious?” You
need to watch out for subtext communications that cross the line and
become mugging; that is, the actor performs the subtext communi-
_cation for the benefit of the audience rather than for the benefit_of
~ the actor he is communicating with. ~~
——- ' oo
7 ™é
. | om uo r ~ ry '>
125
PHYSICAL LIFE
The objects of a person's life are very defining of who she is. An
actor creates a sense of belief in her character's life by creating a
relationship to the objects of that life. Giving life to the objects and
activities of the character's world is as important as finding her
inner needs and impulses. Objects have tremendous power to create
energy. When directors define the physical staging of scenes, they
become significantly involved in the actors’ physical life. It is very
helpful to involve the actors organically in the creating of blocking
and stage business.
It is important for actors to think of props not as obligations

but as opportunities to add to the richness of their portrayals. Ifa
character is playing cards, the actor must really deal with the
cards, look at them and make decisions about whether to draw or
hold — not turn them over because the stage directions tell him to.
\WWhen an actor is presented with the prop handcuffs he is to wear

in a scene, he needs to make a connection to that object, and give it
lite. If he gives the object life, it gives life back to him, almost like
another actor in the scene. To a prisoner who in real life is hand-
cuffed the handcuffs would feel completely different from the way
they would to an actor, who can take them off when the scene is over.
The actor has to make an adjustment to the cuffs in order to believ-
ably play the prisoner. ‘lo a prisoner who is handcuffed for the first
time the handcufts would feel different from the way they would to a
prisoner who has worn them many times before. Rather than
deciding the result — that the character is submissive or defiant —
the actor makes a physical adjustment, perhaps that the coldness of
the steel deadens all feeling in his hands, or that it cuts him like a
knife, or reminds him of a frightening childhood experience. Or per-
haps the familiarity of the cuffs is almost a comfort.
It is via objects and activities that a sense of period or class dis-

tinctons is grounded. People's needs and feelings are no different
throughout history and throughout social classes. It is the activities
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ACTORS’ CHOICES
and objects of their lives that change. An object can also be a kind of
emotional lightning rod, to keep a relationship from coming across
too dead-on. Once in a class two students were enacting the con-
frontation scene from “I Never Sang for My Father.” The student
playing the father was acting up a storm, confronting the son in a way
that was very dramatic and probably satisfying but not believable. I
gave him a newspaper and told him I wanted him to read the paper
during the scene, and not merely use it as a prop. I instructed him to
be able to tell me after the scene was over what the article was about.
The scene then played beautifully. Objects are wonderful as a way to
bring actors into the moment, out of their heads. If they concentrate
on the task of, say, making a sandwich, that concentration can impart
to the emotional life a sense of task as well. This allows the emo-
tional event to take place without actorish posturing.
Physical life grounds a performance, An objective can be played

through an object, and become a physicalization of the character's
inner life. Brando, in “A Streetcar Named Desire,” created a phys-
ical relationship to every object — the radio, the dishes, Blanche’s
luggage — in that little apartment. This gave a physicalization to
Stanley's spine, which was to keep possession of all his property. In
“On the Waterfront” he added to the first scene with Edie the busi-
/. ness of picking up her glove and putting it on his own hand. The
1
glove business physicalizes their relationship: it is boy-like; it gives
«
him his’ intention (to tease her); it reveals the differences in their
education and manners; it is a sexual metaphor. And it gives Fva
Marie Saint a playable objective for the rest of the scene — she wants
her glove back!
: ~~ >
Most actors love costumes and makeup. ‘There is more than a

grain of truth in the “Wings of Desire” scene in which Peter Falk,
playing an actor on his way to a location shoot, is brooding because
he has no ideas for the character he is about to play, but consoles
himself with the possibility that they might have a good costume for
him. "That's half the battle,” he says.
There is a difference between connecting to the physical life of

the character via costume (which is good), and "playing the
127
wardrobe” (which is bad). For instance, if the production designer

decides to put all the female characters in white (as in “Crimes of the
Heart”), then each actor needs to make a choice for each costume
change as to how she happened to choose thet outfit that morning.
This physically roots her in the character's reality; then whatever
thematic significance the production design is meant to have can be
experienced by the audience as integrated to the story and theme,
rather than presented to them as an intellectual idea.
Morgan Freeman's character in “The Shawshank Redemption,”

released from prison and wearing a suit for the first time in forty
years, looks odd, uncomfortable. In the following few scenes we see
him gradually wear civilian clothes more naturally. Instead of
demonstrating to us that the character feels awkward, Freeman makes
his attention to the suit physical. Morgan Freeman the actor is
familiar with the sensation of wearing a suit jacket, but the character
isn't. If the actor puts his attention on the sensation of shoulder
padding, this creates for the viewer the illusion that the shoulder pads
are unfamiliar to him. Or perhaps he puts his attention on the arm-
holes, tighter than those of prison blues. Or perhaps on the hat,
understanding that the character would lack a sense of where a hat
would sit well on his head; wherever it sat would feel unfamiliar.
An important part of creating a character is finding activities and

behavior for her. Does she knit? Chew gum? What objects are her
allies? Her enemies? Watch out for clichés.
> ‘ TN
Actors sometimes do interior physical work. They create charac-

ters of varying degrees of sensuality through physical awareness of
the intimate parts of their bodies. In order to play a graceful person,
they may create an inner life of physical pain. They may work on
physical centers: an intellectual person has his center of energy in his
head, for example. A belief in the character's physical life can give
you the whole character. Actors sometimes have "magic keys” that
open up the character for them. Often these “keys” are physical
choices. “This is called "character work." Dustin Hoffman has said
that he found his magic key to playing the elderly Jack Crabbe in
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ACTORS’ CHOICES
“Little Big Man” when he realized that the guy "probably hasn't had
a decent bowel movement in twenty years."
In a Los Angeles Times interview, Martin Landau described the

physicality of his characterization of Bela Lugosi for the movie “Ed
Wood”: "My face is very alive, and he had a certain limitation to his
face. I had to learn his face. When I put the makeup on, I would
learn to subordinate certain muscles in my face. I open my eyes wide.
He rarely does. You see a lot of teeth when I smile; you see no teeth
when he does. He held his head at certain angles, he had a certain
walk which is different from the way I walk." Do you see the subtle
difference it makes that Landau does not say about Lugosi, "he
squints"? Instead he says, “I open my eyes wide. He rarely does.”
His concentration is physical, specific, and sensory — not judgmental!
All character work, whether accompanied or unaccompanied by

makeup, should be sensorial. Sometimes complex and difficult char-
acter work is done in meticulous detail, like Daniel Day-Lewis in
“My Left Foot,” or Tracey Ullman in her myriad personas.
Sometimes, like Jeff Bridges in “Starman,” the actor makes only a
very small physical adjustment that suggests his otherness more sym-
bolically than naturalistically. But when, as Bridges did, he commits
fully and simply to it, the audience gladly goes along for the ride.
Sometimes character work is a function of the style of the movie.

The movies of the Coen brothers demand stylized acting. Stylized
acting can be wonderful as long as the style is internally consistent;
and as long as all the actors are listening, and are connected to their
need; and as long as all physical adjustments are created organically
in their bodies, not as an intellectualized idea of the character, which
becomes a judgment.
Actors can sometimes fall in love with their “business” and start
to play it for its own sake. It becomes shtick. Or they may start
playing their character choices for their own sake — ‘playing char-
acter" or mugging. The director needs to monitor these things and
ask the actor to give up business or character choices if they get in the
way of telling the story.
129
WHAT Do You MEAN “SPECIFIC”?
All good actors work to some degree instinctively. There may be

some very good actors who don't consciously use any technique, who
instinctively listen, instinctively play intentions, and instinctively create
a sense of belief in the facts, images, and physical life of their charac-
ters. But, to be blunt, there are some actors who claim to work
"instinctively," and pride themselves on never having had an acting
lesson, who are capable of better — that is, more specific — work. The
purpose of technique is not to smother or hobble the actor's insuncts,
but to find ways to make character choices more and more specific.
"Specific" is a concept that a lot of people have trouble with. |

know I did when I was first studying acting. The reason it is hard to
grasp is that there is no one definition for it. The way to make acting
"specific" is specific to every situation!
If an actor A is directed to make her performance more “stern” in

a scene opposite actor B, actor A could make an imaginative adjust-
ment that earlier in the day she heard actor B telling an offensive joke.
Already this is a more specific choice than trying to "be stern.” She
would continue making this adjustment specific by imagining the
details of the experience, or by recalling the details of a parallel expe-
rience of her own. She would recall or create the hallway or room
where it happened, the sound of his voice, the heat in her face, etc.
This adjustment would only work if actor A is actually bothered by
such jokes. If that is not the case, then she must make some other
choice. She is looking for a choice that impels simple, truthful
behavior in the moment, so she doesn't have to demonstrate a
clichéd, general attitude of "sternness.”
Finding more specific choices is called "filling" a performance.

It's also known as finding "colors," "levels," or "layers." Paul
Newman, on "Inside the Actors Studio,” spoke about what to do
when a director tells actors to pick up the pace. He said the actor
should go off by himself and work more on the part, “fill” it better,
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ACTORS’ CHOICES
ask himself questions, find beats, add adjustments, opposites, change

the rhythms, add more specific detail. After the next take, when the
director says, "Great, just what I wanted,” Paul says to check with the
script supervisor on how long the two takes were. "A hundred times
out of a hundred,” he claims, she will reply that the second take was
longer than the first one — the one the director said was too long!
‘This means that in the initial take the actor was “rushing,” not
connecting to the subworld of the lines, possibly because he has not
investigated that subworld adequately. “Rushing” paradoxically can
make a scene feel slow, because if the subworld of the scene is not
coming alive, the scene becomes boring and generic and the person
watching can't help but wish it finished and done with as soon as
possible. In fact it needs to be slowed down in order to find the
details of inner life that will make it worth watching.
In Paul Newman's example, in which the actor is actually

rushing, the direction "Pick up the pace” was a result direction, that
is, a direction that if followed blindly, would make the scene worse
instead of better. But sometimes the direction "Pick up the pace” is
a playable, on-target direction. Sometimes when a scene seems slow
it really is slow.
In rehearsal the actor needs to go slow to figure out the transi-

tions. After some rehearsal, however, the transitions, if they are
working, should start to go more swiftly, the way they do in real life;
but the actor may still be stuck in the exploratory rehearsal rhythm.
In that case picking up the pace will simply feel more natural than
staying with the rehearsal rhythm. Picking up the pace will also
bring the scene alive if the actor is laboring the transitions or lis-
tening to himself act. In that case he needs to stop thinking, let go,
and spit it out. If the actor goes off to think up more transitions,
this will be a disaster. Sorry about that, but I warned you there was
no cookbook!
What are the responsibilities of a director in these cases? Is he

supposed to know and fix every problem of every actor? No. Itis the
actor's job to make all direction her own, and fill it with her personal
131
and imaginative associations. So why should directors bother to learn

how to give playable (choice-oriented) direction? Because it puts
things on the right track. It engages actor and director in a process;
it keeps their attention forward. Even good actors who routinely
translate or fill all result direction, when subjected to a constant bar-
rage of it, can get worn down and confused, while inexperienced
actors can easily lose their bearings. So it helps when the director can
come on the journey with them and give direction in terms that sug-
gest playable choices.
My first professional job was for director John Korty. We were

shooting a made-for-television movie starring Stephanie Zimbalist.
I was playing the sister of Stephanie's new boyfriend. In the first
scene we shot, I was to bring cups of coffee out to the porch and sit
down on the step next to her. While we were rehearsing he said to
me, "You can sit closer to her, because you want to welcome her into
the family."
Later as [ learned more about moviemaking I realized that he

probably wanted to be able to put a tghter frame on our two-shot,
but instead of asking me for that result, chose to give his direction in
terms that related to the characters’ relationship. Or maybe his mind
connected instinctively to the created reality of the characters’ inter-
ests and needs. I was on the set for four days, and interestingly, I
never saw anyone on his set put down a piece of tape for the actors’
marks. He set all the positioning by giving direction that related to
the characters’ situations and relationships. And _ his technicians
never grumbled. Everybody loved him.
When directors can use imaginative adjustments well, actors

adore them and will do anything to work with them. But an inex-
perienced director forcing his ideas — however properly phrased in
the language of imaginative choices — on actors may be seen as a
foolish busybody. ‘That's why it's a good idea to try these things out
in a class situation or with actors with whom you are friendly. The
goal is not to replace one catch-all phrase (‘edge,” or "take is
down") with others, but to allow yourself to think and feel more
deeply, more specifically.
132
STRUCTURE: TRANSITIONS EVENTS, AND THROUGH-LINES
STRUCTURE:
‘TRANSITIONS, EVENTS, AND
“THROUGH-LINES
Actors get into a lot of trouble with transitions, the emotional
changes and events of a role. Transitions are the places where actors
feel the most self-conscious, worry the most about whether they are
going to be able to “hit it." Directors often exacerbate the anxiety
by using the result direction of asking actors to hit a certain emo-
tional “note.” It is in the transitions that bad acting is most likely to
show up.
‘Transitions, or shifts in thought or feeling, in real life are utterly uncon-

scious, one of the most spontaneous, organic things we do. We do not plan to
change our minds, have a new feeling, undergo a change of heart, react, realize,
or go off on another train of thought. We may ignore, repress, or refrain from
acting upon such tiny inner events, but we can't prevent them from happening
or summon them to our will. They are set in motion by what is going on in
our subconscious.
=» Actors’ transitions are another matter. They must be prepared.

But how? First, here are some things that can go wrong:
1) The transition is not there, because the actor hasn't found

it in the script, hasn't understood, or doesn't believe that
there is a transition or event at that moment.
2) It is indicated or fake. The actor decides on a transi-
tion and demonstrates it to us rather than creating it honestly
and organically, or allowing it.
3) Itis forced. The actor intends to make the transition
organically but does noi get there and, at the last moment,
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DirEcTING AcToRS / WESTON
out of a feeling of obligation, pushes it rather than not make

it at all.
4) It is flat, because the actor is worried about forcing or
pushing, and is afraid to overdo or overact, so at the last
moment she drops out.
5) It is overprocessed, labored, telegraphed. This is a
variation on playing the end of the scene at the beginning.
We see the actor "winding up," anticipating the next emo-
tional event, letting us know that even though right now she
is in a rage, she is getting ready any moment now to break
down in tears. In real life there is no process or motivation
involved in the experience of transitions at all. “They are
unexpected, lightning quick, and like lightning they seem to
come "out of the blue.”
6) It is too logical, too dead-on. In other words, however
well executed, it still looks planned, because it lacks the idio-
syncrasy of a real-life transition. The actor has made a choice
that is pedestrian or obvious.
A transition is an emotional event. Sometimes it is called a

"moment" or a "beat change.” Now a discussion of moments or
"beats" is always complicated by the fact that so many screenwriters
use these terms as stage directions, in lieu of the word "pause."
When you see a parenthetical “beat” or “moment” in a screenplay,
that means the screenwriter has in mind a very brief pause at that
moment. It has nothing to do with the beats and events I am dis-
cussing here.
A moment means the actors stop each other, and affect each
other. Sometimes a genuine moment catches the actor so off-guard
that she momentarily forgets her lines. An actor should never stop
the scene when that happens. Such inner accidents create a lot of
energy. She should allow this inner accident to be an emotional
event, and she should continue the scene and do something with the
energy that has been released. The forgotten line is likely to come
back within a few seconds. The director, of course, must be open to
this idea, must be able to tell the difference between a "dead spot"
and an energy-releasing inner accident and must allow a climate in
which creative accidents are welcomed. Sometimes actors forget that
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a moment is an event, not a feeling; it is not an end point. When a

moment occurs, the actor must then do something.
Emotional events for characters can be wins or losses, discov-

eries, choices or mistakes — not realizations or reactions, which are
not playable. By the way, when I say that a character's emotional
event might be a “choice” made by the character, this is a different
use of the word from when we talk about actors ;choices. “Actors'
choices” are also called “character choices,” i.e., choices that create
the inner life of a character. A choice made by the character is some-
thing different, however; it's an emotional event in the scene.
Transitions need to happen in the moment. The character's

wins, losses, discoveries, choices, and mistakes need to be made in the
moment. We want them to emerge spontaneously from the subcon-
scious, the way they do in life. They need to count — or read — on
the screen, because the emotional events tell the story, but we don't
want them telegraphed or emphatic. We want them to be sponta-
neous, vivid, and subtle all at once.
What is needed from actors is connection, engagement, a will-

ingness and ability to affect each other and to be affected, to deal with
each other and with the environment. This is achieved by having a
through-line. The through-line is what makes a performance simple
and unfussy. Meeting the transitions in the moment is what makes
the performance nuanced. |
What is needed from the director is that he or she structure the

scene (and the full script). The tools for understanding (via script
analysis) and then creating (in rehearsal) scenic structure are what the
scene is about, or its central event; its beats; the sub-events leading
up to and resulting from the central event, that is, the events of each
beat; and the characters’ through-lines. These tools will be exam-
ined in detail in the Script Analysis chapter. For now, what I mean by
an event, from the director's point of view, is what happens. This 1s not
exactly the same as a plot event — it is an emotional event, for
example, an apology or a seduction. An emotional event in a rela-
tionship might be "No matter what she does, she can't cheer him
up." When the audience fecls chis event, is taken up by it, connects
135
to it (whether or not they would describe it that way), they wonder,

"Will this couple stay together?” In other words, “What happens
next?" The director is responsible for putting the events of the
scenes together to make a satisfying story, that is, keeping the audi-
ence interested in what happens next.
The events, however well understood intellectually by actors and

director, only really work if they happen in the moment. When a
scene is structured properly, actors can commit to choices, then
abandon themselves to the moment. The scene will then naturally
and inevitably "build," achieving its proper pace and flow. The
"how" of an actor's choices —— for example, how he gets the other
actor to leave the room, or give him comfort — comes from the
moment-by-moment interaction between the actors.
This is the ideal: solving the scene by finding one simple choice
(through-line) for each character that all his behavior can be hung on,
like a hook, and then allowing the actors to play off each other. But
often, once that central problem of the scene has been solved, there
are still transitions here and there that are not working, that need to
be sharpened, deepened, or cleaned up. This is the most dangerous
place for a director to use result direction. When a director wants to
ask an actor for a transition but doesn't want to use result direction,
he can use his “Quick Fix” tools, thus: |
Images
The best way I can think to describe how images and associations
work in creating transitions is to relay Stanislavsky's anecdote, from
An Actor Prepares, about a woman who has just been told her hus-
band was killed in an accident at the factory. She stands in place for
minutes, not moving. The question going through her mind while
she's being told this is, H hat will I do with the dinner I've prepared if he
will not be there to eat it? The mind works in such incredible ways,
especially when information is coming in that one can't deal with or
accept. ‘The image “husband” connected with the image "dinner"
and her mind would go no further. The most useful images in this
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STRUCTURE: TRANSITIONS EVENTS, AND T] IROUGH-LINES
regard are off-kilter, out of context, even bizarre, because that's the
way people's minds work. ;
Verbs
An excellent way to make transitions is to make a simple full

change of action verb, without thinking about the why of it. If an
actor changes suddenly and completely from begging to accusing,
we (the audience) will know that a transition has taken place. And it
will be more believable than if it is made by dragging us through an
actorish "process."
When the director is describing such a transition to an actor, he

should leave out connective phrases. So instead of saying, "Here she
is pleading with him, and then something makes her start punishing,"
say. “She pleads with him all the way to here; then she punishes."
at 2
Pore als re a 4 owe
Physical activity
If an actor is not getting the emotional event or transition interi-

orly, the director can suggest it with exterior means. Standing up
from a chair, putting down a newspaper, even turning her head away
can, if the writing is strong enough, suggest the moment quite ade-
quately and avoid the pitfalls of an overwrought transition.
In any case, one of the worst kinds of result direction is to tell an

actor what he realizes at_a certain point or what reaction he is sup-
posed to have. If you can't come up with some specific playable
direction, such as a through-line, plavable event, image, verb or phys-
ical activity, then the best thing to say is something like “I think
there's a change here,” or "I think there's a transition we may need
to make here," and let the actor figure out how to get there himself.
Through-lines give the actors a sense of history, risk, or need

among the characters. A through-line can be an objective
(spine/need), a verb, an adjustment, a problem, a given circumstance
(fact), a subtext, an image. .\nother way of thinking about the
137
-_ eet A
through-line is as a| primary engagement or focus. So it could be an

object, as in a scene, for instance, in which a character returns a stolen
ring toa friend. The ring itself, first burning in her pocket and finally
shining on her friend's hand, could be the primary focus, or through-
line. The primary engagement of a character could be with a
memory or image. It could be with drugs or booze.
Or it could be with a third character. lost two-person scenes

have an absent third character, someone who is crucial
to the rela-
tionship of the characters who are present. In “Days of Wine and
Roses,” most of the scenes are between Kirsten and Joe; in some
scenes, the absent third character is Kirsten's father who has
loaned them money; in some, it is their young daughter, asleep in
the next room.
Concentration on the through-line keeps the actor connected to

the other actor, but with something of his own. Having something of
his own, a strong choice, makes him able to listen and play off the
other actor without picking up the other actor's tone. Unless you are
directing soap opera, you don't want the actors to pick up each
other's tone, since it becomes melodramatic. In real life weoften”
pick up each other's tone. We unconsciously adopt our antagonist’s
reality and start defending ourselves or explaining ourselves in rela-
tion to his agenda {This is a phice where we want movies to be more.
lea
surprising, emotionally cleaner, and more revelatory than real Tife.
It's what people mean when they talk about an "edgy" quality or the
"heightened" reality required of acting. "Edgy" or "heightened" are,
of course, very vague and general and would not be helpful directions
to give an actor.
A movie can have a non-naturalistic, heightened sry/e without

being fake and caricatured as long as the verbs, facts, images, events,
and physical lives of the actors are all alive and centered in a reality.
Heightened is achieved by making the choices and transitions crisp,
specific, and committed, not wishy-washy. And also engaged. While
the actors are committing to something of their own they need to be
sure that they take energy from each other, that they don't screen
each other out, that no matter what the other actor does they make
138
an adjustment that allows them to keep playing their own intention;

they use what the other actor is giving them as a playable obstacle.
This is how scenes of confrontation — so common in movies and so
rare in real lite — can be alive and believable. This is how comedic
or fantastical situations can carry us with them.
“Heightened” also has to do with making choices that are not

obvious and pedestrian. This means finding a truth deeper than
everyday actuality, seeking insight. I think when many people talk
about heightened reality they mistake it for putting a frame around
the performance — this causes a performance to look pushed or
faked or overdone. Heightened means more honest than we are in
real life.
When actors find the deeper truths of a script, it is always best for
them to maintain a privacy. When the actor confers with his director
about such ideas, the transaction needs to be delicate. And actors
should not talk about these ideas with the other actors. It becomes
casual, a kind of gossip; it dissipates the energy of the idea and dam-
ages the actor's concentration. Meryl Streep disclosed in an inter-
view with Gene Siskel that for every role she gives herself a secret,
something which her character would not want others to know, and
which she herself conceals from her co-stars; in “Kramer vs. Kramer”
her secret was that she never had loved her husband.
When actors keep secrets from each other, when their transi-
tions are crisp and clean, their images private and idiosyncratic,
their intentions (verbs) opposite to the obvious surface meaning of
a line — a performance may have “edge.” And the actors’ perfor-
mances can contribute to the style of a film.
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ACTORS’ RESOURCES AND TRAINING

"I...build on my own experience, on that of others — on every-
thing I have heard and seen...The day Ingmar gives me the manu-
script he also gives me the right to feel that henceforward I under-
stand the part best. She becomes my reality as much as she is
Ingmar's." — Liv Ullmann
The really great actors love their craft. They experience acting
as a kind of laboratory of the soul, a means to exploration and growth,
a path. Acting can be a great act of love, a sharing of the most impor-
tant things one knows and feels about life.
There are excellent actors who have never taken acting lessons
and instead have developed a private technique of their own. There
are other actors who think of their teacher almost as a priest or guru.
I think that the best actors recognize and seek out true teachers, and
steal and learn from everyone and everything they encounter.
This chapter addresses ways an actor brings moment by moment

reality to his choices. For this task, the actor has four resources:
1) memory, or past experience;

2) observation;
3) imagination;
4) immediate experience, or the “here and now.
MeEMory (PERSONAL EXPERIENCE)
By memory I mean the actor's personal memories and experiences

— things that have happened to him while living his own life. The
141
reason an actor uses his own life and experience is not that his partic-
ular life and hard times are any more significant or worthy of note
than anyone else's. The goal of using personal experience as an
acting resource is not self-indulgence but honesty.
No one can experience another person's life. Each individual is

essentially unknown to all others. Hence, when an actor properly
uses his own experience he can do work that is original, specific and
emotionally truthful.
Memory is the resource actors are using when they make personal
substitutions or when they work with the technique of affective
memory. Affective memory (also called emotional memory) is based on
the technique of sense memory.
V sense memoryis the creation of imaginary objects via the memory

of your five senses — what you see, hear, smell, taste and touch, In a
sense memory exercise the actor recalls physical sensation. She
allows the memory to occur physically (in her body) rather than intel-
lectually (in her mind). In a beginning sense memory exercise a stu-
dent holds in her hands an object, say a cup of hot coffee, and puts
her attention on the sensory impressions it makes on her: the weight
of the cup, its temperature, its contours; the sensation of steam
against her face; the smell of the coffee, etc. The attention needs to
be sensory, not intellectual — that is, what she is registering is not an
intellectual evaluation of the temperature ("it is pretty warm," or
"very hot") but rather the pure sensation against her fingers and
palms, her cheek and nostrils. She tries to be as specific as possible
about the individual sensations of different areas of her skin. Once
she has given thorough attention to the sensory impressions of the
object, the object is taken away and she works with an imaginary cup
of coffee, that is, a sense memory of the real object. She imagines the
weight, temperature, texture, aroma, etc., with as much detail as she
can summon, but — this is important — without strain. The goal of
the exercise is not to demonstrate the object to anyone watching, but
to train one's sensory concentration.
142
When I lead sense memory exercises in my classes I usually ask

the students to close their eves, because in regular life we overuse our
eyes as sensory portals and it's hard to abandon ourselves to our sen-
sations of touch and hearing and smell when sight is available. Also,
in regular life our eyes are used primarily for evaluation and catego-
rizing, whereas this use of the senses is a surrender.
For an affective memory exercise, the student selects an emotion-

ally charged event from her own life. She recalls not the emotion
itself or even the event itself, but her sense memories of the physical
lite surrounding that event, i.e., the color of the walls, the smells of
the kitchen, the feeling of the upholstery under her legs, the conden-
sation on the glass she was holding. Affective memory (or "emo-
tional memory”) was developed in this country as a technique for
actors by Lee Strasberg, founder of the Group Theatre, and the
leading light of the Actors Studio. The idea was that by selecting an
event with a significant emotional charge, and by practicing to revisit
the sensory life surrounding that event, an actor could bring herself
back, at will, to the emotional life of the event.
Substitution is a kind of brief affective memory. The “magic as

if” is another approach to a personal substitution: "As if my own job
is in jeopardy.” "As if my own sister has just shot her husband." It’s
a way to talk about raising the stakes of the relationship. It's also a
way to keep the work simple and real. Sometimes a director can say
to an actor who Is ov erdoing, “Forget about the character. Play the
scene as if it were you.” An actor needn't use the technique of attec-
or substitution or the "magic as if” per se in order to
tivememory
bring his own memories and experience to bear on a characterization.
Actors have many private ways to inform their work with their own
understandings of life.
OBSERVATION
In addition to his own experiences, an actor understands what

makes a character tick from observing others. An actor may use obser-
vation of the behavior and physical characteristics of people he has
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DirneEcTING AcToRS / WESTON
come in contact with to play characters that are different from him-
self. Using observation as an actor's resource is sometimes called
working "from the outside in." An actor may be playing someone of
a certain social class or occupation; he needs to find the physicality
of, for instance, a person who has lived all his life as a farmer — ges-
tures and behaviors that differ from a person who, say, has always
worked behind a desk. Playing a character who ages in the film, like
Cecily Tyson in “The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pitman,” or
Dustin Hoffman in “Little Big Man,” an actor uses his observations
of elderly people to create that physicality: there is often a stiffness in
the joints, a tendency to walk and stand with the feet farther apart.
An actor keeps an inventory of the different kinds of drunkenness he
has seen — quiet drunks, sloppy drunks, happy drunks, angry drunks
— and can create a particular physicalization for the kind of drunk he
feels a particular character is.
Working from the outside in is more associated with British

acting and university drama departments and movie actors of the
1930s and 1940s. An actor might plan gesture, facial expression, and
line readings, even practicing them in front of a mirror. When I was
studying acting in the early seventies, American actors had a tendency
to label this kind of acting "technical acting"; the slightly pejorative
ring to that term was intentional.
There have been mighty controversies about whether actors

should work “from the inside out" or "from the outside in." The
danger of working from the outside in is that the work, relying on
external skill rather than engagement and surrender, may become
superficial and stagy. Working from the inside out is associated with
Stanislavsky, and with most acting technique taught today in the
United States. What about the term "The Method"? Stanislavsky
himself called his work a new "System." In New York and Los
Angeles when people refer to The Method they mean the work of
Lee Strasberg and specifically they mean the technique of affective
memory. In other parts of the country — in San Francisco, where I
first started acting, and in Chicago and other major cities — when
people say Method they mean any kind of acting training that follows
or purports to follow the teachings of Constantin Stanislavsky; in
144
other words, any kind of acting training that favors working from the
inside out.
The funny thing is that Stanislavsky himself would probably be

appalled to find that his teaching was thought to be restricted to
__ working from the inside out. Although the first book in his trilogy of
_ textbooks, An Actor Prepares, concentrated on ways to reliably and
truthfully activate an actor's inner life, the second, Building a
Character, concerned itself entirely with creating characterization by
physical means — makeup, costume, vocal patterns, gesture, gait. |
The confusion is I think made complete when we notice that the
introduction to An Actor Prepares, supposedly the bible of the
“inside out” crowd, was written by John Gielgud, a classically trained
British actor and an "outside-inner” if there ever was one!
Surely the best actors do both, work from the inside out and also
from the outside in. Marlon Brando is known as an actor who works
from the inside out, but who actually also works from the outside in;
it was he who insisted on stuffing his cheeks to play the Godfather.
Anthony Hopkins, although he is associated with British acting and
~
thus working from the outside in, acknowledges in_his interviews
working from the inside out as well; Shelley Winters claims to have
spotted him sitting quietly in the back of Actors Studio classrooms
during the seventies.
A character may remind an actor of someone she knows. She can

then adopt physical and emotional behaviors of that person. Shelley
Winters, for her role in Stanley Kubrick's “Lolita,” had to play a
woman she considered different from herself. Kubrick suggested
that she find someone she had known that she could idenufy the
character with. She picked a “pseudo-intellectual lady” she remem-
bered from her childhood in Queens and adopted what she remem-
bered of that woman's physical behaviors — the way she moved her
hands, her feet, the way she wore clothes. Actually, Shelley calls this
process “substituting,” a different use of that term from the process I
described in the “Images” section of the chapter on Actors’ Choices.
It's an empathy, really. An actor can sometimes adopt whole cloth
the persona of someone she has known. I had a television role once
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DiRECTING AcCToRS / WESTON
which I decided to play as my mother. It has to be someone the actor

is very involved with, either personally or imaginatively. It's a kind of
emotional transference, but based in physical observation.
Hy
In order to become imaginatively involved with a character, an
actor often does research. To find the physical details he brought so
vividly to life, Martin Landau watched thirty Bela Lugosi movies and
numerous filmed interviews with the deceased star he played in “Ed
Wood”; he also researched and studied a Hungarian accent. Actors
who have been cast as policemen often spend time riding in patrol
cars with real officers in order to understand how a police officer
relates to the physical paraphernalia (uniform, holster, etc.) of the job.
IMAGINATION
Many actors are drawn to the profession because of an overde-

veloped access to the imagination. For many of us (I must say “us,” of
course, since I am one), imagined reality (i.e., the lives of characters
in books and plays and movies) is as real as life itself, and more com-
pelling. A sense of belief in an imagined reality gives the actor soli-
tude in public, allows him to be absorbed in the created realm and
reprieved from the duties of the social realm.
All of us, actors and nonactors alike, are sitting on a vast iceberg
of submerged resources —. memories, observations, feelings, ©
impulses, images, associations, meanderings — that are not useful to
our daily lives and have been filed away,
to all practical intents and
purposes no longer available to us. These are the resources of our
story imaginations. Stella Adler included among the riches of the
subconscious the resources of the "collective unconscious.”
When I use improvisation as a teaching technique, I see released

the depth and range of my students’ unconscious resources — much
vaster than what is available to our conscious minds. I've seen stu-
dents instantly go believably to the controls of a spaceship or to the
jungles of Vietnam, in an improv, when only moments earlier they
had been miserably struggling to place themselves in a family kitchen,
146
and believably say the lines of a character who is actually very much
like them. I am a great believer in improy for engaging an actor's
. : : . at ~
imagination and sense of belief.
Also daydreaming. Sanford Meisner in his book On Acting advo-

_cates daydreaming as an actor's resource. What does this mean?
~ Sometimes nonactors tell me they are analytical and don't have good
imaginations and don't understand what I mean by daydreaming the
life of a character. It's something most actors do automatically: the
mere mention of an idea sends them off and running, building images
and associations and backstory (both imaginative and personal)
around it. They start having ideas for the character's spine (“I think
he's in love with death!"). Or for ways to physicalize: "I'll grow a
mustache for this role!" "Can I knock over the chair on this line?”
Imagination is precious. It's a bubble of belief. The bubble of

belief is punctured by result direction. Actors are suggestible and
kid-like. Directors are the parental figure. When the actor is told,
for instance, that “at this point in the arc of the script, we need an
ominous note,” it’s like being reminded of the adult world. It's the
director's job to pay attention to what is needed “at this point in the
arc of the script.” It's the actor's job to play.
IMMEDIATE EXPERIENCE
An actor uses the resource of immediate experience by being alert

and awake to what's happening in the here and now, to the stimult
he's getting from the other actors and from the environment. This
is "moment-by-moment” work. Some people call this an attention to
"outer reality," to distinguish it from "inner reality,” the imaginative
— subworld
of image, need, and adjustment.
Sanford Meisner invented the "repetition exercise,” a teaching

technique that promotes moment by moment aliveness and engage-
ment with a scene partner. It is described in his book, Sanford
Meisner On Acting. Two actors sit across from each other, giving
each other relaxed attention. When one of them has an impulse, he
147
may say something — either an observation of the other actor or a

statement of his own feelings — such as "Your eyes are brown,” or
"My stomach is tense.” The other actor repeats exactly what the first
actor has said, and the two of them keep repeating the same phrase
until one of them has an impulse to say something else, which then
gets repeated in the same way.
The exercise must be carefully supervised, to make sure the par-

ticipants are speaking out of true impulse, not because they think it is
time for them to come up with something, or because they feel a need
to entertain those who are watching the exercise. But the beauty of
it is exactly that: you can participate in the exercise even if you have
no impulse or idea for something to say, because you can repeat what
is already being said. The exercise, when properly supervised, gets
the actors out of their heads and away from watching themselves, and
into the moment.
The repetition makes the “lines” of the exercise a kind of non-

sense, so there can be no pressure to say them “right.” The exercise
allows the actors to be engaged without any responsibility to a text or
even a situation. ‘Typically in a Meisner oriented class, the students
are only allowed to improvise situations after several months of
repetition exercises.
In my own classes I use a variation on the classic Meisner tech-

nique which | learned from David Proval. The two participants sit
across from each other, looking at each other, relaxed. After a while
one of them is asked to say something about the other person, but
specifically using the form, "You have...” and refraining from any
descriptive adjectives. For example, if the participant has the urge to
say, “You have beautiful eyes,” he instead must say, "You have eyes."
The other participant then repeats back, but changing the pronoun
to "I." After a while the participants are invited to say how they feel,
only using the form, "You make me feel..." which is repeated, "I make
you feel..." etc. The important rule is that the "you make me feel..."
is a form. The participants are to say how they actually feel, regardless
148
of where the feelings come from. In fact, no analysis will be made of

where the feelings come from.
It's quite a remarkable exercise. Without manipulation or bul-

lying, students "go places" emotionally, with full, instantaneous tran-
sitions and a simple, deep "solitude in public." The purpose is to
build their contidence so that even when they have memorized lines
to say, they will be able to give the lines the moment-by-moment life
of an improvised emotional subtext. They will generate energy from
their honest, real feelings and a concentration on their scene partner.
Their transitions will be full and unforced.
When actors have confidence that they can trust their feelings
and the other actor, they receive all stimuli as energy. If the actor is
irritated with the direction or doesn't like the other actor or is
shooting on a hot sound stage a scene set in the Antarctic, the actor
can still be alive to the "here and now," using everything as energy,
instead of shutting it off, screening it out, pretending it's not there.
If the actor has a headache, he lets the character have a headache. If
the actor is nervous, he imagines what the character might conceiv-
ably be nervous about.
Some actors use direct experience as preparation; that is, rather

than imagining the experiences of the character, or finding parallels
from their own experience, they put themselves through some part of
the character’s experience themselves. Eric Stoltz spent two months
in a wheelchair to prepare for his role in “Waterdance.” Oliver Stone
led the actors through a kind of boot camp to prepare for “Platoon.”
Holly Hunter has described her preparation for a scene in “Copycat”
in which she was supposed to enter a room distraught; she asked a
group of extras on the set to do an improv with her, in which they
pushed her around physically, just before the scene was shot. Dustin
Hoffman is known for insisting on experiencing the reality of the
character. On the set of “Marathon Man,” the story goes, he arrived
one morning to play a scene in which his character had been up all
night. "I stayed up all night to prepare for this scene,” he declared to
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DirEcTING AcTors / WESTON
his costar, who happened to be Laurence Olivier. Olivier's legendary

reply: "But my dear boy, why don't you just act it?”
* * *
"Ss
SENSORY LIFE
Adding sensory detail deepens and keeps fresh any actor's choice.
The brilliance of affective memory as a technique is the under-
standing that it is the sensory life (e.g., the pattern of the wallpaper,
the sound of the voices in the next room) that recalls the emotional
event far more vividly than pondering the emotion ("I felt fright-
ened," etc.) or even the event ("My mother was screaming,” or what-
ever).
If the actor is using a substitution, he starts from a relaxed condi-

tion and explores his memory for true sensory detail about the person
or event he is substituting. He uses all his senses: sight, hearing,
smell, taste, touch. If he is substituting, say, ,the kitchen table of his
own childhood for the kitchen table the set decorator has brought in,
he recalls its color, its scratches, the chewing gum his sister left under
it, etc.
Objectives and intentions stay fresh and vivid via the here-and-
now physical reality of the other actor's physical face and body: for
example, "Do I see forgiveness in her eyes, hear it in her voice (not
just in her words)?"
Sensory life is necessary to bring to life the resources of imagina-

tion and observation too. Let's say the movie is set in medieval times.
The actor does reading and research to get ideas for his physical life,
which will be entirely based on imagination. But the imaginative
work should still be sensory. When he imagines himself sitting in the
wooden chairs of the period, he lets himself feel the rough wood
against the backs of his legs. When he imagines wearing armor, he
doesn't just *hivk about armor, he lets himself feel its weight on his
150
body. If actors do not root their imaginative preparation thus, in sen-

sory life, their work may become intellectualized and stagy.
Character work based on observation must also be sensorially

rooted. If an actor plays a character with a limp, there may be a
temptation to make a mere imitation or demonstration of the out-
ward appearance of an uneven gait. Making it sensory has to do with
making it specific — not a generic limp, but a specific limp, which
originates in a specific stiffness or soreness in the hip or knee joint.
The actor puts his concentration on a sensation of stiffness or sore-
ness, but not with any sense of strain or obligation to fee/ it.
Concentration is the operative word. If the concentration is five or
ten percent successful that is plenty; imagination supplies the rest.
Sense memory exercises can be very freeing. I find in my own

classes that sense memory exercises, as long as there is no strain or
fear of failure attached to them, offer students a kind of reprieve from
the stresses of daily life which distract us from our creative resources.
They return us to a child's sense of concentration on very simple
things, such as the color of the inside of a seashell or the texture of a
rose petal or the temperature of a cup of tea as it cools in our hands.
Sense memory has very practical uses for actors. When a char-
acter in a scene burns himself on a hot stove, the actor playing the
role does not touch a stove that is hot; he touches a cold stove as if it
were hot. Sophisticated special effects require actors to perform in
front of the blue screen as if they were on a precipice or airplane
wing. And since Shakespeare's time, the actor playing Macbeth has
had to be able to see a dagger where there was none.
An actor working from the outside in might scan his storage

banks of observation for the physical movement of someone touching
a stove that's hot, and borrow or imitate that movement. Working
from the inside out, however, the actor creates the sense memory of
the sensation of burning, and then lets his hand follow its own
impulse and move whichever way it wants to, in response to this cre-
ated, imagined stimuli. | think you can see that for film, especially
the big screen, a sense memory is going to be more believable.
151
Does this mean the actor actually feels the pain of a burn? Not
atall. That's the wonder of all this acting stuff; the concentration cre-
ates an imagined reality; the audience is inyited to fill in the blanks
with their own experience or imagination.
FEELINGS
"I think that to sing the blues you have to feel it.” — Billie
Holiday
Is an actor supposed to "feel it"? Ifso, does he feel it as himselfor

as the character? If the character is scared, should the actor really be
scared or should he merely /ook scared?
A dozen actors will answer these questions a dozen different ways.

My own answer is, yes and no. I think that when Billie Holiday said
(in a radio interview) that to sing the blues vou have to feel it, she was
talking about authenticity. Authenticity — not feeling, exactly — is
the goal, but authenticity is unlikely without feeling. Whatever truth
the artist gives us must be true on a feeling level, not just on an intel-
lectual level. An actor needs to surrender to the emotional honesty
that is required for a role rather than crank up its emotional intensity.
I urge all directors to take an acting class yourself so that you can
understand some of these issues at gut level.
Feelings don't hurt people. Sometimes directors are afraid of

deep feelings and this holds them back in their communication with
actors. For actors, expressing deep feelings can be cathartic; they may
have chosen the profession for the very reason that it offers the
opportunity to go to dark and difficult places. Does the director have
to go with the actor to these dark places? Yes and no. You can let
yourself deeply imagine the characters’ inner lives, and respect the
courage of an honest actor while also respecting his privacy.
Emotions are energy. There is no need to manipulate, bully,

shame, or abuse an actor into going to the places you feel are required
152
for the role (even though some of them won't mind it if you do). You
can invite them to invest more in the images of the scene, in other
words, to make the work more personal. Or you can offer them freedom,
give them permission to “let go even more.” You need in the next
breath to promise that you'll be watching to make sure the perfor-
mance is not overacted.
Emotion must never be indulged, or even attempted, for its own sake.
~ When actors enjoy their tears and hold on to emotion for the sake of
its effect, showing us how much emotion they have, the acting
becomes bad. Whenever an actor feels something, he must harness
that energy to a sense of task or predicament. In real life, as I men-
tioned in the first chapter, people don't try to have feelings, and fre-
quently they try wot to have them._ Performances are usually much
more successful when actors play against whatever feeling they have. ~~
~~Te can be funnier when an actor tries vot to laugh at a funeral (like
Mary Tyler Moore in the famous “Chuckles the Clown" episode of
her long-running TV show); more poignant when an actor holds \
back his tears; more frightening when his rage is contained. x
‘TEACHERS AND GURUS

It was via the Group Theatre of the 1930s that Stanislavsky’s
teachings became disseminated in the United States. The history of
the Group Theatre is described in Harold Clurman's The Fervent
Years and the documentary film, “Broadway's Dreamers: The Legacy
of the Group Theatre,” made by Joanne Woodward, as well as (more
briefly) in A Dream of Passion by Lee Strasberg and A Life by Elia
Kazan. It had a far-reaching effect on American acting. Four Group
Theatre members, Strasberg and Meisner (whom I mentioned ear-
lier), Bobby Lewis and Stella Adler, became teachers who taught or
influenced, directly or indirectly, almost every American actor and
the current generation of acting teachers.
As it happens the resources I described earlier correspond in a

very rough way to the approaches developed by the great Group
Theatre teachers. Memory is emphasized by the Strasberg Method,
Pot
153
observation by British technique, imagination by Stella Adler; Value of
Repetition Exercise emphasizes the value of

— . a a
and Meisnér's
immediate experience.
am)
Affective memory has for some people a kind of “black magic”

status, and they sometimes have violent objections to it. The good
things about affective memory are that it makes memory (a resource
all actors use, one way or another) sensory rather than intellectual,
it makes substitution specific, and it helps actors get below the
social mask.
The potential problems of affective memory, voiced most vehe-

mently by Stella Adler, are these:
1) It can be dangerous. It can turn into a kind of therapy

without a license. Often the events used for the affective
memory exercise are traumatic events from deep childhood.
Students may be pushed into emotional areas they are not
equipped to handle.
2) It causes the actor to bring the role down to himself
instead of bring himself up to the role. In other words, the
actor makes every role be about his own miserable childhood
instead of about the circumstances of the script.
3) In Strasberg classes students practice an affective
memory that brings them to tears, anger, or fear a certain
number of times. The theory is that it then belongs to the
actor and will always work, but it may not. We are a little dif-
ferent each day from the day before. Using affective memory
is itself a kind of discharge of emotion, and thus changes the
emotion attached to the event being remembered.
+) You can't be in two places at once. It can take the actor
out of the moment to concentrate on his substitution rather
than his scene partner.
5) ‘The actor may fall into playing “general emotion.”
Method actors can hang onto feelings, and the work may become
subjective, too inward, not expressed in intention or physicalized in
activity — or at worst, self-indulgent. In my classes I always ask students
154
to tie an affective memory, exerci

to ase
need or objective orrela-.
tionship, rather than an emotion. The actor must play the situa-
tion (the predicament, the problem, the task), not the emotion.
The words, the situation, the physical life, the needs of the char-
acter — plus what he is getting from the other actor — bring him
to a feeling or they don't.
This makes me more influenced by Stella Adler than by Lee

Strasberg, although I find affective memory and sense memory
invaluable teaching tools. I am equally devoted to the Repetition
Exercise, and to finding any way possible to get my students to
awaken and engage their imaginations. The line between memory
and imagination is in fact very thin. In practice, most actors use both
‘personal experience and imagination. And observation. And direct
experience too. (An actor could do an elaborate sense memory or
imaginative work in order to carry an empty suitcase if it were full,
but why not instead put something in it?) At some point in his work
on a role, the actor needs to explore personal experience and associ-
ations. Working honestly this way unlocks the imagination. Sense
memory itself is an imaginative exercise. All acting technique is in
service of creating a spark.
Let's look at Anthony Hopkins, a wonderful actor who, I believe,

uses all his resources. For the movie “Nixon,” Hopkins did not try
to imitate Richard Nixon physically, but he chose to focus on a few
specific physical behaviors of the man — shoulders, chin, hands,
some vocal work. He also made observations (which he has discussed
in the press) of Nixon's emotional life on which he based the char-
acter's inner life, in particular the insight (shared by director Oliver
Stone) that Nixon was an “outsider.” Hopkins has said that Stone
cast him because the director sensed "my isolation as a person and
thought I could relate to Nixon... I was surprised when he said that,
but I guess I've been a lone wolf my whole life. It started when I was
still a child in school." It seems to me that this thinking may have led
him, consciously or unconsciously, to use, in creating his characteri-
zation of Nixon, the spine "to build a wall against the pain of being
on the outside.”
155
Directinae AcCToRS / WESTON
In any case, to create his Nixon he used a combination of observation

and personal experience. His creation of Hannibal Lecter, on the other
hand, is surely the work of a vivid, sharp, playful zmagination. He always
uses direct experience — always gives and takes with the other actors. ‘The
“book” scene with Emma Thompson in “Remains of the Day,” for
example, contains remarkable moments of pure chemistry and real psy-
chological event; this is because they both give the scene to each other.
Any acting technique can be used improperly. I have heard of rep-

etition exercises, if supervised imperfectly, becoming indulgent, even
out of control. Actors who rely on observation and imagination to the
exclusion of memory can turn in work that is shtick-y or merely slick.
At any rate, different techniques work for different people.
In England, live theatrical performance, including Shakespeare, is

incorporated more naturally into children's education. The
Shakespeare plays themselves, when met fully (not recited stagily) by
an actor, are lessons in emotional openness, imaginative invention,
risk-taking, and clean, specific emotional transitions. Vanessa
Redgrave has pointed out that she feels her classical British training
in fencing had to do with actors learning to give and take; in other
words, to listen.
There are excellent American acting teachers who are not as well
known as the Group Theatre titans. Peggy Feury and Roy London
never became household names but were beloved teachers who
taught many excellent actors. Some acting teachers are dogmatic
about their teaching methods. Some are tyrants and bullies. Getting
below the social mask can be difficult; most of us have charactero-
logical and social armoring that prevents us from deep feeling.
Acting teachers sometimes take it on themselves to attempt to pierce
this armor by bullying and manipulating students. Actors unfortu-
nately are often wounded souls who expect and respond to such bul-
lying. 1 have found as a teacher that the opposite tack — more
freedom and permission to fail — works better.
_ Acting class should be, among other things, a place where the
Imagination is stimulated and creative freedom is encouraged and
156
where it is very safe to be open and honest and to reveal feelings. It

1s appropriate for an acting class to be therapeutic but it should not
be therapy.
STRETCHING
"By taking on roles of characters that were unlike me, I began

to discover those characters in me." — Al Pacino
What if an adjustment doesn't work? What if an actor tries a

given circumstance, then an imaginative adjustment, then an objec-
tive, a substitution, and nothing seems to get him to the place needed
_for the script? Take the example of the actor asked to make her per-
formance more “stern.” What if she makes the imaginative adjust-
ment that she heard the actor B (opposite her) make a racist remark,
and that adjustment doesn't make her behave sternly toward him;
instead it makes her feel upset and anxious? Well, she might then try
adding a substitution of the actor opposite being someone she is less
fond of (or less threatened by), and that might give her the stern
response. Or she might look for another adjustment, say, that actor
B has made a mistake that is going to make the production go into
overtime and she will miss a social event she's been long looking for-
ward to. But what if that doesn't work either?
What if "sternness” is foreign to her nature and emotional vocab-

ulary? What if she never behaves sternly in her own life? By now she
should have translated the result direction "sternness" into a verb:
possibly to teach, to preach, to disapprove, or to punish. Then she
should take another look, and make another emotional inventory.
Has she really never had the impulse to disapprove or to punish? We
have all had the impulse, even if we never act on it. The actor gets
to find it and then act on it in the created world — to behave in ways
she would never behave in real life — and get away with it!
The actor must make his choices his own, must connect with the
choice in such a way that allows his own subconscious to kick in. The
actor can play characters that are different from himself by making
157
character choices that are different from his in real life, e.g., choose
to beg in a situation where he himself would not beg. It's a playable
choice. He needs to "beg" honestly, of course, the way he himself
begs when he does beg. This can allow the pure, delicious freedom
of getting to do something one doesn’t get to do in real life, that is,
to achieve the actor's liberty to kick in, as it seems to for Ingrid
Bergman in her robust portrayal of the belittling mother (opposite
Liv Ullman as the daughter) in Ingmar Bergman's “Autumn Sonata.”
Allowing herself to complain, demand, and exert her will as no one
ever gets to do in real life gives the performance great zest.
One doesn't need to sleep with one’s leading man or lady. One
can play a murderer without having murdered someone. Lynn
Redgrave has said that her best work is in roles that are not at all like
her. Glenn Close has said the same. Under what circumstances
would I be capable of murder? Everybody draws his own line. An
actor catches hold of a corner of a scene's reality, unlocks some tiny
part of it, and imagination captures the rest. Holly Hunter calls it
"living on a terrain that I know something of, but is not where I live."
A good director can be the key — can provide the invitation to

stretch, the deep permission to “take a chance,” to play — that
unlocks the doors to an actor's resources.
STAGE ACTING VS. FILM AND TELEVISION ACTING
Glenn Close has called the performer's condition a condition in

which one allows oneself to disturb the molecules in the surrounding
space. On stage the actor "disturbs the molecules” up to the last row
of the balcony. For film, the actor must disturb the molecules of the
camera lens. These are very different experiences for the actor, and
require adjustments to his energy and concentration. There are
stage actors who don't connect to the camera, who are, in a way,
afraid of the camera, and there are film actors whose work doesn't
read at all on stage. But the ways that stage and film actors prepare
are similar. ‘he goal of an actor's preparation is always the emo-
tional truth of the role. Acting that is too fake and stagy for film is,
158
to me at least, too fake and stagy for stage. (Four-camera television

comedy — rehearsed for five days and then filmed or taped in front
of a live audience — is both a stage performance and a film experi-
ence for an actor.)
Stage actors (and four-camera comedy actors) must put together

in rehearsal a fully structured characterization, complete with spine,
transformation, through-lines, and beats. Since film acting is done
in bits and pieces, a whole performance can be patched together
with tricks and quick fixes. Some directors prefer to work this way,
rather than by allowing the actors to create a full characterization,
on the theory that the demands of a full characterization will con-
flict with moment-by-moment freshness. Sydney Pollack, although
he comes from a stage background and used to schedule lengthy
rehearsals, has said that in recent years he prefers to work without
rehearsal, confident that he can get the moments he needs with a
word or two just before the camera rolls. Certain directors, such as
Ken Loach and sometimes (reportedly) Woody Allen, don't give
actors a whole script.
On the other hand, since film acting is done in bits and pieces, an
actor who knows how to craft a full characterization (Meryl Streep,
for one) can be an exciting collaborator with a confident director.
Directors as diverse in their rehearsal and shooting methods as
Martin Scorcese, Sidney Lumet, Robert Altman, Jane Campion, and
Quentin Tarrantino all rely heavily on the actors’ contributions.
PROFESSIONALISM
"Skillful actors acquire great expertise, and the greater the

expertise, the more difficult it becomes to [surrender]."
— Vanessa Redgrave
Besides learning the craft of acting, film and television actors also
learn camera technique. This includes hitting marks, finding their
light, and not blinking. Over time, their familiarity with these tech-
nical tricks can make their acting slick and less exciting to watch.
159
Actors can also burn out, get sloppy, or general. They may even take
roles they are not particularly interested in just for something to do.
Actors often develop a bag of tricks, a set of effects they know

they can reliably produce. My teacher Jean Shelton used to call this
"tap dancing.” She meant a reliance on showy emotional or comedic
shtick for its own sake, at the expense of listening. It is also called mug-
ging. For example, romantic comedy heroines Carole Lombard,
Irene Dunn, and Claudette Colbert invented and brought to its peak
the screwball, "quirky" comic heroine. They were great ensemble
players, great listeners. They always played off their partners; they
never demonstrated "quirkiness" for its own sake. But it's a great
temptation for an actress who wants to entertain the public to estab-
lish for herself a set of glances, shrugs, and inflections that become a
formula to produce an effect of quirkiness, and to put her concentra-
tion on producing these effects rather than on the response of her
partner. This is called playing her bag of tricks.
It is also called buying a moment “cheap,” or trying to "slip a

moment through the back door,” as Tom Hanks, in an interview with
Roger Ebert, described his trick, in some early movies, of punctu-
ating a dramatic moment with a “halt-look-away, half-eyes-to-the-
sky" number. He then expressed his gratitude to the directors who
knew enough to call him on such gimmicks. You should understand
that actors with a well-developed bag of tricks are usually highly tal-
ented people, and that honesty and listening will not cost them their
inventive facility, but will enhance it. Secretly they know this. These
actors are capable of wonderful, honest work. Sometimes they just
need a director with guts enough to ask for the good stuff and they'll
put it out. :
In addition, from being on many sets with lots of time on their

hands, experienced actors may learn the following: how to watch
themselves in dailies; how to judge material; how to design lighting
and camera angles, especially those that will present them and their
work most effectively; how to get respect. You may notice that some
of these things, like lighting, camera placement, and watching dailies,
are usually considered director's jobs.
160
It's hard to direct people who can fire you. I think a young
director has to cope with the situation head-on, meet with the star,
and have a frank discussion. You've got to let actors know that you
love and respect them and you want to make the best use of their
talent — that's why you're there. If you've gone ahead on a project
with an actor that's been foisted on you and that you don't even like,
I don't have any advice. But if you've gone with somebody that you
know might be difficult but that you think will bring excitement to
the project — dive in! Go after it. Go after the relationship. Good
actors know that if they do their job and if you do your job they'll
look better. Sometimes you have to prove to them that you know
how to do your job.
Actors at a high level of expertise are very canny about scripts,

know a lot about directing, and usually show up for work completely
prepared and professional. You should not let yourself feel fright-
ened about working with such actors. Don't let yourself resent their
power. Find ways to communicate with them and tap into their
resources and learn from them, but don't abdicate your responsibili-
ties. The actor is not served by a director who lets him take over
directing decisions.
Directors in episodic television have special problems. Unlike

Jim Burrows, who directed nearly all of the "Taxi" episodes and who
now directs only pilots, most episodic directors are "hired guns" who
come into an established show and are expected basically to direct
traffic. In this situation the actors can legitimately claim to know
much more about their characters than you do, so why should they
take any substantive direction from you?
Professionalism requires actors in television series to maintain

their characterizations even though there may be different directors
every week. That means that their spines are set. It would be a mistake
for a director to come in and try to change basic characterizations; this
would be a disservice both to the actors and to the viewing public.
What do you do when the actors have more professional experi-

ence than you do? First, make a script analysis.
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SCRIPT ANALYSIS
SCRIPT ANALYSIS
“... [hen there are other directors I watch and wonder why
they get out of bed in the morning, because of the stunning
lack of homework they do.” — Anthony Hopkins
It is natural, when you read (or write) a script, to hear the lines
and see the characters in your mind’s eye, but if you are the director
of the movie, this is only a place to start! This is not a completed
script analysis. It’s all still in vour head. You need ways to bring your
vision out of your head and into life.
Many directors are primarily visual in their orientation, and their

story imaginations are less well developed than their visual imagina-
tions. But even directors who are also writers often have trouble
bringing their story imaginations off the page.
The words on the page, the dialogue, and (to some extent) the
stage directions are clues to a vast subworld of behavior and feeling
which it is the duty and privilege of the director and actors to supply.
This is the ninety percent of the iceberg that is below water. In order
to understand the script you need to be able to operate in the sub-
world of these characters, to believe in it, create in it, and trust it.
The tendency people have, once they have heard the line, to
adhere rigidly to that line reading or interpretation, is very detri-
mental. Instead directors need to know the characters and the script
structure inside out. The purpose of script analysis is to find out
who these people (characters) are and what happens to them, to
become the teller of their story. Then you won't have to remind
163
DinecTING AcToRS / WESTON
yourself to phrase your direction in the correct vocabulary or jargon,

you will have insight and understanding that you can communicate to
the actors.
z=
You will be able to think of characters in your movie scripts not
as conventions, stereotypes, pawns, movie elements, or theatrical
devices to be manipulated — but as people. You may notice that I use
the terms “character” and “person” interchangeably. I think of char-
acters as people. I allow the characters I meet the same independence
and privacy that I allow the people I meet in real life. As a result,
characters step off the page and take on independent life in my imag-
ination. This makes directing actors actually fun.
I have a set of tools which will help you go deeper into the lives
of the character. They work for every genre, and are helpful both for
must do the same work with a bad script. Bad scripts are often over-
explained and obvious, so you need to create something behind the
words, to flesh them out and give them a texture of life. Although no
actor can really be better than her material (and you must be careful
not to burden the script with profundity it cannot carry or it could
become pretentious), borderline or mediocre material can be made
more lively and entertaining by using the same script analysis tools
you use to dig out the riches and layers of a good script. (Helen Hunt
seems to have done this in “Twister.”) One of the most important
adjustments I want you to make is, once you have decided to direct a
script, to treat it as if it is a good script. You must stop judging and
begin to engage.
This kind of script analysis is vot a competing approach to any of

the various ways that screenwriting teachers talk about script struc-
ture. Writers may find it useful to understand the tools directors and
actors use, and they may find some of my exercises helpful for getting
their creative juices going, but my script analysis discussions are not
meant as a way to design a script you are writing. They are meant as
tools for your design of the adaptation of that script for the screen.
164
SCRIPT ANALYSIS
‘That these two processes are very different is exactly my point. This
means for one thing that if your thinking about script structure
includes ideas such as which character is “hero,” “mentor,” “enemy,”
etc., for the purposes of this script analysis I need to ask you to let
go of such categories and think of each character as a human being
in a situation.
I'm going to refer to a set of charts that I use to teach my script

analysis methods. There are four charts, each with columns; they
are a teaching tool. For some people the charts might also work as
framework for your notes, although I don’t use them that way
myself. I like to make my director’s notes on a lined pad, a paper
napkin, or the back of a telephone bill. Script analysis is not really
as linear as it looks on the charts. But I believe that all the good
directors go through something like these thought processes and do
work of this kind.
There is no conflict between preparation and spontaneity. The

purpose of preparing is to be ready to meet and trust the moment,
and to go through your mediocre ideas, so you will be ready, once
you get to rehearsal and the set, for your great ideas.
PREPARING FOR THE FIRST READ
The Skim is what I call the first time you read a script. I call ita
“Skim” because I don’t believe that the very first time you pass your
eyes over the words of a script can be a meaningful reading. Even if
you read slowly, you do not, on the first Skim, take in much of the
script’s possibilities. You may see thar it has possibilities, but that is
not the same as seeig the possibilities, because you are sifting what
you read through the filter of what you expect to read.
The Skim will leave you with impressions and feelings, of course,
and these can be very valuable. Because these first impressions are
bound to have more to do with what you already know and feel than
with what the script has to offer, they tell you something about the
personal investment you may be able to make in the movie, why it
165
DirRecTING ACTORS / WESTON
might be important to you to do it, what personal and original slant

you may give the material — what, for you, the movie is about. So it’s
a good idea to make notes of your first impressions. Column 1| of
Chart 1 (page 184) is a place for such notations, Don’t worry, at this
point, whether you have phrased your ideas as a result. Once you
have jotted them down, I suggest that you let go of them for the me
being, refrain from allowing them to ossify into prejudgments, and
prepare yourself to meet the material itself during your First Read.
THE WRITER-DIRECTOR
If you have written the script yourself you may not need the
Skim; you may already know what you think the script is about. But
I invite you to approach the First Read the same way as a director
who hasn’t written the script — that is, with an open, fresh
beginner’s mind.
Directing is an adaptation of a script. You must do this work of

adaptation even if you wrote the script yourself. You need to take off
your writing hat, put on your directing hat, and treat the script as if
it was written by someone else. This may seem almost impossible to
do at first, but I can tell you that I have worked with directors who
were able to do this, who believed in their characters so deeply that
they could allow them to have independent life. They were not
threatened by the actors’ contributions and they could collaborate
with the actors to bring the characters out of their own head, off the
page, and into life.
So when I talk about figuring out what the words mean I don’t say,
“Find out what the author meant.” I mean no disrespect to the author
when I say that the director must find the meaning of the script, not
the meaning the author “intended.” My iftention is not to “decon-
struct” the author’s intention. Good writing often takes place at the
most creative, i.e., subconscious level. In working with writers, I have
seen over and over that the author is not always a reliable interpreter
of what he has written. His unconscious impulses are often richer
than his conscious intention. Adapting the clues of the script into
166
SCRIPT ANALYSIS
cinematic life is a different process and requires a different talent

from the talent of writing. Sometimes a person has both talents, but
they are two different talents.
Farol ie |
EDITING STAGE DIRECTIONS PO yeh

pees 1/2" ao
Before you actually start reading you should edit the stage direc-
tions— and cross out most of them. At the very least, all stage direc-
tions should be adapted rather than swallowed whole as emotional
marks that the actors are supposed to hit. Movie people don’t have
any trouble understanding that the production designer must adapt
rather than execute rigidly the screenwriter’s description of sets and
locations. It’s the same for actors.
There are different kinds of stage directions, some more needful

of editing than others:
1) Directions that describe the character’s inner life.
“Longingly,” “kindly,” “livid with rage,” “a withering look,” etc.

These should all be crossed out, for the same reasons that you stay
away from result direction. It is especially important to cross out (or
at least approach with serious skepticism) the parentheticals: “pause,”
“beat,” and “she takes a moment.”
- All these kinds of stage directions are adjectives, adverbs, indica-

tions of transitions or psychological explanations, or emotional maps
(“He cannot look away”; “She makes a decision”). They are not
playable. What the writer has done by putting in these abbreviated
emotional guideposts is to take a stab at providing the characters’
subtext. This is useful to the producers, executives, distributors, and
agents who read a lot of screenplays — dozens per week — and need
such time-saving devices.
It is exactly the job of the director and actors to create the sub-
world. Heeding such shortcuts to the characters’ emotional life will
make the director’s and actors’ job more, not less, difficult. You
167
might want to keep an uncrossed-out version of the script hidden

away to look at at some point during rehearsal, to make sure that the
choices you and the actors are coming up with are at least as good as
the author’s suggestions. But crossing them out first is an important
invitation to your story imagination.
The wrist-cutting scene in “Fatal Attraction” contained the stage

direction “laughing.” Actor Glenn Close tried but could not make it
work honestly. Given permission by director Adrian Lyne to do
whatever she needed to do, she ended up crying in the scene.
2) Directions that depict blocking or business with no plot

con sequences.
“She struggles with her coat”; “He looks at his watch.” These
should be crossed out too. Such a stage direction as “She struggles
with her coat” is still a shorthand suggestion of the inner life of the
character, another version of the first category above. It’s better
writing than describing the character as “frustrated,” but it’s really the
same thing. :
In addition to finding the subtext, finding the movement and

_activities that physicalize the emotional events of the script is exactly
your job, a big part of the creative challenge of acting and directing.~
In “The Bridges of Madison County” Meryl Streep created a bit of
business around fixing the photographer’s collar that was the sexiest
thing in the whole movie.
If there is a bit of business or blocking in the stage directions that

looks interesting to you, that brings to life an emotional event or jus-
tifies a character’s line, you might highlight it with a question mark,
to try in rehearsal. But if, in rehearsal, the actors’ connection to the
emotional event leads them to some other physicalization (activity),
you can consider that as well, and make a choice.
3) Directions that give us characters’ personal objects.

In the examples above, perhaps we would want to make note of
the one character’s coat or the other character’s watch, as potential
168
SCRIPT ANALYSIS
personal objects. Objects are very important elements in a person’s

(character's) life. When we find clues as to the objects in the charac-
ters’ lives, whether they are in the stage directions or dialogue, we
need to circle them, then list them in Column 8 (“Physical Life”) of
Chart 3.
“On his desk there is a picture in a silver frame of a woman and

two little girls.” This should be circled as one of the character’s per-
sonal objects. Any adjectives or adverbs that suggest inner life should
be crossed out. (E.g., “A picture of his wife and two daughters has
been lovingly placed on the desk.” You should cross out “lovingly.”)
Even if you end up without the picture frame in any shot of the
movie, it is helpful and necessary for script analysis. It leads to ques-
tions: “What is the history of this framed photo? Who bought and
placed it on the desk? Is its presence a gesture that fulfills obligation
and proper form, or deeply felt? Are they still married? Is the
divorce too painfully recent for him to have put away the photo?”
4) Directions that give us backstory facts.
“The last time a crime occurred in this town was twenty-five

years ago”; “He graduated first in his class at Harvard.” Backstory
facts in stage directions fall into two subcategories: a) facts that are
referred to in the script, that is, a line somewhere in the script refers
to the fact that the character graduated first in his class from
Harvard; and b) facts that are not referred to in the script, that 1s,
there is no line describing his education one way or the other.
In the case of (a), since they are already in the dialogue, you don’t
need them in the stage directions and you can cross them out. I find
it much more exciting and creative to do the detective work of
deducing the backstory facts than being fed them.
In the case of (b), since they are not in the dialogue, they may
contain useful or even necessary clues. In that case you might enter
them on a list of “facts” (see Column I of Chart 2 on page 192). On
the other hand such statements by the author may be smaginative
choices which you can use, if you find them helpful, and if not, you can
169
DirREcTING ACTORS / WESTON
reject and invent your own. In that case they belong in Column 1
of Chart 3 (page 207). For now I suggest that you circle them with
a question mark.
5) Directions that give us an image.
For example, the feather which escapes Forrest's fingers and

floats up into the air during the opening credits of “Forrest Gump.”
This image was described in the original script, and even if it had
never ended up in the completed movie, it would have been circled as
an image of the script, and a potential clue to the themes of the
movie. It should also be listed in Column 6 of Chart 2.
6) Directions that describe an emotional event.
That is, an event with plot consequences (e.g., “He searches

through the pile of clothes until he finds a gun”; “They kiss.”) These
need to be left in, after you cross out any descriptive words (e.g., “He
searches desperately through the pile...”). You should translate any
psychologizing explanations (“He cannot look away”) into emotional
events (“He does not look away”). Once you have edited and trans-
lated the description into an event, highlight it. Make sure you are
not confusing essential information about the emotional events of the
script with optional stage business; optional stage business may be
highlighted but should have a question mark next to it. An important
reason for crossing out superfluous stage directions and questioning
optional ones is so that you can locate and highlight the necessary
ones — the ones that tell you an emotional event which is not
revealed by any dialogue.
After you do this, you'll be left with very sparse, circled or high-
lighted stage directions, and some question marks. The circled
images, facts, and objects will have been entered on the proper charts.
Highlighted material will contain clues to the physical and emotional
life of the characters.
170
SCRIPT ANALYSIS
Below 1s the opening scene from the play “When You Comin’
Back, Red Ryder?” by Mark Medoff. Before you read on, you might
want to look at the scene and do your own circling and crossing out.
ANGEL
Good mornin’, Stephen.
(Stephen does not look at her, but glances at the clock
and makes a strained sucking sound through his teeth —
a habit he has throughout — and flips the newspaper
back up to his face. Unperturbed, Angel proceeds behind
the counter.)
I'm sorry I’m late. My mom and me, our
daily fight was a little off schedule today.
(Stephen loudly shuffles the paper, sucks his teeth.)
I said I’m sorry, Stephen. God. I’m only
six minutes late.
STEPHEN
Only six minutes, huh? I got six minutes
to just hang around this joint when my
shift’s up, right? This is really the kinda
dump I’m gonna hang around in my spare
time, ain’t it?
ANGEL
Stephen, that’s a paper cup you got
your coffee in.
(Stephen is entrenched behind his newspaper. )
STEPHEN
Clark can afford it, believe me.
ANGEL
That’s not the point, Stephen.
STEPHEN
Oh no? You’re gonna tell me the point
though, right? Hold it, lemme get a pencil.
171
ANGEL
The point is that if you’re drinkin’ your
coffee here, you’re supposed to use a glass
cup, and if it’s to go, you’re supposed to get
charged fifteen instead of ten and ya get
one of those five cent paper cups to take it
with you. That’s the point, Stephen.
STEPHEN
Yeah, well I’m takin’ it with me, so where’s
the problem?
(Stephen has taken the last cigarette from a pack, slipped
the coupon into his shirt pocket and crumpled the pack.
He basketball shoots it across the service area.)
ANGEL
Stephen.
(She retrieves the pack and begins her morning routine:
filling salt and pepper shakers, the sugar dispensers, set-
ting out place mats, and cleaning up the mess Stephen
evidently leaves for her each morning. Stephen reaches
over and underneath the counter and pulls up a half
empty carton of Raleighs and slides out a fresh pack. He
returns the carton and slaps the new pack down on the
counter. )
What’re ya gonna get with your cigarette
coupons, Stephen?
(Stephen reads his paper, smokes, sips his coffee.)
Stephen?
(Stephen lowers the newspaper.)
STEPHEN
How many times I gotta tell ya to don’t call
me Stephen.
ANGEL
I don’t like callin’ ya Red. It’s stupid —
callin somebody with brown hair Red.
172
SCRIPT ANALYSIS
STEPHEN
It’s my name, ain’t it? I don’t like
Stephen. I like Red. When I was a kid I
had red hair.
ANGEL
But ya don’t now. Now ya got brown hair.
STEPHEN
Ccexasperated)
But then I did, and then’s when counts.
ANGEL
Who says then’s when counts?
STEPHEN
The person that’s doin’ the countin’!
Namely yours truly! I don’t call you
Caroline or Madge, do I?
ANGEL
Because those aren’t my name. My name’s
Angel, so —
STEPHEN
Yeah, well ya don’t look like no angel to
me.
ANGEL
I can’t help that, Stephen. At least I was
named my name at birth. Nobody asked
me if I minded bein’ named Angel, but at
least —
STEPHEN
You could change it, couldn’t ya?
173
ANGEL
What for? To what?
STEPHEN 4
(Thinking a moment,
setting her up)
To Mabel.
ANGEL
How come Mabel?
STEPHEN
Yeah...Mabel.
ANGEL
How come? You like Mabel?
STEPHEN
I hate Mabel. ;
(Stephen stares at her, sucks his teeth.)
ANGEL
Look, Stephen, if you’re in such a big
hurry to get outta here, how come you’re
just sittin’ around cleaning your teeth?
STEPHEN
Hey, look, I'l] be gone in a minute. I mean
if it’s too much to ask if I have a cigarette
and a cup a coffee in peace, for chrissake,
just say so. A person’s supposed to unwind
for two minutes a day, in case you ain’t
read the latest medical report. If it’s too
much to ask to just lemme sit here in
peace for two minutes, then say so. I
wouldn’t wanna take up a stool somebody
was waitin’ for or anything.
Cooking around him.)
174
SCRIPT ANALYSIS
Christ, will ya look at the waitin’ line to

get on this stool.
ANGEL
Cpause)
Did you notice what’s playin’ at the films?
STEPHEN
Buncha crap, whudduya think?
ANGEL
(pause)
I saw ya circle somethin’ in the gift book
the other mornin’.
STEPHEN
What gift book?
ANGEL
The Raleigh coupon gift book.
STEPHEN
Hey — com ’ere.
(Angel advances close to him. He snatches the pencil from
behind her ear and draws a circle on the newspaper.)
There. Now I just drew a circle on the
newspaper. That mean I’m gonna get me
that car?
ANGEL
Come on, Stephen, tell me. What’re ya
gonna get?
STEPHEN
Christ, whudduyou care what I’m gonna get?
175
ANGEL
God, Stephen, I’m not the FBI or somebody.
What are you so upset about? Just tell me
what you’re gonna get. ny
STEPHEN
CGmumbling irascibly.)
Back pack.
ANGEL
What?
STEPHEN
Whuddya, got home fries in your ears?
ANGEL
Just that I didn’t hear what you said is all.
STEPHEN
Back. Pack.
ANGEL
Who’s gettin’ a back pack?
STEPHEN
The guy down the enda the counter.
Chingado the Chicano. He’s hitchin’ to
Guatama.la.
ANGEL
You’re gettin’ a back pack? How come?
STEPHEN
Whuddo people usually get a back pack
for?
ANGEL
Ya gonna go campin’.
176
SCRIPT ANALYSIS
STEPHEN
No I ain’t gonna go campin’. I’m gonna go
gettin’ the hell outta this lousy little town
is where I’m gonna go campin’.
ANGEL
When? I mean...when?
STEPHEN
When? Just as soon as J get somethin’
taken care of.
ANGEL
When will that be?
STEPHEN
When will that be? When I get it taken
care of — when d’ya think? Lemme have
a donut.
ANGEL
(getting him a donut)
Where ya gonna go?
STEPHEN
Where am I gonna go? I’m gonna go
hitchin’ that way Cpointing left) or I’m
gonna go hitchin’ that way (pointing right)
and when I get to some place that don’t
still smella Turdville here I’m gonna get
me a decent job and I’m gonna make me
some bread.
(He picks up the donut
and bites into it.)
177
DiREcTING ACTORS / WESTON
ANGEL
Rye or whole wheat, Stephen?
STEPHEN >
This is some donut. I think they glued the
crumbs together with Elmer’s.
ANGEL
Rye or whole wheat, Stephen?
STEPHEN
Cwith his mouth full)
Believe me, that ain’t funny.
ANGEL
Don’t talk with your mouth full.
STEPHEN
Christ, my coffee’s cold. How d’ya like
that?
(He looks at her. She pours him a fresh cup of coffee in
a mug. She sets it down by him. He looks at it a minute,
then pours the coffee from the mug into his paper cup.)
I told ya, I’m leavin’ in less’n two minutes.
ANGEL
That’s right, I forgot.
STEPHEN
Yeah, yeah.
ANGEL
You better let your hair grow and get some
different clothes if you’re gonna hitch
somewhere, Stephen. You’re outta style.
178
SCRIPT ANALYSIS
Nobody’s gonna pick up a boy dressed like

you with his hair like yours. And with a
tattoo on his arm that says “Born Dead.”
People wear tattoos now that say “Love”
and “Peace,” Stephen, not “Born Dead.”
STEPHEN
Love and peace my Aunt Fanny’s butt!
And who says I want them to pick me, for
chrissake? You think I’m dyin’ for a case
a the clap, or what? I got a coupla hun-
dred truck drivers come through here in
the middle of the night that said they’d all
gimme a ride anytime anywhere they was
goin’. You think I’m gonna lower myself to
ride with those other morons — you’re
outta your mind.
ANGEL
Two hundred truck drivers? Uh-uh, I’m
sorry, I have to call you on that one,
Stephen. If it wasn’t for Lyle’s station and
his motel, Lyle’d be our only customer.
STEPHEN
You know, right? Cause you’re here all
night while I’m home sacked out on my
rear, so you know how many truck drivers
still stop in here, now ain’t that right?
ANGEL
In the three weeks since the bypass
opened, Stephen, you know exactly how
many customers you had in the nights?
You wanna know exactly how many,
Stephen?
179
STEPHEN
No Christ, I don’t wanna know how many.
I wanna have two minutes of peace to read
my damn newspaper — if that’s not askin’
too much! Is that askin’ too much? If it
is, just say the word and I’l] get the hell
outta here and go to the goddamn cemetery
or somewhere.
Now here is what I would do:
On the first two pages I would circle “newspaper,” “cigarette” and

“coupon” as personal objects of Stephen’s. Since they are also men-
tioned in the dialogue they are mandatory persona! objects for him.
In fact they could be circled in the dialogue rather than the stage
directions. You may notice that the author didn’t write a stage direc-
tion “He is drinking coffee out of a paper cup.” There is no need for
it, because the information is in the dialogue. In order to create a
script that was easy and pleasurable to read, the author made decisions
to leave out a stage direction about the coffee cup and put in the stage
directions regarding the newspaper and cigarettes. In order to adapt
the script to the stage or screen, we need to cannibalize the stage
directions for clues, not read them for instructions. So I am crossing
out the rest of the stage directions referring to Angel’s entrance and
Stephen’s reaction to it.
Soon the writer mentions some objects (salt and pepper shakers,
sugar dispensers, place mats, cleaning supplies) which are potential
personal objects for Angel. We might have inferred them anyway,
since they are not unusual to a diner. They are not referred to in the
dialogue, so they are not mandatory. I’m crossing them out but high-
lighting, with a question mark, some stage business involving Angel’s
work-related activities and Stephen discarding his empty cigarette
pack for a fresh one. I am tempted to cross these instructions out,
because I like to find my own blocking and business in rehearsal, but,
180
SCRIPT ANALYSIS
to be conservative, I'll highlight this idea with a question mark, to try

in rehearsal. On the other hand, the directions “Stephen reads his
paper, smokes, sips his coffee” and “Stephen lowers the newspaper”
I’m going to cross out. They seem to indicate inner life.
Right after the “I hate Mabel” line, I'll highlight “sucks his teeth”
with a question mark, since it provokes Angel’s next line, “...how
come you're just sittin’ around here cleaning your teeth?” Although
he doesn't really have to be sucking his teeth; if he were using a
toothpick that would also justify the line. I would want to make sure
in rehearsal that the actor playing Stephen can suck his teeth credibly
before committing to the teeth-sucking business. (Ifa star is playing
the role, there probably won’t have been an audition in which to find
this out.) At this point, I’ll go back to the beginning and highlight
“sucks his teeth” there too.
About halfway through, “He snatches the pencil from behind her
ear.” I would probably highlight that with a question mark. This bit
of stage business may have been written by the author but is just as
likely to have been taken from the first production of the play.
Whether it was thought up by the author or the first director of the
piece, you are free to steal it, but you are also free to come up with a
different bit of business of your own. As the director, I’m not sure I’d
use it, but I might want to at least try it (among other ideas) in
rehearsal. All other neighboring stage directions (“exasperated,”
“mumbling irascibly,” etc.) are results, so | cross them out.
When we get to the donut business, I’m going to highlight the

word “donut,” but I’m definitely going to cross out “getting him a
donut,” “He picks up the donut and bites into it,” and “with his
mouth full.” Why? They are redundant; the clues to these activities
are already in the dialogue. They are therefore mandatory. But I
want to take them off the page, so I allow a donut to enter the scene
almost like another character. In rehearsal we will work out the ways
that this new character changes the relationship of the characters
already there.
181
I’m going to highlight the business of her pouring the coffee into
a mug, and him pouring it back into his paper cup. Some activity is
needed to justify his line, “I told ya, I’m leavin’ in less’n two min-
utes.” Also I like it. I definitely want to try this idea in rehearsal.
But I am not married to it. If it should happen not to work, Pll find
something else.
Now the only stage directions left should be either circled or

highlighted; the circled ones have also been entered on one of the
charts. Even though I have crossed out everything I haven’t circled
or highlighted, this does not mean that the writer should not have put
it in. There are writers whose stage directions are insightful and
useful, and the ones in this scene are not bad. But there are also ter-
rific writers who write with minimal stage directions: Chekhov,
Pinter, Horton Foote. Shakespearean texts have zero directions,
except for the odd “Exeunt”; in Shakespeare’s plays all physical
movement and business must be inferred and deduced from the dia-
logue. At the other end of the spectrum there are great writers who
lay on the unplayable stage directions with, a trowel — Eugene
O’Neill, for one.
It’s okay for writers to put such directions in for the convenience
of the producers. In fact, producers usually judge the writing by the
stage directions as much as by the dialogue. So remember that the
best-written, most evocative stage directions use verbs, facts, images, _
_events, and physical tasks instead of adjectives and explanations
whenever possible (for example, “She takes off her glasses and rubs
her eyes,” instead of “tiredly”). But once a script has a green light and
has been turned over to the director and designers and actors, the
writer must send his characters out into the world the way a parent
sends out the children when they turn eighteen. You must trust that
they have learned good values; you have to believe that you have
done all you can.
The important thing for directors is to recognize the necessary

stage directions (emotional events, personal objects and thematic
images) and either cross out or question everything else. Even the
182
SCRIPT ANALYSIS
directions I am suggesting that you as directors leave in are not nec-

essarily useful to actors. Many, many actors routinely cross out a//
stage directions, to give themselves freedom to create their charac-
ters’ emotional lives from scratch.
During a Skim | may glance at the stage directions. But once I

have edited them, I forget about them for a while and turn my atten-
tion to the dialogue.
FIRST IMPRESSIONS — CHART I
Reading out loud is a good way to access first impressions. You

make friends with the words. You may or may not wish to be alone
when you read out loud. Read slowly in full voice. Don’t whisper or
mumble. Don’t rush. Don’t try to “be” the characters but don’t
censor yourself. Don’t listen to yourself. Enjoy the words. Feel
them in your mouth. Don’t read the stage directions (even the ones
that you have circled or highlighted).
If you are relaxed and open, there are two benefits you may get
from reading out loud. You may get new ideas — or questions.
Questions are better yet. In any case, you might want to jot them
down briefly, because if you are doing this properly — that is, if you
are in the moment — you might not remember them later.
183
184
DirpectiING AcTors / WESTON
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SCRIPT ANALYSIS
“OWNING” THE CHARACTERS
The second benefit of reading aloud is that this can begin the
process of owning the characters. Just as each actor must “own” his
own character, the director must own each of the characters, sepa-
rately. At this point you have not yet begun figuring out what the
words mean. You are allowing them to find breath and voice in your
own body. You are beginning to take them off the page.
PARAPHRASING
Then you can start putting their lines into your own words. Does
this sound a bit radical? I don’t know. This idea is based on a very
effective exercise I use in my classes. I ask the student to say the lines
of a monologue she has learned. Then I ask her to tell me what is
going on in the speech, what she understands about the character
from it, starting with the words “This is a character who...” | tell her
that her paraphrase can be any length: it can be much longer than the
speech or much shorter; it can go far afield; in effect, she can say
anything that pops into her head. After this I tell her to do the same
thing again — again putting the speech in her own words, allowing
her impulses to take her wherever they go — only changing the pro-
noun from “she” to “I” when she speaks of the character.
The purpose here is not rewriting the script, but “owning” the
characters and accessing your intuition about them. Ideas often sur-
face that you didn’t even know you had.
Let’s take one of Stephen’s speeches on page +:
“Hey, look, I’ll be gone in a minute. I mean

if it’s too much to ask if I have a cigarette
and a cup a coffee in peace, for chrissake,
just say so. A person’s supposed to
unwind for two minutes a day, in case you
ain’t read the latest medical report. If it’s
too much to ask to just lemme sit here in
peace for two minutes, then say so. I
185
DirREcTING ACTORS / WESTON | | / 4 , 7
wouldn’t wanna take up a stool somebody -, ~~~

A
was waitin’ for or anything. Christ, will ya

look at the waitin’ line to get on this stool.”
[ have heard students paraphrase it thus: “This is a guy who over-

reacts to everything. He’s a control freak. No matter what Angel says
he has to beat her down and get the last word.”
I’m sure you have recognized this as an unplayable judgment on

the character; Stephen probably doesn’t think of himself as a control
freak. When the student takes the next step and changes the pronoun
to “I,” he experiences a little bit of revelation because he has to say,
“I am a control freak. I can’t stand it when anyone gets one up on
me.” Putting it in the first person makes him feel something. Maybe
discomfort. Maybe a pang of recognition.
In fact, when he puts it that way, he may realize that there is a

little bit of control freak in all of us. Judgments may be accurate, but
they are not playable. As long as you own them, as long as you admit
that these feelings are ones that we’ve all had or are capable of, then
you're not judging but empathizing. Empathy is the difference
between saying “This guy is a control freak — just as I am sometimes
(although I may not like it),” rather than “This guy is a control freak
— just like all the people I can’t stand and who make my life miser-
able and who are nothing like me.”
Another paraphrase of the same speech might be: “I’m tired. I

don’t want to be here, but I don’t want to go home either. My life is
not very exciting or very much fun; in fact, smoking cigarettes is one
of my only pleasures. And now my mother has got it into her head
to nag me about my smoking and she won’t let me smoke in the
house.” This is an example. There could be dozens of other ways to
paraphrase the speech. Such a paraphrase gives us a possible subtext
of the speech. Or maybe an idea for a backstory choice (the idea of
the mother forbidding smoking in the house is not anywhere in the
script — I made it up). And it lets us inside the character’s experience
and feelings.
186
SCRIPT ANALYSIS
I think directors during their First Read should do some of this

paraphrasing; not every line of the script necessarily, but as much as
you have time for. Let it be fun — something you ger to do rather
than something you Aave to do. You can take notes: there is a column
(Column 3) on Chart | for this. You needn’t feel that you have to take
notes, however; you can let the exercise be an experience, rather than
information. If it starts to feel boring that means you're doing it
mechanically, so take a break and go on to another script analysis tool.
But paraphrasing does get easier and more fun the more you do it.
The purpose of the paraphrasing exercise is to get you out of

your head and able to access your intuition. When they do this exer-
cise people often find themselves saying things about the character
that they didn’t know they thought. The resources of their subcon-
scious minds are being enlisted in the task of script analysis.
The paraphrasing exercise can be used to gently confront an

actor with his own prejudgments (resistances) to a character, or to
unlock a static interpretation. If you sense a resistance on the part of
the actor, you can ask him, “What do you think of this guy? Do you
like him?” If he answers with a string of negatives, you can quietly
say, “Say the same thing again, only using the pronoun ‘I.’””
“IT’S FUST...” AND “I ASSUME”
I make a big fuss with my students about the words “It’s just...”
I call them the two greatest enemies of an artist. Instead of “It’s just
a love scene,” say “It’s a love scene.” Instead of “He's just apolo-
gizing to his mother,” say “He’s apologizing to his mother.” Do
you see what a big difference that is? A good director inspires the
actors. “She’s just waiting for the doctor’s report.” “It’s just a con-
frontation between two friends.” “He’s just being sarcastic to the
judge.” You can’t expect to inspire anyone when you minimize such
important events. Our artistic goal is to illuminate human events,
not minimize them.
“Obviously” is another red flag for me. “Stephen is obviously

not attracted to Angel.” Maybe I’m perverse, but as soon as [ hear
187
i lan re ae plays ae i
}) )
DIRECTING ACToRS / WESTON ~"'+ - Oo 7
someone say that something in a script is “obvious” I want to con-

sider its opposite. Nothing in a good script is obvious. Like people,
characters are subtle, arbitrary, full of contradictions, and lacking in
“self-knowledge. Other uninspiring qualifiers are “basically,” “poten-
tially,” “sort of,” ete. Think of yourself as a person who can commit,
rather than qualify and hedge all your idea then, when a new
and s,
idea or information comes in, change your mind.
\ There are two other words that directors all too frequently use as the sum
“I assume.” “I assume that Angel lives with her
total of their script analysis:
mother.” or
[Don’t assumea ae anything. Investigate. Imagine. Choose. \
ze - ‘e- .. ne ae
a THE TECHNIQUE OF THREE POSSIBLE
One of the best things that can happen on a First Read is that there
will be lines that you don’t understand, and that don’t fit. An unfortu-
nate tendency in Hollywood today is to rewrite such lines, to make
everything fit, without an attempt to find out what they might mean.
Logic can be a serious roadblock to the imagination. In a well-

written script (and remember, for the purposes of script analysis, we
are considering any script you have decided to direct is a well-written
script), such non sequiturs and contradictions — even lines that at
Ye first you don’t like — canbe gold. They can hold the key to some
“Insight you have been resisting; that the key was elusive and the
insight hard-won will make its truth all the more powerful.
Anytime you find a line that you don’t like or doesn’t make sense,
I suggest that you make a quick list of three things it might possibly
mean. Don’t try to find the right answer but, rather, without evalu-
ating your ideas, scribble them down.
Let's take Angel’s line, “Whos gettin’ a back pack?” Why does she
say this (other than to set up the joke of Stephen’ next line)? She just
asked him what he was getting from the coupon book. Why doesn’t
she seem to understand that “back pack” is the answer to her question?
. Okay, three possible answers. 1) Maybe she has some association

with back packs that is so different from her associations with
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SCRIPT ANALYSIS
Stephen that for a moment she can’t connect the two. For instance,
maybe she has a sister who is a Girl Scout leader and was talking
about back packs for her troup yesterday; hearing the term jolts her
mind back to that conversation and it takes a moment to allow “back
pack” to be part of this conversation. 2) Maybe as soon as she hears
the words “back pack” she associates it with Stephen’s departure,
which perhaps he has spoken of on other occasions. Maybe the
image of him leaving is too painful to process quickly. 3) Maybe she
engaged in some physical — or mental — activity that requires a lot
of concentration. Maybe she is scrubbing the coffee machine. Or
perhaps she is totaling the receipts from yesterday or making up the
orders tor the vendors who will make deliveries today.
Now, I didn’t particularly concern myself with making sense but

rather with trying to find three ideas that were different from each
other. I’m looking for something — anything — to get myself
started, so I can feel that I am coming up with ideas — any ideas —
rather than listlessly staring at the paper. If I write them down
without evaluating them, I may access my deeper resources. What
I’m trying to do is not find the right answer, but turn myself on.
I find the “Technique of Three Possible” most useful when I

come across hackneyed “movie-sounding” phrases, like “You just
don’t get it, do you?” or “You’re sorry? All you can say is you're
sorry?” These are words that people almost never really say in real
life but which show up in movies a lot. Such lines require special
attention to finding some truth, some subtext, to keep them from
sounding clichéd and actorish.
If you open yourself to the idea that any line might have more
than one meaning, you won't lose your equilibrium when an actor
doesn’t relate to something in the script that you have found com-
pelling or beautiful or funny, and you won't panic when the actor
interprets it differently. Then, too, you can use the “Technique of
Three Possible” with actors who are resisting a line, to get them
turned on. When they say, “This doesn’t make sense to me,” you can
ask, “Well, what could it possibly mean?”
189
THE REALITY (FACT) BEHIND THE WorbDs
Another way to understand mysterious lines is to look for the fact

or event that they refer to. This goes for lines that you like as well as
for lines that bother you. Lines that you like can be especially dan-
gerous; you might fall in love with their wit or poetry and forget to
look for the reality behind them. (This is one of the pitfalls of per-
forming Shakespeare.) You have to approach such lines not by
looking for the most effective way to say them and thus display their
beauty, but by looking for the reality behind them.
For the “Forrest Gump” scene in which Forrest calls the front desk
to complain about the noisy Watergate burglars, the director in script
analysis (and the actor in performance) must put their concentration
not on how funny the scene is going to be but on some reality behind
it — for instance, that Forrest is a light sleeper.
More READING IDEAS
At some point you might try reading aloud the lines of one char-
acter at a time. For this technique, you don’t even read silently the
words of the other characters or any stage directions, and you don’t
try to make sense of the scenes. You read all his or her lines one after
the other, slowly, in full voice. Something may come to you. Perhaps
you may want to read the script with another person. Don’t try to act
the roles or the scenes. Instead, look at each other as much as pos-
sible, switching around roles from scene to scene. Or (this is my
favorite) read the whole script aloud to another person. Don’t read
the character names or any stage directions, even circled or high-
lighted ones.
Finally, | want to strongly encourage you to reread the script

(silently or aloud) as often as you can throughout script analysis, pre-
production and rehearsal. Each time pretend it is the first time. Free
your mind of the ideas you are coming up with (you have notes so you
don’t have to remember them), so you can return to the beginner’s
mind that characterizes the First Read. You may be surprised at the
ideas and questions that will come to you.
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SCRIPT ANALYSIS
‘THE IMMUTABLES: FACTS AND IMAGES: CHART 2
I call the facts and images of the script immutable because they
are not subject to interpretation; they are in the script. They are a
wonderful place to start for these reasons:
1) You don’t have to be creative to come up with them.

It’s something you can do when you're not “in the mood” and
find yourself staring at the page and don’t know where to
start.
2) They are the skeleton of the script, its infrastructure.
You need to know them in order to feel confident that you
know and understand the script.
3) They are magic keys into the subworld. Whenever
you get stuck creatively you can return to them, ask a few
questions, and your creative juices can be renewed.
+) Both are great ways to give direction. The facts of a
script are its situation, its imaginative given circumstances —
a good jumping-off place for actors. The images are an excel-
lent tool for shaping and deepening performances.
5) They can help you avoid arguments with actors. If an
actor brings in an interpretation of the script that does not
encompass the facts and images, you can point them out, and
they are there in black and white; this is especially useful to
keep actors from judging or sentimentalizing characters. You
can say, “Yes, but what about the fact that...?” This approach
can help keep your egos out of the discussion.
Sometimes an actor brings in an interpretation that is supported

by the facts and images, but is different from yours. When this hap-
pens you should listen with an open mind to the actor’s ideas; they
may turn out to be as valid as yours, or they may even be better. If
you can tell the difference between this situation and the situation
(above) in which the actor’s ideas are not supported by the script, you
will be much better prepared for discussion and rehearsal.
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SCRIPT ANALYSIS
FACTS AND EVIDENCE
Facts are very powerful for actors — the magic “as if.” The actor
creates a set of simple circumstances, allows himself to believe them,
and then functions as if he were in those circumstances. For the pur-
poses of this exercise we will treat the scene from “When You Comin’
Back, Red Ryder?” as if it were a complete script. Ifwe were making
this movie, planning a rehearsal of this scene, we would of course
examine the full script for facts. Working on one scene as if it is a full
script is an exercise to teach you script analysis techniques which in
the real world would be applied to a whole script.
Some facts will be clear; others we will deduce. We’re not going
to insist that the writer spell everything out; instead we’ll look for
evidence and follow clues. But we’re not going to pretend to have
any facts that we don’t actually have. We’re not going to make
assumptions, judgments, or jump to conclusions; we’re going to stick
to facts. This is detective work. In a way we'll use some of the rules
of court. For instance, hearsay is not admissible; just because a char-
acter says something is true, we won’t automatically call it a fact. We
will look for circumstantial evidence to back it up.
“Facts” are events that have happened or circumstances that are

true before the scene starts — the character’s situation. “Events” are
things that happen in the scene, but once they have happened they
become facts. For instance, Stephen eats a donut; that’s an event in
this scene. For the scene following this one, “Stephen has had break-
fast” would be a fact.
Sometimes students suggest as a fact for this scene, “Angel likes

Stephen.” That’s not a fact. I’m not saying that the role couldn’t be
played with that choice, but anything that has to do with a character's
state of mind is not a fact. It is a choice or interpretation.
—— LO
Often, the first thing students say when I ask them for the facts
of this scene is, “Stephen wants to leave.” This is not a fact either.
Besides describing a state of mind, this statement is contradicted by
193
the fact that he keeps sitting there. So it belongs under Column 4,

“Disputes, Contradictions, Issues.”
Don’t forget — characters, like people, don’t always tell the

truth. They don’t always know the truth. They remember things
incompletely or inaccurately. They may not admit the truth to them-
selves, and, of course, sometimes they lie.
A good place to start in establishing some facts in the “Red

Ryder” scene is the characters’ relationship. T’ll propose this state-
ment for our list of facts: Stephen and Angel work at the same diner.
Sometimes students call me on this one. They say that if they cross
out all the stage directions it’s not certain that they both work there;
it could be that Stephen works there; Angel could be a friend, girl-
friend, or even sister picking Stephen up after his shift. Okay, let’s
back up a step and look at the evidence.
There is early evidence (Column 2) that Stephen works there (his

line, “I got six minutes to just hang around this joint when my shift’s
up, right?”). There also is evidence that shé works there too: She
knows about the rules of the place (how much to get charged if you
drink from a paper cup); she brings him donut and coffee; her line
“If it wasn’t for Lyle’s station and his motel, Lyle’d be our only cus-
tomer” includes the proprietary “our.” On the other hand, if it is a
small diner in a small town and she is known as his steady girlfriend,
she might be familiar enough with the place to know the rules and to
pour a cup of coffee if the waitress was not there, or even to call the
place “our” place. The line in which she asks him what is playing at
the films could be seen as evidence that they are friends or
boyfriend/girlfriend.
The stronger evidence that she does work there is her final line,
“In the three weeks since the by-pass opened, Stephen, you know
exactly how many customers you had in the nights? You wanna know
exactly how many, Stephen?” The way I understand this line is by
looking for the event behind it. First of all 1 recall what I know about
small diners (I used to work in one). At the end of each shift, the
order tickets were collected and put in numerical order and stacked
194
SCRIPT ANALYSIS
neatly so that the next morning the manager could go through them
and compare them to the cash register totals. Angel’s shift (ifwe end
up proving that Angel does work there) follows Stephen’s. So if she
does work there, she is in a position, each morning, to count
Stephen’s tickets; maybe it’s even her job to do so. Unpacking the
fact behind this line (also called “justifying” the line), and finding that
it jells with earlier evidence pointing to the likelihood that she does
work there, confirms that deduction.
Proposed fact: Angel is late for her shift.
Perhaps we can accept this hearsay of Angel’s because Stephen

doesn’t contradict it. I think we can be sure that she is no more than
six minutes late; if it was more than six minutes, it seems likely that
Stephen would comment (Whadya mean, six? It’s eight minutes!).
Some questions (Column 3) arise in my mind: Has she ever been late
before? Is it habitual? Is this the first time?
Maybe she’s not actually late. When I was waitressing, the other
waitresses used to habitually arrive a half hour early for their shift; if
they arrived exactly on time, they considered themselves late, as did the
waitresses they were relieving! If I were directing this scene J might
want to suggest this little adjustment to the actress, to give her another
layer. (See Column 6 of Chart 3, “Imaginative Choices,” page 207.)
My idea for this adjustment arose from information I happen to

have because of my experience waitressing in a diner. If you are unfa-
miliar with the customs and traditions of diner employees, you might
need to do some Research (Column 5b).
Proposed fact: Angel has a daily relationship with ber mother:
The line “My mom and me, our daily fight was a little off
schedule today” is strong evidence, although not actual proof, that
they live together (they could live separately but speak on the phone
every morning). Her calling it a “daily fight” does not actually mean
they fight every day, but it might fee/ like it’s every day. Her mother,
if asked, might claim that she and her daughter never fight!
195
Is this a fact? “Stephen doesn’t want Angel to call him Stephen.” No. All
we can say as a fact is that there has been at least one conversation
between the two of them on the subject of his name. Even though he
says, “How many times I gotta tell ya...,” it still may have been only once;
for some people, twice is too many times to discuss certain subjects.
We can’t even include as a fact that Stephen was called “Red” as

a kid. Even if he claimed it was true, we wouldn’t be able to accept it
as fact. Interestingly, when we reread the scene carefully (script
research, Column Sa), we find he doesn’t actually say that. What he
says is that when he was a kid he had red hair. Of course we can’t be
sure that this is true either. There is no evidence for it since now his
hair is brown, as even he admits. All we can say as a fact is that he says
that he had red hair as a kid, and that on at least one occasion pre-
vious to this scene he has made a request that Angel call him “Red.”
Another way of putting this would be to list it as an “issue” under

Column 4. His name is an issue between them. Other issues might
be her lateness, if we make the choice that it is habitual; or the rules
of the diner, e.g., the paper cup rule.
Actually, as soon as I wrote that, I considered its opposite: maybe

the paper cup is not a standing issue between them. Maybe it’s the
first time this particular issue has come up. Maybe he always uses the
prohibited paper cup, but usually she indulges his lapses; today she
doesn’t. Or maybe he usually uses the ceramic cup and this morning
has decided to make this little rebellion. I’m not trying to talk you
into any of these ideas. The point is that they are ideas — choices —
not facts. (At first glance they seem like weaker choices, but you
never know. Sometimes an apparently less plausible choice can give
a performance a mystery, an edge. It might be something you could
whisper to the actor in between takes to freshen things up.)
QUESTIONS
Questions are perhaps the most important product of script

analysis, even though you are not going to rewrite the script so all
[*, ore
F
196
SCRIPT ANALYSIS
questions are answered. Make a big list of them. Ifa character says,
“Why are you shouting?” instead of assuming that the second char-
acter is shouting, ask questions: Is the other guy shouting? Or does
the first guy have a low threshold? Could it be that what actually
bothers him is the content of what the second guy said?
‘To me an important question of the scene is raised by Stephen’s

line “...as soon as I get something taken care of.” Characters can lie,
so he might be bullshitting — there might be nothing he has to take
care of. He might have no reason except his own immobility for
staying in this town instead of leaving. But ] don’t want to stop my
script analysis here, because this thinking is likely to lead me into
generalities and judgment about Stephen.
What is the thing he has to take care of? It may be that as soon
as the thing he is referring to gets “taken care of” there will be
another thing to take care of, but even so, it is something specific.
With whom does he liver Does he live with his parents? Could there
be abuse or alcoholism in the family? Is it possible that he has to fix
his mother’s life before he can leave?
If you find vourself jumping to a conclusion, I want you to put it

in the form of a question. If, for instance, you find yourself saying,
“Obviously this has happened many umes before,” turn it right
around and ask, “Has this happened before?” That’s always a good
question in any case. One question you should always ask is, “What
in this scene és happening for the first time?”
Anytime there is more than one possible explanation for some-

thing, it is nota fact. It may seem bewildering at first to open up so
many possibilities. You may feel, “I thought I knew what I was doing
and now I have nothing to hang onto.” There are two purposes to
this seemingly chaotic approach. One is to bring our story imagina-
tions to life. Allowing ourselves to “daydream” around the facts of
the script gives us the opportunity to let the material tell us what it 1s
about. The other purpose is to prepare ourselves to make choices. In
order to make choices, you need a field from which to choose; oth-
erwise, it’s not a choice, it’s an assumption. As you get used to this
197
technique you will find it cleaner, and more liberating than psychol-
ogizing, explaining, or gossiping about the characters.
I often hear directors describe characters in terms of what they

are not. “Stephen is not a good employee.” “Angel probably
doesn’t have boyfriends.” As soon as:l hear statements like that, I
turn them into questions: Is Stephergood at his job? Does Angel
have boyfriends? If Stephen is not good at his job, what is he good
at? If he is not interested in his work, what is he interested in?
What sexual experience has Angel had? (A good question to ask
about any character.)
Sometimes I hear people say about characters, “She doesn’t have

much of a sense of humor,” or “He isn’t very smart.” A character who
is what society calls “slow” is not trying to be slow, so an actor who
tries to show us intellectual slowness is condescending to the char-
acter and playing a result (society’s judgment of him). What such a
person (character) is usually doing (his objective) is to struggle to keep
up. An actor should never show us that a character is “slow,” but
always involve himself with how the character copes with the cards
fate has dealt him.
In any case, everybody is smart about something. There are certain

questions which you should ask about every character. What is this
person smart about? What does this character find funny? Where is
his pain? How does he play? In what way is he an artist? What does
he most fear? What profession has he chosen or does he aspire to?
Whom does he look up to? What is the biggest thing that has ever
happened to him? How is the character different at the end of the
story (or scene) from the beginning?
You may occasionally come across a character who has no playful

side. This would be very rare, a very bold choice. Most of the time an
important way to bring a character to life is to look for a serious char-
acter’s sense of humor, and for the serious side of comic characters.
Always ask, what is the character not saying? Whenever a char-

acter breaks off a speech or is cut off by another person, you need
198
SCRIPT ANALYSIS
to ask yourself, what was she going to say? The longer and more
thoroughly you work on a script, the more such questions will crop
up, which is good. The things that bother you can bring the most
creativity, like the grain of sand that becomes a pearl by irritating
the oyster. Sometimes when I do this kind of work with writer-
directors, and start opening them to the subworld of the story they
wrote themselves, instead of congratulating themselves on their
good writing, they want to rewrite the script, putting in the subtext!
Don’t do it! Don’t fix! Don’t bury! Instead, question, daydream,
spin stories. You will enrich the script with layers of association and
understanding. And don’t forget, the best way to direct actors is by
asking questions.
RESEARCH
Questions lead to Research:
Script research - Sometimes a question will be answered, and a

fact gleaned, from rereading the script. Or a new question will be
generated. When we notice, ona reread, that Stephen does not actu-
ally claim to have been called “Red” when he was a kid, the question
arises, “When did he start having the notion of being called ‘Red’?”
External research - Always find out the meaning of a word or

idea you don’t understand. I happen to be old enough to remember
Raleigh cigarette coupons, but if I didn’t know what they were, I’d
have to do research. Anything you don’t understand you should
research. If you don’t know where to start, try the dictionary.
Internal research - By this I mean internal to you — your expe-

riences, observations, and understandings. Connect your. script
analysis preparation to what you know about life. For example, when
you are looking for facts, questions, and choices around the issue of
Stephen’s name, you should think about your own childhood. Did
you have a nickname? Did you wish for one? Was there a hero or
storybook character that you identified with and wished you'd been
named after? Did you have a friend with a cool nickname?
199
This is the work that novice filmmakers most frequently neglect

to do. But it is the work that must be done if you want to make
movies of any insight or originality. How can you ask actors for per-
sonal investment unless you make a personal jnvestment yourself? If
you approach all your preproduction homework technically, that’s the
product you will have — a movie technically proficient, without soul.
Two movie-making giants, Federico Fellini and Ingmar Bergman,

often made movies that were frankly autobiographical. But Akira
Kurosawa, William Wyler, John Huston, John Cassavetes also made
every one of their movies personal without necessarily choosing auto-
biographical scripts.
It always shocks me when people critique Cassavetes solely on the

basis of his filmmaking style. What to me stands out about his work
is that first, his films are always about something, and second, he
allows no emotional distance between the audience and, notably, the
main character in “Woman Under the Influence.” The prodigious
gifts of actorGena Rowlands make this possible, but the raw intimacy
of the performance could not have been realized filmically without
the personal identification and commitment of the director.
I am giving you this simple script analysis tool of internal research

into the facts and images of the script to help you begin making this
connection, even if the script seems to have no personal reverberation
for you.
IMAGES AND ASSOCIATIONS
The other immutable information from the script is its images.

The next script analysis tool is a way to unpack the treasures folded
in the images. It’s a kind of free association exercise. Your associa-
tions come from your own memory and experiences, your observa-
tions, your imagination, and from research. These associations stir
up and create a soup of unconscious material, and weave a texture of
life around the characters and their situation.
200
SCRIPT ANALYSIS
There are two kinds of images that concern us in script analysis:

the writer’s thematic images and each character's personal images.
These are different from the “actor’s personal images” or substitu-
tions which I discussed in the Actors’ Choices chapter.
First Pll identify images from the “Red Ryder” scene, listing the
images separately for each character. Angel talks about the
“schedule” of her “daily fight” with her mother, and about Stephen’s
“cigarette coupons”; she uses the word “stupid”; she mentions
Stephen’s nickname “Red” and her own name, “Angel.” She talks
about Stephen “cleaning your teeth,” the “films,” the Raleigh coupon
“gift book,” “the FBI,” and “camping.” She talks about tattoos: ones
that are “out of style,” as well as “tattoos that say Love and Peace.”
She mentions “Lyle,” “customers,” and the “bypass.”
Stephen uses these images: “dump,” “Clark,” “pencil,”

“problem,” “counts,” “Mabel,” “medical report,” “stool,” “crap,”
“newspaper,” “car,” “back pack,” “home fries in your ears,”
“Chingado the Chicano,” “donut,” “hitchhiking,” “Turdville,”
“Elmer’s glue,” “cold coffee,” “my Aunt Fanny’s butt,” “the clap,”
“coupla hundred truck drivers,” “morons,” “sacked out on my rear,”
766 2) 66
“cemetery,” and “Born Dead.”
The free association technique goes something like the riff I did
with the image “rain” in the section on Images from the Actors’
Choice chapter. We float around on the image, jotting down what-
ever pops into our heads in response to it, ranging as freely and
widely as possible, without censoring ourselves, not worrying about
whether anything we come up with is actually useful. Maybe a tny
amount of what we come up with, say ten percent, will be useful. In
order to do a meaningful script analysis, you need to spend tyme on it.
Okay. Let’s start with the “schedule” of Angel’s “daily fight” with
her “mom.” “Daily fight schedule” makes me think of daily flight
schedule, airplanes, airports, two-seater planes, big jets, air traffic
control. “Fight schedule” also makes me think of heavyweight title
bouts, Muhammed Ali, George Forman, Mike Tyson (rape, prison,
Barbara Walters), and fight gyms; I have never been in a fight gym
201
DirReEcTING AcToRS / WESTON
but I imagine them as dark, with low ceilings, cement walls, noises of
punching bags, grunts, sounds of flesh being struck by boxing gloves.
Then I think about fights without hitting, verbal fights, family fights.
Now we're getting closer. Why did I have tq go through “air traffic
control” and “fight gyms,” which were clearly off the mark of any-
thing useful for this scene, before I got to “family fights,” which is
apparently what Angel is talking about?
I don’t know. I was not censoring myself. I gave my imagina-

tion its head; I Jet it lead me, instead of me trying to lead it.
Imagination, by its nature, resists the injunction to be “useful.” If 1
command my imagination to go only to useful areas, it probably
won’t do anything; it will sit there like a stick. This is what hap-
pens when directors sit staring at the page, unable to get started on
their script analysis homework.
Back to Angel. To call it a “daily fight” which usually follows a

“schedule” makes me think of routine bickering or nagging, perhaps
persistently on the same subjects. I have seen affectionate relation-
ships that include bickering or heckling. Ihave also seen families
whose every interaction communicates antipathy and neglect. Which
kind is Angel’s situation? What do they fight about? Maybe Angel
likes to iron her uniform in the morning and her mother thinks the
ironing should be done the night before. (When | was a teenager my
father and I once had a fight on this very subject.) Maybe Angel
serves the toast unbuttered, an act perceived by her mother as brain-
less, or even as a gesture of disrespect and rejection. Or maybe Mom
insists on smoking at the breakfast table and extinguishing her ciga-
rettes in her coffee cup, to the disgust of Angel, who doesn’t smoke.
How much do these fights hurt? Here I'll do some “internal

research.” My own fights with my parents, no matter how infre-
quent or trivial, always hurt me deeply. At first glance, that experi-
ence seems not at all like that of Angel, who seems to trivialize the
fight by referring to its “daily schedule.” But what if she only pre-
tends to make light of her situation? What if her pain and loneliness
go very deep?
202
SCRIPT ANALYSIS
The image and association exercise calls attention to what a char-

acter talks about rather than what he says about it or claims to feel
about it. The theory here is that things people talk about are a good
indicator of what is really on their minds, what is important to them,
their interests and needs — in other words, what is causing them to
do the things they do. It’s a peek into the character’s emotional
storage banks. It gives us questions and ideas that may lead to choices.
It also brings us into the experience that these characters might

be having while they say these words. In life people change subjects,
make Freudian slips, and forget what they were saying, often without
any reason that they are conscious of. Rather, the association they
make is subconscious. Angel mentions “tattoos that say Love and
Peace.” Is this an appealing or an unappealing image to her? How
does she feel about the hippies? Does she have dreams of going to
San Francisco with flowers in her hair?
When I look at the list I made earlier of Stephen’s images, if I

free-associate and don’t censor myself, a few things jump out. Four
of his images have associations with excrement: dump, stool, crap,
Turdville, not to mention “my Aunt Fanny’s butt” and “sacked out on
my rear.” Two images of death: his tattoo “Born Dead” and “ceme-
tery.” (I am calling “Born Dead” his image even though Angel men-
tions it because he is the one who wears the tattoo; and since she
does mention it, I deduce that it is visible.)
Doesn’t this say something about him? Do you see how it is

more powerful to invoke his excrement images than to say he has
contempt for the town he lives in? Could his two death images
mean that someone he cares about has died? Or that ideas of suicide
are in his emotional storage banks? This is where my uncensored
imagination may pay off. Maybe the “air traffic control” riff off
Angel’s “daily fight schedule” led nowhere, but linking, via free asso-
ciation, Stephen’s death and excrement images may actually end up
being useful.
He mentions “the clap” in connection with hitchhiking. Or is the

connection with the “tattoos that say Love and Peace”? Does this
203
mean that he believes he can contract a sexually transmitted disease

from a car seat? Or that he has sexual fantasies about riding with a
carful of hippies? He mentions “medical report” — is anyone in his
family ill? “Chingado the Chicano” — is this a racially derogatory
epithet? Could it have some other meaning or association? How
much Spanish does Stephen know? Does he have Mexican-
American friends?
What about the images of the title? When we look at the title,
we are looking for thematic images, rather than the characters’ per-
sonal images, as we have been doing. “Red Ryder” sounds western
but has no specific associations for me. However, my husband told
me (my external research) that he remembered Red Ryder as a very
famous comic book cowboy hero of his youth. Could “heroism” turn
out to be a theme of the script? Without the full script we won’t be
able to make this determination. We can make a note that external
research to learn more about the comic book hero Red Ryder 1s going
to be needed.
We can also investigate (internal research) our own associations

with heroism. It was a thrilling moment for me, watching the 1996
Academy Awards, when a childhood hero of mine, Miep Gies, was
introduced to the audience by the filmmaker accepting his award for
the documentary “Anne Frank Remembered.” Even though my
notions of what constitutes heroism may differ from Stephen’s or
Angel’s — or the author’s — | allow my associations with heroism to
jumpstart my connection to the script and its characters.
The image and association exercise can even have practical appli-
cations. “Tattoos that say Love and Peace” gives us a pretty good
idea that the script is set in the early seventies. “Donut” conjures up
for me associations around the stale diner donuts I have encountered
in my life: the Plexiglas donut display case, which rocks slightly
when you open it, the glaze from a glazed donut smeared against the
inside of the Plexiglas, the sugar stuck to my fingers when I pick one
up; sugar donuts, jelly donuts, chocolate donuts, crullers; the dif-
ferent sensations of breaking open a stale, dry sugar donut as com-
pared to a fresh jelly donut; dunking, my Uncle Andy, who used to
204
SCRIPT ANALYSIS
love to dunk, the controversy over whether or not dunking was

polite. This donut riff could give me some ideas for activities for the
actors to try in rehearsal.
While you are thinking about images, you might take note of the
people, places, and things the characters talk about that are not pre-
sent: Angel's mother, Clark, Lyle, and truck drivers; the freeway
~~bypass, the back pack Stephen has ordered from the Raleigh coupon
book, the coupon book itself. The actors will need to have substitu-
tions, either personal or imaginative, for all these off-camera people
and things. If you make a note of them now, when you get to casting
you can remember to notice whether the actors, when they speak
these words, are talking about something real, or merely saying lines.
Once we know the script’s skeleton — its facts and images — we

can generate some ideas for choices to flesh out the skeleton. This is
also our opportunity to translate ideas into playable direction. The
most important thing to remember when looking at possible choices
is that we are looking at what might be going on under the lines.
Watch for choices that are too “on-the-nose,” that come too “dead-
” the surface meaning of the lines. To become more adept at using
opposites, consider choices that at first you think are wrong.
205
IMAGINATIVE CHOICES: CHART 3
1. History (BACKSTORY)
“4
Actors and writers often write biographies of their characters.
These are facts that are not in the script. Since they are not in the
script, they are only facts if they work, if they stimulate the imagi-
nations of the actors and catapult them into their sense of belief in
the moment.
Questions are the tool that gets us to imaginative backstory. For

instance, after deducing that Stephen and Angel work in the same
diner, we might ask how long they have known each other. They may
have met on the job, or they have known each other all their lives.
There is nothing in the scene that proves one theory or the other.
Even if we read the whole play, there may be no evidence proving one
idea or the other.
If they have known each other, are they the same age? Were they
in the same grade? Were they good students? Was either of them
ever kept back a grade? What kind of friends did each hang out with?
Was it the popular crowd? Were their families acquainted? What
were their impressions of each other? Is it possible that they ever had
anything like a date? If so, what happened?
What if Angel used to let Stephen copy her homework? That

would be an example of an imaginative backstory choice. It’s not in
the script, but there is nothing in the script that makes it impossible,
either. It’s framed as a “what if?” because it’s not an actual fact, it’s a
choice — the idea is to generate behavior in the actors. It could also
be called an adjustment (Column 6). Actors do not have to agree on
each other’s imaginative backstory. If the actor playing Angel is
working with a backstory choice that she used to let Stephen copy
her homework in high school (this could be either a suggestion from
the director or her own idea), the actor playing Stephen does not
have to agree that this ever took place, or even to know that she has
made this choice.
206
SCRIPT ANALYSIS
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Now what if they met at their jobs in the diner. Who was there
first? Maybe Angel has lived all her life in this town, and Stephen
appeared on the scene a year ago. Maybe she befriended him. What
if a few months after he arrived, he played some hurtful practical joke
on her? Making such an adjustment is different from making the
judgment that he is a mean person, and it is more specific. Again, do
internal, external and script research on any of these ideas. What
practical jokes have you played on people? What jokes have been
played on you? Ask other people for their experiences with practical
jokes. Keep rereading the script to see if there is evidence to support
this idea.
On a reread earlier, we came up with the question, “How long has

Stephen had the notion to be called ‘Red’:” If it was two weeks ago
that he came up with this idea, that would be a different imaginative
backstory choice, and would give Angel a different adjustment than if
he had been calling himself “Red” for a long time. Pay special atten-_
tion to characters’ memories. {Memories can never be accepted _as
full-blown fact; they
are always tinted by wish and imagination. But
they always contain truth, sometimes a deeper truth than fact.
Stephen speaks of having red hair as a kid. How red was it? If he has
brown hair now, it is unlikely that he was a “carrot-top.” How did he
get this idea that he was a redhead? Could he have had a favorite
uncle with red hair who was kinder to him than his father, and who
he secretly imagined was his real father?
What we are after here are stories that may help catapult the actor
into his sense of beliefin the character’s situation. An important pur-
pose of a director's script analysis is to prepare yourself to tell these
stories vividly and feelingly.
2. WHat fusT HAPPENED
This column applies if there is a gap in time between the scene at

hand and its previous scene. This is the|“off-camera beat,”) the
moment-by-moment life of the characters before the scene started.
Firmly rooting a scene thus in the physicality of moment-by-moment
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SCRIPT ANALYSIS
life gives it a “texture of life,” a sense that the scene is “in the middle
of” something.
How long has Stephen been sitting on that stool? What article has
he been reading in the newspaper? How many customers were there
that night? Who specifically were they? Was it chilly in the empty
diner? I have worked graveyard shifts, so I have a place to start imag-
ining the previous eight hours of Stephen’s life. If you never have
worked a graveyard shift, have you ever been awake all night in a
lonely place? Can you imagine it? Do you know anyone who has
worked graveyard shifts that you might talk to (research)? As much
as possible, create in your imagination the sensory details: the colors
of the walls, the broken linoleum tiles, the changing taste of the
coffee as the night wears on, crossword puzzles he might try to get
interested in, fantasies, naps.
For Angel, how did she arrive at work? Did she drive? Walk?
Take the bus? Get dropped off? What is the weather like? Is it
warmer or cooler when she walks into the diner (is there air-condi-
tioning?)? Did she wash her hair this morning?
The actor does this kind of work as a sensory preparation for a

scene. But it is appropriate to the director’s job as well, as part of her
investigation of the characters’ lives outside the four corners of the
movie screen.
3. OBJECTIVE/INTENTION/NEED
During your script analysis, you should come up with as many candi-
dates for each character’s objective as you can think of. If you're not
sure what a character’s objective is, don’t anguish over it but make
notes anyway. If you don’t have good ideas, jot down three bad ideas
to at least get you started. If you are sure what the objective is, jot
down three other possibilities anyway. If you are so sure you know
what the objective is that you can’t think of any others, then at least
jot down the opposite of your idea.
209
DirecTING AcTorRs / WESTON
While you are learning how to analyze scripts and work with
objectives, you should follow this rule: one objective per scene
per character (unless it’s a scene with three or more people in it;
then each character may have a different objective for each of the
other characters).
What kinds of evidence do we have as to what a character’s objec-

tive might be? The least useful piece of information is what the char-
acter says he wants. When characters make a point of declaring the
motivations for their behavior, it’s usually pertinent to look for the
issue or ambivalence underlying their protestations.
Here are some useful ways to go about choosing objectives.
1) Look at the facts, and then ask, “What might a

person want in that situation?” Make a list. Don’t confine
yourself to what you would want if you were in that situation,
or to what “the character” would want, or even to what a
rational person would want. Don’t get stuck in your preju-
dices. List as many candidates as you can think of.
2) Look at behavior; look at what the character does
rather than what he says he is doing.
3) Look at the things he talks about, that is, his
images. ‘This will give us some clues as to the concerns of the
character’s subconscious, the things he wants but doesn’t
know he wants.
+) Look at the emotional event of the scene, what
happens in the scene, how things end up. Is it possible that the
character wanted that to happen? Or wished to prevent it?
5) Look at the things people want out of life: love,
freedom, power, control, adventure, comfort, security, family,
sex, money, respect, honor. We all want everything, right?
But there are certain things we want that we will sacrifice
other things for. What is important to the character? What
is the thing he will sacrifice for? What does he make the
greatest effort to avoid? What interests him?
6) ‘Translate your ideas into playable form. Instead of
saying, “Fle is attracted to her,” translate it into the more
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SCRIPT ANALYSIS
playable “He wants her to go to bed with him.” Rather than

“He is taking out his frustrations,” say, “He is picking a
fight.” Rather than “He wants to talk to someone,” say, “He
needs a friend.”
7) If nothing at all comes to you, take a look at the
list of “Sample Simple Objectives” in Appendix C.
8) If you are still feeling blank, ask yourself, “Does he
want the other character to feel good or does he want her to
feel bad>”
An objective should engage other characters, create its own

obstacles, and be something that the actor can personally get behind
and commit to. You may find the coolest idea in the world for an
objective, but if the actor can’t connect to it, another choice must be
found. An important thing to remember about objectives is that they
don’t have to be realistic. People don’t always know what they want;
what they want is not necessarily something they can have; and they
don’t always do the right thing to get it.
Let’s look at some possible objectives for the “Red Ryder” scene.
I'm going to come up with three for each character, and I'll try to
make them different from each other. First let’s take Stephen.
1) A suggested objective for Stephen is that “He

wants to get out of the diner.” That is what he says he wants,
but what he says he wants is contradicted by what he does,
which is to sit on the stool and read his newspaper. If he
wants to leave, why doesn’t he do it? And this idea doesn’t
connect him to Angel. It will be hard for an audience to stay
interested in this scene if Stephen is not connected to Angel
via an emoticnal need of some kind. Let’s say we want to
make this thinking playable. A playable alternative might be
that “he wants her to leave.” Now this would be irrational,
but it would be playable; it might work, and even be funny.
We wouldn’t know whether it would work unless we tried it.
2) “Stephen wants Angel to take care of him.” I’m
basing this idea on Stephen’s line “...as soon as I get some-
thing taken care of.” Could this line be evidence that he has
211
trouble at home? Could he hang out at the diner past his shift
so he doesn’t have to go home to face the problems there?
I’m also basing the idea on events in the scene: she does take
care of him (cleans up his mess, brings him coffee and
donut). Maybe her behavior is a response to his unarticu-
lated need. He even uses the phrase “taken care of.” Maybe
the presence of that phrase in his emotional storage banks
reveals his own need.
3) “Stephen wants Angel to treat him with respect,
treat him like a man.” Maybe we should take this all the way
and say he wants to be a hero. I’m taking this from the image
in the title of the piece, “Red Ryder,” a cowboy hero. He
doesn’t seem to do things that might make people treat him
with respect or think of him as a hero, but don’t forget,
people often do the wrong thing to get what they want.
How about Angel? I think it’s possible that she wants him to like
her, or to make it more specific, wants him to ask her to go to the
movies tonight. Another possibility might be that she wants him to
respect her intelligence and wit. She could want him to leave. She
could want him to stay. She could want him to do his job better, leave
the place cleaner after his shift, follow rules, etc. Maybe she needs to
be needed.
What I want you to do now is zor try to figure out intellectually

which one of these is right (or why they are all wrong). None of
them is right unless it works and none is wrong unless it doesn’t
work. These are ideas for rehearsal, or ideas to fall back on if the
choice you thought would work doesn’t work. Above all, they are
ways, like the imaginative backstory ideas, to exercise and engage
your story imagination.
4, ISSUES/WHAT’S AT STAKE/THE PROBLEM/THE OBSTACLE
One thing you really want to watch out for is any inclination
you might have to say that either Stephen or Angel is “just reacting”
to the other one, or that either of them doesn’t care what the other
212
(ip “f t “y . SCRiPT ANALYSIS
)
(i |
one thinks. In other words, leaving them with nothing at stake in
the scene.
A character's through-line or primary engagement is not always

with the other person in the scene. The primary engagement may be
with an image or memory, another person who is not present, or even
an object. The “Red Ryder” scene could be played with that choice.
Say, for instance, that Angel’s primary engagement is not with
Stephen but with Clark, with staying on Clark’s good side, and
keeping her job. Maybe she has recently been promoted to manager
(that could be why she goes over the receipts every morning). In that
case we might say that “her job” is what is at stake for her. Stephen’s
primary engagement could be with his newspaper; maybe he is
struggling to finish an article that genuinely interests him.
Making choices about whether the primary engagement in this

scene is between the two of them, or elsewhere, will affect your direc-
torial style. One thing that draws me as a director to this scene is its
potential for humor, and I suspect that making their relationship the
primary engagement of the scene will give me more comedic options.
But even though I may want the scene to end up funny, I still look for
the characters’ pain, which is another way of asking, “what’s at
stake?” Exploring the idea that Stephen needs to be treated like a
man might lead us to say that what's at stake for him is his self-image,
or his masculinity. Maybe he has a stepparent who belittles him.
Does Angel’s mother have a job? Where is Angel’s father? Is

Angel her mother’s sole support? Why doesn’t Angel’s mother have
a job? Is she sickly? Selfish? It could be that what’s at stake for Angel
is an unending future of taking care of an ungrateful, demanding
mother. This thinking might lead us to say that Angel needs Stephen
to stay.
5. ACTION VERBS
The action verb is what the character is doing to get what she
wants. Sometimes the whole scene will work with one action verb.
This could mean that she is getting what she wants and has no need
to change what she is doing to get it; or it could suggest a rigidity
to the character’s personality. Often the verb changes when the
“beat” changes. iy “
If you have in your mind a certain look or sound for a certain line,
you might want to translate it into a verb. For example, if in your
mind you see the character shouting with a raised fist, perhaps the
action verb you want on that line is “to threaten,” or it might be “to
incite”; it might even be “to beg.”
Some directors and teachers say that for preparation you should
find an action verb for each line. For a beginner there is danger that
this approach will keep you stuck in mechanically translating the pre-
conceived ways you hear the line in your head into a verb. Finding
the verb for each line is not a substitute for understanding the scene’s
central emotional event and the characters’ through-lines.
Even though it’s on my “Short List,” I suggest that you stay away
from “to convince.” “To convince” is tepid; -it is often a way of not
doing something else. For example, when I ask my students to play
the intention “to accuse,” they sometimes take that to mean they
must convince the other person to admit that he is wrong. This is
what we might do in daily life — it’s the more socially acceptable
behavior — but probably not as dramatic. (Although it would be
preferable to have the actor convince X to admit he is wrong simply
and honestly than to have him “accuse” in an overwrought actorish
“movie” manner that becomes an attempt to convince us of the truth
of the words.)
Actually any of the verbs on the Short List are possible for either
Stephen or Angel. It might be hard to imagine Stephen flirting,
coaxing, soothing, or encouraging, but you could be surprised. If an
actor played his lines with an intention “to soothe,” it would be called
“playing the opposite” or “playing against the lines.” You shouldn't
rule it out without seeing an expert actor try it.
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SCRIPT ANALYSIS
6. ADJUSTMENTS
Adjustments are among the most powerful tools a director can
have. They are an invitation to “let’s pretend.” Directors who are
able to come up with perceptive and enticing adjustments are rare,
and adored by actors.
An adjustment can be an “as if” or an “it’s like when” — a

metaphor or parallel. Arthur Penn, when interviewed on “Inside the
Actors Studio,” revealed the adjustment he suggested to Dustin
Hoffman for the scene from “Little Big Man” in which Hoffman’s
character must convince General Custer that he is not a renegade, or
be executed. Penn was worried that the scene was coming off merely
funny and needed a more powerful undercurrent. He suggested (in
lengthier and more vivid terms than this) that an analogous circum-
stance might be that Hoffman had to deny his Jewishness in a con-
centration camp in order to eventually be in a position to kill the
oppressor. In the filmed scene, Hoffman appears to have the inten-
tion “to entertain” Custer. And yet, because of the secret adjustment,
there is a second level of danger and threat giving focus to the char-
acter’s clowning.
Or an adjustment can be a “what if?” — an imaginative backstory

choice. In an interview reported in Daily Variety John Travolta
spoke about being directed by Robert Altman in Harold Pinter’s
“The Dumbwaiter”: “I had a scene where I was reading a newspaper
aloud to someone. I was rattling away. Altman didn’t say much at
first. Then he came over and whispered in my ear, ‘What if your
character is really illiterate and can’t read a word on the page, is
making it all up as he goes along?’ Wow. That changed everything,
permeated the whole scenario.”
What might have been going on in Altman’s mind? Perhaps he

thought the scene was playing too dead-on and the adjustment would
give it more risk. Maybe it was an idea he'd had all along, thatit was
in this character’s personality to pompously pretend to have informa-
tion on every subject; the adjustment would be a way to create that
side of the character without making an unplayable judgment.
215
DirecTING AcTors / WESTON
Maybe the idea popped suddenly into Altman’s head, inspired by

something the actor was unconsciously doing, and the director chose
to follow that whim. When Travolta says, “That changed every-
thing,” he means the new adjustment became. his through-line.
“What if Angel and Stephen went to high school together and

Angel used to let Stephen copy her homework?” “What if Angel has
just been promoted to manager of the diner?” “What if Angel and
Stephen had sex together once?” These adjustments can be agreed
on by both actors (and the director) or they can be private; they can
be secrets. Stephen could adjust to the situation as if they have had
the conversations about coffee cups and his name a hundred times.
Angel, on the other hand, could make the adjustment that the coffee
cup issue has never come up before and the name issue only once.
Angel could play the scene “as if” she and Stephen had a date once.
But Stephen could have the adjustment that the event Angel thinks of
as a date was not a date: they happened to be at the movie theater on
the same evening and happened to sit (three seats apart) in the same
row. In real life people often remember the same event very differ-
ently, or at least attach different significance to it.
An “as if” adjustment can be a kind of shape-shifting — a little

wrinkle in reality, an interior improvisation. Stephen could take an
adjustment that every word Angel says is like a knife through his
eardrum, or like fingernails on a blackboard.
There are certain “quick fix” adjustments that can apply to

many scenes:
Parent/child. \n many real life relationships one person takes the

parental role and the other the child role. ‘This can be a way to
understand characters’ relationships too.
High status/low status. keith Johnstone’s excellent book

lmpro introduced me to the “high status/low status” game and how
useful it is to understanding relationships in scripts as well as in
life. A variation I use is asking an actor to think of himself or her-
self as the “king.”
216
SCRIPT ANALYSIS
Good news/bad news. Instead of saying the character is happy or

the character is depressed, think of the character in these terms:
either, “everything she sees and hears is good news,” or “everything
she sees and hears is bad news.”
Bug and suppress. This construct is based on a warm-up exercise

that I invented, in which one player does anything he can think of to
bother the other player, and the other one discourages or suppresses
the first one’s behavior. Quite a lot of scenes follow this structure.
As if it’s a business deal. As if they are married. There are

many more.
7. SUBTEXT
What if in rehearsal the actor playing Stephen becomes so sar-

castic and mean that the scene gets heavy-handed, losing its connec-
tion and humor, with no obstacle, nothing at stake? You might say to
him, “Let’s change the adjustment. What if last night a truck driver
offered you a ride to Las Vegas on his next trip through plus a
promise of a job there with his brother-in-law? So your subtext all
through this scene might be this good news that you’ve decided not
to tell anyone.” Subtext can help shore up an adjustment or objec-
tive and make it work.
Or it might be a way to explain what a certain line means. When

Angel says, “Now ya got brown hair,” her subtext could be, “You
idiot, don’t you know brown from red?” Or a different choice could
be, “I like brown hair better than red hair anyway. You have nice hair
and I think you’re handsome and that Stephen is a nice name.” The
line would come out very differently.
8. PHYSICAL LIFE
Here is where we pay attention to the physical objects and activ-

ities of the characters’ world. Stephen has his newspaper and ciga-
rettes and coffee. Angel has her coffeepots and donut trays and other
217
DirRecTING AcToRS / WESTON
paraphernalia of diner counters. ‘These objects almost become char-

acters in the scene. Stephen’s newspaper, cigarettes, and coffee are
his friends. Angel has her relationships with the glass coffee cups and
paper cups; she protects the paper cups from improper usage. ‘The
donut is a whole new character who enters in the middle of the scene.
Whose side is the donut on? When the objects take on life in your
imagination you may start to have ideas for blocking and business.
Perhaps Angel is polishing the chrome fittings of the revolving
Plexiglas donut case when Stephen gets the idea to ask her for a donut.
It is through their physical life that actors create characters who

live in a different time period from their own. The daily use of a
~~
jnanual
cash register (as in the early seventies, the time period of this
scene) creates a subtly different reality from our present computer-
ized world. Other kinds ofphysical life to consider
are secrets. What
if Angel has a headache this morning? What if Stephen has hemor-
rhoids? How long has it been since Stephen has had a shower?
* * *
Now. You don’t need to talk to actors about all these elements of the
characterization. You don’t sit them down with the charts and map it
all out. The reason for so many columns is to give you flexibility.
Very possibly you will end up with a favorite way of analyzing char-
acters and giving direction. You might prefer to use images or adjust-
ments or intentions more than the others. Actors too have favorite
ways of looking at things. It’s good to have more than one approach.
If one doesn’t work, you have a backup.
The choice of a tool can illuminate the style of the script. Some
scripts are driven by the characters’ objectives, some are driven by
guiding subtextural images, some will just not work without a whole-
sale leap of faith into an imagined reality. Choosing to talk to the
actors in terms of images instead of verbs, for example, can support
the style of the movie.
The choices are completely mutable and playful unlike the facts
and images of the script. It doesn’t matter what the actor’s choice is
as long as it works. It doesn’t matter if you and the actor agree on the
choice, if it works. When an actor comes up with an idea for a choice,
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SCRIPT ANALYSIS
the appropriate response is never “that’s right” or “that’s wrong,” but

“let's try it.” And then after it has been tried, “that works,” or “let’s
keep looking.”
EVENTs: CHART 4
Every scene has a central emotional event, something that Aap-

pens between the characters who are interacting. It can be an
extremely subtle event, but if othing happens in a scene, that scene
doesn’t belong in the script. The director is responsible for seeing to
it that an emotional event takes place, and for stringing the events of
each scene together to make a story.
A helpful way to go about identifying the event of a scene is by

breaking it down into its beats. The term “beat” is widely misunder-
stood to mean changes in mood, or pauses, or something to do with
the pace or tempo-rhythm of the scene. The term actually began to
be used among actors and directors in this country in the 1920s. The
apocryphal story is that one of the great Russian directors had come
to New York and was delivering a series of lectures. A student asked
the question, “How do you work on a scene?” to which he replied,
“Beet by beet,” meaning, in his heavily accented English, “bit by bit.”
Soon, the story goes, the response was introduced into actor-speak as
“working with beats.”
So really the “beats” are the bits, the little sections of a scene.
Stanislavsky called them “units.” The simplest, best way to identity
them is by swhject — when the subject changes, that is a new beat.
‘The great thing about this method of determining beats is that it is
an objective way of figuring them out. Deciding beats by identi-
fying changes in mood is not a good way for two reasons: First of
all, “mood” is very subjective; it will be easy to get into arguments
with the producer or writer or actor about where such changes take
place. Second, deciding changes in mood brings you perilously
close to emotional mapmaking. We don’t want to make an emo-
tional map; we want to find a coherent emotional structure to the
219
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SCRIPT ANALYSIS
scene. We want to find out what the scene is about, and its central
emotional event.
The procedure in figuring out beats is first to identify every

change of subject, no matter how brief. But eventually we want to
identify three major beats: beginning, middle, and end. It isn’t always
three — sometimes there are two or four major beats — but usually
there are three. In addition to their usefulness in understanding the
structure of the script, the major beats are useful as rehearsal units.
By the way, people often ask whether the beat can change for dif-
ferent characters at different times. The answer is yes.
Column | of Chart + is a place to identify the beat and key it in

some way to the script. You could write “Beat One” and mark the
section in the script with a line and a “One” next to it. Or you could
write a description, e.g., “page 1, line | to page 2, line 6.”
Column 2 is the subject of that beat (some people call it the title
of the beat); Column 3 is the name of the character who brings that
subject up. I always need to go through a scene several times before
I discern its structure. On the first pass, I look only for the informa-
tion in Columns | through 3.
Then I go back, linking things up by looking for the information

from Columns 4 and 5. The purpose of Column 4 is to start noticing
how the beats relate to each other. Often they are connected by small
events or issues (Column 5). Going back through the scene noticing
these transitions and uncovering these connective events should lead
us to ideas about the event of the scene, or what the scene is about
(Column 6).
Before reading on, you might want to take a look at the “Red
Ryder” scene and break down its beats on your own.
Beat 1: to the line “...in my spare time, ain’t it?” Subject:

Angel's lateness. Angel brings it up.
221
Beat 2: from “Stephen, that’s a paper cup...” to “...so where’s the

problem?” Subject: the paper coffee cup. Angel brings it up.
Beat 3: consists of Angel’s line, “Stephen. ,What’re ya gonna

get with your cigarette coupons, Stephen? Stephen?”
Subject: his cigarette coupons. Angel brings it up.
Beat 4: from “How many times...” to “I hate Mabel.” Subject:

their names. Stephen brings it up. In a way, this is a judg-
ment call. We could say that Beats 3 and 4 are one beat, that
Angel brings up the subject of their names by using the name
Stephen three times in a row, when she later admits that she
knows he doesn’t like it.
Beat 5: from “Look, Stephen, if you’re in such a big hurry..”

to “...will ya look at the waitin’ line to get on this stool.”
Subject: Stephen’s continued presence in the diner. Angel
brings it up.
Beat 6: films. Angel brings it up.
Beat 7: from “I saw ya circle somethin in the gift book...”

through Angel’s line “Ya gonna go campin’.” Subject: coupon
book again. Angel brings it up.
Beat 8: from “No [| ain't gonna go campin’.” to “...make me

some bread.” Subject: Stephen's plans. Brought up by Angel.
Beat 9: from “Rye or whole wheat” to “Yeah, yeah.” Subject:

food. Brought up by Angel.
Beat 10: from “You better let...” to the end of the scene.
Subject: hitchhiking. Brought up by Angel.
Seer ‘This first step is easy; the more simplemindedly you do it,
the better. Now, we go through again, refining our ideas by looking
at Columns 4 and 5.
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SCRIPT ANALYSIS
The subject of the first beat is a deficiency of Angel’s — her late-

ness. ‘I'he subject of the second beat is a deficiency of Stephen’s,
brought up by Angel. Maybe the event here is that she gets back at
him for making a fuss about her lateness. Perhaps she walked in
expecting him to welcome her, thank her for her gracious apology,
and laugh at her little joke about the daily fight schedule. Instead he
punishes her for her tardiness; she retaliates with the coffee cup.
Then, having scored a win, she brings up the subject of the

coupon book. He changes the subject to “names” and retaliates for
her incorrect use of his name with a put-down inspired by her name.
She changes the subject again, pointing out two additional faults: he
is not doing what he said he would do (leave), and he is cleaning his
' teeth at the table. He retaliates once more.
This is one way of defining the first major beat. So far neither
one of them has taken a loss. No matter what they are handed, they
come right back at the other one. We could call this (up through
Small Beat 5) the First Major Beat or section, with the subject or title
“a match of wits” or “sparring.” Then I would have to call the
Second Major Beat (Small Beats 6, 7, and 8) “Stephen’s plans.” This
shift could be seen as Angel taking her “loss” and moving to new sub-
jects (films, the coupon book). The event of this Second Major Beat
is that Angel makes the discovery that Stephen is taking concrete
steps toward a departure from his life in that town.
In the Third Major Beat (Small Beat 10) the event is that she
blocks his escape, and Stephen loses it, threatening to go “to the
cemetery” if his proposals are not respected. “That's how I thought of
it on my second pass. But on my third pass I found that coupon book
nagging at me. It actually is first mentioned in what I’ve called the
First Major Beat. Maybe the coupon book marks the beginning of
the Second Major Beat. In this construction, the First Major Beat is
Small Beats 1 and 2; the Second Major Beat is Small Beats 3 through
8 (subject, “Stephen’s plans”), but with a time-out for sparring, insti-
gated by Stephen (in this configuration, the “names” beat is the only
beat he introduces), perhaps to deflect the subject of his plans.
223
Now what about Small Beat 9? I’m starting to feel that the cen-
tral event of the scene is “a threat of desertion” — ie., Angel’s dis-
covery of Stephen’s imminent departure. So perhaps the Third
Major Beat consists of Small Beats 9 and 10 —Angel’s reaction to the
news. First she makes a joke (“rye or whole wheat”), then she blocks
his departure. This seems to reveal an ABA structure. The sparring
of the first major beat (beginning) could be the foundation of their
relationship. The second major beat (middle) contains the event of
the scene: a threat of desertion. Then the third major beat (end)
returns to the sparring, but with raised stakes.
Under Column 6, I mention the “domestic (or literal) event” and

“emotional (or global) event” of the scene. The domestic event ts
what the characters think is going on. The emotional event is the
artistic reason for putting the scene up on a movie screen, what you
want to say about life with the scene, and the relationship of this
scene to the story arc.
In this scene I have said that the emotional event is a threat of

desertion. The domestic event is the changing of shifts in a diner.
You — the director — need to know and create the emotional event
because the emotional events keep the audience involved in the story.
But you mustn't forget the domestic event, because it gives a scene its
scene can become. pretentious. . In her interview for the “Inside the
Actors Studio” series, Glenn Close said that the thing she needs from
a director when she is stuck is to be put on the track of what she called
_“the simplest, simplest truth.” I think she meant that actors can get
too much in their heads when they are juggling adjustments and
sometimes need to be reminded of the simple, domestic event.
The beats, the tiny events leading up to and resulting from the
central event of the scene, must be followable by the audience in |
order to tell the story. chang
The beat es may be punctuated with ~
movement of some kind (it can be very subtle movement, évén the
flicker of an eyelid), or by a change in action verb.
224
SCRIPT ANALYSIS
The classic configuration, the “rule,” if you will (although it is a

rule that is often broken), is that every beat change is punctuated by __
some physical movem phis-a@
ent change in each characters action __
Fath In the “Red Ryder” scene, it might look like this: During Major
Beat One Stephen is on his stool, stationary, feet up, newspaper up.
Angel is putting away her purse, taking off a sweater, adjusting her
uniform, possibly checking makeup. At the end of Beat 1 (Stephen’s
line, “...so where’s the problem?”) there would be some change in
movement, some blocking or business.
Actually the author has suggested some stage business (“Stephen

has taken the last cigarette from a pack, slipped the coupon into his
shirt pocket, and crumpled the pack; he basketball-shoots it across
the service area”) which punctuates the end of the first beat and sets
up Major Beat Two, by introducing the cigarette coupons. This is
actually a pretty good suggestion. If I had crossed this out when I
edited the stage directions, I would probably now go back and erase
the cross-out and circle this with a question mark; it’s definitely
worth trying in rehearsal. If I replace this business with something
else, ?'d want to make sure that the replacement accomplished the
same thing as the author’s direction.
The author has Angel change activity as well. The characters’

activities create a physical context for their emotional shifts. His
ideas are good, but [ still would like you to think up alternatives.
We’re preparing for rehearsal, you see. And whether your rehearsal
period is long — say a week or two — or only consists of ten minutes
just before actual shooting, the best thing you can do in rehearsal ts
stay loose. And the best way for the director to stay loose, and
focused at the same time, is to have lots of ideas to try, even if you
don’t try them all.
Stephen is communing with his intimate friends, his newspaper,

cigarettes, and coffee. Angel is interacting with objects that are
familiar and responsive to her: salt and pepper shakers, wash cloth
(when I was a waitress, at the end of each shift, all the chrome fittings
were wiped down with a cloth dipped in white vinegar and water, so
naturally | would consider adding this detail). These relationships
225
continue throughout the beat. They exert a pull on the characters as

strong as whatever pull the characters have on each other.
The food beat (Small Beat 9) occurs rightafter the central emo-
tional event (the discovery of Stephen’s plans, or his threat of deser-
tion). It makes sense that there would be activity around here.
Activity around the donut and the coffee refill can help both
characters deflect and channel their feelings about the breaking
of this news.
Punctuating the beats with movements may lead to a rudimentary

blocking plan. Now let’s look at how the punctuation might be done
by changing action verbs. Here are some suggestions: For Stephen:
Beat 1, to scrutinize; Beat 2, to brag; Beat 3, to punish or attack. For
Angel: Beat 1, to teach; Beat 2, to charm; Beat 3, to warn or demand.
Directing these beat changes into the scene (and making sure that the
actors play through each beat) can help the audience follow the story,
and can help make a long scene seem less wordy; it can also help you
pace the scene. It is always a good idea to learn how to follow the rules
before you break them. But sometimes directing the script beats into
the scene as playing beats is not advisable; the scene could come out a
little plodding. Whether or not you use the script beats as playing
beats, you still need to know what the script beats (structure) are.
We now have an idea for the event of the scene. This leads us to
a decision as to what the scene is about. My idea that the event of the
scene is a threat of rejection leads me to say (provisionally) that the
scene is about a failed love affair. I don’t mean by this that I think
Angel and Stephen have ever slept together, but, rather, that in
directing the scene I think I will want to illuminate the ways that
these two could be a good match for each other, as well as the forces
in and around them that make a match impossible. This is my vision
of the scene.
Now I would go back to Chart 3 and rethink my imaginative

choices in light of what I want to see happen in the scene. I’d be
looking primarily for through-lines for the characters. But I won't
know whether any of my ideas work until I rehearse with the actors.
226
SCRIPT ANALYSIS
What I have done here is wot direct the scene. ‘The scene is not
directed until the actors are present. What I have done is prepare to
direct the scene by investigating its structure.
WHAT THE Script Is ABOUT
At last we come to the fundamental question of script analysis:

What is the script about? The sages and the eventy are the clues to
this central question.
“What the movie is about” can be phrased as a theme, an image,

a paradox, a question, a spine, or an event. ~~
What the movie is about, when phrased as a theme, may be a

noun. “The Godfather,” for example, is about a family. (Indeed, one
of the reasons it is such a great movie is that it is not about shooting
a lot of people, but about a familv.) A deeper theme of the movie
might be “loss” — the loss of an eldest son, the loss of Don Vito’s
dream for Michael and his heirs, the loss of a father, the loss of the
old ways and old values.
It can be phrased as an image or metaphor. The floating feather

at the opening of “Forrest Gump” is an image of surrender to fate.
Forrest surrenders to chance (or fate); he accepts whatever life brings
him. The most famous line of the movie (“Life is like a box of choco-
lates,” etc.) is another metaphor for the same theme.
“The Fugitive Kind” contains an image, during the climactic

scene of the movie, of a dead fig tree suddenly bearing fruit. This
image calls forth associations with fertility, sexuality, perhaps resur-
rection. The movie’s original title was “Orpheus Descending,”
another strong image. In the Greek myth, Orpheus was a musician
who received permission from the god of the Underworld to enter
Hades, claim his dead bride and bring her back to life, on condition
that while they walked up from the Underworld, Orpheus would not
look at her face. Out of his longing, he broke this rule, and lost her
forever. This image of Orpheus, the artist, descending into Hell for
227
the sake of a woman, and losing her anyway, is central to this complex
movie, even though the title was changed to exclude that specific
image. The director of “The Fugitive Kind,” Sidney Lumet, has said
that for him the movie was about “the struggle to preserve what is
sensitive and vulnerable both in ourselves and the world,” a construct
that I think encompasses all these images.
When a movie’s theme is expressed as a statement, that statement

is most often a paradox. For example, “Forrest triumphs by surren-
dering” would be a way to state that movie's theme as a paradox. The
hero of “Tootsie,” by dressing up as a woman, becomes more of a
man. In “Don Juan de Marco,” Don Juan, the lover of over a thou-
sand women, teaches the monogamous psychiatrist commitment.
You could say that “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” unpara-
doxes the paradox that the human spirit is both unbearably fragile
and ultimately unconquerable.
The theme of Barbara Loden’s remarkable 1971 film “Wanda” is,

I think, this: that unconditional love brings healing and redemption
to the one who loves, even if not to the one who is the object of love.
I think this is also the theme of “Leaving Las Vegas.”
What the film is about can be phrased as a question. “Will Jake

Giddes be able to avoid repeating the terrible mistake he made long
ago, in Chinatown?” (The answer, of course, is no.)
It can be phrased as a spine or a verb. You might say that the spine
of “I Never Sang for My Father” is “to forgive.” Or the central or
climactic event of a movie may tell us what it is about. The climactic
event of “Casablanca” is a sacrifice: Rick gives up his claim (the claim
of true love, no less) on Ilsa, for the good of the cause. When we look
at the rest of the movie, we see the theme of “sacrifice” throughout.
When you are figuring out what the film is about, you must not
neglect the domestic event. In other words, even though I said ear-
lier that “The Godfather” is about family, or loss, rather than about
the Mafia, it is, of course, about a Mafia family. The filmmaker must
make the daily details of such a family specific and real, or else the
228
SCRIPT ANALYSIS
film will be dismissed as pretentious. “Chinatown,” on the “domestic

event” level, is about a murder investigation.
SPINE
The spine, at least of the main character, and probably all the
characters, will relate somehow to the central theme or themes of the
script, but not necessarily in a linear fashion. Even though “Tootsie”
is about a man who, by dressing up as a woman, becomes more of a
man, that doesn’t mean that “to become more of a man” is Michael
Dorsey's spine. His spine, both as Michael and as Dorothy, is, I think,
“to rock the boat.” This spine does nor change, even though the char-
acter undergoes a transformation, from a man whose boat-rocking
makes him an oafish know-it-all, to a man who is ready to focus his
boat-rocking impulses on the challenges of a committed relationship.
A person’s spine (or super-objective, life need, script through-

line, or red thread) may change once or twice in a lifetime. Usually
in real life it never changes. The thing that drives a person for the
rest of her life is often in place by the time that person is eight years
old. For some people “family” will be the central force the rest of
their lives. Or “to escape from the family,” “to win the approval of
his mother (or his father),” “to be more successful than his brother.”
The once or twice ina lifetime that a person’s spine might change
are only at the very big life events, such as war or disaster, marriage,
the death of a loved one, or giving birth. After one has a child, for
example, one’s priorities must change to include caring and providing
for the child. This could cause a complete change in the person's
spine, but not necessarily. If his spine was always “family,” then the
birth of a child reinforces but does not substantively change that
spine. It’s also possible that if his spine was always “success,” raising
children fits into that spine rather than changes it.
Almost the definition of a viable screenplay is that the characters

have one spine for the whole movie. It is what the character wants
229
for the whole script. You could almost call it the solution to the char-
acter, because once found, you can hang the entire script on it.
Here is my suggestion for determining a character's spine. First,

list the facts that are true about the character at the beginning of the
script (these can be things that we find out later in the script, but
which are true before the story starts). Next make a list of as many
possible spines as we can think of, as many possible things that a person
in that situation might want out of life — the candidates for the char-
acter’s spine. Then go through the events of the script, and by
looking at the character’s behavior during these events, start ruling
out some candidates, and adding others. Sooner or later we will
come across the character’s transforming event and its conse-
quences. As we look at the character's behavior leading up to,
during, and consequent to the transforming event, a viable spine
should fall into place.
When we are looking at the character's facts, we should pay spe-

cial attention to what seems to be the most important thing that has
happened to him. In the movie “Smoke” the most important thing
that has happened to Paul, the main character, is the death of his
wife two years earlier. In one of my classes we analyzed his spine,
and it became clear as we looked at his behavior during each event
of the movie, that his spine was “to find a way to go on living after
his wife’s death.”
This spine will be more useful to the actor and the director than
describing Paul by saying that he is closed off at the beginning of the
movie but opens up by the end of the movie (his arc or transforma-
tion). Let’s look factually at his behavior. At the beginning of the
movie 1) he writes every day; 2) he goes to the smoke shop every day
(he could buy his cigarettes weekly but instead buys a daily ration); 3)
in the first scene, he even tells the smoke shop habitués a story. What
I notice from these facts is that even at the beginning of the movie he
does work, and he does maintain a (minimal) daily human contact. In
the pain of his loss, this is the maximum connection to the world that
he can tolerate; it isn’t much, but it is something. He might have
gone on for years at this minimal level. :
230
ScRIPT ANALYSIS
His transforming event comes when the young man saves him
from being run over by the truck. It’s easy to get caught thinking
that Paul’s walking absently into the traffic indicates a death wish.
But what I think is important about this incident is not that Paul
walked in front of the truck, but his behavior toward the young man
who saves him. He thanks him — the most expressive behavior we
have so far seen from him (I’m not critiquing the actor’s perfor-
mance here, but examining the structure of the script). A whole
series of events ensue from this incident: Paul reaches out to the
world, pulls back, reaches out a bit farther, two steps forward, one
step back, but steadily opening up.
Usually a spine is in the form of a verb infinitive (“to revenge

himself,” “to find love,” etc.) but it could be a metaphor, an adjust-
ment, an image, or an intention. We could express the same idea
about Paul through a metaphor; perhaps the metaphor of a chick in
its shell. The young man, in saving Paul’s life, cracks the shell;
Paul, awakened, starts pecking from the inside and continues until
he is free.
In an interview after the release of “Remains of the Day,” Emma

Thompson described her central metaphor as a bird beating its
wings against the Anthony Hopkins character. When her wings
break against this unyielding man, she accepts a marriage proposal
(transforming event) from another man who (as we deduce in the
last scene; all her relationship with her husband happens off camera)
has also never truly joined her in flight. But she has never stopped
wanting to fly.
A spine can be simple, and often is simple. But watch out for
ideas that are merely glib or obvious. In one of my classes we did an
analysis of the spine for the Hugh Grant character in “Four
Weddings and a Funeral.” We accepted “to get married” and “to stay
uncommitted” as candidates, but kept reviewing the facts and events
of the script to see ifwe could come up with something better, since
those ideas seemed so obvious. (Of course we rejected the construct
“he wants to stay uncommitted until [X] — and then he wants to get
married” because that is not a spine at all.)
231
Someone in this class was British and assured the rest of us that,
by reason of the character’s behavior and accent, we could accept as a
fact that he was upper class. It was then interesting to note that the
one woman he could not get out of his heart was an American.
Maybe his spine was “to reject his very British background.” After
some noodling around we noticed the fact that “he has a younger
brother with a disability” (the brother is deaf) — a circumstance that
we know from life would significantly affect a person, and might even
determine his spine. We added to our list of possible spines, “to take
care of his brother.”
For me, the structure of the movie then fell into place. I could
picture a childhood suffused with the duty to put the needs of his
younger brother ahead of his own. The older brother could easily fall
into a kind of unconscious promise or bond with his childhood family
that might prevent him from making an adult commitment. And
voila! It is the brother’s action that precipitates the transforming
event. The younger brother stops the wedding and gets the main
character off the hook from the bad marriage (to which he would
never have been committed in his heart), freeing him to commit to
the right marriage, to Andie MacDowell. To me it makes perfect
emotional sense that the main character must get some extraordinary
permission from his brother before he can put anyone else
first in his life.
In “Four Weddings” the main character's transforming event was

also the climax of the movie, but this need not always be so. The
“transforming event” is not necessarily the climax of the movie. It is
an event in the personal life of the character, not a plot device. But
the important thing about transformations is that they turn on events,
not realizations. People are what they do (or don’t do). In real life a
true transformation (a terribly rare thing) may be accompanied by a
realization, but usually the realization comes later, if at all. What ~
makes people actually change behavior are things that happen to
them, or things they do, not things they realize. oo
232
SCRIPT ANALYSIS
As I have said, a good way to find a character's spine is to look at

his response to the deficiencies (or pleasures) of his early nuclear
family. Another way to look at spines is to look at the big things we
all want: sex, love, success, freedom, survival, power, spiritual attain-
ment, attention, revenge, etc.; then think about which of those
things is most important to the character. Yet another way to deter-
mine a spine is to translate your (result-oriented) description of the
character into a spine. Instead of saying that a person/character is a
selfish person, you could say that his spine is his own comfort and
convenience. Instead of saying a character is insecure, you could say,
“He wants everybody to like him.” To be adept at finding spines, you
need to be a good observer of human experience and behavior.
SUMMARY
One director | worked with asked me to critique a short film

he had directed. When I mentioned a scene that I thought didn’t
work, he replied that he had never been excited about that scene,
because it had nothing visual to shoot. Listen up. Don’t shoot a
scene until you have found “something to shoot.” This director’s not
finding the shootable thing in the scene — what the scene was
about — was a failure of script analysis.
Once you know what the script is about, be sure that

everyone involved on the project is making the same film. If, for
example, the special effects people are not told that the movie is
about, say, redemption, they may assume it is about thrills. If you
don’t tell the costumers what the movie is about, they may
assume that it is about costumes. When actors are not connected
up to what the script is about, they may start to think it 1s about
their performances.
You don't sit down with the actors and show them your filled-
out charts. In fact, when you finish these charts you should prob-
ably burn them. The purpose of doing this work is not to fill out
charts but to understand the script. The main reason for
preparing is to go through your mediocre ideas so you can be
233
ready for the great ideas that can happen when the actors arrive
and you begin the collaboration. The reason for preparing is not
to “pre-direct” the movie, but to gain confidence that you know
the characters and script inside out so yaqu can operate in the
moment in rehearsal and on the set. The notes, plans, and charts
are a jumping-off place from which to start being creative.
A quick summary of script analysis: Don't be distracted by

_Stage directions — concentrate on relationships. Replace adjec-
tives with verbs, images, facts, events and physical life. Know
what the movie is about, who the characters are, and be able to
back up your ideas with evidence. Havealternatives, in case your
favorite ideas don’t work. Keep “rereading ‘the script and
rethinking and deepening your ideas. The directions that I think
most actors respond to best are the ones that show insight.
oo
234
CASTING
CASTING
I have some objective criteria and a plan of attack to suggest when

auditioning actors. People who cast intuitively, and who are good at
it, do these things without thinking about it, without realizing they
are taking all these steps. If you’ve been casting using your intuition
and you feel like it works, then you should keep doing that. But in
case you're not satisfied with your casting results, here are some
objective measures, a checklist, and a set of procedures. Using these
methods over time should awaken and train your intuition so that
after a while you won’t be thinking about rules and procedures.
Let me ask you first: what do you look for in casting sessions?
Most directors look for the performance that they have been running
in the moviola-of-their-mind. This is a big mistake.
“ln audition is not performance.

a Auditioning and performing are
two separate skills> Many actors faveboth skills, but there are actors
who audition well and don’t work well. There are also actors who work
well and are great in performance, but who don’t audition well. Which
kind of actor would you rather have in your movie or IV show?
Directors often fall into a “dream lover” approach to casting.

This means having an idea/ideal of the character in your head and
searching for the actor who matches it. This gets you into a lot of
trouble, and it’s a drag. The director, producer and entourage sit in
a stuffy office, waiting, hoping that an actor will come in and knock
them out. They grow more and more anxious as the days go by, their
235
eyes glaze over, everyone starts to look the same, and they can’t
remember why they ever wanted to film this script in the first place.
Waiting to be knocked out by your dream lover is passive.
z=
How can you be active in the auditioning process? If you don’t
look for a performance, what should you look for?
There are four areas important to casting.
1) The actor’s ability.
That is, talent (the cards fate has dealt him, through birth
and experience) plus skill (what he has done to develop his
talent), including:
a) intuitive equipment: emotional range and flexi-
bility, sensitivity, intelligence, an ability to listen, to work
moment by moment, to be honest, to give himself inner
freedom and privacy in public, to make the imaginative leap
to a created reality.
b) acting skills: an ability to play a simple intention,
to play against (opposite to) the obvious reading of a line, to
create images, to be specific and insightful in his choices, to
make transitions cleanly, fully, and believably.
c) physical abilities: that is, range, flexibility, expres-
sivity, and skills in voice and movement.
d) artistic sensibility: taste, instincts, sense of humor,
sense of proportion.
e) heart: fearlessness, trust, commitment, emotional
and physical stamina, a need to perform.
2) Whether he is right for the part.
I am going to suggest that when you think about whether he is

right for the part you put your concern for the actor’s “look” and
“quality” secondary to whether he has what it takes to play the role. By
this I mean, can he connect to the character’s spine? Does he compre-
hend and connect to the character's experience and the transforming
event in the character’ life? This does not mean that the actor has to
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CASTING
have had the same experiences as the character, but it will have some-
thing to do with his life experience as well as with his intelligence, sen-
sitivity, range, commitment, and skill.
If you can afford it, it’s very helpful to have a good casting director.
They know a lot of actors, and may come up with names you haven't
thought of, or even fresh casting ideas for some roles. Be sure you
are on the same wave length. Before you agree to work together,
have a frank, open discussion about your tastes and prejudices, and
your ideas about the characters. Arrange to view some of the casting
director's past work. Be sure the casting director has already read the
script and is excited about the project.
There may be physical requirements for the role. Be clear about

this, so you don’t waste your time and the actors’ time. But I do
encourage you to think twice about this choice. Anyone who read
Ken Kesey’s book One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest would know
that Nurse Ratchet had to be obese, ugly, and loud; Louise Fletcher,
who was slender, attractive and understated, won an Academy Award
for the role. Apparently the filmmakers made a creative decision that
what was more essential about Nurse Ratchet than her looks was her
spine “to control absolutely the men under her care,” and that giving
her the look and manner of an ordinary bureaucrat made her more
effective and frightening in that task.
3) Whether you can work well together.
The bottom line is that you need to cast actors who can take
direction from you. By this I don’t mean actors who never question
your ideas or never counter them with ideas of their own — in fact I
mean just the opposite. I mean that you can communicate with each
other, that you have a mutual respect, and ideally that you mutually
spark and challenge and support each other's creativity; that being in
each other’s company helps you both to have ideas, that you turn each
other on, and that you both like to perform for each other.
There are actors who put the work ahead of their egos, who are
truly open — open to their resources, their feelings, understandings
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and impulses, open to the material, open to surprises, open to the

contradictions and complexities of the character, open to the actors
they work with, open to fresh insights, and willing to find a truthful
way to make direction work. These are the ones [ want you to find
and work with.
4) Casting the relationships as well as the roles.
This means that you understand the relationships of the script,

that you know, for instance, what behaviors and experiences make
this particular family a family, and that you cast the ensemble, not just
the individual roles.
The best way to be conversant with an actor’s abilities, and know

whether she is right for the part and you work well together is to have
worked with her before. There is no real shortcut to this knowledge.
Whenever you cast someone you haven’t worked with before, you are
casting with your fingers crossed. That’s why so many great directors
— Fellini, Bergman, Cassavetes, Woody Allen, to name only a few
— work with the same actors over and over and create an ensemble.
There is trust, because a director learns how to work with those
actors, knows what he can get, what pushes their buttons, where they
can go, and what places they need help going to.
When you're starting out, of course, you have no ensemble, but

even if you are making your first movie, why not think in terms of
building your ensemble? Instead of looking for the right actor for the
role, you'll be looking for the right role for the actor. Instead of
thinking, “How can I survive?” think, “How can I build?” Think of
casting as farming rather than hunting. Instead of thinking of your-
self as getting your sites on the right actor and then scoring the hit,
think of yourself as cultivating a crop. Keeping as your priority the
building of your ensemble will take some of the burden from casting.
It will help you put out energy, and putting out energy will give you
more energy. )
When preparing for auditions, you need to choose scenes, which
are called “sides,” for the actors to read with another person. You can
6 . .
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have actors read with each other in the first round of readings,
although usually in the first round you meet them one at a time. You
want to pick scenes that go somewhere, that have some transitions in
them. The casting director will have ideas. Usually scenes involving
astunts, nudity, or emotional breakdowns are not used for a first
reading, but it’s up to you. If you are casting a role with no good
audition scenes, you might choose a scene from another script, per-
haps a play, with a character that reminds you of the one you are
casting. By the way, the Screen Actors Guild requires that sides be
made available to actors a certain length of time ahead of their audi-
tion appointments. Check with your local Guild office. Even if you
are shooting a nonunion project, it’s good to get in practice abiding
by Guild rules.
If you have the actors audition (read) one at a time, I suggest you
have them read with someone who is not involved in the casting
process. If you have a casting director, usually she or an assistant will
offer to read with the actors, but it is helpful to bring in an outside
person, preferably an actor. This is because one of the most impor-
tant things you want to look for when you’re casting is actors who
listen, so you need to be able to see whether the actor plays off what
he is getting from his scene partner. This means the person reading
with him has to give him something to play off, which is very hard to
do if, at the same time, she is trying to make assessments of the actor’s
ability and what he has to offer the role. Some very good casting
directors have taught themselves to be able to do some giving and
taking with the actor at the same time as they are assessing the actor,
but it’s preferable to bring in an actor to read opposite the audi-
tioners. You can have the same actor for all roles; you don’t have to
have the right genders and ages, but someone who is giving the audi-
tioners something to work off. It’s a good idea to establish ahead of
time with this actor that he is not auditioning, but is helping you out.
If you don’t feel confident of your ability to tell if an actor can

listen or not, you might try this: Make an arrangement aliead of time
with the “helper” actor, that if she reads more than once with the
same actor, she will read her role a little differently each time. If the
“helper” actor plays her part differently and the auditioning actor still
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reads his lines exactly the same, no matter what he’s getting from the
other person, then you will have seen that the auditioning actor has
locked into a line reading, that he has low flexibility and doesn’t
listen. You want to cast people with flexibility, whose performance
changes when the actor opposite them changes. You can save your-
self a lot of hassle if you find that out in casting.
Before the actor starts to read, tell him you'd first like to hear him
read the scene the way he prepared it, and then you'll give him a
couple of different ways to play around with it. It’s helpful to
announce this ahead of time, because otherwise if he does it his way
and then you tell him to do it another way he’ assume that what he
did was wrong and what you are asking now is right. Setting up the
idea that there’s a right way to play the role is, in my opinion, getting
off on the wrong foot. Don’t forget that for the people you end up
casting, the casting session is your first rehearsal. You can say, “I'd
like to work with you a little bit, have you read the scene a few times,
some different ways, play around with it. I don’t care if you depart
from the script. I don’t care if you get the words exactly right.”
One thing you see the first time is the actor’s choices, both the
creativeness of the choices and whether they are specific and real, as
well as what they respond to about the text. And that’s what you
should be looking for, not a performance. Noting the creativeness
and specificity of the choices will give you information about the
actor’s ability. Noting what he seems to respond to in the text will
start to give you information about whether he’s right for the part.
Now what if the actor balks at reading without getting direction

from you; in other words, wants you to tell her before she reads the
role what the character is like, or how you see the role. This means
that she is frightened, that she is used to auditions in which she is
expected to “nail it” on one reading, and doesn’t want to waste her
chance without knowing what is expected of her. This is an oppor-
tunity for you to assure her that you are not looking for a perfor-
mance, that you are open to exploring the characters with the actors,
and that she will have the chance to read the scene more than once
with different adjustments.
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CASTING
I feel it is important for you to cast actors who have ideas and are
willing to take risks; that is why I feel strongly that you should hear
what the actors have brought in before giving any direction. And
then, even if you hate what he did the first time, you should have him
read it again, with some direction, because you said you would. You
should make a note of how he was playing the role in the first
reading, to be sure that what you ask for next is in fact different. Use
objectives or adjustments rather than giving result direction. Instead
of “This is how I see the character...” or even “I want you to...,” try
saying, “What if...” or “Let’s try it this way...”
ee
If you ask the actors to do it a few different ways and they read it
the same way every time, that’s important information. You are
finding out if they can follow direction. You are also finding out if
they can play an objective or adjustment, and you will also get some
idea of their range. You may want to give them some time to work
on it; you might want to say, “I don’t need you to do it off the top of
your head, you can go out and think about it and come back. We'll
take you as soon as you are ready.” You want to see if they can make
this new idea their own and make it real for themselves, but it’s not
necessary that they be able to do this in ten seconds or less.
You also should be noticing whether they’re really talking about

something when they come to images. If the line is, “My car is at the
shop,” do they really seem to be talking about something, or just
saying a line? That's what’s meant by having images behind every-
thing. You’re also watching for transitions: are they quick, clean and
full? or forced, telegraphed, or labored? And throughout the process
you are always watching for listening and moment-by-moment reality.
You will have been looking, in script analysis, at the behaviors of

the character, so you want to find out in casting whether the actor has
the capability to create those behaviors believably. If you have some
adjustment, intention, or objective that you feel goes to the heart of
the character, it would be a good idea to find out in casting whether
the actor can handle it believably. This is still not the same as looking
for a performance.
24]
I like to use improv in casting to note the actor’s freedom and

access to subconscious resources. There is a Screen Actors Guild rule
now that casting improvs may not be video taped. If you have any
questions about this, you should contact the Guild.
It is customary to “call back” the actors you are interested in a

second time before you make final casting decisions. At callbacks it
is a good idea to pair them up with other auditioning actors, and
observe different combinations to see how they communicate with
each other. This is known as chemistry; what people call chemistry
is communication. You are casting a relationship, not two perfor-
mances. You can say exactly that: “I’m looking for a relationship.”
There are unusual things you can do in casting: You can read with
the actors yourself. This goes against what I said earlier about having
the actors read with someone not involved in the decision-making.
But if you read with actors — as long as you don't do any performing
— you may be able to find actors you have a special affinity with. You
would need to have a high tolerance for eye contact and connection.
In one audition, the director asked me in what ways I identified

with the character and in what ways I didn’t. An actor friend of mine
told me of an audition where she was asked to do an improv in which
she would count to ten — but take as long as she needed. She
reported that she took ten minutes, and ended up going many places,
laughing, even crying. Although she didn’t get that role, the pro-
ducers later cast her in something else. You may feel bad about not
casting actors after you have asked them to put out a lot, but actors
feel less bad about not getting a role if they know they have had a
chance to give their all. ,
As you know I love opposites so it won’t surprise you that I love

to cast against type. Successful casting against type is a hunch about
the actor’s secret soul. When it works you are liberating the actor’s
hidden real self. When I am assigning my students their first mono-
logue, I have just met them and only exchanged brief introductions
around the room. I have the luxury of finding the right part for the
actor rather than the right actor for the part. I look for something in
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CASTING
which I do not hear their voice; in other words, I cast against type,
but I make a hunch as to what might izrerest them. A student will
often tell me later that the piece I chose for her was very meaningful.
That's what I think works in figuring out whether the actor is right
for the role — whether there will be something about the character
or his experience that captures the imaginative resources of the actor.
Incidentally, I don’t believe it is possible to cast well from video-

tapes. The tapes may be useful to jog your memory about some deci-
sion or idea you had during the audition, but you won’t be able to see
any of the subtleties I’ve been talking about. You will be forced to
look for a performance. If producers or studio executives want input
into casting, rather than sending them the tapes, encourage them to
come to a callback.
You can reference-check an actor with other directors he has

worked with, just as you would with any employee, but be sure to talk
to the director, not to crew members. Crew members may have dif-
ferent criteria for judging actors, and many film sets are rife with
mean gossip. Use what you know already about hiring people. A stu-
dent of mine who had been a studio executive told me that at the
studio she would always take an hour to interview every job candidate.
Her peers questioned this procedure, but her department always had
high productivity and low turnover. When she began directing she
allowed herself to be pressured by her producer during auditions to
choose before she really was ready — and she regretted it.
If you want to have some social conversation with actors, don’t

start by saying, “Tell me about yourself.” “Tell me about yourself” 1s
perceived by actors as a stress interview. Most actors are really quite
shy. Managing to look comfortable in a stress interview has very little
to do with acting ability. If what you are hoping to gain from social
conversation is a more open and frank connection with the actor,
remember that the best way to encourage another person to be frank
and open is to be frank and open yourself. Put energy out.
When actors get to a certain level in their profession, they don’t

audition for roles. Most of the time, a film needs one or more stars
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of this level of prestige in order to get the financing. The stars must
be presented with a firm offer before they will even read the script.
This offer is made “subject to a meeting,” so both sides can get out of
it if the first meeting between actor and director goes badly. Unless
this offer meets the actor’s “price” which has been set by his agent,
the agent will not forward the offer or the script to the actor, or, usu-
ally, even inform the actor of the offer.
There are, however, established stars who will consider doing a

role for less than their usual price if the script is very good and the
project interests them. If you have a low-budget project that you
think fits this description, you can try to find some way of getting the
script to the actor other than through his agent. This means meeting
someone who knows his brother, or his hairdresser — or whatever.
Sometimes once one star is attached to the project vou can ask him
to read with other actors in line for other roles. This is a good idea if
it can be worked out because, after all, you are casting relationships.
But maybe the best way to get a star in your movie will be to dis-
cover her yourself. What about Martin Scorcese and Harvey Keitel?
They met when Scorcese was shooting his first film as a student at
NYU. He advertised in a newspaper for an actor; Harvey Keitel, who
had never acted before, answered the ad on a whim. They have made
each other famous. You won't be able to be good at casting unless you
are interested in actors. Go to plays, go to independent films, look for
newcomers, find out who you like and what you like about them.
The thing to understand about casting is that you are going to

make casting mistakes. To be a successful director you will have to
learn how to work with them. Correcting your casting mistakes
depends on your ability to recognize actors’ strengths and work with
their weaknesses. Actors are not pertect; they all have weaknesses.
You are not looking for a perfect actor, someone you don’t have to
direct, but one whose plusses are exhilarating enough that you can
live with his weaknesses. :
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REHEARSAL
REHEARSAL
“When I met Marty [Scorsese], I was keenly aware of my
meeting a part of myself. With Marty, I was getting to know myself
better. The work between us was never a case of ‘you walk over there
and then turn around.’ It was about finding what we were
searching for in my own being.” — Harvey Keitel
“I want to thank our director Tony Richardson for...giving us actors

permission to play.” — Jessica Lange, accepting her Academy Award
for “Blue Sky.”
“I'd go through the fire for you, man; any time, any place, any
project.” — Don Cheadle, speaking to director Car] Franklin, as
Cheadle accepted his Los Angeles Film Critics best supporting
actor award for “Devil in a Blue Dress.”
There is an area of deep permission that some directors are able

to bring actors to, at which the actors’ work achieves lucidity, and
choices of intelligence and power are made without effort or strain.
It’s the kind of permission Quentin TJarrantino gave John Travolta,
which I talked about in the Moment by Moment chapter. I believe
Harvey Keitel, Jessica Lange and Don Cheadle, in the quotes above,
are speaking of this same deep permission and its rewards. Director
Sidney Lumet is, I think, referring to this phenomenon when he says
that at a certain point, watching dailies halfway through the filming
of “Dog Day Afternoon,” he began to feel that the movie had taken
on its own life and was virtually shooting itself. Of course the script
has to be good, the director has to know how to shoot the movie, the
actors must be skilled, talented, and right for the parts, and the
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preparation must be done. This chapter is about the preparation the

actors and director do together — the rehearsal.
Some directors don’t rehearse at all, which means they are

rehearsing with the camera rolling. Tom Hanks has described Penny
Marshall’s shooting technique for “Big” as “filmmaking by attrition,”
because she shot so many takes of every scene. William Wyler in
effect rehearsed with cameras rolling, exposing often a million feet of
film for one movie; the Wyler legend is that the only direction he
ever gave actors was, “Do it again.”
If you have a way of rehearsing and shooting that works for you,
you should keep using it. Some people may find the rehearsal ideas
of this chapter radical, even controversial. Like the script analysis
techniques, they are designed to defeat whatever inclination you may
have to do it “right,” so you can work lucidly, in the moment.
Directors refer to the lack of time for rehearsal in movies and

television as a given. In fact, there is plenty of time for rehearsal.
Actors spend hours on sets with nothing to do. Directors certainly
have other responsibilities besides their responsibilities to the actors,
but out of a working day of ten hours, how much of the time is spent
in actual shooting of film? Very little, right? The rest of the time is
preparation. Why is all the preparation time on a set devoted to tech-
nical requirements and none to the acting? Of course, if you don’t
want to squeeze rehearsal into the hustle and bustle of shooting days,
you can rehearse off the set before the technicians arrive.
Some actors and directors fear rehearsal or say they don’t believe
in it. “They say that rehearsal kills the freshness and spontaneity of
performances. This is a misunderstanding of the function of
rehearsal, which is not to set out a connect-the-dots schema for the
actors to follow by rote, but to open up the possibilities of the script,
find its emotional and physical structure, and give the actors permis-
sion to play. What I think many directors (and actors) mean when
they say they don’t have time to rehearse or they don’t believe in
rehearsal is that they don’t know how to rehearse. And if you don’t
know how to rehearse, then you shouldn’t. Cast well, make sure the
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actors are listening to each other, and then back off. The harsh
reality is that rehearsal can be a disappointing and frustrating experi-
ence. [f all that is done is to set line readings and try for results,
whatever was good about the audition or first reading will be lost and
the work will only get worse.
Rehearsal ts not performance. Vhe purpose of rehearsal is not to

“nail it” but to get ideas about what will work in front of the camera.
In rehearsal we are looking for information, not performance. The
goal of rehearsal is not perfection. The only way the rehearsal can be
productive is if it is understood and treated as a process.
And even process-oriented rehearsal gets worse before it gets

better. Often what worked instinctually in the audition or first
reading must be dismantled or even discarded in order to create, with
technique, a playable structure that will reliably work again. This can
be a frightening experience. A director may feel he wants to hang on
to whatever was fresh and good in the first reading while the scene is
repeated over and over, but that’s not going to happen. If the actors
do a great audition or a great first reading, that means they cav do it,
not that they Aave done it. That brilliant first reading is over, it’s gone.
It’s like a one-night stand. If you decide to take the risk of a com-
mitted relationship, there are going to be bad times as well as good.
Two steps forward, one step back.
But here’s the good news. Creativity is bounuful, self-replenishing,

inexhaustible. The more you use it the more you will have. That’s why
rehearsal can lead to performances of extraordinary range and
freedom, such as those of Stockard Channing in “Six Degrees of
Separation,” or Judy Holiday in “Born Yesterday,” or Marlon Brando
in “A Streetcar Named Desire,” each of which had, in effect, long
rehearsal periods, since each played many months on Broadway before
being made into films. The proper purpose of rehearsal is to limber up
the actors’ emotional and imaginative “muscles” so they can do their
job without strain or tension. When the actor is working without any
tension, scene rehearsal, even hours of it, keeps yielding new emotional
and imaginative information; the constant influx of new feelings and
insights keeps the actor in the moment and, paradoxically, freshens the
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DirRECTING AcToRS / WESTON
performance. This is why the “filmmaking by attrition” methods of

Wyler and Marshall can work. Repetition ad nauseam can ure the
actor to the point that he stops tensing himself to do it “right,” lets
down his defenses, quits checking and controlling his performance,
ceases to “act with a capital A,” and is finally simple, instinctual, and
in the moment. Tom Hanks, describing Penny Marshall’s “film-
making by attrition,” said that at one point he finally begged her to
stop, declaring he could no longer “see the words in front of me.”
This kind of surrender is probably what she wanted!
If your budget does not include an unlimited supply of film stock,

it would be a good idea to learn how to rehearse before the camera is
rolling. If you do know how to rehearse, you won’t have to leave all
your decisions as to timing, pace, and dramatic moments for the
editing room. You won't have to panic when an actor makes a weird
choice, challenges your authority, or develops a resistance to the role.
You won’t have to worry about whether the actors are “peaking” too
soon, because you will know how to work.
REHEARSAL PLAN
Whether you have a week or a day or half an hour to rehearse,

you need to know what you want to accomplish in the time allowed,
then set a schedule for it, and plan tasks. Some directors — Rob
Reiner, Sidney Lumet, Roman Polanski, for example — set up a
rehearsal period of a week or more before the technicians arrive.
This way of working can save a lot of time, money, and heartache on
the set and in the editing room. Other directors preter to rehearse
each day of shooting; Mel Gibson, when directing, holds rehearsals
during the last part of the day for the next day's scene. Other direc-
tors rehearse each morning for the day’s scenes. Or, on the fly, snag
a half-hour here or there during the shooting day.
Organize the scenes for rehearsal purposes during script analysis.

Decide which scenes you wish to rehearse together. Locate scenes
that are continuous action and therefore really one scene, even if they
include more than one setup. For instance, a scene that starts in a
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REHEARSAL
restaurant and continues on the street should be rehearsed as one

scene even though it is two setups; then when you get to shooting it,
the actors will have a sense of through-line to the scene. Since
movies are almost always shot out of chronological sequence, you
may wish to rehearse in chronological sequence in order to locate
and create the script’s arc. Or you may wish to rehearse all the scenes
of one relationship together on the same day, to concentrate on the
arc of that relationship.
Write out a rehearsal plan. Include these areas:
1) your ideas of what the film is about, what it means to

you personally;
2) the spines and transformations of all the characters;
3) for each particular scene, its facts, its images, the
questions it raises;
+) what the scene is about, its emotional event, and how
the scene fits in the arc, or story, of the script;
5) possible through-lines, including candidates for each
character's objective, and ideas for imaginative backstory
adjustments;
6) the beats of the scenes (beginning, middle, and end),
each beat’s subject and event, and ideas (action verbs, adjust-
ments) of how you might work on each beat;
7) the scene’s physical life and its “domestic” event;
8) research you have done, and research you have left
to do;
9) your plan of attack, what you wish to accomplish in the
rehearsal, and what procedures you have in mind to follow;
10) a blocking diagram.
The rehearsal plan is not a blueprint to be slavishly followed.

It is a digest of the script analysis tools outlined in the Script
Analysis chapter, a way of reminding yourself to prepare. Once
prepared, you can throw away your preparation and step into the
moment. I strongly recommend against even bringing the
rehearsal plan to rehearsal.
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FULL CasT READ-THROUGH
Many directors like to have a read-through of a full-length script

with the full cast. The purpose is to generate excitement about the
project, to allow the actors to begin bonding with each other and the
material, and to hear the words spoken.
You need to introduce people (or ask them to introduce them-

selves) and you should speak a few words. It’s an opportunity to tell
the cast what the script means to you, reveal your commitment and
trustworthiness, and talk about what kind of acting you like. Tell
them your priorities. Tell them how you plan to work in rehearsal.
Let them know that you want to hear all their ideas and problems,
and specifically, that if they have any ideas or problems related to
another actor’s performance, you want them to tell you personally.
By all means, tell them you feel lucky to have this cast!
Give them the ground rules for this reading. Tell them it is not a
performance, that they can do anything they want, move around, or not,
as they wish. You could say, “I want you to have some fun, meet each
other and hear the script read. I’m not looking for a performance.”
Decide ahead of time what stage directions you want read (as few
as possible) and find someone to read them. You might want to say
something like this: “[So and so] will read some of the stage direc-
tions but it doesn’t mean that we are married to them. As we go
deeper into rehearsals, we'll be aiming to create relationships rather
than execute stage directions.”
The director has the opportunity, which she should begin to avail
herself of at this first reading, to create a sacred atmosphere, the sense
that this is not just a job. | recommend that the first reading (some-
times called a “table reading”) take place in an open circle without any
tables, since the table can function as a barrier. In order to have
meaningful rehearsals of individual scenes, you must convey to the
cast your own dedication to the rehearsal process and instill in them
a seriousness of purpose.
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SCENE REHEARSAL
The good news about rehearsal is that nothing can go wrong

because it’s not the real thing. Beware of perfection. Don’t try to be
inspired. Keep the focus on believability. Don’t expect the actors to
have their lines learned before scene rehearsals. Some do and some
don’t. It would ordinarily not be appropriate to demand that actors
have lines learned for rehearsal unless you have worked with them
before and established that procedure.
The goals of rehearsal are first, to make sure the actors listen and
work honestly, use themselves, and find some authentic connection
to the material; second, investigate the text: that is, explore ques-
tions, problems and possible meanings of individual lines, and solve
the structure of the scene (events, through-lines, and beats); third,
block the scene and find the physical life; fourth, establish the actor-
director relationship, set up your system of communication, hear and
try the actors’ ideas, and smoke out their resistances.
OPENING REMARKS
At the beginning of a scene rehearsal, you can take five minutes

to talk about the scene, and ask the actors if they have questions or
ideas. Listen to the questions, and take note of the actors’ concerns.
If there is a quick answer, give it, but usually such questions are not
meant to be answered in one sentence; they are areas to explore in
rehearsal. You might say, “That’s a good question. I have some
ideas,” or, “I wondered that myself. We'll have to figure that out.”
If you wish you can speak briefly about the theme of the script.
Even better, make simple, relaxed references to your own connection
to the material. For example, “My mom works in a state psychiatric
institute like the one in this script,” or, “The relationship between
these characters reminds me of my grandfather and grandmother,”
or, “Something like this happened to me once.” Steven Spielberg
speaks very openly in interviews about his personal connection,
_
ware
ho
because of his parents’ divorce, to his movie “E.T.” Iam sure he must
have spoken as openly to the actors when he was directing.
Set up the framework and goal of the rehearsal. Perhaps it is to

connect with the characters and relationships; perhaps it is to get at
what is unspoken in the scene; or perhaps it is to work out physical
activities. ‘Iell the actors your policy about stage directions. Make
sure there is a clearly understood rule preventing any hitting or other
violence that is not agreed on and choreographed. Very soon do a
reading of the scene. Here’s a rule of thumb: Don’t ever talk for more
than five minutes before having the actors do something.
What about warm-up exercises? Sometimes they help, sometimes

not. According to Emma Thompson’s published diary, Ang Lee had
the “Sense and Sensibility” cast do warmup exercises, even though
some of the actors grumbled. If you do them, be sure they are inven-
tive and engaging, and that they further the goals of the rehearsal.
First READING OF SCENE
Start out with a simple, free, conversational reading of the scene

with no acting and no blocking — talking and listening only. It’s a
kind of ground zero from which to work. Some people call this
“reading it flat,” which I find a confusing way of putting it. You don’t
really want the actors to speak in a monotone or keep glued to the
page. You want them to engage with each other — talk and listen —
without big emotional stakes, especially without any attitude. In a
way you want them to read the scene as if they are talking about the
weather or what they had for lunch, rather than as if they are talking
about whether their mother has started taking drugs again. :
Sometimes people talk about rehearsal as a time for the actors to

get “comfortable” with the script and with each other. What is meant
by this is making sure that the actors are talking and listening, rather
than giving performances. Although you can’t hang on to the fresh-
ness of the first reading, you can insist that the actors listen and affect
each other throughout rehearsal.
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REHEARSAL
Sometimes if the actors listen and respond to each other and are
aware of the physical environment, that is enough to make the scene
come alive, and it’s better not to mess with it any further. The
director's final responsibility is to the events of the script, and some-
times the best way to realize the events is if the actors get out of the
way of the lines, that is, if they listen, and stay very simple. That way
the audience can at least hear the lines. If you only have a few min-
utes to rehearse, make sure the actors are relating (listening) to each
other. This includes making eye contact unless there is a good
reason not to. Then add some simple physical life, and voila! The
scene is directed.
Now you have a choice. Do you want to go further into the

structure and shaping of the scene? If you do, I’m afraid you are
asking for trouble. As soon as you start giving substantive direction,
you are engaged with the actors, and you bear a responsibility. If
things go wrong, vou can’t go back to the way it was. The gears are
engaged. Read further at vour own risk.
THROUGH-LINES
Looking for the characters’ through-lines is the first step toward

solving the structure of the scene. When I say “solve the structure”
of the scene, I mean find the way to make it tell the story of the script.
When an actor has confidence in the structure of a scene, he is not
shackled, but freed to fill it with spontaneous, moment-by-moment life.
Find out the actors’ ideas about what is going on the scene for
their character. If an actor has an idea, that’s good, even if it’s dif-
ferent from your idea. It gives her honesty and energy, a connection.
Don’t make her wrong but, rather, build on what she gives you. For
example, if she says, “I think this happens all the time in this rela-
tionship,” you can say, “Yes, I was wondering about that. What have
their previous arguments been like? Or could this be the first time
this particular issue has come up?” Rehearsal is a place to try out
ideas, so try out the actors’ ideas, too. ‘Try it both ways: run through
it one time as if there have been many other discussions on the same
253
topic; and a second time as if this is the first time it has come up. Or
improvise the last conversation of this topic (I'll speak more about
improv a little later). You may be surprised and delighted by the new
information brought to light by an improv. You have to let go of fears
about your status or ego. Your purpose in having prepared thor-
oughly (via script analysis) for rehearsal was not to get rigid about
your ideas, but to feel relaxed and open, to give you the natural
authority of knowledge and preparedness. Then the actors’ ideas will
not feel like a threat but will feed and strengthen your authority.
Asking questions is a good directing technique, even if you have

some ideas about what you think the answer might be. We want the
actors to make the direction their own, even feel it was their own
idea. The reason this procedure is not patronizing to the actor is that
the director does not in fact know if his idea is good watil the actor
makes it her own. It is not necessary or even desirable to spell every-
thing out for the actors, even if they want you to. John Cassavetes
would never answer any of the actors’ questions. This made Peter
Falk furious! Falk knew that Cassavetes knew what he wanted in the
performance, but was refusing to tell him what to do or how to do it!
Cassavetes’ dedication to the rehearsal process and to honest acting
was absolute. He also had huge personal charisma and didn’t care if
his films were commercially successful.
You may not find yourself in Cassavetes’ position or see yourself

in his methods. In that case, be ready to jump in with an answer to
your own questions if the actor seems not to have any ideas. The
actor may be embarrassed to reply to a question, because she is afraid
she will look stupid; this can be just as true of stars as of inexperi-
enced actors. Actors hate it when the director has no ideas himself.
Your script analysis should have given you an understanding of

your vision in terms of event. ‘To create the event, structure the scene,
and deepen the actors’ connection to the material and each other —
find through-lines. You have already gotten ideas for through-lines
from your script analysis; now you try them out. Although some-
times it is useful to address the through-line toward the end of
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REHEARSAL
rehearsal, the rule of thumb is to find the through-line first and then
add layers and beats.
The basis for a character's through-line is his given circumstances,

that is, his facts or his situation. A simple reminder of the characters’
facts, or backstory (“You're seeing your ex-lover for the first time in
ten years, and he is now married with two children”) may create the
through-line and be adequate direction for some actors in some
scenes. Learn how to do this storytelling well. Don’t put the actors
to sleep with your descriptions of characters’ backstory. If your ideas
about the script are merely clever or intellectual, you won't be a good
storyteller. Allow yourself to connect to the story on a feeling level.
But don't tell the actors how to feel. Use the storyteller’s tools: facts,
images, events, verbs, physical detail. Put yourself imaginatively in
the character's shoes, and the actor’s shoes, and make your own sub-
stitution while you tell the story by (in this example) letting yourself
recall your own experiences with ex-lovers. You can even speak of
such experiences to the actor, since this lets the actor know your con-
nection to the material, and invites her to make her own connection.
Another way to get at through-line is via the character's objective

or need. That is, instead of discussing what the character is like, look
at his behavior — what he wants, and what he is doing to get what he
wants. Every character (every person) always has an objective, and
the objective (in real life as well as movies) doesn’t change very often.
In terms of dramatic structure, every well-written scene has one
__ objective per character. These aré the reasons why the “dbjective”
can be a useful way to create through-line and begin a discussion with
an actor about the character. If an actor is talking about the character
in an intellectualizing or judgmental way, you can (gently) interrupt
with, “What does the character want?”
a |
The objective, however, is not necessarily the best tool for every
actor. Some actors have not trained with objectives and don’t like to
work with them, since they find objectives and action verbs too intel-
lectual. That’s why I want you to have other directing options (dis-
cussed in earlier chapters), such as adjustments, metaphors, images,
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DirRECTING AcToRS / WESTON
or issues. Or the concept of the character’s “primary focus” or task,

his problem; or his subtext; or his physical life.
Use only one of these tools at a time. The reason for coming up,
during script analysis, with ideas for all these different directing tools
is so you will have several to choose from, and so you will have
another idea if the first one doesn’t work. Whatever you do, don’t
give the actor a laundry list all at once, of backstory and objective and
adjustment and action verb and images and physical life, etc. Work on
one thing at a time.
LAYERS
Directors commonly tell actors too much at once. Work in layers

and in sections (beats). If you tell the actor, “You love your husband
and want to cheer him up, but you also still have feeling for your ex-
boyfriend,” you have given her an impossible direction to follow.
The two contradictory elements cancel each other out. The actor
may simply think that you don’t know what you want, or she may
only hear and follow one of the two directions anyway. At worst she
may try to do both; the two ideas will cancel each other out and the
work will become either forced or flat. If, on the other hand, you
establish a through-line for an actor that she “wants to cheer her hus-
band up,” on the next run-through of the scene you can add the
adjustment that on a certain line she is recalling the image of dancing
with her ex-boyfriend.
If the actors are listening and you don’t like the way it comes out,
you night add a layer. Some people use the term “colors” or “levels”
for what [am calling choices or adjustments or layers, as in, “Let's see
if we can add another color here.” Or you might try a different
through-line choice, say, “get her to take care of you” instead of “get
her to feel sorry for you.” But you don’t need to give a specific sug-
gestion as to the choice to try next; it’s okay to say, “I’m wondering if
we need a stronger choice here.”
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REHEARSAL
Look for a light in the actor’s eyes when discussing choices.

Whenever you ask a question or give a direction and get a blank or
frightened look in response, quickly say, “Or...it could be this...” And
come up with another idea or another question. The actor must
make a choice he can get behind. The hope is that the choice that
captures the actor’s imagination will be the same as the choice that
goes to the heart of the material. When good actors are working
organically on a good script with a well-prepared director in a free,
creative atmosphere, this will usually be the case.
WORKING IN BEATS
You recall that in the chapter on script analysis I said the major
beats could function as rehearsal units. It is hardly ever a good idea
to rehearse a whole scene al] the way through over and over. After
you have run it through once or twice or so, to establish listening and
connect with through-lines, break it down into beats; that is, work in
sections. Each scene has either two or three (sometimes four) major
beats; an extremely short scene may have only one.
Don’t describe the content and transitions of all the beats and
then run the whole scene. Work on one beat, perhaps after some
brief discussion or direction; then work on the next beat. When you
work on the second beat, don’t rerun the scene from the top; isolate
that one beat and put your attention to it.
This is the heart of rehearsal. This is where you can investigate

troublesome lines, cultivate images, unpack subtext, create events, set
up transitions, deal with objects, and find activities and movement.
You are structuring the scene, anchoring the emotional life to the
blocking and the pacing.
In the meanwhile, you are creating a soup of association, subtext,

image, and circumstance around the lines and activities of the script.
You are asking questions, using imaginative connections, personal
memories and images of your own, anecdotes of behavior you have
257
observed in life, and comments about what you see going on in the
actors’ faces and bodies during rehearsal. You are directing.
REHEARSAL GUIDELINES = 7
It may not be necessary for actors to make a full emotional invest-

ment in rehearsal. In rehearsal we are looking for a choice that brings
to life the scene’s structure and engages the actor’s interest. We’re
not looking for performance, but for the routes that may take us to
performance, and usually some investment is needed to see if the
choice will work. Rehearsal is a place where actors experiment with
different ways of getting to what they will need on the set. It’s better,
you see, for them to try out these different emotional routes with the
actor they will be working opposite, because the “how” of the emo-
tional journey must come out of their interaction with that particular
actor.
The amount of emotional investment needed in rehearsal may

depend on the material. When the material is rich and layered, the
actors, in order to open their imaginative and emotional gates to the
deeper layers, will probably have to work at full emotional tilt all
through rehearsal. Lightweight material needs a light touch in
rehearsal; the sense of imaginative p/zy needs to be maintained. In
any case, just as there should always be listening in rehearsal, there
should always be enough endowment that the actors never fall into
indicating or setting line readings.
If you feel they are not endowing their images and given circum-
stances, you can try telling better stories, using questions, images, and
your own personal associations with the material. For instance, you
might say, “Have you ever been stranded in a hurricane? I was once.”
Or you can say something like “I understand you're not making a full
investment now in rehearsal. I know you will keep working on that.”
You might ask while discussing choices, “Is that something you can
connect with?” Or, “Is that something you can make real for your-
self?” You can always ask questions about how they like to work.
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REHEARSAL
Rehearsal rhythm is slower than performance rhythm. During

rehearsal the actors need toexplore,to let themselves live between
the lines, to find colors and transitions, and to build connection
(commun ‘J . It they don’t take that time, they
may start rushing or fall into attitudes. So it’s okay if actors don’t
rave the pace you want in early rehearsal. You can mention, “Later
[or “soon”] we'll be picking up the pace, but for now it’s fine to take
your time.”
But don't let them work at low volume. Often when actors are
not speaking loud enough it means they are worried about doing it
“right” and are afraid to take a chance on committing to a choice. Or
they haven't found a choice they can commit to, and more work
needs to be done to find it. Sometimes they are holding on to an
emotion and not giving it to the other actor. If you have not yet
acquired the skill to feel confident talking about the problem, it’s all
right simply to say. “We need more volume.”
Notice whether you are repeating the same direction over and
over. That means it isn’t working or the actor doesn’t understand it
or is resisting it. When an actor says, “Tell me again what we’re
doing here” or, “I’m trying to take this all in,” those are clues that
your direction is confusing or too elaborate.
If an idea or direction doesn’t work, take it on yourself. Say, “I

think we're on to something, but I don’t think that idea of mine was
enough to get us where we need to go.” Or, “I’m not sure I explained
that right. Let’s try it again, only this time...” Every communication
you have with an actor, including social chit-chat and body language,
is part of your actor-director relationship; in other words, everything
you say or do in the actors’ presence is de facto direction of the script.
Learn to give direction in the language of permission, rather

than the language of enforcement: “It’s okay to slow down,”
instead of “You’re going too fast.” Good direction often comes
indirectly, and offhandedly. If the director gets too excited about
an idea, the actors can feel pressured to do it right, frightened of
failing to execute it properly.
259
Good ways to phrase direction are: “What if...?” or “Let's try...”

or “{ wonder...” or “Let’s see if this works,” or “Maybe...” or “I had
an idea about this section...” or “But here’s another interesting thing.”
My own personal favorite (I’m giving away my best secret here) is
“This might not work.” It takes off the pressure. The reason “It
might not work” always works is because I always mean it. The
reason I want to try something is to see if it will work. I have an idea
in my mind and until the actors make it work, that’s all it is — an idea.
I also favor, “I thought you had an impulse,” or, “Something you did
gave me an idea.” These are always true, if you put full attention on
the acting. Rehearsal is collaborative. The actors’ contributions,
when they are working well, are more instinctual. The director can
capitalize on the actors’ instincts to build the structure.
More effective than asking actors to “underplay” would be to sug-

gest “going against the lines,” i.e., an opposite. If you want the per-
formance “heightened,” try using language that suggests digging
deeper rather than pushing harder. Instead of asking for “more ten-
sion” or “more build,” ask for a stronger choice and more listening.
Instead of “bigger” you probably mean “more free.” Instead of “take
it down” you probably mean “Stay honest. Keep it simple.”
Don’ say to actors, “Put stress on this word.” Instead suggest an

image or fact that might be behind it. If an actor asks you how to say
a line, you might reply, “You mean, what does it mean? Let’s take a
look.” If an actor suggests an attitude or emotion for his character,
you can say, “Let’s find the verb of it,” or “I don’t care how it comes
out looking.” When praising actors, it’s good to say things like “The
work is going well,” “We're on the right track,” “Let's keep going in
that direction,” “We’re in sync,” rather than “That was perfect,” or
“You have nailed it,” or “When we shoot, do it just like that.”
| These are all suggestions to get you off the track of result direction. You
will want to find your own ways of putting things. The better you get with
this the more you will feel you are communicating rather than using jargon.
_ In one Rehearsal ‘Techniques class I was teaching, the actor’s first

line had to do with asking the other character to give her some privacy.
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REHEARSAL
The director signaled, “When you're ready...”. The other actor

walked in and the first actor said, “Would you do me a favor and give
me more time before we start?” It was classic, really, because the
actor’s impulse toward her scene partner mirrored exactly the char-
acter’s interaction with the other character, but she didn’t use it.
Indeed when the rehearsal continued, her line asking her partner to
leave her alone a minute never had the truth of the accident. A
director who is alert can capitalize on such accidents. It’s legitimate
to say to an actor, “Earlier | overheard you complaining to the A.D.
about the muttins. That’s what I want in this scene.” You mirror
back to the actors behavior of theirs that was spontaneous and make
it useful to them as a playable choice.
Don’t let the actors direct each other. As soon as you notice an
actor coming forth with opinions about how someone else’s character
could be played, take steps tactfully but firmly to discourage it. You
can use the language of permission, something like “You don’t need
to worry about that. I can take care of it.” Let the actors know that
you welcome all their ideas but that their ideas should be imparted
privately to you, not to the other actors, the producer, the writer, or
anyone else. Keep the actors from making bargains with each other.
Don’t confuse “getting comfortable,” which is a proper purpose of
rehearsal, with an actor retreating to his “comfort zone,” which is
never a good thing. The purpose of maintaining an atmosphere in
which actors can be deeply relaxed, open and free, is to encourage
them to be receptive to obstacles. Don’t let them take out the obsta-
cles. You may wish to talk to the actors separately about their work
and their choices. I talk to actors separately in the early part of
rehearsal; if rehearsal is going well, soon the actors are sponta-
neously working with privacy in public and don’t even hear what [am
saying to the other actor.
Sometimes when one actor is very strong and you work with the
other actor for a while, to bring him up to his level, he gets better and
then the other actor gets weak! You need to keep at it, going back
and forth. Sometimes you can get a scene to work by working with
only one of the actors. It may be best to work with the one who is ,
strongest, who may then be able to carry the weaker actor. If you
261
work with the weaker actor, concentrate on getting him to be as

—
simple as possible.
OT nee
Be inventive. You may give a good directiomand the actor doesn’t

follow it or it doesn’t work. First use alternative ways of asking for it
— that’s the purpose of the detailed script analysis. If nothing works,
there may be a resistance, or there may be a better way of solving the
scene. You can enlist the actors’ help in finding the solution. Your
yardstick should be the truth of the scene, rather than a need to
impose yourownwill = = =~
Stay relaxed. Be yourself in your body. Stand and move around

to keep your energy flowing. If you are tense, your tension will be
communicated to the actors; you won't be able to listen, or to hear
the dead spot, the false moment, the line that doesn’t work.
Whenever a dead spot occurs, there is work to do; there is an event
that is yet to be realized, lines not yet understood, tacts behind the
lines to justify, images to explore, more specific choices to make, and
transitions to deal with.
While you are learning how to rehearse, I strongly suggest taking

time to do it (both the through-lines and each beat) three different
ways, including at least one way that you feel sure is “wrong.” It is a
way to learn how to explore, how to use opposites. Eventually the use
of opposites and juxtaposition will become second nature. It’s also an
extremely useful technique if the actors are inexperienced or don’t
know how to work, to keep them from falling into set line-readings.
If the rehearsal starts to get boring, try making it more physical.

Have the actors throw a pillow back and forth, or even have a pillow
fight. Let them speak the subtext. Ask them to say “I don’t believe
you” if they feel the other actor is not in the moment. If they
are
familiar with the Meisner Repeat Exercise, invite them to incorporate
it into rehearsal. This means that any time an actor feels stuck, or
pn that she is saying lines with no connection, she can say how she
eS oF make
eels or make an obs
observation about the oth er actor, or repeat what the
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REHEARSAL
If the actors resist such exercises, you might say, “It’s too dead-
on, I want to do something wrong to shake this up, to get the rela-
tionship more fresh.” Or, “You guys seem stiff. I have an idea about
something that might loosen up the situation. Are you willing to try
it?” If they say no, you can say, “Well, we have a problem; you tell
me how we're going to solve it. The acting has gotten a bit stiff here
and I want to get back to the ping-pong, the give and take. How do
you work? Tell me what I can do for you.”
IMPROV
Although improv is sometimes used to change or add lines of dia-

logue during rehearsal (see John Schlesinger’s comments in the
Criterion laser disc version of “Midnight Cowboy,” or accounts of
improvisational methods director Mike Leigh uses when writing
scripts), | am more interested for this book in improv as a rehearsal
technique. John Cassavetes used improv this way, and the acting in
his movies always had such immediacy that people often thought that
the actors were improvising as the cameras rolled. Improv as a
rehearsal tool can help the actors find themselves in the roles and
inhabit the world of the characters, but it can do even more than that.
One of the most central, and difficult, tasks of the actor is to say lines
he has read, memorized, and rehearsed as if he is saying them for the
first time. To do this, his moment-by-moment emotional life or subtext
must be improvised. Going so far in rehearsal as to improvise, not
only the emotional life, but even the words and movement, can help
create that deep permission to live in the moment even when mem-
orized lines and blocking and emotional structure (through-lines and
beats) have been added to the scene.
Using improv doesn’t mean you don’t prepare. A director who is

well prepared will get much more out of improv as a rehearsal tool. He
will get the most out of improv if he can “mirror back” to the actors,
in playable terms, the useful insights gleaned from a good improv.
Some actors don’t like improv. They may be afraid it’s not really
improv, that the director is expecting a certain result and not telling
263
them what it is. There must be freedom and trust for improv to
work. Improv is not a frivolous undertaking; it is a sacred tool, a door
to the subconscious. Whatever unconscious material is brought to
light in improv must be respected. There is no such thing as an
improv that is “wrong.”
Here are some kinds of improv that can be useful in rehearsal:
1) Paraphrasing
You can invite the actors to put the lines of the scene in
their own words. This can take them off the effort to prove
to us that the lines are true, and allow them to make the
images, impulses, and activities of the character their own.
2) Improv based on the facts
This is a favorite of mine. I love to pick out the bare facts

of the scene and have the actors improvise around those facts
with total freedom, restricted only by the two rules of improv:
“no denial” and “no obligation” (and, as 1 mentioned earlier, the
understanding that no one is to get hurt). I tell them to allow
the facts to be true, but not to use any of the lines and not to
follow the plot of the script. This is an unstructured,
exploratory approach. It can give you information and insight
into the characters’ objectives, their primary relationships, their
subtext, and their issues. It can create opportunities for layers.
For instance, let’s say the two actors rehearsing the “Red
Ryder” scene had voiced in discussion their belief that the two
characters didn’t like each other or get along at all; then let’s
say they had done a read-through of the scene with objectives
“to pick a fight,” which had gone fairly well. Next, you, as
director, could suggest an improv on the facts of the scene,
which are simple: Angel and Stephen work at the same diner;
Angel lives (or speaks daily) with her mother; her shift fol-
lows his; the diner has very few customers; there has been a
previous conversation between the two of them on the subject
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REHEARSAL
of his name. The actors, given total freedom to follow

impulses, and having already had the chance to try out their
ideas, will very often come up with an improvised scene that
is not hostile at all! A new layer, perhaps of affection, even
longing, has surfaced. If you can point it out to them in a
playable form — for example, “You almost seemed like
brother and sister” (an adjustment) — it can be usable. You
don’t need to point it out to them right then. You can make
a note of it to mention during shooting, to whisper to one (or
both) of them before a take.
3) Improv to create backstory
You can improvise scenes from the characters’ past. For

instance, for the “Red Ryder” scene, the director could ask
the actors to improvise Stephen and Angel changing shifts,
not on the morning of the script, but on some other morning,
say two months ago. Or, to explore the possibility that Angel
did Stephen’s homework for him in high school, a scene from
that era could be improvised. This is more helpful, [ think,
than discussing intellectually the characters’ pasts.
John Cassavetes used to write whole scenes that he had

no intention of putting in the final movie, and have the actors
improvise around them. Al Pacino, when asked, in a 1989
Vanity Fair interview, whether he continues to use the
Method technique of affective memory, said he prefers “off-
script” improvisations.
4) The pre-scene beat
It’s very useful to improvise what might have taken place

just before the scene began, specifically physical life, so the
scene can be “in the middle of something.” If you were
rehearsing “The Graduate,” for instance, you could have the
actors improvise the car ride home from the party that
Benjamin gives Mrs. Robinson. At some point you can say,
“Go into the words of the scene.”
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5) A parallel event or relationship
An improv is an elaborate “as if.” It is an “as if? acted out.

Instead of saying, “Let’s try it as if...” you actually improvise
the reality of the “as if.”
Let’s say in your script analysis you have thought of a

metaphor for the central event of the scene, such as “The
thing that happens in this scene with you and the truck driver
is like what happens when a clerk at the post office tells you
he has no twenty-cent stamps.” In rehearsal you could
improvise the post office scenario, and then go into the truck
driver scene. Or for a scene about a lawyer you could propose
an improv about “not that lawyer, but one like her.”
It can be very useful, especially for a scene of high emo-

tion, to start with a “lower stakes” improv, a situation that par-
allels the event of the scene, but is less dramatic. For example,
if we take a scene taking place on a space station in which one
of the characters is about to push the lever that will jettison the
other character into space, I think we can safely say that this is
a situation neither of the actors will have encountered in life.
We might begin rehearsal with a “lower stakes” improv, say
that one character has to fire the other one from a job. ,
“Higher stakes” improvs can work really well too.

Strangely, even if the improv/metaphor is more far-fetched
than the situation in the scene to be played (e.g., the scene is
about a firing, and the sprov is about the space station ejec-
tion), the actors may find the connection and sense of belief
more effortlessly, simply because they are off the lines, off the
sense of obligation.
“Parallel event” improvs can be constructed to create a

sense of intention. You may have decided that the character’s
intention is to punish the other character. But perhaps the
actor is falling into a stagy, overdramatic idea of punishing.
You might say, “I want you to punish the way that you punish.
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Let's say that [the other actor] agreed with you to learn lines
before rehearsal, then didn’t learn them. Punish him for it.”
Then go into the lines of the scene.
6) Silent improvs
Silent improvs give a texture of life to the relationships

and physical world of the characters. You set up the physical
world and let the actors live in it without any talking. Again,
you can go right from the improv into the scene. Silent
improvs are very useful when shooting, as a way for the actors
to start working and connecting with each other before the
director says “Action.” If you are going to suggest them
during shooting, it’s a good idea to get comfortable with
them in rehearsal.
7) “Third character” improvs
You can ask the actors to play the scene as if the “third
character” about whom they are speaking or thinking is actu-
ally in the room. I have seen this technique bring a scene to
life in extraordinary ways.
Or have the actors switch roles. Or do a high status/low

status improv. Or...
8) Improvise!
Design your own improvs. Try to keep your setups for improv
physical and factual rather than abstract and psychological.
Improvs are often longer than the scene. The actors are spon-
taneously speaking the subtext of the scene. Sometimes they
become so excited about their inventions that they then want to add
some of the lines that they have improvised to the script. If you
don’t want to do that, you can say, “Yes, definitely, let's add it, but
let’s add it as subtext!”
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Improvs are not performances. They give information for pos-

sible playable choices — imaginative backstory, objectives, adjust-
ments, subtext. That’s what you should be looking for, so that later
during shooting you can say, “You know in that.great improv we did
yesterday, it seemed that your intention was to control him. Let's try
the scene that way.” That is, you mirror back to the actor in playable
terms the insight released by the improv.
BLOCKING: PHYSICAL OBJECTS AND

PHYSICAL ACTIVITY
Think of “blocking” as the characters’ relationship to the envi-

ronment, and “stage business” as their relationship to objects.
Blocking and business physicalize the inner life of the characters, illu-
minate the events of the scene, and add the texture of life. If you
don’t know how to block a scene, your master shots will be a waste of
time and film stock.
One of the great things about usable master shots is that they can
allow the actors to overlap dialogue. It has become a given that actors
must always make a tiny pause before they speak, so there will be
unlimited options in the editing room. This tiny pause is something
that almost never happens in real life conversations; it is a great bar-
rier to listening. Although actors can overcome this barrier by
playing intentions, when actors are allowed to overlap the dialogue
and freely play with each other, the chances for fresh, free, alive per-
formances are hugely increased.
In any case, at some point in rehearsal you begin to add some

movement. ‘Try to work as organically as possible. You can say, “Let’s
start to add some sense of the physical environment.” Add a chair, an
object, a little at a time. Create the objects’ histories; make friends
with them. Or paint an imaginary picture of the physical environment,
thus inviting the actors to imagine it; allow them time to see it
believe in it. )
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When actors are working well and organically, they are likely to
move spontaneously in ways that physicalize the emotional events of
the scene. You can build on such impulses. You can say, “Let’s keep
that hand movement you made on line X.” Then you should make a
“note ofit. You need also, if you can, to make a note of the intention
or adjustment that seemed to create the movement. The movement
ideas that capture your attention will be things that happened acci-
dentally. The actor probably won’t remember, because she was
working in the moment.
Your script analysis will have given you ideas for activities for the
actors. Rehearsal is the place where you find out whether these ideas
work, adjust them if they don’t, and give actors the chance to make
these ideas their own. An insightful gesture can create all the inner
life that is needed for a scene. For example, you may be certain that
in a particular scene you want one actor to touch the other actor’s
face. Itis all right to give that direction and let the actor find the way
to get there believably. It can help if you say something like “I want
you to touch his face here. I don’t expect you to get there emotion-
ally right now. You can take whatever time you need.” By the way,
pay attention to actors touching each other — make sure it counts.
Knowing when to ask the actor to move and when to ask him not
to move can make the scene work, but it can also help the actor find
his energy and his center. Sometimes actors dissipate their energy
with aimless movement; sometimes they get stuck emotionally
because they are stuck physically.
Bring objects to rehearsal. Objects are a powerful tool of the actor.

Finding the right object, offering it to the actor at the right place in the
script, at the right point in the rehearsal process, can completely turn
around the actor’s performance. Some actors love to find objects —
physical business — to add to their characterizations. In rehearsal
actors who are uncomfortable with physical business have time to prac-
tice and make it their own. Perhaps an actor is given eye glasses in the
hope that some humor can result if she searches for them, forgetung
they are perched on top of her head. She will need time to work with
the prop and make it her own, especially if she doesn’t wear glasses in
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real life. Otherwise it will pull her performance down rather than add
to it.
If you love a piece of business, set it free. A divine piece of business

is only divine if it is working. If the life goes out of it, you must let it
go, and find something new. You have to trust that if you were smart
and inventive enough to come up with it, you'll be able to come up with
something else too. This principle is true for a// the ideas you came up
with in script analysis. They are a jumping-off place, not a blueprint.
If you give a blocking direction and the actor forgets it or can’t

make it work, you should investigate. It means either the blocking 1s
wrong and you need to change it, or there is something the actor
doesn’t understand about the scene. You may need to discuss choices
with the actor and rework the character’s emotional life.
You can create a through-line to the blocking — an activity the

actor is engaged in throughout the scene. Then, as you work beat by
beat, you find specific places to do this or that.. A character can have
a territory, which is respected _or invaded, circled, appr oached, etc.
Obstacles can be createddphysically.
physica There can be objects which sep-
arate the characters, function as allies to one of the characters, or pro-
vide a lightning rod for the relationship; that is, instead of punishing
__the other character, the actor punishes the pie crust she is rolling out.
But objects must have the texture of life, evenif they also have stylistic_
or thematic or storytelling purposes. For instance, if you want a con-
frontation to take place across a table, pay attention to how you intro-
duce the table to the actors. If you introduce it as a prop on which to
lean during the confrontation, you are calling attention to the effect
you want to produce. It is better to allow the actors’ primary connec-
tion to the table be as the table on which they ate dinner last night, to
call attention to its place in the physical texture of their lives.
Even though I favor blocking organically off the actors’ impulses,

I recommend that you create a blocking diagram ahead of time.
Make a floor plan or model of the set. Get doll house furniture (or
make furniture out of cardboard) and a set of toy soldiers. Move the
toy soldiers around while vou say the lines of the scene. Next make
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an aerial view floor plan of the pattern of movement you have come
up with. Then do it again. Come up with at least three possible
ways to have the actors move in the scene. Don’t make your shot list
or do any storyboarding until after you have done this work. Some
directors don’t storyboard until after they rehearse with the actors (if
at all), so that the blocking can be arrived at collaboratively with the
actors. I recommend to you the book Film Directing Shot by Shot
by Steven Katz, which contains information on the physical staging
and composing of dialogue scenes.
You will rarely be rehearsing on an actual location or set. Sets are

often being lit — or built — during rehearsal. To use a rehearsal
space, measure and mark off with tape the dimensions of the set, and
bring in furniture and objects (props) of roughly the same size as
those you expect to have on the shoot. It can be useful to work on
the emotional dynamic of a scene outside the context of its location:
for example a scene that takes place in a car; no one has to rehearse
being ina car. Ifyou find the emotional solution in a rehearsal room,
when you get to the set and the actors must contain the emotional
event in a car, that will add an obstacle that may help the scene. On
the other hand, for a scene in which there is loud music, or especially
dancing to music, rehearsal is an opportunity to practice with the
music, even though during shooting there may be no music.
Actors should always be in the moment during rehearsal. The

exception to that is if you are “marking through” the blocking.
Sometimes you need to practice complicated blocking like a dance
choreography; that is, go through the steps of it mechanically so it
becomes second nature before filling it with any emotional life. This
is often essential to directing scenes with lots of people. It is called
“marking it through” or “walking it through.” When actors are
marking through a staging, they should not try to act at the same
time, because if they do a half-job of acting they will probably fall
into a sing-song, setting line readings. Rehearsal on the set, that is,
setting the blocking for the lighting crew and camera operator, Is
marked through by the actors without any investment.
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DiREcTING ACTORS / WESTON
_ Violence and_sex_in_a scene should never be improvised, but

should always be choreographed and marked through without invest-
ment; the emotional life should be filled in after the physical life is set
and the actors’ safety assured.__ ms
with movement,
Often each beat change is punctuated or a
or a new pace. Physicalizing the beat changes
verb, on
_changeof acti
helps the audience follow the story. Experienced directors develop a
sense of when to “play through” a beat change, or when to create a
kind of syncopation by “going against” the rhythms that are written
into the script. It is part of a director’s talent and artistry to know
when to allow a “moment” or beat change, and when it is more effec-
tive to “play through.” You can work on beats out of sequence.
Especially if time is short, I often find it useful to work first on the
meatiest beat, the one containing the central event of the scene.
A director needs to develop a sense of when to let the actors run

the scene, and when to stop and work a moment. Even if you have
told them you were going to run the scene, you can stop it if you see
something you need to work on.
RESISTANCES
Actors can have resistances to choices which in fact tap into their
deepest soul. Once an actor I was working with, who was playing a
character named “Celia,” was having a terrible time with a scene,
refusing to engage with the other actor, whose character name was
“Johnny.” Finally she burst out: “But I hate Johnny! He’s lazy and
selfish and treats Celia very badly.”
Underneath her judgment of Johnny was an implied judgment of

her own character, Celia, as a woman who was weak because she put
up with this unsuitable man. I asked her to think of Johnny as a man
Celia had once loved and was still attracted to even though she wanted
him out of her life now. Then I said, “I think that’s something that’s
happened at one time to everyone.” I wanted her to allow the
obstacle to be personal, and I wanted to not make her wrong. If I had
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told her that her anger was wrong for the role, I don’t think I would
have gotten the performance I did finally get from her.
Even though what the actor is resisting may be a part of her own per-
sonality that she doesn’t want to face, there is no need for the director to
take it on himself to analyze her neurosis or character defects, discuss her
acting problems, accuse her of laziness, or inform her that she has a
problem with authority. The best way to approach resistances is by
smoking out the judgments the actor is unconsciously making.
Another thing you can say (privately) to an actor who is resisting

is, “You seem to have some resistance here, but I believe you can do
it. Do you want me to leave you alone to work on it or do you want
me to work on it with your” Or, “Is there something on your mind?”
“Is something bothering your” “Am I doing something that you
don’t agree with:” When in doubt, ask. Ask them to go farther. Ask
them what they need from you to get there. Ask them how they
work, and what is bothering them, but respect the actors’ privacy. If
you need to discuss a choice, you might add, “if you don’t mind
sharing it with me.” This advice is based on artistic even more than
ethical considerations. It may dissipate the energy of the choice to
talk about it.
There is a difference between a director who is respectful of

actors’ privacy and their different ways of working and a director who
is timid. Respectful is good. Timid is bad. As a director you must
learn the difference.
There are some actors who are ornery, who question every direc-
tion, who, no matter what you suggest, find a reason why it won't
work or why they can’t do it. The funny thing about actors like this
is that, often, once they have complained and argued and threatened
over a direction, they go ahead and do it anyway! I have sometimes
been this kind of actor myself. All I can say in our defense is: Would
you rather have an actor who says no and then does it, or an actor
who says yes and then doesn’t do it? Since resistances are often
unconscious, they can be covert. That is, the actor may try to be
cooperative when he doesn’t feel it. He may say “yes” when every
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fiber of his being is resisting. Covert resistance is actually more sub-

versive of the rehearsal process than overt resistance. Covert resis-
tance has to be smoked out before it can be dealt with.
=
Sometimes it works to give a resistant actor permission not to do
it, but have as your own unspoken subtext, “yet.” In other words,
“Okay, let’s forget that idea [for now].” The actor may need ume. He
may register the direction without executing it immediately.
Reassure him there is no need to nail the direction right now. Instead
of thinking of someone being a difficult actor, think of him as an actor
having difficulty. Treat all problems with actors as artistic problems;
that way you won’t get sucked into anyone’s neurosis. But don’t
retreat from the relationship. Anytime you are having trouble with
an actor, increase your commitment to the solution. You can even say
this: “I am committed to solving this problem.” That way you let
your energy be committed to something higher than insecurity.
Don’t let the actor’s insecurity (which is always at the base of actors’
bad behavior) cause you to get involved with your own insecurity.
Whenever you get overt resistance from an actor, or smoke out a

covert one, I want you to say, “I’m glad that happened!” Or, “I’m
glad you brought this up.” Many directors know so little about actors
that they think that the purpose of casting is to find actors with whom
there won’t be any problems. There is no such animal! When an
actor keeps forgetting a line, for example, it may be because of a resis-
tance. Even actors who are truly ope — the kind I want you to work
with — have resistances, but they are more likely to know and admit
them. They might say, when something isn’t working, “I must be
resisting something here.” If an actor says this in your presence, this
is not an occasion for alarm, it means he is trusting you, letting you
in on the process. -
Actors can panic if they feel they are miscast. There can be a very
fine line between a risky role that provides a thrilling stretch for the
actor, and a role that he is just not right for and in which he is likely
to look inept and foolish. A director needs to take responsibility for
the casting even if it wasn’t your idea, but was insisted upon by the
producers or studio. Don’t project anxieties of your own about a
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possible casting mistake. If you don't recast, you need to proceed as

if the actor is the best person for the role, you need to communicate
to him that what you want for this role is whatever he can honestly
bring to it, and you need to support him in exploring the script, so he
can keep digging and making the role his own. You need to always
communicate this to a// the actors. This is the deep permission.
Sometimes actors judge the director and resist direction because

they don’t respect his ability. You mustn't take this personally. You
must focus always on the work, not egos or personalities. Keep your
concentration on bringing the script to life. Listen between the lines
to the communications you are receiving from the actors. Maybe they
need proof that you know what you are doing. Most actors arrive on
set prepared to direct themselves. If you are an untried director and
you want to have a significant rehearsal period, you may need to con-
vince the actors that rehearsal with you will be a productive rather
than a painful experience. Good actors would much rather be left
alone than suffer pedestrian, unenlightening, intrusive direction.
Stars need direction as much as any actor, maybe even more,

since they have a lot at stake. And they are surrounded by people
who don't tell them the truth, who are currying favor by telling them
everything they do is wonderful. Stars need a director they can trust.
They need to know you will tell them the truth.
Don’t be intimidated by good actors. Director Betty Thomas, on

the first day of shooting an HBO movie with Kathy Bates, saw that
Bates seemed to be holding back. After watching dailies, the pro-
ducer confirmed that the scene should be reshot and encouraged
Thomas to take charge. The next day Phomas said to Bates, “I never
got to say anything to you or give you any direction yesterday, but I
know you're a thousand times better than that, so we have to do it
again.” This is exactly the right way to approach the situation of a
good actor who is not delivering what you hoped, and it doesn’t mean
you are shining them on — it is the truth. When you are working
with actors think of yourselfnot as manipulating them to your vision,
but as making it safe for them to take the risks needed to meet the
material. Let them know thcy are safe. Tell them, “I won't let you
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overact.” Or, “If it’s too much I’ll let you know.” Then make sure
you do.
Rehearsal is useless unless you can listento what the actors are
doing, what they are giving you, what they are resisting. A good
director works differently with each actor. Sometimes it is best to
leave an actor completely alone to work at his own pace. The way to
develop the intuition needed to tell you when to push, and when to
leave actors alone to find their own way, is by connecting deeply with
the material and listening to the actors. If you ask a question of an
actor, listen to the answer, and listen between the lines. When an
actor asks you questions, it is more important to hear the questions
than to answer them. What is the subtext? What is on his mind?
Once a student who was playing the mother in a mother/son

scene said out of the blue to me: “There can’t be any sexual feeling
between these two.” So I of course said, “Hmmm. Let’s look into
that.” Her statement doesn’t mean that she has a rigid opinion on the
subject, or that she will fight you if you suggest an adjustment “as if”
the other character were her lover. On the contrary it means that the
idea has occurred to her; it is floating around in her emotional storage
banks. Perhaps it is the aspect of the scene she is resisting, but sheis
letting you know she is getting ready to give up her resistance.
Some actors work at a level of image and intuition that is more

like a child’s than an adult's. Encourage the actors to play. Their
job is to find the honest behavior, not to control the effect. You are
the safety net. Actors need constant reassurance. If an actor is not
yourself about this —/when an actor seems self-sufficient and

unneedful of your attention, this is more likely to be a danger signal
than an occasion to relax.
. eee
_ Don’t let an actor shut down. Sometimes you need to grapple

with actors, challenge them, even confront them if they are faking or
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REHEARSAL
bullshitting. But don’t argue, because you can’t win an argument

with an actor. She may give in but there is likely to be some shutting
down, and shrinking. Learn the difference between arguing and
grappling. Arguing originates in a more pessimistic perception of the
telationship. So don’t argue with anybody.
Whatever actors do, love them anyway, the way a mother loves
her children, even the difficult ones. Give them unconditional love.
When there is a problem, let them understand that you are ready to
reach into your own chest and hold out your heart.
EPISODIC TELEVISION
Actors in episodic television have the opportunity to rehearse

their characters’ spine and physical life sometimes for five or more
years. This frees them, on the good shows, to have true ensemble
work. On some long-running shows, actors fall into playing attitude,
but on the good ones, they really play off each other.
A “hired gun” episodic director needs to have figured out from

watching other episodes of the show what the characters’ spines are.
Then, if you know how to make a good script analysis and have
enough practice at it that you can do it fast (you may get the script
only a few days before shooting), and can focus on the events of the
script, you may be able to give actors suggestions that will help make
the dramatic moments more startling and real, and the comedy
sharper and funnier.
Don't forget the guest artists and day players. In order to bring
the guest actors into the ensemble, they need attention from the
director and an opportunity to rehearse with the regulars. You can
be inventive. An actor friend of mine who, as a guest artist on
“Roseanne,” was playing a poker-playing buddy of the John
Goodman character, reported to me that the director had the actors
in the poker scene spend a morning playing poker together.
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SUMMARY
A documentary director told me that when she is pre-inter-

viewing documentary subjects, sometimes within a few minutes she
can see what it is that the subject has to give. She doesn’t ask them
the important questions in the pre-interview; she waits for the
camera. At other times she has to dig, spend a long time talking with
the person, and ferret out the material that she wants to get on
camera. This process is completely analogous to fiction rehearsal.
It’s not a formula or recipe. Sometimes you need a cup, sometimes a
pinch.
Don’t read off your script analysis notes while you are directing
rehearsal. Your script analysis was preparation. In rehearsal you
should work in the moment. The best thing that can happen in
rehearsal is that your ideas may change. You may, with the actors, find
richness and complexity or simplicity that you didn’t see when you
were working all alone on the script. You may adopt wholesale some
good idea of an actor’s.
So take chances. Make choices. You can always change your mind.
If something doesn’t work, don’t think of the occasion as a failure.
Think of it as an opportunity to move forward. Be yourself. Keep your
sense of humor. Don’t forget in rehearsal that there is nothing wrong
with having fun. Don’t talk just because you think you’re supposed to.
If you don’t have something useful to say, don’t say anything.
Rehearsal should end with questions, with things for the actors to
work on while they are waiting to shoot the scene. If you end
rehearsal with a performance, the actors may spend the time until the
scene 1s shot (whether it is two weeks or fifteen minutes) trying to
hold on to that performance. We don’t want them to approach
shooting trying to hold on to their rehearsal. We want them to
approach shooting ready to work.
A summaryof what to do if you have five days or more of

rehearsal for a full-length script: Read each scene at ground zero,
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REHEARSAL
with no adjustments. Improvise on the tacts of the scene, backstory,

pre-scene beats, objectives, etc. [ry the scene with several different
through-lines, including at least one that you all agree is wrong.
_ Work beat by beat to find movement and objects and create events.
Watch for unrealized moments and solve them. Connect with the
imagery of the script.
A summary of what to do if you have twenty to thirty minutes to

rehearse a scene: After reading the lines together, seated, and relaxed
so actors can connect, find some simple movement and objects. Look
for false moments; solve them.
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SHOOTING
SHOOTING
“Once they’re in that starting-gate position and ready to go, it’s
really a case of nurturing, and trusting, and letting them have a
good time. I don’t even necessarily mean, by a good time, laughing
on the set — although we have a lot of that at times. But what I
mean is being allowed to make mistakes, being allowed to try things.
The key is that you all agree that you’re making the same film.” —
Martin Scorsese
Shooting should be seen as an extension of rehearsal — that is,

unpressured, exploratory, free — and better than rehearsal, a treat
and an adventure. We want everybody’s best energy and concentra-
tion. We want fresh, simple, honest, emotionally alive, moment-by-
moment work. We don’t want an actor who was great in rehearsal to
start “acting with a capital A” as soon as the camera rolls. The big
question 1s how to maintain a creative atmosphere in the midst of all
the technical and financial pressures of shooting.
One thing you can do is find time with the actors that is not social
time, and not exactly work time either, but magic time, where you
recreate the magic circle that you had in rehearsal, and reestablish
your relationship with them as a primary factor in their work. I can’t
tell you how to do this; each director’s method is unique to his or her
personality. Some are playful, some are parental; some are almost
military in their concentration and authority, while some are so low-
key that they seem almost “not there.” Some take the “rope-a-dope”
route, that is, affecting to have no control over the proceedings
(when really they are on top of everything). Some are business-like;
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some are sexually magnetic; some radiate a deeply intuitive, even

spiritual sensibility.
Marlon Brando, in his autobiography, described an afternoon he

spent on the set of “A Streetcar Named Desire,” watching Elia Kazan
direct a scene which he, Brando, was not in. Kazan was seated on the
moving camera dolly, completely emotionally involved in the scene,
mouthing the lines, moving his hands, mirroring the actors’ expres-
sions in his face. Kazan’s total immersion gave him the information he
needed to make changes for the next take.
Here are some thoughts on how to develop and maintain the atten-
tion and connection needed to recognize and guide actors to the spark,
the sizzle, the sense of “something happening” — the /rfe of a scene.
1) Say something to each actor before and after every take.
During shooting the actors are (we hope) at their most raw.
Everything that comes in affects them. Let them feel your attention
by speaking to them before and after every take. If possible, give
them something new to work on.
Sidney Lumet, when asked in a 1993 interview for Premier how

much he sets out to accomplish in rehearsal, said, “75%. I leave
about 25% for the camera, for us to work on. Usually it’s just enough
for me to be able to give them fresh emotional approaches. One of
the enemies of creating emotion is repetition, and if I can find some-
thing new that amounts to the same thing, that’s a preferable way to
work. ‘That's what I save for camera. | don’t use up all my variations.”
What he means by his “variations” are all the ideas he has come
up with in script analysis. ‘Uhis is why a full script analysis in which
you come up with a number of different ideas and a number of dif-
ferent ways to express your ideas is so useful. You will have fresh ways
to sumulate the structure you and the actors worked out in rehearsal,
or ideas for ways to completely change the structure if it suddenly
ceases to work. You will have a store of playable tidbits to give the
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actors after each take, to keep their attention forward, because if an

actor's work on a scene is not getting better it is getting worse. It’s
like the love affair that the Woody Allen character in “Annie Hall”
compares to a shark: if it doesn’t move forward it dies.
Direction at this juncture has to do either with focusing the

actors on some playable task (such as “I want you to keep track of
every time you get her to smile”), offering them more freedom, or
getting them to relax and simplify if their work has become intellec-
tual or actorish. You may wish to talk to each actor separately. There
needs to be a privacy to all communications between actor and
director. It can be a “privacy in public”: in other words, you create a
privacy between the two of you even if other people, e.g., the crew or
other actors, are within earshot; “privacy in public” is, in fact, an
important skill for a director to develop. In some situations, it is
preferable to speak to the actors together. You need to make such
decisions thoughtfully.
If there is really nothing productive to say — if, for instance,

there must be multiple takes unrelated to this actor’s performance, or
if a good actor is unaccountably struggling and you know he already
knows there’s a problem — then don’t try to say something profound.
But say or do something anyway — make eye contact at least — to
keep things loose or focused or, in any case, connected. Let the actor
know he is supported. Tell a joke, even, or a secret.
Whatever you do, when you communicate with the actors, don’t
communicate anxiety. Keep your attention forward. If there is a
problem, get excited about finding the solution.
2) Don’t ask for a re-performance.
If you love the take or rehearsal that just happened but need to
go again, don’t say, “Do it again just like that.” Instead say things
like: “We're starting to cook”; “It’s working well, let’s stay on this
track”; “You're coming up with new things, it’s getting richer.” Keep
the attention forward.
283
3) Don’t let them be bad.
Watch for actors lapsing into set line readings. Watch for tension
in actors’ faces. Watch for overacting. Make:sure the actors under-
stand that you will protect their moment-by-moment reality. If you
are relaxed and alert and if you put your total concentration on the
actors, you will be able to detect false notes because they will cause
your own attention to wander. Anytime an actor hits a false note, it
needs to be addressed by his director.
Sometimes a layer can be added. Sometimes the whole structure

of a scene will need to be reworked. Even on the set, with the min-
utes and dollars ticking away, it is important to approach these prob-
lems without tension or pressure, or else you won’t be able to come
up with creative solutions.
When you need a quick fix, consider an opposite. Even if it is

patently “wrong,” it can sometimes work on a dimé bécause it has
shock value. It can impart freshness because it liberates the actor
from his line readings and from a sense of obligation.
If all else fails, ask them to let go of their preparation and be sim-
pler, “just talk and listen.” : —
—
4) Use the language of permission.
Lo “It’s okay to pick up that knife a little earlier,” rather than “You
didn’t pick up the knife on the right line.” Make all your direction
and feedback to actors as positive as you can. Imagine yourself in the
actors’ shoes. Tell them what you like as well as what still needs work.
If an actor is struggling, offer him time, even if there isn’t any.
‘Tension and strain are the enemies of our work. All problems must
be embraced as creative obstacles. a
5) Be honest.
_ Actors want to know if it’s not good enough. If your relationship

with the actors and your own personal charisma are strong enough,
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you can say things like “You seemed a little off”; “We're not quite
there yet”; “It’s in and out”; “Let's try something new, I’m not sure
this is working anymore”; “It’s gotten surface-y, the inner life is
missing”; “The give-and-take is missing, I want you to play off each
~other.” Or, “Tell me what I can do to help. Are you stuck? Tell me
what's bothering you.” “I’m afraid my direction was not very clear, _
but I know you can do better and I want more.” Sometimes the
shock value of plainly telling an actor, “It’s not real enough” is exactly
what’s needed. By the way, “It’s not real enough” is a better direction
than “It’s not angry enough.” sz
6) Don’t use result direction.

a a wo
In rehearsal the actor has a chance to ponder a result direction

and translate it into something playable, but on the set he doesn’t
have that time. In fact, you may not want the actors to mull over the
direction. You may want to catch them off-guard and catapult them
into the scene. This is best managed with verbs, facts, images, events,
and physical life; that is, playable direction.
Result direction is inaccurate direction. Say an actor on the first

take wrinkles her forehead in a way that you like, and the take must
be repeated. If you ask her to repeat the wrinkle you’re not actually
asking for what you liked. What you liked was the listening, the
interaction, or the emotional event resulting from her concentration
on a verb, fact, image, etc.
If you must give result direction, you should say, “I know [’m
giving you a result direction,” or, “I know I’m giving you a result and
you'll need to translate it into something playable.” If you are
reduced to line readings, say something like “Don’t follow this as a
line reading — I’m doing this badly.” Having said all this, I need to
admit that result direction sometimes works, but usually only once.
Letting the actors in on the effect you want to produce may give you
the take you need. But if it turns out there was dust on the camera
lens, you will probably need to come up with a new, playable idea for
the next take.
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DirEcTING AcToRS / WESTON
7) Make sure that the actors receive feedback from one

source only.
Any complaints (or even compliments) that the writer, the pro-
ducers, the editor, director of photography, script supervisor, crew, or
other actors have about an actor should be told privately to you.
Thank the person for their communication. Then determine what,
if anything, should be done about it.
Make sure that you are the one who says “Cut.” Explain to actors
that even if they make a mistake you want them to keep going until
you cut the scene. Don’t let the D.P. or the technicians cut the scene.
If your budget requires you to be conservative in your use of film
stock, to the point that you want the camera crew to let you know
before the end of the scene if in their opinion the take is no good,
then arrange a signal with them ahead of time so they can discreetly
let you know, and you can say, “Cut.”
8) Just before the camera rolls...
When you say “Action,” try not to have an unconscious subtext

of “On your mark, get set...GO!” This unconscious “starting gun”
subtext creates tension for actors and a feeling that “now it’s time to
start acting,” which is not conducive to good moment-by-moment
work. Say “Action” with a sense of allowing, letting go, permission,
and connection.
A scene should always happenin the middle of something. You

need to watch for an actor “winding up” to start a scene; it-can be as_
simple to spot as an actor taking a deliberate breath when he hears
“Action.” “There needs to be something going on before the scene
starts: an awareness of the physical life of the scene; a relaxed freedom
and presence in his own body; and a connection to the other actor(s).
You can allow or encourage actors to play their intentions silently,_

to improvise out loud the pre-scene beat, or to speak out Toud the
anchoring subtext of their intentions, éven to say “hello” to each”
other just before the camera rolls. Shelley Winters reported in the
May 1996 Interview that director Jane Campion, on the set of
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SHOOTING
“Portrait of a Lady,” aske

the actors
d to say out loud whatever they
_were thinking before every scene started. This works best if you
encourage them to speak without censoring or deciding if their
appropriate.
.impisulse
9) Stand next to the camera.
In order to see the tiny differences between a good performance

and a mediocre performance, you need to watch the actors, not from
the video monitor, but from next to the camera. Some directors can
tell if the actors are listening without watching or without even
hearing well: Akira Kurosawa has been nearly blind for some years;
William Wyler lost most of his hearing during his World War II mil-
itary service. It’s the director’s concentration that I am speaking
about. The director cannot give his full concentration to the actors
from behind the video monitor. The actors can feel your connection
and concentration when you stand next to the camera; it feels very
strange to an actor not to have the director there.
10) Give actors permission to fail.
“This won't be the last take. PI! definitely do another, no matter

how this goes.” “This might not work.” Freedom to fail is one of the
most powerful tools a director can use in relation to actors. Tension
is the biggest enemy on the set. When either you or the actors are
tense you (they) won't be able to see and hear, to think and choose in
the moment. When an actor blows a take because he got the lines
wrong, tell him you don’t care if the lines are right. I have seen this
work like a charm.
It can be very useful to shoot a scene two different ways. It takes

the pressure off both ways. Two different endings were going to be
shot of “Casablanca.” After watching the first take, which happened
to be the one in which Ilsa goes off with her husband, the filmmakers
didn’t bother to shoot the second ending in which she goes off with
Rick. I think it’s indisputable that the ending chosen was the right
one for story reasons, but it also seems possible that the performances
are enhanced by the freedom afforded the actors because they were
not thinking of that take as “the end of the movie.”
287
If you get pressure from an actor or a producer to shoot a scene

his way instead of yours, think of the idea of shooting it both ways as
an opportunity, not a burden. If you have not gotten what you want
from an actor after many takes, you might try saying, “I’m printing
that last one; I’ve got what I need. Let’s do one more, just for fun.
Let’s do it different. Let’s do it wrong.”
11) Learn to match energies.
Communication can be difficult if your energy is much higher or

much lower than that of the person you are trying to communicate
with. Actors, especially on set, can be very volatile. If you feel an
actor’s energy is low, allow your energy to be just a little bit higher
than his; that way he will be able to hear you, and, as a bonus, you
may be able slowly to coax his energy up. If his energy is unnaturally
high, allow yours to be high too, only just a little bit lower than his;
it may calm him.
The worst thing about shooting for actors is all the waiting; it
can be a terrible energy drain. Physical watinaups that engage actors”
with éach other — such as tossing a ball, playing tag, pillow-fighting,
air-boxing, air-fencing — can enliven the actors and guide their con-
centration toward each other.
If the actors get upset with anything — a problem on the set or

with a costar, a disagreement with your direction, even personal
problems — gently encourage them to use these feelings as energy.
All feelings are energy, and energy is a good thing. Turn problems
into opportunitiés, not failures. ~~ ~~ - OO
12) Marks, matching, overlapping.
The director's priority should be to have the scene go somewhere,

to move, to take the audience somewhere, to create that shimmer that
gives the sense of something happening. The actor’s priority should
be to be real in the moment, to connect tothe emotional life of the
script in the moment. The worst thing that can happen to an actor's
performance is that he buys into a set way of saying his lines. Actors
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SHOOTING
who stay alive and dynamic on every take and seem not to change the
performance are actually moving, each time,a little deeper into the
meaning of the script and into their own resources. This creative
priority of forward movement (remember the word “emotion” has as
its root the word “motion”) should be honored.
When actors make technical considerations of matching shots

and hitting marks their priority, their performance can become slick
and technical. I think it is possible for directors and technicians to
approach the problems of hitting marks, matching performances, and
overlapping, more creatively than the conventional wisdom. Woody
Allen, for example, practically never shoots coverage, and relies almost
exclusively on long masters. One reason he does this is so the actors
can be free to overlap dialogue. Sidney Lumet says that it is possible
to cut dialogue even if the actors do overlap and don’t make that little
pause between each line — it’s just harder.
13) Sex and Violence.
Talk about your plans for blocking and shooting a nude scene
separately with each actor, then together with both actors. Walk
through the choreography of the movements with clothes on,
without emotional commitment. After that, a nude scene should be
approached like any other scene in which emotional nakedness is
required by the actors, in which the actors are required to create soli-
tude in public. Not all nude scenes are alike. The characters still
have backstory, problems, intention, a physical environment, etc.
All violence and stunts should be supervised by a professional in

that field.
14) Know when to say “Print.”
Sometimes (but not necessarily) an actor can give you help

deciding whether a take is good enough to go with by letting you
know whether it “feels” solid. An actor needs to not watch, not check
and control his performance in order to connect with the subcon-
scious. He may sometimes give a marvelous, unaffected, in-the-
moment, unguarded performance and think the take was bad. He
289
may feel destablized by unguarded moments or by direction that

leads him to unguarded moments. Sometimes an actor will say “I
don’t feel it,” or “I have to feel it.” But_when acting is reall good,
when it has simplicity.and truth, it often doesnt feel like anything ~
When you find (through script analysis and rehearsal) the objective~
structure, a scene can work and the story get told, even if the actor is
not “feeling it.”
15) Concentrate.
I’ve said this already, but I’ll say it again. The actors need your full
concentration if you are going to be able to tell whether the emotional
event of the scene was achieved. This does not mean that I think shot
composition and framing are unimportant; but if you want the actors
to fill up the screen, you need to put out energy toward that goal.
16) Be inventive.
If you are following your notes like a blueprint on the set

because you are too frazzled and stressed out to make decisions and
come up with new ideas in the moment, or if you are answering
questions just to have something to say, without an idea you really
believe in, or if you are trying to use the right jargon and not make
a mistake, I can just about promise you that your movie will not
come out the way you hoped.
Even if you become very adept at working with actors, there will
still be times when you make mistakes and say the wrong thing to an
actor. Your talent will lie in how you are able to recover from these
mistakes and turn them into adventures and opportunities.
You don’t have to shoot a scene the way you rehearsed it. You
don’t have to follow your script analysis notes. Preparation and
rehearsal is not wasted, even if you don’t follow it. A writer wouldn't
think of publishing a first draft. Script analysis is a director's first
draft. Rehearsal is the second draft. Take One is the third draft. Etc.
Prepare exhaustively. Concentrate. Then let it go. Don’t aim.

Have fun, even. It’s the greatest job in the world.
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EPILOGUE
EPILOGUE
“But to dig deeply into the way things are through people is what
I like, and what the people who work with me like also. To find out
the delicate balance between living and dying. I mean, I think that’s
the only subject there is.” — John Cassavetes
There are daily exercises directors can do to keep developing

their craft. Read. Go to museums. Watch documentaries.
Daydream. Eavesdrop. Interview your friends and find out their life
stories. Tell stories to children. Give good street directions. Become
a person to whom people tell their secrets. Learn about the human
heart and what makes people tick. Embrace your own memories.
Many directors need to listen more to actors. Directors who are

shy need to get in there and grapple with actors. Most need to talk
—more_cogently,. stick to facts and images, and stay awayfrom expla-
nations. Study and prepare, then practice with actors, and trust that
if you follow the rules you will start to have intuitions about what to
do in new situations. Allow your imagination to flourish. Let the
characters take on a life of their own, not just a movie life, but a life
outside the borders of the camera, and be unafraid to involve your
own feelings and insights about life.
You can’t learn to direct from a book, so it’s important to practice

rehearsing with actors. If you cannot take a class in rehearsal tech-
niques, then meet actors, find scripts, and work out on your own. Or
direct theater; it’s cheaper than film, and in some ways harder than
directing film actors, so it’s good preparation. Take chances, make
mistakes, pick yourself up and try again!
29]
DireEcTING ACTORS / WESTON
All learning, like all rehearsal, is two steps forward, one step back
(the only alternative scenario 1s one step forward, two steps back). I
know I am taking a big chance when I give you my secrets in a book,
where I can’t respond to your questions and can’t watch and monitor
your use of them. Any of these ideas can misfire. Once a student
reported to me that her first attempts to use the techniques from the
Acting for Directors workshop were distressing. She said, “The tools
you gave us were power tools; they were like a sharp-edged sword.
When we used them incorrectly we cut ourselves.” Find a way to prac-
tice the use of these tools in a safe situation. Make them your own.
Don’t operate out of fear. Don’t say, “I had no choice.”
Most actors in their scene study classes, even if they don’t ever
perform on stage, work on scenes from plays. A director who has not
read any plays seems virtually illiterate to a trained actor. Film has
been around for a hundred years; before that the people who were
producing plays would have been producing films if they’d had the
technology. Even if you’re not interested in theater, you should read
plays and study the history of theater, especially Shakespeare.
Shakespeare is extraordinarily cinematic. A serious filmmaker has a
lot to learn from the study of Shakespeare, regardless of whether you
have any interest in directing films based on Shakespearean plays.
Many directors direct one gender more effectively than the other.
The gender many, though by no means all, directors have more
trouble directing is the one that is not their own. Make a special
effort to get inside the experience of the other gender. A useful book
on this subject is Deborah Tannen’s You Just Don’t Understand.
All the actors’ tools are useful for you: listening, choosing an
objective, taking adjustments. In meetings you can use the actor’s
technique of putting all your concentration on the other person, in
order to feel less self-conscious. It’s also useful in meetings to be able
to tell the difference between what someone is saying, and what they
are actually doing (their subtext).
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EPILOGUE
Think about your own objective. There may not be a right or

wrong one, but be honest and specific with yourself about what it is;
on some days a perfectly valid objective might be to get through the
morning without collapsing. Directors can fall into unproductive
unconscious objectives, such as “to not make a mistake,” or “to pro-
tect my ego.” Always put the work first.
What is your objective toward the audience? If you want them

to see how smart you are, how sensitive, or to be a witness to your
pain, if you want to indoctrinate them or punish them or ingratiate
yourself slavishly to them, then you could be headed for trouble.
Think of your film as a story that you are telling to one person.
Pick a specific person from your own life thiatyou are telling this story
tor, and keep an empathic sense of that person’s interest and connec-
tion to the story uppermost in every decision you make. By keeping
your story personal and specific you will paradoxically stand the best
chance of telling a story with universal appeal. But by keeping your
focus on the specific person you are telling the story to, rather than on
your own need to tell it, you can avoid self-indulgence.
Your creativity is not a bowl with a finite amount in it, which can
be emptied, but a natural spring from an unseen, unknowable source.
When you give of everything you have, you are priming the pump.
If you’re not sure what you're doing, don’t hold back, be expressive
anyway. A breakthrough is then possible. If you play it close to the
vest, then you might not get into trouble, but you won’t get anywhere
else either.
You cannot decide what your vision is, or even to have one, but
you can trust that you have a vision, and you can find it. The path to
finding it is your search for the truest truth in every detail of your
work, Challenge yourself. Aim high, because we are human and are
going to fall short. If your aim is to “get by,” then you won't. If your
aim is to give your all and hold out for the truest truth, then, with a
little luck, you might get by.
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DirneEcTING AcToRS / WESTON
APPENDIX A
DIRECTING THE “NATURAL” ACTOR:
CHILDREN AND NONPROFESSIONAL
ACTORS
“Natural” actors are free, uninhibited, unafraid of what people

think. They have something to offer; that is, they have some expe-
rience or understanding of life that fits them for the role. They open
up when they are being looked at rather than shut down like most
people who are not professional actors.
Whether or not they have had acting training, you want to find
children whose imaginations are susceptible, who are bright and sen-
sitive and free with their emotions. Audition the mothers as carefully
as you audition the kids. Parents may drill the kids on their lines in
the wrong way, making them learn line readings. Children learn lines
very quickly, so often you don’t need to give them the lines in any case
until the last minute.
Improv is very useful when casting children, to find out if they

can get to the places you need them to go via imaginative suggestions.
Improv is useful in rehearsal, too. You want to tap into their imagi-
nations, because that is their strength. You don’t have to trick them;
you don’t have to say, “Your mother is sick.” You can say, “Your
mother is fine, but can you imagine what it would be like if your
mother was sick?”
You need to go to where they are. You need to be able to match

energies with them. If your energy is much higher or much lower
than theirs is, you won’t be able to communicate. You can talk to
them more freely about feelings than you can talk to adult actors,
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APPENDIX A
because they haven’t intellectualized their feelings yet (unless they

are taking acting lessons!).
Jafar Panahi, director of “The White Balloon,” described in an

interview how he worked with seven-year-old Aida Mohammakhani:
“I knew immediately Aida could play this character, yet on the second
day of shooting I decided to test her. I forbade her to do something
and made it impossible for her not to do it; then I scolded her and she
started to cry. I said to her, ‘See how easy it is for me to make you
cry? But I don’t want to do it that way because it makes you unhappy,
and [ want us to have another kind of relationship. I suggest we look
into each other's eyes every time you have to cry in the film, and
when I start to cry, you cry.’ She didn’t believe it would work, but the
first few times we looked at each other we cried together, and then
she cried alone.”
[I can’t imagine a better method than that for directing a child.
Preteens and teenagers are on the borderline between childhood

and adulthood. Their free imaginations can still be captured, but
they can also get self-conscious and mannered. A director needs to
obtain their trust and respect on a personal level in order to get their
most simple and truthful performance.
To get the best from non-professional actors, make sure that what
you ask them to do is close to who they are and that it is simple. Tell
them to talk to the other person the way they would in real life. You
can use a few simple action verbs and adjustments: “Scold her the way
you would scold your own kids.” “Tease him the way you tease your
husband when he falls asleep in front of the TV.” “Really look at his
face and in your mind decide whether you would take a check from
this man.” Don’t forget, non-professionals don’t know about hitting
marks or not overlapping or finding their light.
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APPENDIX B
COMEDY
What a person finds funny is of course a very personal thing, but

there are some principles of comedy that I think you will find useful.
These principles apply to the four ways that a movie or show can be
funny: the situation, the lines, the characters, and/or the physical business
may be funny.
ALWAYS PLAY COMEDY FOR REAL
Comedy, like drama, is best achieved wheri actors concern them-

selves with moment-by-moment reality rather than the effect. If the
situation is funny, playing it straight, connecting with it as simply and
honestly as possible, makes it funnier. Under the best humor is often
real pain. The problems of Ralph Kramden (Jackie Gleason on “The
Honeymooners”) were always desperately serious.
If the lines are funny, they come out funnier when the intention
is more important than the lines. If the actor’s subtext is _“look
100K how
Now
_funny-thisline is,” the fun is gone.
Sometimes after a bit of physical business gets a laugh, the actor is

tempted to milk it to get the laugh next time, to do the business for its
own sake. This means it is no longer coming out of the situation. It has
become schtick. It now takes the audience out of the story, and is,
finally, not as funny. If, in rehearsal, a funny bit comes out of a character
using toilet paper to blow her nose, when the actor has to repeat the
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APPENDIX B
activity for the camera, she has to be sure that the reason she is using
the toilet paper is to blow her nose, not to make the audience laugh.
Many actors train in “comedy improv” classes or “sketch

comedy” classes, where they develop a number of “characters” that
they can “do” in many different imaginary situations. Actors who
“do characters” should never play character. What makes the good
character actors good is that they can create the physical and behav-
ioral adjustments of a wacky character, and still put their attention
on playing the reality.
It can happen that a director has to step in to let an actor know

he has crossed the line into shtick. Paul Newman recalled getting
this direction from Martin Scorsese during rehearsal for “The Color
of Money”: “Don’t try to. befunny.”
LISTENING
When actors listen, they are getting out of the way of the lines.
Then, if the lines are funny, the audience can hear them and get the
joke. Comedy works best when there is ensemble playing. The
actors play off each other — a ping-pong effect. I think it is no acci-
dent that in the better written comedies, there is more listening.
First of all, superior actors are drawn to superior writing. And
second, the actors trust the writing and know that if they play off each
other and don’t push, they will get their laughs.
James Burrows said in a Los Angeles Times interview of his

years of directing the television show “Taxi” that his role was “more
of a wrangler than anything else. There were a lot of egos on that
show. I was really a wrangler to get the ensemble nature. That was
my job — check your ego at the door.” What this means is that he
got the actors to listen to each other. I believe that his ability to get
actors to behave as an ensemble, to listen, to give the scene to each
other instead of trying to prove how funny they are, is central to his
phenomenal success in directing television comedy.
297
SENSORY LIFE
Physical comedy needs to be rooted sensorially, not indicated.

This means that the actor doesn’t demonstrate his wide-eyed wonder;
he creates an image that really affects him, or he surrenders to the
physical sensations in his eyes; perhaps both.
FREEDOM, RISK, AND IMAGINATIVE PLAY
True comic invention is a risky business, requiring headlong,

uncensored access to the subconscious — with a light touch.
Clowning is in my opinion a very noble profession. Great comedic
actors expose the most chaotic reaches of their imaginations and in
some small way make the world safe for the rest of us. The comedic
actor must not be watching himself, or paying attention to the effect
he is having on the audience. Watching to make sure the right effect
is created is the director’s job. The comedic director must be a safety
net for the actors, able to tell whether the work is good and give them
permission to risk, to fail, to commit.
It can also help if the director knows a few comic techniques.
SETTING UP GAGS
Every joke must be set up. A “straight line” sets up the situation;
the punch line or “payoff” delivers the twist. In vaudeville the roles
of “straight man” and “funny man” were very clearly defined. When
George Burns first teamed up with Gracie Allen, he thought of him-
selfas the funny man and gave her the straight lines; soonhe noticed
that she was getting more laughs than he, so they switched roles and,
with his simple questions (“What did you do today, Gracie?”) he
became the best known “straight man” in the business. Dan Ackroyd,
ina Daily Variety interview for the issue commemorating George
Burns's hundredth birthday, described himself as the “straight man”
to John Belushi and Bill Murray on the early days of “Saturday Night
Live.” The character played by Jessica Lange was the “straight man”
of the movie “Tootsie.” Playing “straight” does not make an actor
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APPENDIX B
subsidiary to the “funny” actors, or mean that he never gets laugh’.

The early years of “Seinfeld” positioned Jerry as the “straight” center
of the show, as was Mary Tyler Moore of her show; the zanier
“second banana” characters bounced the gags off the more “normal”
lead characters. Sometimes a single character performs both duties:
paying off one gag and setting up the next one with the same line.
Some jokes are wordless. For example, a scene in “Ace Ventura:

Pet Detective” depicts Ace’s clandestine search for medical records in
a dark storeroom. This gag is set up in two stages. Stage one of the
setup (the serious situation) is that we know Ace needs to be very,
very quiet. In stage two, the camera watches his stealthy entrance
into the storeroom from low inside the room — behind a length of
bubble wrap piled on the floor. The loud popping that issues from
his accidental step on the bubble wrap is the punch line — the first
punch line, that is. The popping becomes the setup for the next gag:
Ace, alerted to danger, struggles to keep his feet in the air to prevent
further popping. Gravity, of course, defeats him, and more and more
popping ensues. This is an elaborate gag that continues to “pay off”
until the last bubble is popped. But even a “cheaper” gag such as a
character unexpectedly banging his head on a rafter needs to be set
up by establishing his reason to leave the room.
TIMING
Timing simply means knowing how long to wait before deliv-

ering a line. Sometimes it is funnier to pause; sometimes it is fun-
nier not to pause. Timing involves a relationship to the audience,
and good instincts for timing are rarely perfected without exposure
to live audiences, either through theater training or through experi-
ence in a live comedy troupe or as a stand-up comedian.
LOUDER, FASTER, FUNNIER
Comedy needs comic energy. This doesn’t mean every line must
be shouted, but often comedy depends on the actors “topping” each
299
other. On the other hand, sometimes the punch line is delivered with
a sudden drop in energy — the actor “comes in under.”
GIVING THE AUDIENCE PERMISSION TO LAUGH
This is a subtle, mysterious thing that comic actors have to feel in

their bones. It has something to do with timing, comic energy, and
risk, and it means that the actors /et the audience in, allowing them to
laugh. It’s a very fine line, because the actor has to let the audience
in without playing the effect.
OPPOSITES
Surprise and juxtaposition are the heart and soul of comedy.
Playing an intention that is opposite to the apparent meaning of a line
is a common comic technique.
Comic ADJUSTMENTS
If a character is carrying on about losing his pack of chewing gum

as if he has lost an envelope containing a thousand dollars, the inap-
propriate adjustment might be funny.
ACTION VERBS
Playing a simple verb (intention) full out for as long as it will

hold and making crisp, full transitions can aid in setting up or
delivering gags.
RISING OR FALLING INFLECTIONS
_ This technique is better phrased as an adjustment. Using the

rising inflection technique, for instance, means that every line is
spoken as if it is a question.
300
APPENDIX B
It’s hard for actors to deeply trust a comedy director unless she
knows how to give actors feedback and advice on matters of comedy
technique: for example, whether it is likely that there will be a bigger
laugh if the actor holds a microsecond longer before giving the punch
line; when it might be better to come in “under” instead of topping;
when a rising inflection might just polish a gag. You also need a good
imagination to see opposites and think up comic adjustments.
But the techniques and gadgetry of comedy should always be in

service of the central situation of the story. The comedic director’s
primary tasks are to put the story ahead of the cheap trick, to turn the
actors into an ensemble that keeps hitting the ball back to each other,
and to maintain a light touch and a free atmosphere where imagina-
tive play is respected. And finally...
EVERYTHING IS EVERYTHING
The director is the guardian of the integrity of a film or televi-

sion show. I recommend that as you develop your aesthetic judg-
ment, you look always for the humor in a dramatic script, and the
pain that is underneath comedy.
a a
- . ry as - C o ° a
pf lo foes / 4 Codaaef ,
301
DIRECTING AcToRS / WESTON
APPENDIX C
I. SHORT LisT OF ACTION VERBS

(WITH ANCHORING SUBTEXTS)
demand “T demand it.”

convince “T think you should...”
persuade “Look at it this way...”
encourage “I know you can do it.”
incite “To the barricades.” “I have a
dream.”
brag something you are sincerely
proud of
complain “It’s not fair.”
beg/plead “Please help me.”
cajole “Come on, sweetie...”
coax “Are you sure you wouldn’t like
to ”
charm/flatter/compliment osetia “You're wonderful.” “You’d be

very good at...”
SOOKE ceccssecsssccssecsseceseesssecssecsareceseecssecseeee
nothing to worry about.”
tease/tickle “I think you’re cute.”
flirt “Come over here and sit next to
302
APPENDIX C
“I’m very attracted to you.”

“Wait til you see...”
“Are you man enough?” “T dare
you.” “I bet you can’t.”
“You lied to me.” “I saw you do
it.”
“I know your game.” “I see right
through you.”
“You wanna fight?”
“[’m warning you.”
“You’re a bad person.” “I’m sick
of you.”
ridicule make fun of clothing, etc.
belittle “You are worthless, nothing, not
important.”
“You hurt me.” “I want you to
suffer.”
count wrinkles, notice details of
dress and person
ask questions which are none of
your busisiness, copecially re:
"money, sex >;
stalk m watching you.”
30 3
II. SAMPLE SIMPLE OBJECTIVES
I want you to laugh.
I want you to cry.
I want you to put your arms around me.
I want you to take care of me.
I want you to wait on me.
I want you to feel sorry for me.
I want you to kneel down in front of me.
I want you to hit me.
I want you to leave the room.
I want you to kiss me (make love to me).
I want you to play with me.
Find out how much you know about me. \ /
Find out if you are telling the truth. Wi
304
APPENDIX C
III. MORE ACTION VERBS

accuse belittle guide
blame discourage maneuver
punish deflate massage
shame dampen cajole
scold demean coax
reprimand deny sell
condemn disparage nag
berate sneer at pout at
attack vilify complain to
menace undermine gripe at
badger discourage whine at
browbeat reprove wheedle
bully criticize steer
intimidate taunt goad
knife jeer at bait
coerce stalk prod
pressure nail provoke
persecute pounce on dare
rag on confront get his goat
crush test engage
rape demand one-up
castrate order pester
destroy
hammer
summon
direct
pry
quiz
suppress instruct interrogate
torment lecture insinuate
confine teach inspect
weigh down preach calculate
poison brag diagnose
warn upstage categorize
admonish bluff encourage
threaten plead empower
harangue beg boost
remind entreat bolster
ridicule convince build up
mock persuade crown
305
accept string along battle

approve beguile grapple with
affirm wean from startle
flatter guard against shake up
compliment shut out expose
salute defend against interfere with
applaud revolt against repulse
praise renounce tease
greet challenge tickle
bless defy needle
surrender to incite play with
forgive exhort please
rescue kindle cheer
heal galvanize dote upon
confide in enflame relish
attend to infuse savor
entrust inform nuzzle
soothe explain to entertain
caress clarify for clown
cherish justify self to dandle
hold expound to amuse
touch reason with divert
grieve negotiate with lighten
lull accommodate humor
pamper concede to jolly
pacify capitulate to celebrate
appease tolerate dazzle
placate overwhelm electrify
subdue take care of arouse
enfold reassure awaken
smother appreciate shock
suffocate apologize ogle
push away pick a fight with hypnotize
dodge fuss at lure
deflect quibble with tantalize
fence contradict seduce
fake out negate flirt
306
APPENDIX C
entice
woo
fondle
spoil
undress
reach for
make love
reminisce
dream
speculate
307
FILMOGRAPHY
Films listed by title, director, and year of release, in the order mentioned in
the book.
Batman Returns, Tim Burton, 1992

Never Say Never Again, Irvin Kershner, 1983
Unforgiven, Clint Eastwood, 1992
Blue Sky, Tony Richardson, 1994
Deception, Irving Rapper, 1946
When Harry Met Sally, Rob Reiner, 1989
On the Waterfront, Flia Kazan, 1954
The Fugitive Kind, Sidney Lumet, 1959
Patch of Blue, Guy Green, 1965
The Last Picture Show, Peter Bogdanovich, 1971
Leaving Las Vegas, Mike Figgis, 1995
Red, Krzysztof Kieslowski, 1995
Get Shorty, Barry Sonnenfeld, 1995
Pretty Woman, Garry Marshall, 1990
Dead Man Walking, ‘Tim Robbins, 1995
Father of the Bride, Vincente Minnelli, 1950
Network, Sidney Lumet, 1976
Colors, Dennis Hopper, 1988
Rudy, David Anspaugh, 1993
Schindler’s List, Steven Spielberg, 1993
‘The Godfather, Francis Ford Coppola, 1972
Godfather II, Francis Ford Coppola, 1974
Last Tango in Paris, Bernardo Bertolucci, 1973
Last of the Mohicans, Michael Mann, 1992
Hamlet, Franco Zeffirelli, 1990
Cry, the Beloved Country, Darrell Roodt, 1995
308
FILMOGRAPHY
Howards End, James Ivory, 1992

Driving Miss Daisy, Bruce Beresford, 1989
The Postman, Michael Radford, 1995
Toy Story, John Lasseter, 1995
An Affair to Remember, Leo McCarey, 1957
A Steetcar Named Desire, Elia Kazan, 1951
Wings of Desire, Wim Wenders, 1988
Crimes of the Heart, Bruce Beresford, 1986
Shawshank Redemption, Frank Darabont, 1994
Little Big Man, Arthur Penn, 1970
Ed Wood, Tim Burton, 1994
My Left Foot, Jim Sheridan, 1989
Starman, John Carpenter, 1984
The Days of Wine and Roses, Blake Edwards, 1962
Kramer vs. Kramer, Robert Benton, 1979
The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pitman, John Korty, 1974
Lolita, Stanley Kubrick, 1962
The Waterdance, Neal Jimenez and Michael Steinberg, 1992
Platoon, Oliver Stone, 1986
Copycat, Jon Amiel, 1995
Marathon Mian, John Schlesinger, 1976
Nixon, Oliver Stone, 1995
The Silence of the Lambs, Jonathan Demme, 1991
Remains of the Day, James Ivory, 1993
Autumn Sonata, Ingmar Bergman, 1978
Fatal Attraction, Adrian Lyne, 1987
Bridges of Madison County, Clint Eastwood, 1995
Forrest Gump, Robert Zemekis, 1994
The Dumbwaiter, Robert Altman, 1987
Woman Under the Influence, John Cassavetes, 1974
Smoke, Wayne Wang, 1995
Four Weddings and a Funeral, Mike Newell, 1994
Tootsie, Sydney Pollack, 1982
Don Juan De Marco, Jeremy Leven, 1995
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, Milos Foreman, 1975
Wanda, Barbara Loden, 1971
Chinatown, Roman Polanski, 1974
I Never Sang for My Father, Gilbert Cates, 1970
309
Dog Day Afternoon, Sidney Lumet, 1975

Six Degrees of Separation, Fred Schepisi, 1993
Born Yesterday, George Cukor, 1950
E.T., Steven Spielberg, 1982 ")
Sense and Sensibility, Ang Lee, 1995
Casablanca, Michael Curtiz, 1942
Midnight Cowboy, John Schlesinger, 1969
The Graduate, Mike Nichols, 1967
Annie Hall, Woody Allen, 1977
The White Balloon, Jafar Panahi, 1995
The Color of Money, Martin Scorsese, 1986
Ace Ventura: Pet Detective, Tom Shadyac, 1994
‘Twister, Jan De Bont, 1996
Devil in a Blue Dress, Carl Franklin, 1995
310
BIBLIOGRAPHY
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Adler, Stella, The Technique of Acting, Bantam Books, 1988

Ball, William, A Sense of Direction, Drama Book Publishers, 1984
Bates, Brian, The Way of the Actor, Shambhala Publications, Inc.,
1987
Bergman, Ingmar, Images , Arcade Publishing, 1994
Brando, Marlon, with Robert Lindsey, Brando: Songs My Mother
Taught Me, Random House, 1994
Broadley, Margaret, Your Natural Gifts, EPM Publications, 1972
Clurman, Harold, On Directing, Macmillan Publishing, 1972
Clurman, Harold, The Fervent Years: The Group Theatre and the
Thirties, Da Capo Press, 1975
Cole, Toby, and Helen Krich Chinoy, eds., Actors on Acting,
Crown Publishers, 1970
Cole, Toby, and Helen Krich Chinoy, eds., Directors on Directing:
A Source Book of the Modern Theater, Bobbs-Merrill
Educational Publishing, 1976
Funke, Lewis, and John E. Booth, eds., Actors Talk About Acting,
Avon Books, 1961
Grandin, Temple, Thinking in Pictures: and Other Reports from
My Life with Autism, Doubleday, 1995
Hagen, Uta, Respect for Acting, MacMillan Publishing Co., Inc.
New York, 1973
Johnstone, Keith, Impro, Routledge/Theatre Arts Books, 1979
Katz, Steven D., Film Directing Shot by Shot: Visualizing from
Concept to Screen, Michael Wiese Productions, 1991
Kazan, Elia, Kazan: A Life, Alfred A. Knopf, 1988
311
Leonard, George Burr, Mastery: The Keys to Long Term Success

and Fulfillment, Dutton, 1991
Lumet, Sidney, Making Movies, Alfred A. Knopf, 1995
Mamet, David, On Directing Film, Penguin Books, 1991
Meisner, Sanford, and Dennis Longwell, Sanford Meisner on
Acting, Vintage Books, 1987
An
Redgrave, Vanessa, Autobiograph y, Random House, 1991
Reich, Wilhelm, Character Analysis, Touchstone, 1945
Ross, Lillian, Player, Simon, 1962
Ross, Lillian, Picture, Doubleday, 1993
Shepard, Sam, Cruising Paradise, Knopf, 1996
Sherman, Eric, Directing the Film: Film Directors on their Art,
Acrobat Books, 1976
Shurtleff, Michael, Audition, Walker Publishing Company, 1978
Stanislavski, Constantin, An Actor Prepares,
Theatre Arts Books, 1936
Stanislavski, Constantin, My Life in Art, Theatre Arts Books, 1948
Stanislavski, Constantin, Building a Character, Methuen/Theatre
Arts Books, 1949 :
Stanislavski, Constantin, Creating a Role, Routledge/Theatre Arts
Books, 1961
Strasberg, Lee, A Dream of Passion: The Development of The
Method, Plume, 1987
‘Tannen, Deborah, You Just Don’t Understand, Morrow, 1990
Thompson, Emma, The Sense and Sensibility Screenplay and
Diaries, Newmarket Press, 1995 _
Ueland, Brenda, If You Want to Write, Graywolf Press, 1987
312
FURTHER ACKNOLWEDGMENTS
FURTHER ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
The Paul Mazursky and Ralph Nelson quotes from Chapter II,
the Jean Renoir and Jack Nicholson quotes from Chapter IV, and the
John Cassavetes quote in the Epilogue were all found in Directing
the Film: Film Directors on Their Art, by Eric Sherman for the
American Film Institute. The Adrian Lyne quote from Chapter II is
from Film Directors on Directing, by John Andrew Gallagher. The
Elia Kazan quote that begins Chapter II is from a pamphlet which
was given to me by Paul Gray.
The following quotes were all found in articles in the Los

Angeles ‘Times: Helen Mirren, Diane Keaton in Chapter II; Dennis
Franz, Joan Allen, Garry Marshall in Chapter IH; Bryan Singer in
Chapter IV; Emma Thompson in Chapter VII; Jafar Panahi in
Appendix A; James Burrows in Appendix B.
The Ralph Fiennes quotes in Chapters II and IV were from a

1995 Vanity Fair article. The Morgan Freeman quote in Chapter II
is from Los Angeles View.
The Vanessa Redgrave quotes in Chapters IJ] and VI are from

her Autobiography. The Liv Ullman quote in Chapter VI was found
in The Way of the Actor, by Brian Bates.
The Harvey Keitel quote in Chapter IX is from Daily Variety, as

are the Anthony Hopkins quote in Chapter VII, the Martin Scorsese
quote in Chapter X, and the Don Cheadle quote in Chapter IX.
313
Information about how Anthony Hopkins worked on “Nixon” is

from the Orange County Register and The New Yorker.
All the anecdotes and quotes attributed to Sally Field, Paul

Newman, Glenn Close, Sydney Pollack and Holly Hunter are from
their appearances on the Bravo Channel series, “Inside the Actors
Studio,” except for the “Hamlet” anecdote from Chapter IV, which I
found in the Los Angeles Times. The Betty Thomas anecdote in
Chapter IX is from DGA Magazine.
The play with the ironed shirts images from Chapter IV was
“Mrs. Cage,” which was written and directed by Nancy Barr, and
produced by Mado Most in 1990.
314
ABOUT THE AUTHOR |
Judith Weston lives in Los Angeles, where

she conducts classes and workshops in the
studio she runs with her husband, John
Hoskins. For directors, her workshops
include Acting for Directors, and advanced
workshops in Script Analysis and Rehearsal
Techniques. For actors, she teaches ongoing
classes in scene study, technique, improvi-
sation, cold reading, and Shakespeare. For
actors and directors together, she teaches
the Actor-Director Laboratory.
Photo by Susan Schader
She consults privately for directors in pre-production, for projects including

studio and independent films as well as television, to help them clarify their
directing choices and prepare for casting and rehearsal.
In addition to her Los Angeles workshops for directors and actors, she travels
with these workshops. and has taught them in Europe, Canada. and other
cities of the US. including New York. San Francisco, and Seattle.
Her first book, Directing Actors: Creating Memorable Performances for

Film and Television, is widely read by directors, writers. and actors. It has
been translated into German, Japanese, Finnish, Korean, and Spanish,
If you wish to study or consult with Judith, or to arrange an on-site workshop,

please consult the website, or call or write for more information:
Judith Weston Acting Studio

310 392-2444.
www.judithweston.com
[email protected]
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others, more high quality films will be produced.
And that has been our mission, now complemented through our new web-based
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services offered by our company.
Our goal is, quite simply, to help you reach your goals. That’s why we give our
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We truly hope that our books and web-based resources will empower you to
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Let us hear from you at anytime.
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FILM / TV / DIRECTING / CINEMA STUDIES
f
“Judith opened a door for me to an aspect of that creative

process about which I had never really been aware — acting.”
Ron Judkins, Academy Award® for Production Sound Mixing, Jurassic Park
4%
“I've been recommending Judith to everyone I know.

She manages to awaken one to one’s own deepest resources.
I know a great teacher when I find one!”
Polly Platt, Producer Broadcast News, Terms of Endearment
DIRECTING ACTORS
Creating Memorable Performances for Film and Television
By JUDITH WESTON
4 t
De film or television is a high-stakes occupation. It captures your full attention at every

moment, calling on you to commit every resource and stretch yourself to the limit - it’s the
white-water rafting of entertainment jobs. But for many
Contents Include: directors, the excitement they feel about a new project
¢ Ten Examples of Result Direction tightens into anxiety when it comes to working with actors,
¢ Five Quick Fixes DIRECTING ACTORS is a method for establishing creative,

¢ The First Seript Reading collaborative relationships
with actors, getting the most
¢ The Imaginative Choices out of rehearsals, troubleshooting poor performances, and
¢ The Beats of a Scene giving briefer directions.
¢ The Spines of the Characters
Ms. Weston discusses what constitutes a good performance,
* Directing Your Own Script
what actors want from a director, what directors do wrong,
* Casting and Rehearsing script analysis, how actors work, and the director/actor
* The Actor/Director Relationship relationship. This book is based on the author’s twenty
* Fine Tuning During Shooting years of professional acting and eight years of teaching
* A Short List of Action Verbs Acting for Directors.
TSBN-13: 978-0-941188- Kal

ISBN-10: 0-941188-24
0
Design & Illustration by Wade Lageose, Art Hotel
2269 5
a
Tu
9"7 809 Michael Wiese Productions
188241
“Academy Award™ is the ragistered trademark and service mark of the Academy of Motion Picture Artsis and Scienc

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COLD SPRING HARBOR LIBRARY

Cover Design: Art Hotel, Los Angeles FSC

© 1996 Judith Weston

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

I. RESULT DIRECTION AND QUICK FIXES

II. MOMENT By MOMENT

HI. LISTENING AND TALKING

V: STRUCTURE: TRANSITIONS, EVENTS

VI: ACTORS’ RESOURCES AND TRAINING 141

VII: SCRIPT ANALYSIS 163

APPENDIX A: CHILDREN AND

APPENDIX B: COMEDY 296

FURTHER ACKNOWLEDGMENTS 313

All the wonderful actors I have worked with as colleagues or

T want to thank the teachers from whom | studied acting and

to believe that I might have something to offer the world as an actor,

Soon after I started teaching Acting for Directors, students began

Frank also introduced me to David Lyman; this began a long and

I received tireless, generous, insightful, invaluable feedback from

Finally, | am grateful to Dr. CarolS. Stoll, my family, all my

Directors want short answers to these questions, but in order to

There really aren't shortcuts. There isn’t any kind of blueprint

ACTORS: THE MYSTERIOUS “OTHER”

Directing film or television is a high-stakes occupation. It cap-

The entertainment industry is conflicted in its attitude toward

Writers who turn to directing often become troubled and impa-

Indeed, most people seem to believe that directing actors can't be

It's not unusual for actors to be dismayed at how little directors

THE CRAFT OF DIRECTING

Directing actors can be taught as a craft. It does not need to be

There is no cookbook. You've got to completely let go of doing

I want to change your minds around a bit. When I teach my

You will make mistakes. We are mistake-making creatures; we

Artists tend by nature to be dark, worried, superstitious creatures.

I offer you the exhilarating prospect of never again saying these

to access your intuition, you need to get below your preconceived

I don't intend to dampen or make you distrust your intuition.

Everybody knows what to do when inspired! That's true by

Technique does two wonderful things: it gives you something to

THE ACTOR-DIRECTOR RELATIONSHIP

Rigorous technique and careful detail go into such performances.

Sometimes directors ask me why I want them to know so

Here is the crux of this sometimes painful, often frustrating but

Sometimes very intelligent actors hold back until they decide

This is not good. Because if he is doing someone else's job as well

If you understand the script, know how to tell a story filmically,

The director's main responsibility — and prerogative — is telling

This is the good stuff. Unlocking the subworld of the script,

The level of trust required for this work is breathtaking. Jessica

Actors refuse direction at their peril; they'are throwing away the

WuatT Do AcTorRs WANT?

Equally important, the actors must have confidence that you

Then, your understanding must be communicated: they need

Last but best, they want to be pushed, to grow and to learn. A

Wuat Is IN THIS BOOK

Understanding the script and giving actors playable direction and

For directors with extensive technical background, setting aside

Knowing when to say "Print" is something I don't think you can