HOLLYWOOD ACTOR PREP by Dana Kaminski

During Gabourey Sidibe’s Audition, The Acting Portion Was Utterly Convincing

She was Precious. Director Lee Daniels liked her audition, very much.

Then, she did something that surprised the heck outa him.”Hark”,  he said…”She speaketh.’  [Not really...]

Lee Daniels: After The Acting Part Of The Audition Was Over…

He and she started talking. And, then Gabby Sidibe, who hadn’t had an acting job,  or acting class, for that matter, ever…

Spoke completely differently than the way she spoke during her acting audition, for the lead role of Precious.

Yes, Daniels did say that…that when she started speaking normally, he knew she was an actor.  That is what set her apart from the 400+ other potential Precious-es. Gabourney Sidibe, Bedford-Stuyvesant-born, candidate-number-too-high-anymore-to-count-for-the-director, and actress-who-was-never-an-actress and who-really-didn’t-want-to-go-to-the-audition-so-much; spoke almost like what he described as ‘Valley Girl’, when she was just being Gabby.  Yet, as Precious, she spoke differently, and as believably, as if Precious was actually her true self.

That’s acting.

Which Is What You Will See In The Film, When You Go To See  ’Precious’.

I guess that’s gonna be a big problem for Gabby. Her portrayal is so right-on; and reasonably, invisibly understated. Her acting is so deep, so pure, so real, he felt that she was a veritably castable Precious, just like the other 400+ candidates in his file drawer, as Lee Daniels explained. But, Gabby Sidibe got the job, because when she was done trying out for Precious, when she wasn’t being Precious, she was being Gabby. And Gabby was a psychology major enroute to getting a degree. She’s a well-educated, verbally expressive, differently cadenced, grown woman.

Not an abused girl, not a withholding girl, not an invisible-type personality. Gabourey Sidibe is an articulate, actualized, accomplished individual.

She is so confident, so actualized, and entrusted the director so deeply, that her performance is so withheld, quiet, and accurately understated; it’s gonna whiz right over most people’s heads. It’s so real, and so tear-wrenchingly silent, understated. Precious is buried; a child whose real-self never saw the light of day.

If you read the psychology, you know then, that that is how abuse, especially sexual abuse, is survived. Detachment.

Precious is detached from the rest of the world, by girth, by non-affect, by laconic invisibility.

My best,

;~Dana

Actor Gabourey "Gabby" Sidibe

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“The Dark Knight” was extremely artistic; and, at the same time, major blockbuster stuff.

The acting, especially Heath Ledger as The Joker, got a lot of attention…and rightfully so.

But since, lately, I have been blogging about actors’ directors…I wanted to post something about an actors’ director whose film has been, currently, in our consciousness.

Director Christopher Nolan

Christopher Nolan directed the “The Dark Knight”.

Great story; break-the-mold acting; subtext, beneath every bit…

I don’t want to get into Chris Nolan’s various talents and abilities, mostly, because I would have to go on for far too long. Let this bit suffice, if I may…

Talent works like this.  It’s div-vyed out in degrees…Some people have talent that is so outstanding, it carries them through all the rest. Other people have less talent, but have strong determination, acquired skills, and/or discipline, professional attitude…(you get the idea)…

It’s an unusual occurrence, for a director to receive notice, for even one remarkable, obvious talent. (That is, of the many areas, that are under a director’s aegis.)   Many directors get successful, even famous, for one notable, outstanding ability.  We regard that as strength enough; as, indeed, it is. 

Directors manage the other directorial tasks, adequately; or delegate to their crew, to the individual talents and wisdom of each of them. Often, there is one or more people working under the director, who actually make the director look good. Sometimes, a director will only use,  for example,  a specific cinematographer, and even defer to that person for everything in their specific area of expertise and artistry.

A Director’s Wisdom

That’s part of the wisdom, that a successful director, needs.  And, wisdom is an imperative trait, in order to be a great director…Wisdom: to choose actors and crew; and the wisdom to delegate while the filming is going on, to them. And wisdom to know when to take the lead.  Wisdom, to be at the helm, no matter what, always, definitively, running the show.

There are the very rare ones, who can do it all, very well.  And more. This director’s talents appear strong in more than a few areas… He’s an artistic, creative visionary;  and manages to manifest it, in his finished pieces.  Awe-inpiring… 

And, may I point this out this tiny little paradox?? …He directs Hollywood Blockbusters. 

When I saw “The Dark Knight”, I knew that this film was something unusual..There were so many aspects of the film, that were far and above the  ”great” that we had become used to.   So numerous, that they nearly cancelled each other out, in terms of memorability!   ”The Dark Knight” was so “high-level” in artistically, technically; it made audiences everywhere, forget that our accustomed standard is so much lower..in traditional Hollywood fare. 

Frankly, I don’t know how Chris Nolan is able to, consummately, handle all the aspects of directing, so masterfully, so artistically, — to that kind of completion.

Chris Nolan, Aaron Eckhart

A Focus On Acting

Happy, am I, that Hollywood Actor Prep is about acting…Because, just a specific analysis on the acting, alone, in ”The Dark Knight”; would take up far too much of my blog space…

The Los Angeles Times, recently ran a three-part interview with Chris Nolan. The interviewer is Geoff Boucher, who is an online blogger for the Times. I am putting excerpts of it, in this post.

I am pleased to offer you these Nolan quotes… Because he takes us inside his process; and how, with the actors, he collaborated…

He tells how the scene was planned and how much work went in before filming.  How, precisely they got to that final scene…how the director and and the actors worked, specifically for this dramatic, culminating scene, in the “interrogation room”. 

It’s rich, and clear, the unique sensibility of a director-artist….There’s good insight into the kind of thinking, respect, and interaction,  which resulted in the  level of acting that wound up on that film.

Clearly, it was no accident, or chance. It’s good to see inside, and to have some affirmation…that there are actors’ directors around, really great ones.  The type that have their mind, and a modality; on the kind of things that merge with an actor’s ability, to create a force of genius; and an arena for genius to flow.

Wanna know why else am I pleased to  focus on only-the-acting in that film? Because the acting-was-magnificent.

For me, that’s personal:

Gary Oldman

Acting excites me, and great acting excites me even more; breakthrough acting blows-my-mind. I am so passionate about this art form, and it’s importance; that when a “Big Hollywood Director” regards acting as art, and honors it, and makes sure it is in his film….then I am rejuvenated. (It makes my year.)

If you’ve never been on a major motion picture set, or watched the filming of a large cast and crew movie, I suggest you go to the link and look at the entire interview.  Nolan does discuss a lot, about the different parts of movie-making, as he relives the experiences on “The Dark Knight”…so you can get a good preview into what it will be like to work in such an environment, as an actor. 

If you are a film maker or director, especially, I recommend it, for you. Here’s a link to the entire Chris Nolan interview, …Full of overview and detailed descriptions, you can get a fine glimpse into the different areas of film making, that a director can use, to shape a movie thematically. Chris Nolan ticks through them, in this interview, as if every director used a lighting as a paintbrush; or a considered a “quality” of a room (and let it make a mood); or cherish an actor going in-and-out-of-focus, in the camera lens, as a tool to relate some of the underlying theme.

Christian Bale + Heath Ledger

Interview excerpt from LA Times:

I asked the London native to pick one scene in the film that he would circle as the essential moment in the movie, either in its service to the overall story or the film’s texture. He answered quickly.

Nolan: To be honest, it’s pretty easy for me. The scene that is so important and so central to me is the interrogation scene between Batman and the Joker in the film. When we were writing the script, that was always one of the central set pieces that we wanted to crack.

GB: At what point in the production schedule did you shoot it?

Nolan: On the set, we shot it fairly early on. It was actually one of the first things that Heath had to do as the Joker. He told me he was actually pretty excited to tear off a big chunk early on, really get one of the Joker’s key scenes up in the first three weeks of a seven-month shoot. He and I both liked the idea of just diving in, as did Christian [Bale, who portrayed Batman]. We had rehearsed the scene a tiny bit. We had just ripped through it a couple of times in pre-production just to get some slight feel of how it was going to work. Neither of them wanted to go too far with it in rehearsal. They had to rehearse some of the fight choreography, but even with that, we tried to keep it loose and improvisational. They wanted to save it all. We were all pretty excited to get on with a big chunk of dialogue and this big intense scene between these two iconic characters. It was quite bizarre to see Batman across the table across from the Joker [laughs]. I’m glad you asked this. You know, I could actually talk about this scene for hours.

We had a lot of time to shoot it too, because it was so early on. Quite often, as you get behind on other things and you run toward the end of the shoot, things can get very squeezed. But you tend to schedule the first few weeks very generously to give the crew and the actors and myself time to find our feet and find our pace. So we had a couple of days to do it.

GB: Can you give me a snapshot memory from those days shooting the scene?

Nolan: … We wanted to be very edgy, very brutal. We wanted it to be the point at which Batman is truly tested by the Joker and you see that the Joker is truly capable of getting under everybody’s skin. I’m realizing this now about that scene — I haven’t thought this through before — the synthesis of all the different elements that I’m most interested in within filmmaking all come in that scene.

GB: There’s remarkable physicality of the actors in that scene. They are such different presences in the room: Christian is all dark mass and bottled fury and Heath has this spindly weirdness. … 

Nolan: Yes, and I think you start to see it even at the beginning of the scene where everything is in closer. There are tight close-ups with just a little drift to the camera. We start in a very controlled way, but even within that frame, the way Heath is bobbing in and out —and he’s actually bobbing in and out of the focal plane because, you know, it’s very hard to follow someone whose leaning toward camera the whole time. It actually really adds something. We’re continually trying to catch him with the focus. You really see his movement back and forth. That way, even in a tight frame, you have this sense of strangeness. On the other hand, you have Batman sitting there just very, very controlled, restrained as you say. Then there’s a point where it spills over into real physicality and he drags the Joker across the table. We go handheld at that point and shot the rest of the scene with handheld to be very spontaneous in its movement. They had rehearsed the stunts and the fight stuff very specifically, but we really let the actors work within that. I had never seen anybody sell a punch the way Heath was able to with Christian. I got the violence I wanted. What I felt was really important creatively for the scene was that we show Batman going too far. We show him effectively torturing someone for information because it’s become personal.

Christian and I had talked a lot on “Batman Begins” about finding a moment in that film where you actually worry that Batman will go too far. A moment where his rage might spill over and he would break his rules. We never found that moment. It just wasn’t there in that story. There was a lot of strength and aggression in the way he played the part, but I don’t think the story provided that element of losing control. What the Joker provides in the second film is the fact that his entire motivation is to push people’s buttons and find their rules set and it turn it on itself. And Batman of course places such importance on his rules, his morals. It’s what distinguishes him, in his mind, from a common vigilante. The Joker is able to twist him around and make him question his own approach and his own actions.

GB:  the first film, the Batman’s most memorable moments of intense aggression feel more like theater — he’s doing it in a calculated show to scare people. The first movie seems to be about Batman’s fear; the second one is about his rage.

Nolan: Exactly. That’s why we never found that moment of danger, the one we had talked about, where there’s this danger that Batman will just lose it and go too far. That rage is very much a central part of the story in ‘The Dark Knight,’ and that interrogation scene is the fulcrum on which the whole movie turns. I think Batman finds out — and Bruce Wayne finds out — a lot about himself in that scene. I was just delighted to get to see Christian show that rage. And it’s wonderfully balanced with Gary’s control as well. Even though everyone remembers the scene as being the Joker and Batman, Gordon played a very important part to setting it up and allowing this interrogation to happen. And then as he is watching from the sideline, he sees the exact point where this is going too far. He knows Batman well enough to observe this, to recognize it. He tries to get in, but Batman has locked the door. And what we get to lead to, by the end of the scene, when he’s just pounding on the Joker, I think Heath managed to find the exact essence of the threat of the Joker and who he is: He’s being pounded in the face and he’s laughing and loving it. There’s nothing you can do. As he tells Batman, “You have nothing to do with all of your strength.” There’s this sort of impotence of the strong and the armored and the very muscular Batman; he’s very powerful, but there’s no useful way for this power to be exercised in this scene. He has to confront that.

Originally, at the end of that scene, once the Joker reveals his information, Christian dropped him and then, almost as an afterthought, he kicked him in the head as he walked out of the room. We wound up removing that bit. It seemed a little too petulant for Batman in a way. And really, more than that, what it was is that I liked how Christian played it: When he drops the Joker, he has realized the futility of what he’s done. You see it in his eyes. How do you fight someone who thrives on conflict? It’s a very loose end to be left with.

 

Enjoy your weekend…

;-Dana