Actors Anonymous (30 page)

The grammar of film is more complex than the grammar of text.

Within each shot are innumerable variables: Who has been cast, how those actors play their parts—do they use accents? Do they transform themselves physically? How are those actors presented in individual shots—close-ups? Tracking shots? Zooms? How are those shots edited together—jump cuts? Minimal cuts? Constant cutting? Tracking shots leading to static shots? Who and what are the scenes focused on? What is made primary? Are there filters used? Is there background music? Special effects? On and on.

Now, of course, there are some conventions. We are used to watching films on the big screen and television shows in the comfort of our homes. And of course movies all end up on the smaller screens as well.

There are conventions of duration, usually ninety to a hundred and twenty minutes for a film and thirty to sixty minutes for a television program.

There are actor types that are often used. This is a tricky thing to define, but there are certainly trends. Asian, Latino, Black, Middle Eastern, and Jewish actors generally get the shaft as far as the types of roles being offered. Oh yeah, and women too.

There are genre conventions. Action movies. Gangster movies. Cop shows. Vampires. Teen shows. Reality shows about the trashy little pockets of our country, trashy in an interesting way. These shows have some of the more original characters around.

There are conventions about material that is accepted: Violence is more acceptable than sex. Straight sex is much more acceptable than gay sex. In comedy you can get away with subject matter like masturbation, rape, and death much easier than in dramas where the material is used for its disturbing aspects.

Because film and acting are so technical, they can be learned like a science. Of course, on top of the technical aspects, or nested within them, are the artistic considerations. I’ve been on sets where I look around and see all these adults focused on putting something together, all these professionals, good at what they do, and what they’re making is the most puerile crap ever.

It makes you wonder why everyone does it. If so many people feel like they’re stuck doing material they hate, why do they all do it? And what is the way out? It seems like one way is to work with the great directors. Every actor says he wants to work with Scorsese, and I’m sure it’s the same for the below-the-line positions as well. But why are we all sitting around waiting for Scorsese? Why not be your own Scorsese? And even if you can’t make movies like him, the power of
creation is enough. If you work on your own projects, the projects you believe in, then you have the power of making a Scorsese film.

I hate the guys who are held up like gods because they make big movies. This is the whole reason for this testimony. To show that they are not born into those positions. We are all capable of making something. You can be the director and actor of your own life.

But you usually need to collaborate. That’s the catch. It’s hard to create a great life without other actors, without people helping with the visual aspects, and the audio aspects, without a good soundtrack. It can be done—look at
127 Hours
—but still, being alone for so long? That’s no kind of life.

In life we all want to get along; in art we want to be defiant. In design we want pleasing things; in art we want pieces that become tools to pry underneath the surface, to rip through the façade.

You want the crew to be amicable, especially if you’re making something disturbing. Every kind of subject should be fun to make; the participants should enjoy doing it. Bergman acknowledged that he made films about tough subjects, but it was not masochistic because he was transforming the material into art, the painful parts were purged by the art.

I used to spend tons of energy and time getting emotionally prepared on set, but now I can turn it on much faster. If you believe in the scene you don’t need to emotionally prepare much: The situation will present itself to you as reality, and you will react. It just requires the imagination to take you there.

Think about how few crying scenes there are in any given film. Think about how many scenes there are with your clothes off. We often spend so much time preparing for these kinds of scenes (emotional self-torture, time in the gym) for so little payoff.

Be an acting animal. Breathe acting so that you don’t have to think about it much. Let the material shape you, let the imaginary circumstances shape you. Let the character be born. Don’t put too much of your own spin on it, let it arise naturally from everything around you.

And if you’re the lead of a film—or a supporting character—know how to ride the production so it does half of the work for you. Meaning, you don’t need to show some things through the character if the set, or lighting, or special effects are doing much of the work for you.

TRADITION 10

We should have no opinions on outside issues, hence the public life remains public and the private life is private.

From the Foreword to the Second Edition

F
RIDAY, 1 A.M
.

During this time I listened to a lot of Motown. There was a song in the Ryan Gosling/Michelle Williams movie
Blue Valentine
that was supposed to be
their song
. It was this obscure Motown song by someone called Penny and the Cents, or something like that. They used the song in the film because no one else used it as
their song
because it was so obscure. But after it was put it in the film, it became known.

What does fame get one?

The picture of me sleeping with my mouth open next to a bunch of attentive students says a thousand words. But it says the wrong words, or it says the words that TMZ wants it to say. It doesn’t say:
This
photo was taken at 10 p.m. during an optional guest lecture by William Kentridge, hosted by the graduate art school. James wasn’t even in the Columbia art department but he went to their visiting artist lectures anyway, even though he was in four other graduate programs at the time and working on the film
Howl
and hosting
Saturday Night Live,
and a bunch of other things. Like many students do, he fell asleep in class
.

But beside fame, what does putting on a persona get one?

We all have masks. Often, I like to write about young people, because it’s a time when they are still sculpting their masks.

When we get older, after years of use, the masks meld with our faces. Yes, there are little tweaks here and there, but the mask is reinforced by response. We wear the mask and people respond to the mask and the mask becomes us, the outside response from others nails it down tight.

James used to try to buy all the new albums. He had over 500,000 songs on iTunes. It was a bit of an addiction. Just click “$9.99 Buy,” and then “you might also like these Genius Recommendations.” But the drive crashed and he has never recovered his half a million dollars worth of music.

I like when the press presents me as dumb. It sure takes the pressure off.

Natalie Portman went to Harvard. She’s even mentioned in
The Social Network
. She is tied to Harvard. It gives her a lot of intellectual capital in the press. But in person, she doesn’t act like an intellectual.

But she is smart; she spends more time listening than talking.

This is the testimony of someone who wears masks for a living. Whenever he wears a mask in front of the camera and thousands of people see it, it remains with him a little bit.

Is there a veridic self underneath?

Or are the surfaces what rule?

Some people, mostly creative people, don’t like scholars because they look at art from the outside but know nothing about the actual making of art.

Facebook.

I think it’s nice to have a mix of everything. Some critical writing is better than fiction. Most critical writing is better than fiction.

Twitter.

Google.

Instagram.

James would listen to Motown because it meant he didn’t need to keep up on the next big thing. There was an established body of work that he could explore without worrying about keeping up with its expansion.

After he lost his iTunes music, James just plugged “You and Me” by Penny and the Quarters—the
Quarters
not the
Cents
—into Pandora and got a bunch of other obscure Motown songs.

Perez Hilton.

B____ slowly kisses her way along my stomach. I’m used to it. Sometimes twice a day. Sometimes four in a day.

The Atlantic Wire.

On the show
Entourage,
the main character played by Adrian Grenier does things to the extreme. I want to think that it’s over the top, but actually, it might be less extreme than what actually happens in Hollywood.

Gawker.

Once, when someone asked Elvis about the Vietnam War, he said, “I’m just an entertainer.”

Kenneth Anger.

I hate the idea of not being able to talk about something if I want to.

Lindsay Lohan.

There is nothing tinnier than obvious fake laughter, when one person in the crowd is laughing louder than the rest, to be heard above the rest, as if she is saying, “I’m in on the jokes, and I appreciate James.
I’m his ultimate fan!
”

Paris Hilton.

But sometimes I think that the politicians have no more right to be politicians than I do. Ronald Reagan? Arnold Schwarzenegger? You just need the right advisors.

Anne Hathaway.

Sarah Palin. Okay, she was dumb, we get it. But we’re all actors now, aren’t we? Some actors are smarter than others.

Christian Bale.

I met B______ in Morningside Heights, near Columbia. She was working the desk in the student exhibition hall, reading Kafka. She had a cool demeanor, but it was more like she couldn’t get her words out so easily, so she covered everything with an icy smile.

Some people smell when you bend them over.

Ryan Phillippe.

During breaks, M______ and I would meet sometimes in the _______ building. She made it easy. Third floor, one of the empty rooms. I’d hold the door shut because there was no lock.

I’d spend at least one of my twice-weekly nights up at Columbia with B_____. She lived on Amsterdam, in some old church property that Lucien Carr lived in, Ginsberg’s buddy when he was at Columbia, the
one that killed their other buddy. Young Kerouac helped him hide the murder weapon and then they went to see a film.

At 1 a.m. I’d finish writing and walk from Dodge Hall, where Berryman, Trilling, and Van Doren all had been—I think—across the boulevard and up the hill to her old building and to her room with the mattress on the floor and the art theory books stacked around.

The boys—Kerouac, Ginsberg, Burroughs, Carr—used to have arguments about Thomas Wolfe in these parts. Night of the Wolfians, they called it.

I had no wolf pack. I was a lone wolf.

Michael Fassbender.

Ryan Gosling.

Alexander Skarsgård.

Jonah Hill.

Balthazar Getty.

Michelle Williams.

Katie Holmes.

Jack Nicholson.

Adam Sandler.

Columbia’s Butler Library, the place where they filmed the beginning of
Ghostbusters
. The Slimer part. This girl came up to me as I was writing this and just started talking. She was eighteen I guess, a freshman and an art history student. She just wanted to talk to me, and so she did. And she was tired of trying to study, and it was 2:30 in the morning, and she didn’t think that either of us should be studying anymore. And I asked her what she suggested that we do, and she said that we should just sit there and talk, talk, talk, and it didn’t matter what we said, but that we should just talk
at
each other and then we would get to know each other, and we would share our souls with each other.

I looked at her and I thought she was crazy, but she was also very cute, and I wouldn’t mind getting to know her soul for a minute. Her talking-at-each-other plan actually had some structure. It was more like an improv game.

“So how do we do it?” I said. “I want to get to know your soul.”

“Easy, it’s easy,” she said. “You say something, and then I say something, and then you, and then I, and we just keep going and going, and we’ll get closer and closer to each other, okay?”

“Uh, okay, so, uh, I’ll go,” I said. “I’m Japanese,” I said, even though I am not Japanese. But she didn’t flinch. “I have eaten my panties,” she said.

“I have eaten dog shit,” I said.

“I have eaten dog,” she said.

“I killed a dog.”

“I dated a sociopath, and he killed a person.”

“It was my dad,” I said.

“The person was a baby,” she said.

“My dad was a baby,” I said.

“You are a baby,” she said.

“I’m retarded,” I said.

“You know nothing,”

“I know something.”

“And so do I, you’re going to die,” she said.

“I hope so,” I said.

“When I shit, it is roses,” she said.

“Your asshole is a rose garden,” I said.