In ITV’s “Broadchurch,” Series 1, the story revolves around the discovery of a dead child and the subsequent murder investigation. The actors were not told the identity of the murder as the show progressed; the performer who was the killer learned of that fact only before the last three episodes were filmed. The intent was to get a genuine feeling out of the performances.
Alfred Hitchcock reportedly told Joan Fontaine that the rest of the cast of “Rebecca,” disliked her… not true, but he wanted the actress’ film performance to accentuate the isolation and discomfort that The Second Mrs. Dewinter felt.
In Patty Duke’s autobiography, she discusses a similar tactic used by “Valley of the Dolls” director Mark Robson with her co-star Sharon Tate, and commented negatively on the practice, saying something like, “For heaven’s sake – she’s an actress. If you want a performance out of her, tell her what you want; don’t trick her.”
That comment seems like the right answer to me. I’m no actor, though.
Supposedly the lead actors in Saving Private Ryan were subjected to boot camp style training over a course of six days, difficult enough so that many of them wanted to quit. Matt Damon was not forced to do this in order to generate resentment towards his character from the other actors.
Oh, and John Malkovich spent nearly fifty years being John Malkovich in preparation for his role in Being John Malkovich. You’ve got to admire his dedication.
The Broadchurch example is an instance of it being done well. Some reactions are difficult to produce on demand and therefore might benefit from this trope.
When done for the sake of “realism” it basically shows that neither the Director nor the cast are up to the task of making a believable performance.
A good actor can do well with it, in* How I Met your Mother*, Jason Segal was not told that Marshall’s father had died until the shot the scene, and the result was possibly the best scene of the show.
All the near death experiences they made Shia LeBeouf go through in* Transformers* did sweet fuck all to improve his performance.
It worked nicely in The Usual Suspects. Gabriel Byrne thought his character would be revealed to be Kaiser Sose.
Hitchcock has become notorious for messing with his actors. In* Rebecca*, he knew Lawrence Olivier was whispering obscenities in Joan Fontaine’s ear during the love scenes. (Olivier had wanted his wife Vivian Leigh to play the role.). Hitchcock didn’t try to stop it; he liked the was Fontaine reacted.
Supposedly no one knew what the ending of * Casablanca* would be until the end of filming. Ingrid Bergman said she wasn’t sure how she should play it. That was more a function of the writers than the director, though.
The cast of MASH* was not given the final page of the script of McLean Stevenson’s last episode (when Radar announces that Henry Blake had been killed) until after the rest of the episode had been filmed. Supposedly, this was done partly to elicit more genuine reactions, but I think mostly to keep the actors from injecting any sense of foreboding or melancholy into the earlier scenes.
TVTropes has a page devoted to this sort of thing called Enforced Method Acting. One of the ones on the “Film” page notes that Ed Harris was actually drowning on the set of The Abyss because James Cameron kept the camera rolling after he’d run out of oxygen in a tank scene to capture his panic - and when he got out of there, Harris went over to Cameron and punched him.
One that’s not listed there: DOUBT, where Philip Seymour Hoffman and Meryl Streep earned Oscar nominations as, well, the priest accused of child molestation and the nun accusing him, respectively.
As per the title, Streep’s character believes he’s guilty but doesn’t technically have any first-hand knowledge – and so they got her to portray 99.9% certainty by just not telling her whether he was innocent. By contrast, Hoffman’s character would’ve known damn well whether he actually molested that kid, and so got told what she didn’t: whether he’s truly protesting his innocence, or is guilty as sin and doing a 99.9% effective job of lying his ass off while secretly knowing the truth.
I think it’s one thing to withhold things like the end of scene or reveal certain information just before the cameras start rolling. I think it’s something else entirely to mislead an actor about how other cast members think about them or allow other actors to make an actor feel bad as themself and not their character. And I agree with Patty Duke, we use actors and not automatons because we expect the actor to be able to bring their skill and knowledge to the performance. Save the tricks for making horses look like they can talk and respect the actor enough to let them use their experience to create the performance.
So many thoughts. When I was younger and first starting to direct I found stories like this to be inspirational. As I got older, got trained, and met competent actors I realized that these directors were simply being cruel.
I may come back later and spew a half dozen paragraphs on the subject. But there is no good reason do to this stuff.
Didn’t Suicide Squad’s director do a bunch of mind-fucking stuff to get reactions, and supported Jared Leto being way-too-in-character as Joker, sending dead things to other actors, etc.?
Yeah, doesn’t seem good at all to this non-actor.
I heard one story on WTF with Marc Maron: for Broadcast News, director James L. Brooks was open to an ending that did have Holly Hunter connect with William Hurt’s newscaster. But he would only do it if it was improvised. He had Holly get into a cab at their airport, and William Hurt was supposed to get in the same cab, which would’ve been completely unexpected to Holly but Brooks trusted her ability to improvise.
When they were filming the scene, William Hurt was approaching the cab and someone said “Hi Bill!” and completely ruined the moment. Brooks couldn’t even process what happened - he was sad and angry and just checked out, but ultimately thinks the ending that they went with, where no one gets anyone, was true to the script.
When they filmed the chestburster scene in the original Alien, the cast new, generally, what was going to happen. But they didn’t tell them that they’d rigged it with high-pressure hoses filled with blood, and packed John Hurt’s prosthetic chest cavity with raw meat from a butchers. When the alien pops out and sprays blood in everyone’s face, those reactions are pretty genuine. Here’s some cast recollections of the scene.
Possibly related anecdote - in the movie Deliverance, there is a scene where Burt Reynolds’ character goes over a waterfall. They tried the shot with a dummy that looked like Burt Reynolds. The director said, “No - that looked like a dummy going over a waterfall.” So they reshot the scene, and Burt Reynolds actually went over the waterfall himself, and damn neared drowned. They dragged Reynolds out eventually, Burt snorted out a half gallon of water, and asked the director, “So, how did that look?”
Said the director, “Like a dummy going over a waterfall.”
I don’t remember the movie, but James Arness says that John Ford once staged a scene in which an archer dressed as an Indian fired an arrow just inches over Arness’ head- Arness looked terrified because he really WAS.
Now, not everybody believes Burt Reynolds, but in his autobiography, he claimed that Bill McKinney was a bit of a nut, a guy who took Method acting very, very seriously. He said McKinney ran around the woods naked hours before filming the big rape scene in Deliverance.
IF Reynolds is to be believed, McKinney went WAY over the top in his scenes with Ned Beatty, and acted genuinely insane. Reynolds finally raced in and broke them up, after which Beatty was furious.
Reynolds claims director John Boorman had egged on McKinney to do so, thinking it wouild make the scene more harrowing.
They do it with kids a lot. One I remember was from To Kill a Mockingbird - they didn’t tell the young actress (playing Scout) that a gunshot was about to ring out, so her shock would be genuine. (I forget the context.) They also did it with the reveal of Wonka’s Chocolate Room to all the kids (and parents) - they didn’t show it to them beforehand, then just threw the doors open and filmed the reactions.
When they filmed Hans Gruber falling off the top of the building in Die Hard, a stunt man was holding him and said he would let go on the count of three. He let go on two.
In the remake of Cape Fear, during the scene where Juliette Lewis meets DeNiro alone pretending to be an art teacher, she did not know that DeNiro was going to move in and kiss her, so her reaction is genuine.
Also, in Elf, John Favreau had the jack-in-the-box rigged so that Will Ferrell never knew when exactly it was going to go off, so every reaction was a surprise.