Category: Film

7 Thoughts for the Beginning of 2015

Cinemulatto’s mind has been all over the place—still tracing my family history (yes, someday I may even participate in an Acadian reenactment), reading a lot, breathing a bit after some big work deadlines. I’ve faced a few film festival rejections, leading me to wonder why I bother submitting to film festivals (and spending way too much money on submission fees, travel and housing costs in the event of an actual acceptance, and moving-target distribution opportunities).

I’ve had many moments where there’s been “just a little question in my mind,” to quote Arthur Lee. Here are the resulting thoughts.

Obama. A friend and I once had a debate about Jungle Fever and the gist was this: he felt Spike Lee could do no wrong since he’s the most radical African American filmmaker who’s ever hit the mainstream. Although I wouldn’t consider Obama radical, in many ways his presidency is a deviation, one mixed with inspired moments of governance—becoming “the LGBT president,” giving us Obamacare, pushing for immigration reform, reaching out to Cuba. I recognize there’s still work to be done and that he’s not perfect. Still, Obama has had an active and relatively progressive tenure, and this is why I find myself forgiving some of his political transgressions. After all, just about all of the “bad” things about his time in office predated him; things like wiretapping, drones, and detainees at military prisons were started by others. Obama hasn’t stopped them, for sure, but he also inherited them and likely stepped into an already well-established culture that predated him by several decades. So, I’ve been thinking about this. I’ll keep defending him.

Progress. The universe is almost 14 billion years old. Astronomer estimates say there are over 100 billion galaxies. What’s the nature of progress?

Democracy. In writing about Jane Austen’s female leads, Azar Nafisi states in Reading Lolita in Tehran, “They risk ostracism and poverty to gain love and companionship, and to embrace that elusive goal at the heart of democracy: the right to choose.” Does this mean that the second episode of Black Mirror has a happy ending?

Vaccinations. Why are we debating this?

Compassion. My brother David is in San Antonio, Texas, continuing his year-long compassion tour. Meanwhile, I’m making arrangements to visit the child I sponsor in Jackson, Mississippi, and the number of impoverished public school children has risen. Compassion is doing whatever one can to help at least one other person.

Films of the imagination. Have things like reality TV and the John Cassavetes Award inured us to creativity? Does make-believe only exist in the realm of science fiction? Can’t I pull a story and fictitious world out of my ass and have it be believable on its own terms?

Athanasia. My short film got accepted into this year’s Queer Women of Color Film Festival! The story is completely fabricated. It looks at how death affects an aunt who loses her nephew and her relationship with her partner. Everyone has their own way of dealing with death. More details to come once I have them. (By the way, there are no submission fees for this festival, it’s local, and all films are free.)

What are your current thoughts?

 

#Funcle, #Socorro, and a Resolution Check

It’s been quiet. After major deadlines at my day job that meant a bunch of late nights and even more early mornings, several colds, and non-stop short film production, I’m now going to bed earlier. And sleeping more. And spending time not doing much as I prep for post-production on Socorro, the last short film of this year. It’s about a traveling musician in a semi-futuristic world in search of love and companionship (and his quest to take out a bad guy). Another of the 2014 shorts, Funcle, had its premiere on November 8th at the San Francisco Transgender Film Festival and I’m sending it out to meet a few more submission deadlines. It’s about the two genderqueer buddies pictured above.

Although there are still a couple of months left in the year, it seems as good a time as any to check in—how did I do with this year’s resolutions?

  1.  I made four shorts instead of six. This is fine by me. (Or, using active voice: I’m fine with this.) The four are Winter’s Eve, Athanasia, Funcle, and Socorro, and I had a private screening of the first three to a small group of good friends and my family. These were a blast to make and share. If nothing else happens with them I’m content. The main reason: throughout it all, along with the pressures of work, I battled a bout of mild depression and seem to have won. Note to creative types who get bogged down easily by life at moments: read, rest, eat well, take walks, drink tea, and get some sunshine.
  2. I’ve got two feature scripts in decent shape. Not perfect, but not bad. My major goal for next year is to pick one (not six) and run with it.
  3. I’ve been mentoring. As I mentioned in an April post, mentoring is so much more valuable than being a mentee. I’ve confirmed this as true. I’ve been guiding three actors on their quest to hone their skills, and although it’s a long process, I feel I’ve been able to provide the right amount of encouragement and guidance, as desired and requested by my mentees. A good start was casting them in my short films.
  4. I’ve lost track of my movie retreats. Being the mother of a two-year-old at age 45 is damn hard. What I’ve learned in this process: patience grows thinner as you get older, or perhaps during middle age. As I’ve said before: read, rest, eat well, take walks, drink tea, and get some sunshine. Do this with your two-year-old and it makes things a lot easier.
  5. I got out more! I’m happy to have made several new friends in 2014 (I hope you know who you are!). Life is good.

The gist of the above: despite Republicans now controlling Congress, bees dying, drone attacks, and bad things generally persisting, life and creativity go on for the artistically minded. Find time to relax. Then start all over again (at a slower pace, as needed).

 

Types of Roles Black Actors Never Get

I saw Boyhood this past weekend and loved it. I loved it for the same reason I loved The Tree of Life: it was a meditation on all the moments that, in sum, make up a life, and it presented the most mundane situations with a simplicity, tenderness, and unaffectedness that rendered them poetic. There were hardships—parental alcoholism, divorce, uprooting and moving to an unfamiliar new town—but nothing like the struggles we’ve come to expect of movies that feature black characters.

The Help. Fruitvale Station. 12 Years a Slave. All important movies, for sure, but what if black characters were afforded opportunities to self-realize and experience “normal” challenges in ways that are mostly reserved for whites in films? What would that look like? And how odd would it sound to audiences so used to seeing white people in these roles?

Boyhood. A young black male, Otis Kennedy, suffers through the pain of his parents’ divorce. Visiting his father often enough to learn the ins and outs of camping trips and bowling alleys, he continues his self-discovery through manhood and into college, where he experiences an enlightened drug trip while hiking in Big Bend State Park, Texas.

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. Alvin Rogers is bent on escaping the memory of Loretta Smith, his ex-girlfriend. He enlists the services of Lacuna, Inc., who promise to erase all recollections of his painful relationship. When he decides he no longer wants to go through with it, he must race against science and memory fragments to reconnect with Loretta, his true love.

Her. In 2025, Devon Williams, an introvert whose job is to write personal letters for those incapable of expressing deep emotion, purchases “Clarice”, an artificially intelligent girlfriend. Eventually learning that her love interests include 641 other people, Devon goes to his roof to watch the sunrise with his good friend, Eileen.

Angel Heart. Mark Brown, a private investigator, is hired by enigma Louis Cyphre to track down a singer, Johnny Favorite. Mark’s travels take him to the clinic where Johnny was last seen, Johnny’s former lover, and Johnny’s former musician friend, Toots Sweet. What Mark finds out about Johnny, and himself, causes a revelation of identity and terror.

High Fidelity. Ronnie Washington, who owns a record store, recounts various breakups, attempting to find out what went wrong with each one. His fun-loving, oddball co-workers, Andre Youngblood and Ronald Jackson, spout obscure music trivia as Ronnie tries to win back an ex, Ruby.

Winter’s Bone. Seventeen-year-old Rhianna Davis is the head of her family, who live in the rural Ozarks. To protect them, she embarks on a mission to find her father, who put the house up for collateral to pay his bail and has gone missing. Knowing he’s involved with the local crystal meth scene, she questions shady characters, only to find herself in dangerous situations with no answers. Not believing her father’s been killed, she continues her perilous search until she finds out the truth.

Perhaps Winter’s Bone, with its underprivileged characters, absent father, and drug motif, is the closest this brief list comes to what black actors are usually offered in the way of mainstream roles. In the year 2014, there has to be more. Think of our most beloved characters from cinema. Can you imagine if Willy Wonka had been black? How about a black Tyler Durden, or Jack Sparrow, or Jessica Rabbit?

Where all the fun, non-stereotypical characters at?

 

Filmmaking Lessons from
The Beatles

The Beatles have been my favorite band since I was probably in 1st or 2nd grade. My first album was Meet the Beatles. From there it was a years-long and still-current obsession involving things like bootleg purchases, Beatles A-Z weekends on local radio, Beatlefest in Los Angeles, and lyric memorization. I once started a childhood religion based on the worship of John Lennon. But that’s a different blog post.

I know all the trivia involving Paul being dead and Adrienne Kennedy’s adaptation of In His Own Write and John having various threesomes and Eric Burdon being the Eggman.

The obsession, of course, includes films. I’ve visited the sidewalk at Marylebone Station in London where George fell down in A Hard Day’s Night and I can tell you that when it was first broadcast, Magical Mystery Tour, an improvised movie, was in black and white (leading to poor reviews by critics who may have been otherwise swayed by psychedelic colors). These aren’t the most lasting bits of information involving movies, however. My love of everything Beatle (peace and love, peace and love, peace and love, says Ringo) translates into filmmaking lessons based on how they navigated through their bandmate years. It goes something like this:

  • Continually try new things. Stop touring and hit the studio. See what it sounds like singing while lying down. Try making movies in different genres, or spending no money, or based on things like inner city black men who don’t get shot.
  • It’s fine to not make sense sometimes. John Lennon purposely wrote I Am the Walrus to confound school teachers who’d started analyzing his lyrics in classrooms. Don’t worry about what people think, and if they happen to like what you’ve made, all the better.
  • Discover your best way of working. Paul wrote every day. John wrote during moments of inspiration. Ringo created drumbeats after reading lyrics. Find your own way of working instead of listening to what other people say you should do.
  • Work with people smarter than you. This is also called “find your George Martin.” When recording Tomorrow Never Knows, John Lennon didn’t understand the technology behind Artificial Double Tracking so called it “the flange.” Don’t worry about knowing the name of every single piece of grip equipment (unless you’re a grip). Focus on vision and big ideas.
  • Never be afraid of failure. Decca didn’t sign the The Beatles (famous instance of kicking oneself in the ass). For every 10 failures there has to be at least one success. Some successes are larger than others.
  • Put in the hours. Malcolm Gladwell’s now-iconic statistic of The Beatles playing 10,000+ hours in Hamburg, Germany is a great example of how you have to do the work. Keep going. Get behind the camera, spruce up your editing station, and watch thousands of films.
  • Give peace a chance. If you’re always arguing, break up. Filmmaking has many solo moments, but it’s essentially a community effort. If you can’t get along with someone or if someone’s treating you with disrespect….
  • Find your dream team. Fire your Pete Best. Surround yourself with people who support you and whom you respect. There’s no need to work with assholes. Keep at it until there’s chemistry and things click.
  • Provide an environment for new ideas. Yes, The Beatles were loaded. They were supported by a manager, producer, sound technicians, studio heads, and the like. Still, create your own comfortable environment where you know you’ll do your best work. Build your support network.
  • Support your team’s preferences. Lead by example and admit when there’s something you don’t know or would rather not do. Ringo let John, Paul, and George decide who went on the Sgt. Pepper cover, because he didn’t care.
  • Stop if it’s no longer fun. Life’s too short to waste it on something you don’t absolutely love doing. Cut to Abbey Road rooftop as needed.

Bonus anecdote: I cried when John Lennon died. I was in 6th grade and Howard Cosell announced it during Monday Night Football. My mom started crying, too, until she realized it was John and not Paul. “I thought it was the other one,” she said.

 

Robin Williams: Touched with Fire

Cinemulatto had to take a break for a couple of weeks. Too much death, too much hate. I’d started writing about Robin Williams right after his passing, so I feel compelled to finish what I started. Here goes….

“You need to take your wife out of the house more, she’s depressed,” Doctor Gunther told my father. I was around 14 years old. I knew she was sad but at the time didn’t understand the clinical explanation of depression. That is, not until experiencing my own highs and extreme lows around leaving home, coming out, and later dealing with the ebbs and flows of success and failure. Still, I knew this was nothing compared to what my mother had to endure.

It’s with this small insight into the depressive state that I tried to fathom what Robin Williams must’ve gone through. My mother had reason to be depressed. “How can this possibly happen to someone as famous and hilarious as Robin Williams?” we collectively ask, fulfilling denial’s part as the first stage of grief.

In her book Touched with Fire, Kay Redfield Jamison examines past artists who likely suffered from bipolar disorder, and the connection between this disease and creativity. How many more artists, actors, singers, dancers, and other creative people are out there, quietly wrestling demons, contemplating how to cope?

Stars have a mythical quality. We associate them with certain characters they’ve played, or songs they’ve written, or headlines they’ve made, or whom they’ve divorced or married. It’s too often that we find out, after it’s too late, how tortured some of them are. I don’t know how many fan letters Robin Williams received on a regular basis, and I certainly can’t say that such letters would’ve made any difference in his decision to take his life.

We do know, however, that there was an outpouring of love after his death. So, I say to all of you who changed the way I exist in the world, even if it’s just in small ways: thank you. You’re appreciated now and you made an impact.

Viola Davis. Octavia Spencer. Benicio del Toro. Cate Blanchett. The Wachowskis. Mark Ruffalo. Denzel Washington. Dustin Hoffman. Al Pacino. Laurence Fishburne. Catherine Deneuve. Halle Berry. Pam Grier. Prince. Joaquin Phoenix. Morgan Freeman.

The list can go on and on. But, as the passing of someone like Robin Williams gives us pause to reflect on issues of mortality, longevity, creativity, and suffering, let’s also give thanks to those heroes—famous and not so famous—who made us who we are.

Who would you like to thank?

 

9 Iconic Movies with Stellar Portrayals of Women

Most of us are familiar with The Bechdel Test. To qualify as female-friendly, a movie must meet three requirements:

  1. It has to have at least two women in it,
  2. who talk to each other,
  3. about something besides a man.

Isn’t there more? Let’s face it—women, if movies indicate correctly, are really only good for two things: birthing babies and pleasuring males. And everything related to these things. Sex. Prostitution. Stripping. Staying home with babies. Agonizing over babies.

Did we mention sex?

Here’s a new test: is the movie about sex or motherhood? Luckily, we have many, many great examples in the modern film canon!

Yes, many male filmmakers hit the nail on the head with their vaginally focused characterizations of female characters. Here are 9 great examples. And, just for fun, let’s point out what these characters’ male counterparts get to do.

  1. Blue Velvet. When she’s not waiting to get her kidnapped son back, Dorothy Vallens loves to get hit by Jeffrey Beaumont. Meanwhile, Jeffrey’s off doing things like solving mysteries and getting rid of the bad guy.
  2. Breaking the Waves. Okay, granted, Jan Nyman was paralyzed in an oil rig accident and attempts suicide. He fails. While he recovers he gets to have sexual fantasies about his wife, Bess McNeill, after he urges her to go out and get some on his behalf. She has tons of sex. She thinks God is speaking to her. She ends up getting beaten to death and Jan’s all better just in time for the funeral. Big win for women’s rights!
  3. Antichrist. You can’t really mention Breaking the Waves without bringing in an even bigger score for women the world over. We’ve reviewed Antichrist in a previous Cinemulatto post. But how can we resist including it here? The mental breakdown after “She” loses her child? “He” only gets to keep his sanity, although later his penis gets bludgeoned. “She” gets to chop off her clitoris. Susan B. Anthony fought long and hard for such a privilege.
  4. Scarface (the Brian De Palma version). Say hello to my little trophy wife. She snorts coke all day and is devoid of mothering capabilities since “her womb is so polluted.” Tony Montana gets to build an empire before losing it. Where’s Elvira’s spin-off, where she becomes a gang warlord?
  5. The Accidental Tourist. We know this is based on a novel by a woman. Couldn’t this have been a case of alternative casting? Two women: one loses a child, another chases a man from her first appearance in the movie. You can catch him if you follow him on the job—as he travels the world and writes best-selling books. Who wants to be an author when you can work at a kennel in heels?
  6. Requiem for a Dream.
    “I stole a cop’s gun. Or I think I did. I definitely stole a TV.”
    “Yeah, well I was in a sex show with a double-headed dildo.”
    “So what? I lost an arm and my buddy’s in prison.”
    “What about your mom?”
    “She’s psychotic.”
    “So, wait. Motherhood and sex?”
    “Oh.”
  7. Leaving Las Vegas. A down and out guy controls his own destiny with the help of not a bartender, or a therapist, or a cop, but a prostitute. (For other titles in the “I’m here to forward your story and I either have a kid or a sex job or both” cf. The Wrestler, Taxi Driver, Pretty Woman, Trading Places, and maybe a few others.)
  8. Fight Club. I’ll be chain-smoking and waiting to have sex with you while you travel the world and double as the hot leader of an all-male wallop society. I have a cool costume and makeup, though.
  9. Only God Forgives. This film may not yet have a place in seminal film history, but Ryan Gosling’s blank stare is, by now, iconic. He spends his time with prostitutes. He reaches into his dead, overbearing mother’s womb. End scene.

These are just a few examples. We both know you’re familiar with more great ones.

 

A Love Letter to Indie Filmmaking

Dear Indie Filmmaking,

After all these years, I’m still so madly in love with you. You’re with me when I wake up, and I take your hand in mine before I go to bed each night. It’s a testament to true passion that we still have a healthy relationship after so many years, even after so many difficult moments, occasional uncertainty, and frequent financial roadblocks.

Why do I love you so much?

Indie Filmmaking, you’re best-all-around, all grown up. You’re my beloved multiple personality of development, pre-production, production, and post-production. (Let’s save the distribution talk for later.) You’re with me in the solitude of the written word. You’re always one image away in the safe-space of my imagination. You’re also right by my side during the revision process, and you travel with me to the comfort of community support during casting, rehearsals, crew hiring, and location scouting. You’re my life of the party, altruist, and confidante, all rolled into one.

Okay, about distribution. I know I’ve been harsh on this weaker side of yours. Can you blame me? I know distribution is outwardly pretty impressive, with all the wheeling, dealing, and small checks, but I’ve come to realize: distribution makes me nervous, and not in a stomach-butterfly way. The moments before a movie screening can be torturous, like a performance review at work, only with a few hundred people or more. The audience’s stares before the screening are often not affectionate, and there’s no guarantee this will change when the curtain closes. Distribution is also anal-retentive and bureaucratic, with its copyright applications, restrictions and approvals, and music cue sheets.

I love it when distribution steps out of the room and it’s just me and the rest of you. The way you ease up to me in the form of shot lists and storyboards. That sexy sound you make when I power up my editing suite. That look in your eye when you flirt with me across the room at the wrap party. You make me gasp when I’m sending an external hard drive via FedEx. You’re one sexy lady, Indie Filmmaking.

Brains, brawn, and beauty. That’s you. May we share many more years together, and may we learn to gracefully accept those moments when distribution crashes the party. She’s always the first to leave, anyway.

 

How Are Those New Year’s Resolutions Going?

You may be lucky—you may be one of the 8% of Americans who’ll actually make it through all of their 2014 resolutions. Cinemulatto wishes you the best of luck! I made a few of my own resolutions in January, so since the first quarter of 2014 is behind us, time to check in.

How are you doing with yours? Here’s where I am:

  1. Write and produce six original shorts around a theme. I’ve already downsized this to five shorts instead of six (let’s hear it for stretch goals). Still, production for one short is complete, editing is underway, and I’m in the middle of production for the second short. In the spirit of Zero Dollar Shorts, I might set an offshoot goal to post all of my undistributed films online for free. Please leave a comment if you’d like to see this happen.
  2. Complete five feature scripts (four rewrites and one new one). I think I’m on track with this one. One of the five screenplays has been submitted to a staged reading competition and the second is in review with a reader. It can happen!
  3. Find a mentor. I came to a conclusion: I don’t want a mentor. I want a mentee. To this end, I now have two aspiring actors who’ve decided to take my guidance and work toward roles in indie films. What better way to organize and solidify what I believe I’ve learned from 25+ combined years of drama and film experience? And what better way to force myself to know what the hell I’m talking about, and to make myself fill the gaps in knowledge I know I need to fill?
  4. Hold four “movie retreats”. I’ve done one retreat so far. Three to go.
  5. Get out more. I’m not doing so hot on this one, but I have been doing a healthy amount of socializing while I film, making this goal two-fold: also become known as someone who has a mellow film set, who’s there primarily to build community, have fun, and be creative. A passion should never be work.

I’ll do another check-in after June. I encourage you to do the same. Onward!

 

Film Editors I Have Known

Most people don’t know what editors do. People in the movie business don’t know what editors do. Editors are perceived as special people who work in dark rooms away from the madding crowd.—Evan Lottman, whose credits include Panic in Needle Park,
The Exorcist, and Apocalypse Now

Film editors are grossly underrated, often playing the role of wizard behind the curtain. Without looking it up, who can name the picture editor (or editors) of any of these movies?

  • Lawrence of Arabia
  • The Godfather
  • Taxi Driver
  • Easy Rider
  • Pulp Fiction
  • Star Wars

Without editors, we have no movies. And without the opportunity to work closely with and learn directly from editors, indie directors are missing out.

I’ve been teaching myself how to edit. I’ve covered Walter Murch. I’m currently making my way through First Cut: Conversations with Film Editors. Aside from combing through the thoughts of those with long lists of Hollywood credits to their names, I’ve been lucky to have worked with some pretty great picture editors, often before I studied great works from the film canon that utilized these techniques.

In honor of those who taught me something about putting together a movie, who made me see things differently and challenged me to keep learning and try new things, here are little nuggets from film editors I have known.

  • Marisol McIlvain: Marisol cut my first feature, I’d Rather Be…Gone. What I learned: cutting on motion, jump cuts, and using reaction shots to add drama, tension, and emotion.
  • Jason Touissant: Jason edited my short, Faith-Based Charity, as well as the trailer for an unproduced feature, My Mirage. What I learned: leaving “air” when it’s needed before moving into a new scene, rolling before “action” and “cut” to capture footage of an actor before he or she is “acting”, and using L cuts to connect scenes.
  • Amal Kouttab: edited We There. What I learned: music can make long moments seem shorter.
  • Jesse Kerman: edited Mother Country. What I learned: you can hone in on the emotion of a scene through the editing. This was the first movie where I worked with “name” actors; I was strongly inclined to not cut much out of several strong performances. I admit, however, that in some instances where the writing was weak, Jesse skillfully crafted emotionally charged moments by strategic omission. Less is often more, indeed.
  • Robert Wainscott: I’m throwing in a sound editor since I’ve learned so much from Robert. I’ve worked with him on all of my projects since 2008. What I learned: how sound can completely transform a movie, and how it can add layers to a scene. For example, for my short film Lucha, I wanted to use audio from Radio Venceremos, the underground radio station that operated during the Salvadorian Civil War. It was Robert’s idea to have the station playing not under the closing credits, but during the final moments of the movie, on a radio in a car driven by rebel fighters.

Many thanks and much appreciation to the editors in my life!

Oh, and here are the answers, so you don’t have to look ’em up:

  • Lawrence of Arabia: Anne V. Coates
  • The Godfather: William Reynolds and Peter Zinner
  • Taxi Driver: Tom Rolf and Melvin Shapiro
  • Easy Rider: Donn Cambern
  • Pulp Fiction: Sally Menke
  • Star Wars: Richard Chew, Marcia Lucas, and Paul Hirsch

 

5 Things I Know For Sure About
Acting

Like many others, I was shocked and saddened by the news of Philip Seymour Hoffman’s passing. Also like many others, I didn’t know him personally. (A couple of acquaintances of mine had the pleasure of working with him.)

It’s always the case that, whatever demons someone is wrestling, no matter what sorts of static the social chatter happens to produce around gossip, speculation, and sordid details, the fact remains—a life was lived, and so many are the better for it.

Hoffman’s passing made me remember all the times I saw him in movies and thought, “Philip Seymour Hoffman is so good.” From Boogie Nights to Happiness, to The Talented Mr. Ripley or Magnolia or Almost Famous or Capote or The Savages—such a long list!—Hoffman was always true to form and utterly brilliant.

His passing also made me reflect on the takeaways; not just the often-cited reasons for staying away from drugs or seeking help when it’s needed, but what we can learn about craft from unwitting mentors like Hoffman, and how it can give us pause to focus on our own lives. As an indie film director, I’ve taken time to think back on all the lessons I’ve learned about the big screen, my own successes and failures, and I’ve come up with a few things I know about what Hoffman loved and spent so much time doing—acting.

  1. It’s the Method. This is not to knock techniques like Alexander, Viewpoints, or others. If anything, these augment and support Method acting. But think of the greats: Hoffman (Philip Seymour and Dustin), Brando, De Niro, Pacino, etc.—and it becomes clear that there’s something really effective about listening, staying focused on the moment at hand, and making use of affective memory. I know, Anthony Hopkins—you think method actors are a “pain in the ass.” Well, you played a black man passing as white. That was a pain in the ass.
  2. Homework works. There are folkloric stories like Hillary Swank living as a man and Daniel Day Lewis’ extreme character makeovers. In my own short films, I’ve created little assignments like having someone write a love letter to an ex-partner, sending two characters out on a date, and discussing the experience of one actor’s digging her own grave for a part. Similar to mindfulness meditation, the best way to observe behavior (aside from studying actual human behavior) is going out and doing it yourself and seeing what arises. According to Hoffman’s long-time acting teacher, Tony Greco, a main drive of Hoffman’s was wanting to get to the truth of the part. One of the best ways to do this is through homework.
  3. Acting is a fragile profession. All publicity stunts and Shia LaBeouf aside, actors can be brittle people, and I would argue, need more love and attention than most. After all, they’re opening themselves up to complicated and difficult emotions, without the assistance of a trained therapist (other than the director!). Sidney Lumet’s anecdote of Marlon Brando nailing the emotion on a 34th take in The Fugitive Kind speaks to allowing an actor to overcome an emotional block, no matter how long it takes. Such interior moments are, by their nature, contained and delicate; a director has to treat them accordingly.
  4. Bigger isn’t always better. Orson Welles once said, “The famous difference between stage acting and acting for the camera? It’s all nonsense, you know. There’s just good acting and bad.” Of course, acting for the screen in cinema’s Golden Age was very different from today’s oft-muted, “character study” performances in indie films. Bigger might have been better at one point, and at times it still is. But, the prevalence of unforgiving close-ups and hyperrealism call for smaller, not larger. Oh, and good acting helps, too.
  5. We’ll always have actor heroes. In 1951, legendary gossip columnist Hedda Hopper interviewed Preston Sturges about “the future of motion pictures” given the advent of television. He predicted that movies and the industry would simply change to keep pace, since people will always need stories and entertainment. We’ll also need people to act for us, to mirror back our hopes, fears, aspirations, nightmares, triumphs, failures, and everything in between. Gossip columns notwithstanding, we’ll always have and need actor heroes, and the more stories we continue to create, the more diverse these heroes will be.

Thank you, Mr. Hoffman. Godspeed.