"Method" Directing / Getting an Actor's Performance By Real-Life Constraints

[The_Other_Waldo_Pepper]

@Sage_Rat

I can think of three cases where it might be a good idea:

1. The actor is an idiot and can’t be trusted to interpret how a real human should act.
2. The actor isn’t a very good actor and will broadcast everything, every time he’s on screen.
3. The actor’s vision of how the scene should play out differs from the director’s, and he refuses to play it any other way than his own.

Even if you trust that the actors can act, disregarding all information. If you give them that information, suddenly you’re hostage to their directorial abilities.

Heh. I only just stumbled across this, in IMDB’s trivia for “The Last of Sheila”: to get the right performance out of Raquel Welch, she was told that – just like Dyan Cannon is playing a Sue Mengers type, and James Coburn is playing an Orson Welles type, and Richard Benjamin is playing an Anthony Perkins type – her character was written as a thinly-veiled Ann-Margret type. So make with the unflattering portrayal and ham it up, lady! Just get out there and do an insulting riff on Ann-Margret!

Yeah, the character was based on Raquel Welch.

[BigT]

I think it makes sense to not let other people know who the killer is. But the killer probably should know.

I think that idea that it’s okay if the character also wouldn’t know is a good dividing line. That also works for the “surprise” aspect.

[Oakminster]

Meh. For me, it’s infinitely easier to just…act. I can understand doing some research…this is how one holds a scalpel, or performs some other action defined in the script…but otherwise, I don’t need to go to medical school to play a doctor. I don’t care for the various forms of warm up exercises some performers use, either. I need a little bit of alone time to get ready to perform, but that’s my process. I don’t begrudge other actors their process.

[Evan_Drake]

All this crap just seems tiresome and childish, part of a trivial attitude to life. Hitchcock must have been an odious little boy.
Plus his films are over-rated.

[Guest-starring_Id]

@eunoia

Sorta meta but Richard Rush’s The Stunt Man http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0081568/ has Peter O’Toole brilliantly portraying such a director.

An excellent example from that film of directorial subterfuge comes at 1:30:

Mephistophelian director played by Peter O'Toole (who'd'a thunk?) pep talks actor Barbara Hershey into showing shame for next scene, and just before the cameras roll, he tells her in a sort of "a little aside" fashion that unfortunately one of the rushes that her parents saw had a nude scene with her in it, and then he reiterates, with a whisper, *shame*, and walks away, saying action.

Yeah I’d call that a douchey play, and a breach of any trust that those characters may have established.