HOLLYWOOD ACTOR PREP by Dana Kaminski

Unusual Week Here At Hollywood Actor Prep

I am doing the AFI Film Fest; am prepping Oscar Prep to kick in again, this year, just after that. I am wrangling interviews. Doing my mothering thing. Coaching some actors. Me, busy? Yuh.

I am going to do shake things up this week by doing it a little differently here.

I Discovered A New York Times Article That Was So Fertile With High Level Acting Stuff

Primarily because the writer Dennis Lim, focused on Matt Damon’s artistic sensibility, and integrity as an actor. How that plays out in terms of his professional career, as a well-known actor.

That’s a scanty description.  This article, ‘Eternal Role, Eternal A-List Character Actor’,  has subtly woven key phrases, and topics, that are an actor’s dream.  That is, if you are a certain type of actor;  the passionate, pontificating kind, and you could discuss all night long the finer points of acting craft, or role choices, etc.  Like I can. Perhaps you are also that kind, since you are here reading this… Hm?

I am in a hurry. (I mention that before?)

So this is what I am going to do, and it seems like it could be fun. If you find it activates your acting gland, or even your artistic discussion gland, movie appreciation gland, friend-0f-Dana gland, whatever: Please participate this week, because I am going to spend some time (when I can arrange some) into discussions on some of the points in this article, that concern actors. Especially because so many of these exemplify the standards and principles of Hollywood Actor Prep.  Priority, foundation, of quality acting; of solid professional acting careers.

I’m gonna start by not outlining or pointing out what the topics are. I’ve already made it easy for you, and also for all those dinky strange “acting coaches” in Podunk or wherever with qualifications of bologna, who write ‘E-zines’ and charge for their workshops. I’m certain by now, they have have more money than me, by rephrasing and regurgitating my posts as their own. (Remember my post last year about being careful about acting hoaxes and frauds?  Soonafter, frauds all over the net, posted articles to watch out for frauds. Ezines, and all. Did they charge you for that, by the way? I want to demand a commission.)

Speaking of reprinting (ahem), I am reprinting, word for word, portions of this New York Times article. By Dennis Lim. Who is a writer I admire, by the way; as is Kris Tapley, whose column this morning actually led me to this article, ‘Eternal Role A-List Character Actor’.

Here’s are the bits. Your first mission, should you choose to accept it, is to figure out the key phrase which we will be discussing a little, or the hell-out-of, in the coming week. I only pulled out bits the parts of the article with these phrases,  so it should be easy enough to copy into a hundred Ezines. For my authentic readership, I’m inviting you to comment below, either what the key acting phrases are, or which ones you think are the most valuable, or pertinent…You can also simply read it over and just plant some mind-seeds, so that when we get into it, you’ll be jumping full and hearty into a discussion.

That’s all I’m going to say for now. Except…Shall we begin?

(From Dennis Lim, The New York Times, on the actor, Matt Damon)

Details matter to Mr. Damon, who has put together his quietly impressive résumé with a curatorial eye, working his way to the top of the Hollywood heap while avoiding the traps of a typical A-list career. “The leading-man stuff doesn’t come easily to me,” he said. “I’ve always felt like a character actor.”

…

But the increasing variety of Mr. Damon’s roles and the almost perversely self-effacing ease with which he sinks into them suggest the thoughtful, restless sensibility of an actor who, as his frequent collaborator Steven Soderbergh put it, “is thinking about expanding himself as opposed to presenting himself as a movie star.”

In Mr. Soderbergh’s acerbic character study “The Informant!” (now in theaters), Mr. Damon transforms himself into a doughy, delusional executive who exposes an agribusiness price-fixing scheme. In Clint Eastwood’s “Invictus” (opening on Dec. 11), he’s a rugby captain entrusted by Nelson Mandela with bringing socially unifying sporting glory to post-apartheid South Africa. And he reteams with Paul Greengrass, who directed him in “The Bourne Supremacy” and “The Bourne Ultimatum,” for “Green Zone” (scheduled for a March release), in which he plays a chief warrant officer on a futile hunt for weapons of mass destruction in newly occupied Iraq.

“Matt has a lot of repeat business,” Mr. Soderbergh said. “That’s always a good sign. It’s the real indication of how people feel, if they want to have that experience again.” Mr. Damon has made two films with Gus Van Sant, three with Mr. Greengrass, five with Mr. Soderbergh (including all three “Ocean’s” movies). He has also worked with Steven Spielberg, Martin Scorsese, Francis Ford Coppola, Terry Gilliam and Anthony Minghella.

“I’ve learned a lot just by standing next to these great directors and watching them,” Mr. Damon said. He shared an Oscar for the screenplay of “Good Will Hunting” and wants to direct some day. (Mr. Affleck has already made the leap, to some acclaim, with “Gone Baby Gone” in 2007.) Until he finds the right project, he’s happy to keep “arming myself with information,” he said. “Clint didn’t start until he was 39, and he’s had 40 great years.”

His watchful acting style comes partly from adopting the mind-set of a student on a film set. “He’s interested in the totality of the film,” Mr. Soderbergh said, adding that this was not necessarily a common perspective for an actor. The few times he required direction in “The Informant!,” Mr. Soderbergh noted, it was because the obliviousness of his character conflicted so starkly with his basic approach: “Matt has such a well-developed understanding of the context of a film, but he was playing someone who’s never aware of context.”

The hallmark of Mr. Damon’s screen presence is his intelligent physicality, his ability to convey plot points and character psychology through subtle, precise shifts in facial expressions and body language, whether playing the tightly coiled Jason Bourne or the schlumpy Mark Whitacre in “The Informant!”

…

But what Mr. Damon does in the Bourne movies is trickier than just making an intense cardio workout look good. “It’s the way he frames his physical choices as an actor,” Mr. Greengrass said. “It’s not just: oh, they’re after me, I’ve got to run; it’s about finding in what he does an impulsion to move. There’s an imminence about his acting.”

He singled out the foot chase through Berlin midway through “The Bourne Supremacy” that ends with Bourne jumping on a train. “The entire character hinged on that one dialogue-less moment,” Mr. Greengrass said, in which Mr. Damon “had to convey three different ideas: first, he’s evaded his pursuers; second, he feels a gnawing self-disgust because he’s discovered he’s a killer; and third, there is a huge implicit sense that he’s got a plan.”

For “The Informant!,” a very different kind of physical performance, he gained 30 pounds and had his face puffed up with prosthetics. The disguise obscures “the boundaries of the character,” Mr. Damon said. “It was all a metaphor for this guy being kind of undefined.”

That more or less sums up the quintessential Matt Damon role: the tabula rasa hero. It’s hard to think of another contemporary star who has played so many unknowable ciphers. Whitacre’s babbling stream of consciousness can be heard throughout “The Informant!,” but he proves to be an obscurely motivated protagonist and a hopelessly unreliable narrator. The amnesiac superspy Jason Bourne is an existential puzzle, not least to himself. Tom Ripley, of “The Talented Mr. Ripley” (1999), is an opaque shape-shifter, the antihero as identity thief.

For Mr. Damon, the appeal of embodying these ambiguous characters is in peeling back their inscrutable facades. “As an actor you have to make decisions about what their motivations are,” he said, “even if you don’t let on.”

Mr. Damon’s method, discreet to the point of invisibility, is premised on not letting on, not making it seem like work. “Even with a performance that big,” Mr. Soderbergh said, referring to Mr. Damon’s turn in “The Informant!,” “you never catch him acting.”

Morgan Freeman, who plays Mr. Mandela in “Invictus,” said that Mr. Damon is, “like myself, a journeyman,” meaning it as a compliment. “He always gets the job done,” Mr. Freeman said. “There’s no strain in his work.”

But understatement is often overlooked, as Mr. Damon is well aware. “There’s a style of acting that tends to get rewarded,” Mr. Damon said. After a pause, he added, “It’s not what I do.” (His one acting Oscar nomination was for “Good Will Hunting.”)

…

Mr. Damon’s existence as a public figure has coincided with the rise of warp-speed Internet-age celebrity culture. “People who thought they could control their image are from a different era,” he said. His overnight success made him a tempting target for a while, and he was mocked in everything from the Off Broadway spoof “Matt & Ben” to “Team America: World Police,” the animated satire in which the Matt Damon puppet is capable of uttering only his own name.

He acknowledged that he occupies an enviable position in the Hollywood firmament. Of the actors on “the shortlist who can get movies greenlit,” he said, “I probably have to deal with the least amount of nonsense around celebrity.”

…

His oddly low-key brand of stardom allows Mr. Damon, craftsmanlike actor that he is, simply to get on with the job. He is both ambitious enough to mention, more than once, “my list,” an inventory of filmmakers he still wants to work with, and modest enough to note that the list has already exceeded his wildest expectations.

Details matter to Mr. Damon, who has put together his quietly impressive résumé with a curatorial eye, working his way to the top of the Hollywood heap while avoiding the traps of a typical A-list career. “The leading-man stuff doesn’t come easily to me,” he said. “I’ve always felt like a character actor.”

…

But the increasing variety of Mr. Damon’s roles and the almost perversely self-effacing ease with which he sinks into them suggest the thoughtful, restless sensibility of an actor who, as his frequent collaborator Steven Soderbergh put it, “is thinking about expanding himself as opposed to presenting himself as a movie star.”

In Mr. Soderbergh’s acerbic character study “The Informant!” (now in theaters), Mr. Damon transforms himself into a doughy, delusional executive who exposes an agribusiness price-fixing scheme. In Clint Eastwood’s “Invictus” (opening on Dec. 11), he’s a rugby captain entrusted by Nelson Mandela with bringing socially unifying sporting glory to post-apartheid South Africa. And he reteams with Paul Greengrass, who directed him in “The Bourne Supremacy” and “The Bourne Ultimatum,” for “Green Zone” (scheduled for a March release), in which he plays a chief warrant officer on a futile hunt for weapons of mass destruction in newly occupied Iraq.

“Matt has a lot of repeat business,” Mr. Soderbergh said. “That’s always a good sign. It’s the real indication of how people feel, if they want to have that experience again.” Mr. Damon has made two films with Gus Van Sant, three with Mr. Greengrass, five with Mr. Soderbergh (including all three “Ocean’s” movies). He has also worked with Steven Spielberg, Martin Scorsese, Francis Ford Coppola, Terry Gilliam and Anthony Minghella.

“I’ve learned a lot just by standing next to these great directors and watching them,” Mr. Damon said. He shared an Oscar for the screenplay of “Good Will Hunting” and wants to direct some day. (Mr. Affleck has already made the leap, to some acclaim, with “Gone Baby Gone” in 2007.) Until he finds the right project, he’s happy to keep “arming myself with information,” he said. “Clint didn’t start until he was 39, and he’s had 40 great years.”

His watchful acting style comes partly from adopting the mind-set of a student on a film set. “He’s interested in the totality of the film,” Mr. Soderbergh said, adding that this was not necessarily a common perspective for an actor. The few times he required direction in “The Informant!,” Mr. Soderbergh noted, it was because the obliviousness of his character conflicted so starkly with his basic approach: “Matt has such a well-developed understanding of the context of a film, but he was playing someone who’s never aware of context.”

The hallmark of Mr. Damon’s screen presence is his intelligent physicality, his ability to convey plot points and character psychology through subtle, precise shifts in facial expressions and body language, whether playing the tightly coiled Jason Bourne or the schlumpy Mark Whitacre in “The Informant!”

…

But what Mr. Damon does in the Bourne movies is trickier than just making an intense cardio workout look good. “It’s the way he frames his physical choices as an actor,” Mr. Greengrass said. “It’s not just: oh, they’re after me, I’ve got to run; it’s about finding in what he does an impulsion to move. There’s an imminence about his acting.”

He singled out the foot chase through Berlin midway through “The Bourne Supremacy” that ends with Bourne jumping on a train. “The entire character hinged on that one dialogue-less moment,” Mr. Greengrass said, in which Mr. Damon “had to convey three different ideas: first, he’s evaded his pursuers; second, he feels a gnawing self-disgust because he’s discovered he’s a killer; and third, there is a huge implicit sense that he’s got a plan.”

For “The Informant!,” a very different kind of physical performance, he gained 30 pounds and had his face puffed up with prosthetics. The disguise obscures “the boundaries of the character,” Mr. Damon said. “It was all a metaphor for this guy being kind of undefined.”

That more or less sums up the quintessential Matt Damon role: the tabula rasa hero. It’s hard to think of another contemporary star who has played so many unknowable ciphers. Whitacre’s babbling stream of consciousness can be heard throughout “The Informant!,” but he proves to be an obscurely motivated protagonist and a hopelessly unreliable narrator. The amnesiac superspy Jason Bourne is an existential puzzle, not least to himself. Tom Ripley, of “The Talented Mr. Ripley” (1999), is an opaque shape-shifter, the antihero as identity thief.

For Mr. Damon, the appeal of embodying these ambiguous characters is in peeling back their inscrutable facades. “As an actor you have to make decisions about what their motivations are,” he said, “even if you don’t let on.”

Mr. Damon’s method, discreet to the point of invisibility, is premised on not letting on, not making it seem like work. “Even with a performance that big,” Mr. Soderbergh said, referring to Mr. Damon’s turn in “The Informant!,” “you never catch him acting.”

Morgan Freeman, who plays Mr. Mandela in “Invictus,” said that Mr. Damon is, “like myself, a journeyman,” meaning it as a compliment. “He always gets the job done,” Mr. Freeman said. “There’s no strain in his work.”

But understatement is often overlooked, as Mr. Damon is well aware. “There’s a style of acting that tends to get rewarded,” Mr. Damon said. After a pause, he added, “It’s not what I do.” (His one acting Oscar nomination was for “Good Will Hunting.”)

…

Mr. Damon’s existence as a public figure has coincided with the rise of warp-speed Internet-age celebrity culture. “People who thought they could control their image are from a different era”, he said. His overnight success made him a tempting target for a while, and he was mocked in everything from the Off Broadway spoof “Matt & Ben” to “Team America: World Police”, the animated satire in which the Matt Damon puppet is capable of uttering only his own name.

He acknowledged that he occupies an enviable position in the Hollywood firmament. Of the actors on “the shortlist who can get movies greenlit”, he said, “I probably have to deal with the least amount of nonsense around celebrity.”

…

His oddly low-key brand of stardom allows Mr. Damon, craftsmanlike actor that he is, simply to get on with the job. He is both ambitious enough to mention, more than once, “my list”, an inventory of filmmakers he still wants to work with, and modest enough to note that the list has already exceeded his wildest expectations.

Are you thinking of getting into a heated discussion about acting, with me? I  hope so.

Follow me on Twitter. ReTweet this if you already are on there. Post it on your Facebook too, if you would. Thanks.

Best,

:~Dana

The Acting Teacher, and The Governor, and Good or Bad Acting Choices

(This post is Part Two of a series.If you haven’t yet read:

Hollywood Actor Prep: The Real Acting Job Of An Actor Is NOT To Act , please click to do that first. It’s Part One.)

Have you heard of Howard Fine?  He’s got an acting school in Hollywood. I know very little about  him, other than his name. I think he has a decent reputation as an acting teacher, here, in Hollywood; although, the New York school on his resume was not considered to be very good, at all. Amongst the more serious actors.

But as I said, I don’t know that much about his acting classes and his teaching, here.  But, have you heard of Bobby Jindal? He is the Governor of Louisana, and he made a speech, recently, that caused a lot of public reaction. Because, it was a very public flop.

Howard Fine wrote about it, from an acting standpoint, in The Huffington Post.  It was quite impressive.  He discusses what made the speech come off so badly… and how come it was received so differently, by those that watched it, than it was obviously intended to. Accurately, he defines the difference between what makes good acting good, and bad acting (so obviously) bad.

When someone gives a public speech, and they do the same things that unskilled actors do, the effect is the same.  Or rather, the ineffectiveness is just as glaring.

I think this commentary, of Howard Fine’s, provides a great lesson for actors. More substantiation, of why acting technique is so important. 

I urge you to watch the video below the commentary first, then read the article. Then, watch the video again.  (I highlighted a lot, here…)

What Caused Bobby Jindal’s Speech to Be a Disaster?  

by Howard Fine

I would like to examine from my perspective as an acting coach, the reason Bobby Jindal’s speech did not work. I have heard a great many theories espoused and none of them actually addresses the root of what made him seem so inauthentic in his prepared remarks and why he comes off better in live interviews. It comes down to the difference between “How and Why.”

In life we have thoughts and feelings and then we find the words to express those thoughts and feelings. It is a straight line. In acting as in public speaking, we start with the words. What should the great actor and the great orator do? They should find the thoughts feelings that make them need to say these words. In short they should find The Why.

What is a common mistake? It is focusing on The How. The actor or orator in this case is thinking about How to make the speech effective. If you supply the Why, The How takes care of itself. What Jindal did is focus on How he wanted to come across. In acting I call this a General Attitudinal Choice. He thought of the effect he wanted to have on the audience. He wanted to come across as likable and friendly. He wanted the audience to think that he is a good guy, so he adopted a general demeanor of kind and empathetic. This is why he came off as condescending. No matter what he talked about the the pose was the same. He was trying to project his idea of a warm and friendly guy. Therefore he came off as patronizing.

Chances are that he didn’t write the speech. He needed to find a way of making the words come from him. In order to do this he would have had to contact sources within his own life experiences and opinions that are in agreement with what he was saying. His feelings and expressions needed to travel freely. Instead he locked himself into a false demeanor.

Obama is effective because he is in the moment. He is helped by the fact that he is a writer. Chances are that he wrote some of his address to the joint session of Congress. In any case, Obama connects his real feelings to what he is saying. He therefore comes across as the real deal.

Jindal is by far better in his live interviews. Some of the pundits have been saying that perhaps he was more nervous about delivering the Republican Response than he was in his interviews on Meet the Press and the Today show. His nerves had nothing to do with it. In a live interview he is speaking his own words, so they naturally connect to his feelings. He also doesn’t know what questions he will be asked and therefore cannot premeditate the shape of his answer. He has to listen and respond which forces him to be in the moment. That is why he is more believable in a direct exchange with a reporter. Some have also pointed out that he may have a hard time reading a teleprompter. That is also not the issue.

True emotions travel. This is reflected in body language and in the voice. Manufactured emotions remain static. If you look at Jindal’s eyes and listen to his voice in the prepared speech, you can sense the hollowness. His pitch did not vary. His expression barely changed. He tried to have variety in his manner but it was predetermined for emphasis and to give the impression of a real expression. He chose was and/or coached on where to pause and what words to stress. None of this happened organically and he therefore came across as insincere.

 

Best,

;-Dana

Please share Hollywood Actor Prep with your friends, by putting this post right on your Facebook, by using the “Share/Save” below. It’s just a click or two.

And, since I am “series” writing, now, on different topics, please insure you don’t miss any crucial acting stuff--and subscribe! Did you know that you can get Hollywood Actor Prep Posts, when they are updated, right to your email? Or to  your RSS feed, like Google Reader, etc.? That’s very easy to do, here, too.

When I know that I am reaching actors, and posting info that is critically valuable, then I get inspired to write more, give more….so on.  So please keep on sharing, and let’s get a real solid community going.  That’s my Twitter goal, too.  I tweet out every time I put a post up, so you may want to follow me on Twitter, if  you use it. My name on Twitter is __dana__ . I have over 1000 “followers” there.  Many of them are actors, or related fields.