12 no 3

It's getting better and better. I'm getting more and more used to it. Relax more. Do what I can to put whatever nuances that can make me dive right into the scene to be real and truthful: talk to a person I know, understand my wants and needs, and what is bugging my character right now. But most of all, I can't be thinking about them anymore once I step in front of camera. I got to let it go.

Sally and I were talking about the successful first take much like what Liz had written in her blog. It just takes practice. I don't think there will ever be a day where your first take is better than your second take, but what can be done is to keep doing it and hoping that one day, that first take is enough to convince the people sitting across the room. Sure, you have to take other things into account such as the chemistry in the room and so on, but it's one of the few things that can be controlled. Keep doing it. Keep trying to be better.

Moving on.

Eleven: OSCAR.

Some catch-ups again. I know I'm late and I almost forgot. I was watching Oscars at a friend's house. Ang Lee,  my uncle in my dreams - represent. So proud.

My NPR selections of this blog has to do with Ben Affleck and Bradley Cooper, and I have much more respect to them than before after I read their interviews. Here's what enlightened me:

On Bradley Cooper first. He was talking about Silver Lining Playbook and he was mentioning his scenes / interactions with the great Robert De Niro. One of the scenes in the film was about Cooper's bipolar character breaking down during a verbal fight with his father who is played by De Niro. Cooper is a good honest actor and he was so into the scene that he started to cry "like a hyena", and it ended up being too much for the film. Cooper also mentioned in the interview about another scene where he was sobbing while reading a letter, and the reaction was also too much to keep it in the roll. He said he finally understood what "less is more" means. Another great thing he mentioned was when he was reading the script out loud for the first time with De Niro, and De Niro said his first line in such a truthful, "non-acting" way that for the moment that Cooper actually thought De Niro said something to him out-of-character. Conclusion: find the truth, stop acting, LESS IS MORE.

I was interested to hear Ben Affleck talk about self-directing in Argo because I'm also currently in the process of directing myself, but fortunately for him his product is a film whereas mine is a staged show so it's arguably more difficult to observe myself like he did. But he did say that he would do dozens of takes of himself from scene to scene where he would try different character approaches and different emotional prep / given circumstances. He said that that felt more liberating. Affleck also talked about his early acting years where he didn't understand the value of truthfulness, and he was just getting it by from day to day without the emotional honesty. When Terry Gross referred to acting as "a career of rejection" and asked Affleck how to deal with it, he did say the importance of keeping the confidence and not to let the rejections hurt you as an artist. "[People] get depressed. People get sad. And then that becomes a self-fulfilled prophecy." As difficult as it is, I / we have to keep that level of confidence even when we're feeling like we hit the bottom, because nobody wants a defeated actor. We have to shine. Or perhaps, we have to remember why we still love doing this. Easier said than done, but I'll try.

And Sally, yes hi, you, since you're probably the only person reading this blog, I'm extending my sincere gratitude to you - Michael said you said a lot of nice things about me. You didn't have to do that but you did it, and I'm very very thankful. I'll see you soon.

X Marks the Spot

I thought I can be freer but there were too much self-explanations in my improv. Stop. You don't have to explain too much, just embrace the circumstances and talk about it. I guess I didn't fully get into it because I'm too comfortable with the script, but the danger of that is I'll stop playing. Never stop playing. Perhaps, under my subconsciousness, I still want to be right. I need to get that away. I'm still afraid to do the wrong thing. I guess I'm still afraid because I don't want people to say "I thought you understand your character but you're showing him all wrong." I don't want that, and that's probably why I restrict myself a lot more than I should. Gotta be freer.

My computer's driving me nuts. I need a new one. Thank God for external drive and Google Drive. I saved my thesis and my one-man-show script there. 

I'm meeting Michael tomorrow. I don't want to think too much about it. I never like it. I don't like it when I disappoint myself. But this seems like a good start. I should have fun and have confidence. Hey, treat everything as a surprise but do them well, we'll see what happens. Otherwise, what are you going to do?

I still love doing this. Although it's a mystery and sometimes a self-contradicting thing I still love it. I can't explain it to people. I love it when I do it and see people's reaction. Yeah man, I'm telling a story. I'm using my whole self to tell a story. Isn't that super cool? Isn't that amazing? I know, I think so too. 

Keep loving it.

Nine

I'm currently in a rehearsal room trying uneventfully for the last 90 minutes to be productive. I'm doing a one-man show (partially forced) and I don't really have a director. I wrote the piece and I will perform it without any other "crews" or people to help me out during the actual performance process. And let me tell you, I'm trying my best to give a damn but at some point, you burn out. I do try to re-gear myself into the materials front time to time, but then you can only do so much. By yourself.

And is it bad to say that I don't care about it as much as I thought I would? I don't know anymore, I'm just trying to get by. Now see that right there can be opposite of what I just say, but I don't know what I'm saying anymore. Moving on.

My mistake of doing the improv was that I really let EVERYTHING go, which is a no-no. A certain structure is still needed for this kind of free form. I'll remember that. But man can I say that it's difficult to put that boys scene together because somehow I need to reshape the amount of people involved in the original scene? I felt a bit schizophrenic, but I won't complain. What I was glad about is that there seemed to be truths in the moment, which is always desired. I have a clear objective I was going for without me consciously realizing actually, but the form brings out the truth. Or it forces you to do it, rather. It was good. Got to make these things feel natural and comfortable. Got to get used to this form.

I do ask myself during my own rehearsal process whether I'm bringing the truth. I think that's always a good reminder.

Namaste on ACH. Going to meet them soon. Thank you Sally.

8

Blog. Yikes. Nearly forgot about them. Alright I'll try to be good and concise. 

Felt good during Monday's shoot. A weird thing was I felt odd and not in the mood when I was outside reading with my partner (but Alexis is always an amazing and supportive partner, the problem was on me.) Strangely enough I cooled down when I walked into the room. Again maybe the extra gulps of coffee helped, but maybe it was because I was finally getting used to the camera. In fact I started to consciously ignore them. Still didn't explain what happened beforehand though, but it's good.

One colleague congratulated me after class and thought I improved. I said I was trying to stop "trying". Or stop trying to act I guess. It really would help sometimes if I decided to drop everything and just, simply, talk. Again it doesn't work all the time but when it does, it always felt present and truthful. Wonder why is that?

Had a wild thought a couple of weeks ago. Maybe I should send a resume to Ang-Lee? Hi, I'm an actor. I'm from Taiwan. I speak Taiwanese and Mandarin. I love your work. Well in fact I didn't see too much of your work but I'm very proud of what you did. You are very cool. Can you hire me?

Ha ha.

Moving on.

Seven Years of...

I'm in Starbucks, feeling productive, and jotting this down (figuratively) while I'm working on that gosh darn thesis paper. No I'm kidding, it's actually making me feeling quite good. At least I have something unique I can talk about for 20 pages. 

Okay. So. That Kevin Spacey article. Goodness. I will try not to cut and paste here.

Not that the majority of the population read or listen to NPR, but isn't it great when KS said that Richard III sort of prepped him for this show? Pay attention to theater work next time, kids. Great acting and great process starts from here. Stop eating films up like it's the greatest thing in the world. Remember there are always editing.

We'll be blessed (maybe not at the moment but likely later) when we can have a director who doesn't mind to do 100 takes. Yes man, beat the acting outta ya. Stop acting. Just react. It'd be wonderful to have a chance to do that. I think.

I love it when KS says about "excess accessories" that actors bring. It calms me because I always feel weird when other actors have a special gesture or attitude or whatever and they call it part of character. I'm not de-valuing those actors because those things can be wonderful, but I always feel odd because I don't have that, usually. I'm just thinking about using my whole self and being as truthful as I can (AGAIN, this is not saying that I know everything - I know next to nothing and the way to know SOMETHING is to get work, because it's from there that you learn). What KS says calms me.

About that David Fincher fella, I love it when he reminds me about the first moment when he talks about the first scene from The Social Network. It's what we valued on the stage and when we're doing scenes too, isn't it? We have to establish the relationship. Keep asking yourself, "What's the relationship? What's the conflict?" That gets you somewhere.

Alright. Back to work. See you fellas.

6: Catching Up

Got to do some catch-ups in this post. Thanks for the reminder.

To be brutally, painfully, and dangerously honest, I'm no longer the biggest fans of acting books. In my opinions, there are too many of them lying around. Although most of them are valid and the authors do try to contribute what they have find to be so crucial and golden that they want to share with their readers, I believe every actor has their own "kicks" or triggers. Eventually (in a perfect world), each actor develops his own process and hold on to the same list of questions or reminders that can spring them to live onstage or in front of camera. I find it a bit difficult to read more acting books because of all these teachings and previous information that I have yet to process thoroughly, but I'll try my best and say a few things in Mr. Cliff Osmond's book that ring to me.

Conflict: my undergrad acting teacher love to say: 99% of the scenes - especially between 2 characters - are boxing matches. You are in the ring alone with your opponent, and you have to fight like hell to win. I later came up with my own version: when I play a character, the common underlying thought across each and every moment of the scene should be: you (or any other people) will be better off if you listen to what I have to say. Cliff also said the important thing about love scenes (I guess it can be either between "lovers" or friends): there's always competition. Always. You always want to be better. You always want to win.

Reality: I embrace the moment when Cliff reminds the readers that acting should be as close to reality as possible (and yes, it's never equals to BORING or MUNDANE). I'd like to think though that if there's any difference between true reality and staged reality, is should be that staged reality is a "heightened" reality: that is, people in this world have more emotional freedom. They're more vulnerable and sensitive to their emotions, and they concentrate their every living second on feeling and living. We sometimes skip through our own daily lives in order to protect ourselves so that we don't ending up in an asylum, but audiences are hungry and bloodthirsty in that sense: usually, if not always, they want to see the actors feel and react and get overwhelmed by emotions. I have to remind myself of that. It's tough, but I'm learning.

On those NPR thingy, I read about the crazy and mesmerizing Daniel Day-Lewis and the underrated william H. Macy, and boy did they have something to contribute. My most memorable moments of reading/listening to Day-Lewis talking about Lincoln was when he talked about how thrilled he was when he discovered Lincoln's sense of humor. To be a smart-ass for a moment, Kurt Vonnegut said at one point that "humor is an almost physiological response to fear." What makes us human is our sense of humor. We use humor as a weapon to deal with our frustrations and fears we encountered in our everyday lives. I believe, therefore, by understand the character's humor, I can get a clearer glimpse of the character's fears and views of life. It can be very valuable. It's huge and hard to grasp, but I think this is the right track.

William H. Macy, on the other hand, said something that was very important and is especially true to us "student actors". I'll be lazy there and post the transcript:

"In our theater company, with Felicity, with my wife, we talk about actors sometimes - some actors, they're good actors, quote-unquote, "good actors." And then you get these other actors who are completely not, quote-unquote, "good," meaning they're not team players. They're just all over the place.
They're hard to get to the set. They're unpredictable. They never do the same thing twice. You don't know what they're going to do. They, a lot of times, turn out to be - give the best performance. They're great. And I fall into the category of the good actor. And I'm trying to do less of that and be outrageous."

Isn't that a great wake-up call? Sometimes we need to, yes, stop acting and stop being careful and start reacting. Feel. Be free. Don't worry if you're off-beat. Don't worry if you lose yourself. That's great. People savor it when you can make the unscripted errors part of the characters. Keep living.

Wow-wee. A lot of words today. Good. Productive. Onwards and upwards.

I Plead the Fifth

Less and less to talk about now. 

Sometimes acting is also about experience. The fact that I've never been a waiter before might have hindered my audition on Wednesday. (Adding on to the fact that I'm still trying to get used to "seeing" and "putting" my lovely off-screen imagined partners and make them stay at the same place.) Although acting teachers would say that each of us has already experienced all there feelings in the world and leave the rest of it to your imagination, it is still helpful at times to be observant and look at the people around you. I admit that I seldom pay attention to the people around me, but it can likely be both productive and fun. I'll try to pay attention to the people sitting next to me in a restaurant.

To be honest, I'm getting really tired recently of all the classes lately. I think I've had my share of learning. Not that I'm done learning or I know all the techniques in the world, but it's that I really need time to dissect all this. Three years of notes and records takes time to consume and to brand them in your head. What's more important, I think the most important thing for me is to figure out how I work. I need to figure out my own acting process. It might need to go through some trials and errors, but I need to make these techniques to become instinctual. I need to find my own way. Now, the days can feel like dragging and at times I feel like I lost all the energy that keeps moving forward.

I'm a little bit in a slump now. I'm fighting with my flaws and laziness and imperfections and over-thinking, and sometimes I need to deal with people who I love but find it hard to connect and/or relate to at times. I know eventually things get better. I know this is the feeling that comes and goes. Sometimes I feel golden and sometimes I feel poop-y. Just have to learn to ride the wave and be who I am. Or at least to remember what I used to be.

Turn out this is rather longer than I expected. Ha. (No pun intended. Oh the irony.)