I have known film and TV actors, and studio musicians, who did not see or hear the finished products they worked on, and who didn’t care. Play the scene or score; get paid; go on to the next job. William Conrad famously refused to memorize throwaway CANNON scripts, merely reading lines from a prompter. I can’t imagine him reviewing his episodes.
I think John Carradine and Klaus Kinski are the exemplars of screen actors taking any role, no matter how bad.
The Adventures of Pete & Pete.
Notice that Eric Roberts has 558 acting credits, an Oscar nomination, and 3 Golden Globe nominations. By a lot of measures, he’s been unbelievably successful, crap or not.
Actually, if they’re not a major character, they may not know how it turns out. I’m not sure if all actors are necessarily present at table reads, and sometimes actors are only sent scripts for the scenes they’re in. They may have done dozens of takes of their scenes, even with different outcomes, and won’t know which, if any, made it into the final cut. Personally, I’d be curious not merely about my own performance, but also the performances of my colleagues and friends among the cast.
But I think it’s not merely surprising but incredibly lazy for an actor to agree to do commentary on an episode, and then not bother to at least do a run-through beforehand to plan what they are going to say, rather than doing it ad hoc.
I enjoy watching the commentaries on TV shows and movies on DVDs. However, the worst commentary is usually by actors, who may have no idea what’s going on in the rest of the plot besides the scenes they’re in. The best commentary is usually by the writers, directors, and producers who have an overview of what the show is all about.
One of the worst commentaries I’ve seen was by Drea de Matteo, Adrianna on The Sopranos. She gave the sole commentary on a crucial episode concerning her character, and it was incredibly shallow (which I suppose is apt for her character). (Other bad ones were by the three child actors on Game of Thrones, Sophie Tucker, Maisie Williams, and Isaac Hempstead Wright. It was basically a lot of middle-school giggling about what other actors they thought were cute, with almost no reference to what was going on in the plot.) The best commentaries I’ve seen were on Breaking Bad, which often included Vince Gilligan and a half dozen others, including the main actors, producers, etc.)
I watched FIGHT CLUB with actor commentary, and figured the guy who could get by on movie-star good looks would prove less interesting than the noted perfectionist who has to work harder at being a method actor, because, hey, it’s not like he’s recording this in between a couple of his Sexiest Man Alive wins, y’know?
As I recall, I was wrong: Brad Pitt had plenty of interesting things to say about the movie; but Edward Norton, not really, no.
Not really, because they don’t have any say in the matter. It’s none of their business, and they know that.
Do you call back the delivery driver to get his opinion on how you arranged the furniture he brought to your house?
I saw the kids in the show watch video of older shows. It was mostly “I can’t believe I looked so nerdy.” It’s done, there is nothing you can do about it, and you have moved on to worrying about the next role. Not to mention the experience of shooting out of sequence makes watching the finished product nothing like acting in it.
The only actor commentary I’ve heard was by Keir Dullea and Gary Lockwood for 2001. Awful. The commentary was edited to make it sound like they were together but it was clear they weren’t, and though they’d seen the movie they had no idea of what Kubrick was doing, and it showed. So in my limited experience I agree with you about actors. You’d at best get what was going on around the set, because actors spend a lot more time in the dressing room than on stage.
However, the commentary by Zucker and Abraham for Airplane was almost as bad. They did talk about casting, but most of it made you feel like an idiot for laughing at the jokes which they seemed to consider uniformly awful.
The best commentary I’ve heard is for older movies and is done by film historians and critics, who give the context and tell you lots of interesting background.
That was exactly the experience the kids had in doing the shoot. The kids no doubt played together, did their homework, and sat in the dressing room waiting for the production crew to get ready (and learning their lines, which was no problem since they were professionals.) Then they’d go on set, read the lines a couple of times, then back to their dressing rooms for some more hours of waiting. Why would they care about the plot? Their job was to read their lines, not worry about the big picture.
She gets way too much shit for that, unless they are a main character some scenes could be in any damn movie. The kid who played young Antman in Endgame also had no idea what movie they had put him in, he said he watched infinity war and antman and the wasp and when he never showed up he thought he’d been cut completely.
When we filmed the pilot for my reality show I thought the plot of the show was one thing. When I saw the trailer I was surprised how much I was in it. Once the episode aired I was cut down to 10 min of the show and the plot had little to do with what I thought the plot was while filming.
During season 1 I watched every episode and live tweeted them and again it was interesting to see how much the plot we filmed had to do or not with the aired episode. I think with reality tv instead of scripted its easier to watch the episodes, I know our star watched every episode if for no other reason then to follow what the show was doing with him.
I think it’s unfair to actors to judge all of them by the standard of how clueless Gwyneth Paltrow is.
I remember someone on a talk show ( i wanna say Merv griffin)asked a retired bit player from the studio era on how many movies he was in and he said about 100 or so then he said “now, how many you’ve seen me in? about 25” he said about 80 percent of his career was on the cutting room floor
But since he was on a 5-year contract he just went to the days/weeks assignment and did what they told him … which was mostly background stuff that couldn’t be done with an extra …
Ignorance Fought.
I admit it: the industry had me… hook, line, and sinker. I honestly thought that there was an attendance optional final screening for the cast that was usually pretty raucous.
I even fell for the detail that they’d supposedly shout lines back to the screen MST3000 style with each person trying to be funnier than the last and with popcorn being thrown about.
That’s particularly true of the Marvel movies, which in the last couple years have been blending together into one big ongoing story. The Pepper Potts scenes that Paltrow was in could plausibly have ended up in almost any of those films and wouldn’t have felt out of place.
I constantly have to remind myself that Civil War is technically a “Captain America” movie. It feels like it should be an “Avengers” movie, what with most of the Avengers being there and all. Toward the end of “Phase 3,” it didn’t seem to matter that much whose name was in the title.