Trailer Park #5

Trailer Park #5

 

The past weekend was spent on location, in the trailers at Lake Snowden. I had all interior scenes, and for the first time since I began, I had lines. Well, I had lines before, but single ones, ad libs, sort of, in the heat of action sequences. But this weekend was about interior stuff, scenes with multiple characters, including a hamster. More on that in a sec.

 

The weather wasn’t much better than Michigan. No snow, but bone cold, made all the more bitter by a knifing wind that gusted to 30 mph, according to the weather bulletins. You’d think that it wouldn’t be a problem, but it was—in addition to the lights inside the trailer, there were a bunch set up outside, at the windows. And the poor grips had to stand there all day, holding the poles steady while the wind cut their bodies down to size. I am sure wind erosion reduced most of the crew by a few inches in height over the weekend.

(above,waiting for a shot setup...below, happy I am not outside in the wind) 

I read over my lines a bunch of times before we began, but they were never really drilled down to muscle memory. And this is one of the things I don’t like about film acting. I prefer the rehearsal, drill, repetition, and deepening that you get from stage acting. In film, it seems almost accidental. Do enough takes, and sooner or later the editor will find something that works. They say Brad Pitt’s early performances were all created in the editing room, by piecing together snippets of moments in something coherent. I see what they mean. It is said of Ian Holm that he never performs a take the same way, so as to give the director a wide range of choices with which to craft his film. And this brings us round to the discussion that stage acting is for the actors, while film is for the directors.

 

One of the reasons I accepted this role was to learn about acting for the camera. I never wanted to do those schlocky slasher movies that always get made locally, because I didn’t think I’d learn much from it. Plus, film is like herpes—it’s always there. No matter what else you do in your career, somewhere, someone has a dvd of your performance in Sorority Hooker Zombies. Or failing that, some small really indie film with homeless people as characters, because for some reason, young filmmakers assume there is a sort of transcendence about homeless people. Angels in our midst, so to speak, from whom we can learn valuable lessons. 

 

Anyway, one of the things I’ve learned is that I am not a “first take” actor. I need a few takes to warm up. Invention comes from repetition, in my case. It all still feels accidental, but I am getting the handle on it. I am learning too that stagecraft has no place in film. Behavior does. I’d always heard that, but now I am getting realtime experience in it. It isn’t so much a dialing down from stage (Orson Welles said there is no such thing as film acting vs. stage acting, there is only good acting vs. bad acting), but rather an employment of things you wish you could do on stage, but can’t, because it wouldn’t read.

 

(If film is about the eyes, here are a pair of bleary ones)

Film is about eyes, I think. So is stage, but stage also needs movement and gesture. Film is primarily eyes. They are the place we always look for clues in other people. Even our dogs look us in the eyes (and hands), because they express mood. Guarded eyes read flat on film. Think of our favorite actors in film, and they are always the people with very expressive eyes—George Clooney is a good example. But someone like Jennifer Jason Lee, who is a brilliant actress, has beady little eyes with not much expression, and so we don’t get drawn to her like we would Julia Roberts, who has very expressive eyes. Or Audrey Hepburn, who had the most expressive eyes of all. (Re: Julia Roberts, I lost a lot of respect for her when she said, on Inside the Actor’s Studio, that she doesn’t like to rehearse. Lots of film stars don’t. This seems to me to go back to the accidental thing, that sooner or later a take will work for the cutters).

 

I like to think that there are times, on stage, when I can create the illusion of behavior. But it comes from technique. Learning how to recreate behavior. But in film, that veneer of technique is very visible, so one needs to strip it back to just plain behavior. And that’s a job in itself. The trap for an actor is that they stop doing anything, and what comes out is flatness and guardedness. The trick is to think, and allow it to come out in your eyes. Be specific, because the camera susses out generalities. So, I use the first few takes to gather up what my character is thinking, specifically. My luck, though, the editors will end up using the early takes.

 

So, we filmed for two days in the trailer belonging to my character, Dewey Knox. It was decorated with some delightfully cheesy things, like a framed patriotic eagle and flag paint-by-numbers picture, lots of old snapshots of guys with guns. The art direction team has done a terrific job, and it is an often overlooked art form in moviemaking. But absolutely essential.

 

Because there are two crews under the two directors, you get to see different dynamics at play. One director and his DP and crew are pretty much in sync, and the process moves rapidly. The other crew features little contention between the director and DP (or maybe he’s the head cameraman). Their process moves a little slower, more time taken for arguments about lighting and setups. I suspect the end result won’t produce any visible difference. As a stage director, which is my preferred medium of all, I encourage input from everyone—I don’t assume I have all the answers—but once I’ve made my decision, the discussion is closed. I don’t like to revisit it. Like Patton, I don’t like paying for the same real estate twice.

 

Saturday night we filmed in Marcelle’s trailer. She is owner of the trailer park, and we did a scene where a group of us come in to complain to her about another character who is raising guinea pigs, which is against the rules. My character, an idiot, has bought a hamster, not knowing the difference between the rodents, and tries to convince Marcelle that he found it in his trailer, that the guinea pigs are getting out and multiplying. I come in carrying a bucket from which I produce a hamster and hold it out to her.

 

Before shooting the scene, I went to a back room where the hamster was being tended by some crew members. Once again, the rodents of the cast got the best treatment. This room had a huge heater, and the room was like a sauna. I went there every time there was a break in the action. My task was to get friendly with the hamsters, and select the one for the scene. There were two, one was tiny and hyper, and the other was fat and lazy. I picked him. The hyper one leapt from my hand and kept running all over the room, jumping over outstretched hands of the crew. The other guy, who we named Vernon (Vernon the Vermin) was quite happy to be cupped in my hands. Eventually we got to the point where he would ride on my shoulder or curl up in my shirt pocket. He was a real film hamster too. Nailed all his scenes, especially his close-ups (which brings me to another Orson Welles-ism: he used to tell his actors “if you aren’t any better than that, we’ll have to go to close-up.” His feeling was that anyone could act in close-up, given enough takes. Even Rin Tin Tin would look like he was thinking something. Again with the accidental take concept.)

 

Sunday evening, around dark, the wind picked up something fierce, and there was talk about shutting down and rescheduling, but no day was good for everyone. So we soldiered on. I got to engage in a real moment of actor douchebaggery, of which I am justly proud. During a break, I went outside to smoke, and there was a poor miserable grip, standing there, holding a light pole in the gale force wind. I walked up to him and asked him to stand up  a little straighter. He did. Then I stood behind him to light my cigarette and I stayed there, using him as a wind break. The nearby crew all laughed, and I told him I’d always wanted to have a douchebag moment like that.

 

Driving back to C-bus that night, my eyes started burning, and by bedtime, I was in serious pain. It was like the worst soap burn you ever faced…I was up most of the night standing in the shower, trying to flush my eyes. The next day, I was damn near blind—everything was blurry—and my face has swollen up and was beet red. Dani took me to a doctor, who referred me to another who referred me to another. The day was spent shuttling round doctor’s offices and filling out new patient forms—well, dani did, I sat there wearing sunglasses (light was unbearable) and a sock cap half-pulled over them. The upshot was that I am allergic to the makeup they applied over the weekend. I got a shot of steroids, and steroid eye drops, and some anti-biotics in case there was some sort of hamster disease involved. Even today, Wednesday, I am still wearing sunglasses, and things are bleary. I am writing this on Word magnified to 200%.

So I will be bringing my own makeup this weekend, and applying it myself. And nothing around the eyes. My facial swelling has backed off, but it still looks like I had a bad sunburn. Today I will try to drive for the first time—I wonder if there is a sticker I should get—caution, blind guy driving. I am already profoundly deaf—I am damned close to Helen Keller here.

 

But, that aside, filming this movie has been a lot of fun. I only have a few weekends left.