PART THREE is the Director’s Checklist. Before you start rehearsals — any rehearsals — what questions have to be asked? Whether you’ve directed no films or a hundred, these are the basic tools that help you deconstruct a script or a scene.
The checklist contains the tools that keep the director and actor on the right path to creating a good scene. You’ll not only be better prepared to answer any questions on set, you’ll also know how to approach guiding your actors in their performances.
PART FOUR, new to this second edition, is the director’s survival guide to episodic television. With the inception of so many new venues for streaming television and media, there are hundreds more shows being created and hundreds more opportunities for directors. Many directors who would not have thought of working in television now see that the opportunities are too numerous to resist. No longer your four stodgy, commercial-driven networks, what we’ve got isn’t really television anymore. It’s streaming media everywhere. Two-year-old kids are swiping right on their smartphones to stream SpongeBob and more. (What’s next? WombTV?)
I want you to come away from this book with a better appreciation of bonding with your actors and a deeper understanding of the politics of episodic television, whether network, cable, or streaming media. May it protect you in a world where diplomacy and collaboration are must-have skills.
I’ve included photos of posters from the international versions of some of my films. They’re often very different from the U.S. posters, sometimes even featuring a different title, and are fun to compare with the originals.
John Badham
December 1, 2019
PART I
A LACK OF TRUST:
The Five Mistakes
A Nasty Bit of Laundry
If you’ve spent much time around actors, you’ve probably heard something scurrilous whispered between them. That’s in public. What actors say in private among themselves is often worse — and here it is. You ready?
Japanese edition of I’ll Be in My Trailer.
Many… most… let’s say lots of actors don’t trust directors. Not a bit, not a whit, not a crumb. They have been flogged, flayed, and betrayed by directors ever since they were told in acting class to pretend they were a fried egg that had been beaten by their rooster father. Misled, misrepresented, and flat-out ignored, they have been treated like robotic pieces of meat, if you’ll pardon the metaphoric succotash. Viewed as misbehaving children who live in a fantasy world of explosive egos and DUIs, actors often find themselves demeaned, devalued, and depressed.
Taylor Hackford: Well, the whole idea of trust between actors and directors is so critical, and I think it’s why many actors distrust directors: because they never take the time to gain their trust and to let them feel that somebody smart is working with them. Some directors are afraid of actors. Some directors don’t want to talk to them.
It’s easy to understand how an actor can store up resentments over time and begin to see all directors as louche or suspect. Polite directors, talented directors, and helpful directors all get lumped in with the mediocre ones, the abusive ones, the screamers, the idiots, and the invisible directors who only shoot the same sequence — master, two shot, over shoulder, close-up, close-up — time and again, no matter what they’re shooting.
Delia Salvi: The best-kept secret in the entertainment industry is how much actors, including award-winning performers, distrust directors, and how directors often fear or dislike actors.1
Exaggeration, you say? Maybe. You have to look at it from the point of view of the actor who has been tortured and ignored their whole career. Their resentment has built up a volcanic pressure inside that wants to explode when a director comes around with their snotty little “notes.” Even the famously talented directors — the Scorseses, Spielbergs, and P.T. Andersons who are great communicators — often have to rehabilitate the battle-scarred, shell-shocked, PTSD-ridden actor to gain their trust as a creative collaborator.
Gilbert Cates: I understand why some actors become pricks. I get it. You go through many difficult times before you get cast in a role. You build up a heap of resentment and anxiety. Most of it is fear. Most of it is actors afraid of being asked to do something that they can’t do, and being found out that they can’t do it.
Little wonder that any actor who has achieved any level of respect will demand director approval, both in films and television series. They want to feel confident that their director not only knows their craft as a filmmaker but also has respect for the actor and understands the character they’re playing. They want to know they will be protected from looking bad or foolish. Actors want to be directed… but by people who help them do their best work.
Jodie Foster: I think sometimes directors are afraid of actors because they don’t entirely understand the process of acting. There’s something very mysterious about it. It’s a skill. They just don’t know what the skill is.
When an actor steps on a film set, they know that they only have so much control over the elaborate process of filmmaking. It’s quite different from the world of theater, where most actors are trained. There, they have much more control over their world. Every night is a different performance that can be improved, corrected, and adjusted. Bad directions can be ignored, staging can be fixed. That doesn’t mean it will be better or that it was bad initially. It just means that the actor feels more control in a theater environment.
Sadly, Judd Nelson, member of the famous Brat Pack and star of The Breakfast Club, reminisced once that when he first started acting, “I thought all movies were going to be collaborative and have rehearsals and a director who liked us.”2
Stephen Collins: I think sometimes as an actor, you just know that you can trust a director. You know him well enough to say, “Oh, screw it. I’m going to take a leap of faith because he’s got something going here.” I think actors just want to be heard. If an actor really feels that he or she has been heard, they’ll give up what’s on their mind. If you feel like you’ve been stamped down and can’t put your two cents in, then you never commit to the scene.
Let’s see how that worked out in practice with one of the toughest actors, and one of our best directors.
Michael Zinberg: I was doing an episode of The Practice. I had a huge show with James Whitmore Sr. He was a brilliant actor. I grew up watching him on television and in movies, on the stage when I could. I was intimidated. I was frightened. Now, I knew his son very well, James Whitmore Jr. He’s a great director in his own right. I said, “I got a huge show with your dad, do you have any tips?” He thought for a beat, and he said, “Well, if you have anything to say, it better be good.”
So in comes Mr. Whitmore to talk with me about the script. We get to this one pivotal scene. I said, “This is how I think this scene should play.” He said, “You’re absolutely wrong.” I said, “Okay, tell me.”