Discussion On Professional Acting, And Actor Artistry…And Matt Damon
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.
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Best,
:~Dana
