Writing For Actors - part 1
January 21, 2008 by clive
Close to the end of the movie “Paris Texas” is a key scene where Harry Dean Stanton tells the story of how he ended up wandering in the desert; he tells this story to the ex-wife who he hasn’t seen since the night he tried to kill her. Now, what interests me about this scene, is for the entire three and a half minutes, as the story unfolds, the camera remains static on Natasha Kinski (the ex-wife). We’re not watching Harry Dean Stanton talk, we’re watching Natasha listen… at no point does the editor cut away to Harry’s moving delivery of this key monologue.
When you look closely at most films this is actually closer to the norm than you might expect, the camera often remains on the person listening, rather than the person delivering the line. This is especially true at key dramatic moments. This is because at these moments, what the audience is witnessing is impact of a line on the inner life of a character.
However, there is a deeper significance to the importance of this editing choice and I believe it holds one of the keys as to why so many indie films and spec scripts fail to create high quality drama. This is because, in order to write a scene where the listening is more important than the delivery, you have to write stories from the inside out… and not the outside, in.
In order to build a performance that makes an audience hold its breath in anticipation, you have to create moments of vulnerability. A moment where the audience understands the deep significance of what’s being said or done. In my opinion, in order to do that you have to write stories that flow round the inner life of the characters, rather than the externals.
Let me give you another example:
Towards the end of Paul Haggis and Bobby Moresco’s “Crash†the Cop takes his Mother to identify the dead brother. She lays into the Cop for not finding him, like she’d asked… and, at the same time tells him how the dead brother was a good son, because he came by and put groceries in her fridge when she was asleep. This is a heart breaking moment in the film, because we know the truth, it was the Cop who left the groceries. We also know the sacrifices he’s made, throughout the film, to look after his junkie Mother and to protect his criminal brother.
Now, when you attempt to write a story like that, you have to make a relationship between the characters inner life and what they do, and what they experience in the outer world.
My belief is that this link between what’s happening in the character’s inner life and how that impacts on the outer world should be the basis for ALL thinking, when it comes to screen writing. And yet, it’s incredibly rare to see that kind of approach… even in films that make it to the screen. More often than not, films are written with a view to the externals… and, if it’s given a thought at all, the inner lives of the characters are delegated to the actors.
I also have a theory about why this is happening.
When I talk to indie film makers and spec screen writers, by and large they are driven into the industry by their experiences as an audience member… “I love movies, therefore I will make them.” There’s nothing wrong with that, I’m a big film fan as well. However, more often than not, when people attempt to write and make their own movies, they still view the product from the POV of an audience member. For the audience the movies is just a set of images on a screen which they experience passively. The bad news is this passive experience flows over into people’s attempts to tell stories.
For most film makers and screenwriters, what they try to do, is take the pictures in their head and recreate the images they have there… in the belief that if they can figure out what it should look like, they’ll be able to make it.
Which is why indie film makers are obsessed with new camcorders/formats/effects packages/new plugins… and in newbie writers this trait shows in a desire to write the shots to be used, expressions like “we see†and endless sentences constructed in passive voice. Even if you manage to train a screenwriter out of writing “We see a close-up of Betty-Lou sitting, reading on a bench in the park†deep in their hearts that’s what they really want to write, because it feels natural. And, it feels natural because they’re still viewing drama as an audience member does, not as a practitioner.
Now, for me, all of these trends in indie film making point to a very real chasm of misunderstanding about what drama is, how actors work and what’s really happening when they watch a film.
Instead of writing for the audience, the script writer should be writing for the actor. And, in order to do that you have to understand what it is an actor is doing when they work.
And, in my next post I’ll talk about how we can start doing just that.
Nice post. I think it was the French who first began to shoot the listener. I’m not sure it was a editing choice so much as a director’s but either way, I always liked it.
I think it was New Wave cinema, the old school New Wave, with Godard and those cats. Not to be confused with the musical genre that hit the US in the 80s. I think that in the 90s when steadi-cams found their way into the mainstream - a time when Americans were aggressively trying to create a sense of “realism” and “naturalism” - they started mining the French films of the 40s 50s. NYPD and ER being the most popular examples, used all kinds of techniques to create that realism/naturalism feel. Actors where doing it too. If you watch Clooney’s early ER work he’s constantly scratching his nose, pulling at his ear, lowering his head/looking to the ground to “listen”. You can pit those performances against guys like Columbo and you’ll see similarities but the difference is that Columbo’s gestures were more characterizations (cartoony). This method suggested that the action taking place was real-like as opposed to 90s where they were trying to show the action to be like, real (my so called life reference).
Us Americans didn’t actually start doing the whole naturalism/realism bit until a group of theater directors, playwrights, actors, checked out a Russian exhibition in NYC. This exhibition was a little ol’ troop from Moscow helmed by a dood named, Constantin Stanislavsky. That group of Americans, who called themselves The Group Theater, went to Russian for a couple weeks to learn from the Russians, came back, and got to work on their new found knowledge.
In typical American fashion, they all disagreed on what they learned, broke into factions, separated into schools of thought, threw their brand on their personal versions, and opened schools.
The list of teachers, directors, writers, actors is huge.
Uta Hagen, Sanford Meisner, Lee Strasberg, to name a few. Without these folks there might not have been folks like Brando, Pacino/DeNiro, Mamet, Lumet, Pollack, Dean, on and on.
The Russians and these schools were the main influence in turning Americans from Melodrama-tists into Naturalists/Realists.
The writing also changed during this time, Clifford Odets was a member of the group. I think Harold Clurman was there (one of the great Critics) and a slew of others. Guys like Arthur Miller and Tenn Williams probably wouldn’t have been around without The Group’s trip to Russia.
A great book to check out, when writing for the actor, is A Practical Handbook for the Actor.
http://www.amazon.com/Practical-Handbook-Actor-Melissa-Bruder/dp/0394744128
Don’t be fooled by the cover and brevity of the book.
Doesn’t hurt to check out Stanislavsky, Hagen, Meisner, Strahsberg, Checkov, and, er, Meyerhold either. Those old school Russians knew their stuff.
Nice to see I’m not the only writer obsessed with acting technique.
Thanks for the book recommendation… I haven’t read that one.
I agree that writing from the actor’s pov will improve your work greatly.
Let us know what you think of the book - my favorite, but not everyone’s cup of tea.
It still boils down to telling a good story doesn’t it?
My ultimate goal in writing and directing my own films is to make the audience feel like they are right there in the frames. I think that’s going to be a long process for me, and after reading your post, one of the things I want to work on is shooting scenes without considering having an audience over my shoulder. Actually that’s a relief!
And so true about new filmmakers getting bogged down in the tech, I’ve always believed a good story could be shot with a cell phone and a flashlight.
Filmmaking is a growing process too, I look at it like drawing pictures. If I draw a tree and you say; “What the heck is that?” then rather than getting bent out of shape over criticism of my art, I want to go back and redraw my tree. Next time you might say; “Hey! That’s a tree!”.
And when I finally present a tree and you say; “Mmmmmmm, apples!”
that’s when I think I’ll have it down.
I’m still rounding the “what the heck is that” bend but cheerfully working on it.
It absolutely about telling a good story… but, and I’ll talk more about this in my next post, the story comes from an understanding of the inner journey of the protagonist.
And, yes it’s definitely a journey… LOL
Greta post Clive,
It’s definitely something I’ve noticed when reading specs. It seems like the actors are talking to the audience almost, rather than each other.
I think it all comes back to not studying cinema but just imagining movies. There are tons of good books on writing for acting and direction, but too many writers are looking for a commercial success rather than a technically-proficient cinematic endeavor.
A big problem is that though you can “learn” how to write dialog, no one can teach you. It comes from listening, observing and especially interacting.
In terms of modern cinema, Mamet is great for writing for actors.
http://www.amazon.com/Directing-Film-David-Mamet/dp/0140127224/ref=pd_sim_b_img_5
He has several along with Sidney Lumet. I also found a great reference in Judith Weston who also has several good book sfor character creation and interaction. Check out Mamet’s “Writing in Restaurants” also.
Thanks Christian,
I’ve always been a fan of Mamet’s writing about direction, even though I think he’s overly dogmatic in his anti-method crusade.
In my last feature I had three leads, one who was a natural for that particular role and needed almost no direction, the antagonist who was 100% method and the protagonist who was a hardcore Mamet fan.
As a director approaching that cast, I decided to adapt my directorial technique to the needs of each actor, rather than imposing a directorial philosophy on them. Which I think was a good choice.
Yeah, I’m working towards directing and cinematography, but just so that I can interact better with them. It is a great choice to direct each actor to their strengths and weaknesses. You can actually see when a director is not working with the actors or “mis=directing” them.
Most actors can get the tone of the scene from reading but sometimes, you want something a little extra or slightly different.
My basic take is that acting, writing and directing all require similar mind-sets… and, in fact, there is more in common between the writer and the actor than you’d expect.
The only difference between a good writer and good actor, in many cases is opportunity, motivation and training.
I believe you could train any good actor to be a good writer and and any good writer to act.
I agree that writing and acting do blur slightly as when writing a script, you have to think about a person actually saying the lines (hopefully with conviction).
I tend to use as few words as possible - just enough to have the actor understand the tone they need. Also, if you follow the tenet of reading lines aloud, you can then tell if the person should stand, walk, twittle their thumbs, bite their fingernails or even yell.
This is just like writing for non-acting characters. The idea is to use images, sounds, background, etc to relate the words with the message (theme). Many people think they should just have the characters play a sport or something to have the “show” but if Juno did one thing it was blow that concept out of the water. She did nearly zero “showing” at least in the script I read.
I’ve been doing a lot f study of film theory from the likes of Kracauer and Bazin. Most writers should definitely read their work. It really looks at the psychology behind cinema rather than the cinema itself.
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