THE HEART OF THE THING IS NEVER THE THING ITSELF

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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