February 27, 2007 by webmaster.

If you’re looking for a simple description or definition of what this process is, this is it. That scene you are working on has a heart. It’s not in the script or evening the subtext. It’s deeper. It’s an emotional heart, it’s an “elemental truth” as Joseph Campbell would say, it’s an archetypal energy that is extremely powerful. When we talk about the 3 stages of artistic development, this is the 3rd stage; intuitive mastery. This is what we quest for in this class. Indeed, it is what all heroes quest for.

And it is the same in all forms of art. When a composer tells us “the notes were coming to me faster than I could write them down,” when a writer tells us ” it’s as if the characters took over and I was merely taking dictation,” when a jazz musician tells us “suddenly it just clicked and we were all taken for a ride by the music,” when a dancer tells us “something took over my body and I just danced”, they are all talking about this same thing.

Some of you have felt it as well. The scene suddenly takes over and you forget all the great things you were going to do, you stop judging yourself and the scene, and you struggle in this overwhelming energy to simply hang on to that thing you are fighting for: your goal. Recently, in the classes, there have been some important break-throughs in some of your second works - where you got a taste of this “heart.” By my pushing, yelling, kicking, coaxing, you accidentally fell into the heart of the scene. And afterwards, the question is always, always, always the same… “How do I do that on my own,” “how do I get there.”

I remember asking Cameron that question after a scene I did in his class. He looked at me, smiled slightly and said, “I don’t know.” I wanted to take that little Malibu surfer dude and kick him right in the balls! Now, after a few years of working with him as a student and a few years of coaching this process, I know that his answer was exactly right. Each of you will get there in your own way. There is no magic formula, innovative technique, secret button, new wonder drug (ViACTra?), which will get you there. Mastery is a journey and each journey is unique. Like the Knights of the Round Table, each of you will enter the forest at a different point and there will be no trail and it will be very dark

I can give you three clues.

1 - It will be by surrender and not by effort. Really trying and working hard, while necessary for your development, will not make it happen. It will usually come when you’re frustrated, angry as hell (probably at me), and about to tear up your SAG card and quit acting forever.

2 - It never comes when you’re doing what you usually do. Don’t look for it when you’re making your usual safe choices, when your just wading in the shallow waters of the surface of the script, when you’re doing all those wonderful things you do that work so well and that you’re sure we all love. It comes when you’re daring. When you make an emotional choice that you’re not sure you or the scene can handle; when you make a physical choice you know will embarrass you so much you’ll never be able to show your face in class again; when you do the scariest thing you’ve ever done and step off the edge of that cliff… it just might hit you in the face.

3 - It will come when you finally show up. When you show us that part of yourself that you hate and despise, when you tell us that secret about yourself you never want anyone to know, when you go to that painful, awful time in your life you swore you would never go back to … then it will take you in its arms and carry you into an adventure you never dreamed possible.

There are many long, barren wastelands that you must trudge through over and over again to get to the Grail Castle. Intuitive mastery ain’t easy. It took me two and a half years of working with Cameron just to see where it was. It took Lawrence Olivier “many years to learn to film-act: at least ten of these were appallingly rough and ready, from sheer prejudice and ignorance.” It will take you as long as it takes. I dare you to keep plugging away, to keep going, no matter what.

I dare you.

“For when the heart insists on its destiny, resisting the general blandishment, then the agony is great; so too the danger. Forces, however, will have been set in motion beyond the reckoning of the senses, sequences of events from the corners of the world will draw gradually together, and miracles of coincidence bring the inevitable to pass. ”
Joseph Campbell

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February 27, 2007 by webmaster.

Post-It’s found on a student’s mirror.  Quotes are from various sources.

“Submit to the character’s ego
-    to their wants
-    to their needs
Make something more important than yourself.”
“Seek the peace and freedom found only in the now.”

“Each scene:
What value is at stake in my character’s life at this moment?  ie. Love?  Truth?
How is the value charged at the top of the scene?   ie. Positive? Negative?  Some of both?
Now at the close of the scene – where is the value now?”

“What is your every wish for the scene?
That thing that is in your character’s heart.
What is your dream version of the scene?
Follow what ever desire your have & look for the fun.”

“What is the relationship?
The heart of the thing is never the thing itself.”

“Who are these characters?
What do they want?
Why do they want it?
How do they go about getting it?
What stops them?
What are the consequences?”

“Truth: Is located behind, beyond, inside, below the surface of things, holding reality together or tearing it apart, and cannot be directly observed.”

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February 20, 2007 by webmaster.

No matter.



Try again.
Fail again.
Fail better.

-Samuel Beckett

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February 20, 2007 by webmaster.

“It is not the critic who counts: not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles or where the doer of deeds could have done better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly, who errs and comes up short again and again, because there is no effort without error or shortcoming, but who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, who spends himself for a worthy cause; who, at the best, knows, in the end, the triumph of high achievement, and who, at the worst, if he fails, at least he fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who knew neither victory nor defeat.”

Theodore Roosevelt
“Citizenship in a Republic,”
Speech at the Sorbonne, Paris, April 23, 1910

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February 20, 2007 by webmaster.

“The hero, whether god or goddess, man or woman, the figure in a myth or the dreamer of a dream, discovers and assimilates his opposite (his own unsuspected self) either by swallowing it or by being swallowed. One by one the resistances are broken. He must put aside his pride, his virtue, beauty, and life, and bow or submit to the absolutely intolerable. Then he finds that he and his opposite are not differing species, but one flesh.”

With these words Joseph Campbell spells out eloquently the artists path. More precisely it is the path of every individual born into this world. Sadly though, we live in a world- laid bare of ritual, a world that has relegated myth to the realm of fairy tales and mistaken the important contribution of science as a replacement for Poetic Truth, abandoning deeply to the sub-conscious the profound meanings of magic and dreams. Most individual’s will rarely if ever come face to face with this path having their eyes wide open. They will feel it thrust upon them in the form of trials and tribulations. Mostly they will miss its significance, fail to see the critical part it plays in the emotional, mental, and physical development of the individual. It is the artists luck that this tearing down of ones self, this self-submission to the countless personalities that people our unconscious, is in fact a profoundly ancient path to self-realization. The artist has the rare opportunity to enter this test with their eyes wide open, and their heart embracing even the darkest possibilities.

Have you ever asked yourself why you are drawn to this art? When all your friends and relatives question your sanity, wonder not too subtlety about your future and your security, why do you carry on? There are so many things that would provide you with so much more peace of mind, so much more safety in your old age. Why are you driven past the boundaries of reason? Because you know, in a place well past your intellect, that there are greater things at stake than your own well-being. You have accidentally bumped into what Allen Watts likes to call the “Wisdom of Insecurity”, the calling to push though something great; the fire walk, the awakening.
Maybe you’ll be a star, maybe you’ll be a working actor, and maybe you’ll become a master of this craft without ever working professionally and retire to raise a family or open a bookstore in Upstate New York. The outcome in the material world is far less relevant. It’s the path to awakening thorough the arts that matters. It cannot be explained to those outside the calling, and so we shrug our shoulders and look like happy idiots. But the poetic irony is strong, that the only security on this path is the commitment to the adventure. It is the wild spirit of the One Who Lives for the moment that the public craves to capture on film. The safe haven of secure choices is the dwelling place of fear. No adventure emerges from there. No hope can be born in that place. It is the Adventurer Artist who stands a chance. That is why we are drawn to them, why we seek to join them. Because, again in the words of Joseph Campbell …

“The hero whose attachment to ego is already annihilate passes back and forth across the horizons of the world, in and out of the dragon, as readily as a king through the rooms of his house. And therein lies his power to save; for his passing and returning demonstrate through all the contraries of phenomenality the Uncreated-Imperishable remains, and there is nothing to fear.”

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February 13, 2007 by webmaster.

When considering analysis, discussion, or presentation, listen to your inner self and to your feelings every time. Should you be mistaken, after all, the natural growth of your inner life will guide you slowly and in good time to other conclusions. Allow your judgments their own quiet, undisturbed development, which, as with all progress, must come from deep within and can in no way be forced or hastened.  All things consist of carrying to term and then giving birth. To allow the completion of every impression, every germ of a feeling deep within, in darkness, beyond words, in the realm of instinct unattainable by logic, to await humbly and patiently the hour of the descent of a new clarity: that alone is to live one’s art, in the realm of understanding as in that of creativity.

In this there is no measuring with time. A year doesn’t matter; ten years are nothing. To be an artist means not to compute or count; it means to ripen as the tree, which does not force its sap, but stands unshaken in the storms of spring with no fear that summer might not follow. It will come regardless. But it comes only to those who live as though eternity stretches before them, carefree, silent, and endless. I learn it daily, learn it with many pains, for which I am grateful: Patience is all !

Rainer Maria Rilke (from Letters To A Young Poet)

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February 13, 2007 by webmaster.

THE ARTIST’S GOAL

This past week was a little rough for me.  Shooting the film in Montreal resulted in no days off.  And one of my classes had a new monitor for the first class of the month and things got a little out of hand.  It made me quite angry and I sent that class a very direct and forceful (i.e. pissed off) email.

I need to tell you all why I got angry and why I’ve been harping on commitment, rules and responsibility lately.  I make all of you look at yourselves in a very profound manner.  I want you discover that you are way more than you imagine, so I pound away at what you think are your boundaries, whom you think you are, every week.  You may not know this, but I have to do the same work on myself.  Lately that work has gotten fairly intense.  One of the things I’ve discovered is that not too long ago, I made what seemed to be a simple choice.  That choice was that my new quest in life would be to give back.  Give back to each of you all that I know, have found out and continue to learn about this business and what being an artist means.  I am now realizing that that choice was not so simple.  It was really me saying that my career as an artist – the fame, glory, money …whatever, was no longer important.  Yours was.  Being a basically selfish and self-center person, I am now realizing that this is a huge choice, and it is affecting me now on many different levels.  What a large commitment in a very new directing this choice is.  So if I seem a little obsessive about YOUR commitment…now you know why.

Before every class there is always a moment when I look at or think of each one of you.  It happens at different moments and I never really know when – so don’t try to figure it out! I think of each one of you as Joseph Campbell would – as a jewel.  Each one VERY different, each one VERY precious.  None of you know how amazing, beautiful, and powerful you are.  I do.  I will keep pushing, fighting, yelling, hugging, soothing, and shocking you toward that realization – toward who you really are.  I will watch each one of you as you get stronger and brighter.  I will not compromise my journey.  I will not compromise yours.  I will not allow you to compromise yourself.

As Cameron says, “this is not the class where we train actors to be good for a part.  This is the class where we train actors for whom parts are written.”  I want you all to take that to heart from now on.  If you just want to make a living as an actor – you are selling yourself short.  If you want to be a star and be famous – you are selling yourself short.  If you want to make millions of dollar and own a bunch of houses – you are selling yourself short.  If you want to get an academy award – you are really selling yourself short.  If you want any of these things too much you will have a life full of various degrees of frustration, pain and depression.  Anytime an agent fires you… you will be crushed.  Any time a casting director passes on a mean note about you to your agent… you will be devastated.  Anytime you don’t get the audition / callback / role…you will question your whole life.  Anytime you get a bad review or, God forbid, your not even mentioned in a review and you were the lead …you will be badly hurt.  And if (dare I say it) your UNION GOES ON STRIKE…you will very slowly and quietly slip into depression.

I want you to do what you do for only one reason.  It’s the reason that I now struggle with for myself.  I want you to use this very special gift you have, muster up all you courage, use all your skills, all your training and jump off that ledge naked and human…to see if you can do one simple thing.  Touch someone’s heart.  Touch another human being’s heart and in doing so…change their lives.  That is an artist’s only true goal.  That is the only thing that matters.  That is your life as an artist.  It has to be.

Cause you know what I’m betting on…I could be wrong?  I’m betting that at the end – the VERY end - it won’t matter how rich I am, it won’t make a damn bit of difference how many magazine covers I’ve been on, any awards won’t mean a thing, stardom and fame will be like dust.  None of that stuff will matter.  What will matter?

I think that we will be judged …by how many hearts we have touched.

And we will judge ourselves in that way as well.  I’m betting there will be some comfort in that.  I’m not sure.  What do you think?

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