Does Method Acting Suck?
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- Опубліковано 19 вер 2024
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I have to correct something: Jared Leto also sent a LIVE RAT to Margot Robbie. Fortunately this story has a happy ending because even though Robbie was freaked out by the rat, she didn't have it killed, she instead did some research to take care of it until she could find an owner for it. So even if she was scared shitless of this rat she decided to treat it with kindness. Oh and the rat's new owner? Guillermo del Toro. He named it Venustiano. It unfortunately isn't alive anymore - rats typically don't live more than 2-3 years at the most - but from what I understand he had a very good life, even after what Leto did.
As a pet rat owner, this story both pisses me off and warms my heart. It also killed all respect I had had for Leto - I was a huge 30 Seconds to Mars fan back in the day - because fucking hell, exposing your coworkers to horrific trauma like this while also putting an animal in danger. He knew full well that Robbie would freak out and he knew there was a possibility that she would harm or kill this creature and he still did it for the publicity and "in the name of art". Fuck Leto.
Of course Guillermo took the rat. :)
I'm not even really getting what the sending of rats has to do with playing the Joker. This kind of crap is not what the Joker does. These are the actions that you maybe see from prank videos made by the kind of douchey youtuber that ten year olds think are super edgy.
That's amazing of Margot Robbie though. Respect for her went up a lot.
Of fucking course Guillermo took the rat lmfao
I am a vegan and I see nothing wrong with this(??)
I'm pretty sure Henry Cavill method acted a bit during the Witcher, it's just that no one really noticed because he just did stuff like sleep in his armor and befriend his horse.
Viggo Mortensen carried a steel sword with him while making LOTR and always had it with him.
Would either of these necessarily be method acting? Getting used to odd props, costume, and animal performers might help them feel more comfortable on screen to just act. Just a thought though.
@@JnEricsonx John Rhys-Davies was grumpy and uncomfortable the entire time he was in Ghimli make-up.
@@MechaSlinky Well he was allergic. Fair enough.
😂
"Improv-ing a fight" is normally just called "getting in a fight."
I feel like there's a scale of -method- directors from 'Kubrick being a royal dick to Shelley Duvall on the Shining' to 'Andrew Adamson hiding the Narnia set from Georgie Henley until the cameras were rolling. There's a kindness in the latter example, especially dealing with a child actor, giving them space to have fun. And I think there's more leeway to surprise actors with positive emotions rather than negative ones.
I have heard that DDLew's acting style is why he takes so few roles, so he can rest and be himself. (It's also probably why he's never parodied himself. Hard to be silly when you're taking yourself so seriously)
He’s also seen his dead father onstage before, which is why he will never do theatre again.
Aw, that Narnia tidbit is so wholesome and fun. I like stories of directors being cool like that.
The sustained abuse of Shelley Duvall is also quite different from just surprising an actor for that one reaction shot - like Alan Rickman being dropped in Die Hard; they told him we will count to three - then dropped him before they got to it. Might not have been the best moment of his life, but nothing happened that wasn't planned - he knew he would need to fall, he was just surprised by the timing of it, and it did not last for weeks and weeks.
Also moments when actors spontaneously laugh at a joke they weren't expecting, can be an improvement from 'acting'.
The theatre guys were saying he betrayed them. So he made up and excuse@@blitzkriegdragon013
I want to see an actor who plays Superman go "method" and run around committing as many selfless deeds as possible. I mean...I guess Christopher Reeve kind of wound up doing that, but that was after he stopped playing Superman.
Lols yeah it's always the nasty messed up characters they do this with
I want to see Cavill do that. He (kinda) can, "methoding" as fiction's nicest portrayal of Sherlock Holmes
When he was playing Dr Who, Tom Baker (who was a tyrant on set, and bullied the cast and crew) got so focused on being an inspiration to children he only drank orange juice in public and wouldn't smoke despite being pretty dependent on alcohol and cigarettes in his private life at the time. Apparently even method acting a good guy was bad for Baker, as he got very upset that he could never be the hero the Doctor was to the people around him and this made his situation worse.
@@cameronmarnoch5236 Please have nothing bad to say about Jon Pertwee.
Whenever I'm made aware of a scene where someone is actually suffering on camera and not just acting, it permanently ruins that scene for me. All I can think about is the actual, real suffering that the actor went through and the suffering that the character endures is lost.
I remember an old acting story where Dustin Hoffman was being super method on the set of Marathon Man. The character was being tortured, and Hoffman stayed up for days so he would seem really tortured and damaged for those scenes. His costar Laurence Olivier said to him, "My dear boy... why don't you try acting?"
Whenever I hear a story about some megalomaniacal director tormenting their actors in order to get them to act tormented, I always want to say, "My dear boy... why don't you try directing?"
Directing is such a lovely, collaborative art. Asking the right questions, challenging the actors and getting challenged in return, having the actors show you interpretations and reflections on the text that you never thought of, adapting and experimenting and exploring... You guys, it's so exciting. But good directing comes from collaboration.
If you bully and terrorize anyone enough, they will react as people do to being bullied and terrorized. If you turn on the camera at the right moment, you might catch that reaction, and it might indeed be compelling. But that's not directing. Any shmo off the street will look scared if you scare them, any asshole with a loud voice can bully someone. That's just abuse with a camera. And there are better ways to get a compelling performance that involve actual, well... directing.
It irritates me no end that these bullshit tactics are the ones that get revered in pop culture as like, raw and uncompromising and artistically brilliant, when really it's the last resort of a weak, self-important director who doesn't have the skill or the patience to get a good performance with actual technique, even with a great actor and a brilliant script handed to him on a silver platter.
you’re right, scaring someone isn’t directing at all. claiming that they needed to do something by awful is just an excuse for not having the skill to communicate with or help the actor
Makes me wonder what would happen if Kubrick tried to direct Klaus Kinski. Nothing good, of course lol
Idk why Stanley Kubrick was praised as a god of cinema.
@@nont18411 Because he made genuinely great movies despite his crazy bullshit.
Kubrick anyone?
So....back when The Lord of the Rings movies were new and the extended editions were coming out, Sir Ian McKellen was doing some commentary or in an interview (it was somewhere in the special features; I was an enthusiastic middle school student, I watched all of that stuff) where he mentioned a conversation in which he was asked "How do you do embody Gandalf so well?" and his response was simply "Well, I'm playing a wizard, so I just....think like a wizard." as if that was a complete and satisfactory answer to the 99% of us who are mere mortals. This was described as method acting. Funny how over the last 20 years the term has gone from that, which is basically the System - work out how your character will behave and act accordingly - to all the dicking around backstage that some people do.
“If we were to draw a graph of my process, of my method, it would be something like this: Sir Ian, Sir Ian, Sir Ian, action, wizard ‘You shall not pass!’, cut. Sir Ian, Sir Ian, Sir Ian.”
@@ajzeg01 That quote is from a TV show Ricky Gervais did called Extras. It's a scripted comedy bit. ua-cam.com/video/m5CX00i4uZE/v-deo.html
Viggo (Aragorn) went method too during the movie, hiking to sets when his character was meant to look like he was traveling, learning skills his character would know beyond what was required to just hike (swordsmanship, horseback riding, tracking etc), taking advantage of onscreen mistakes (when he broke his toe on the Orc helmet, or nearly drowned in the river). But they were always treated as tools to improves his preparations and performance.
But even then, Viggo was always humble and on good terms with the other actors. Nobody had a bad thing to say about him.
Meanwhile you get people like Jared Leto who just wants to be an asshole with the excuse of “I was just acting, relaaaaaaax.”
You *sure* this was the special features and not just his episode of Extras?
@@pseudonymous9153 Not even remotely. Most of what I've heard about the creation of those movies comes from the special features. I didn't remember where I'd heard this, so I assumed it was there.
Fortunately, while working as an actor, I have only had the displeasure of working with a committed method actor once. The main issue that came up was when his character was slapping the ass of the actor playing his wife. This was a theatre production so it was happening multiple nights in a row. He was hitting her so hard though that he was bruising her and she struggled to sit down after a week or so of shows. The director spoke to him multiple times and his return was always that he was following the method teachings and to do any less would ruin his system.
My personal experience and the things I have read about famous method actors is that as a system it just facilitates abusers to be as abusive as they like with no consequences. It feeds into the whole toxicity of many sets and productions that allows people to do shitty things and then be praised for it afterwards.
And just one last thought, isn't it funny how all the contentious method actors seem to be male? What a bizarre coincidence!
_white_ males
Anything less would ruin my system...
"Okay, well, that's not acceptable... let's go in a different direction. Or we can go with a different actor. Decide that right now, before we part company, because if you strike your costar again, your done."
Exactly. In Stella's book there is one such example but that ended with the female actor slapping the man and then she said she herself got into some method acting lol
I've found that most actresses who subscribe to The Method(TM) just get labeled as "difficult to work with". Look at Marilyn Monroe--she had studied method acting and set very high standards for herself, but directors were less tolerant of her doing it than they were of, say, Marlon Brando. There's a lot of toxic masculinity tied up with our conception of method acting, and I don't think it gets talked about enough.
I, generally, have a larger issue with what I've seen referred to as Enforced Method Acting, directors who force their actors to experience the thing with or without them really being down with that.
Probably the most egregious I've heard of was from The Abyss. There is a scene when Ed Harris's character is drowning and almost out of air and just barely makes it to the ship on his last gasp
So like James Cameron *actually* didn't give Ed Harris enough oxygen when shooting that scene. He actually almost did drown because they chose to do that. And Ed Harris, rightfully, punched him once the scene was over and he was out of the take.
I doubt anyone could defend that exactly, but that's what I think of when I see it discussed.
I do defend Harris punching Cameron, but I don’t think that’s what you meant.
oh that thing about "improvisng" during fights sounds really unsafe. if you improvise in aconversation and it goes wrong, you get a bad take, you improvise during a fightscene and it goes wrong, someone gets hurt. like, why would you that
Eric Stoltz got fired from Back to the Future partly because he got way too "method" with the character of Marty McFly and failed to consider that he was in a light-hearted movie, not a gritty angst-driven drama. Method actors always annoy because they consider no one besides themselves. That's not how a collaborative effort like a movie should work.
Great video as always, Laura. You consistently find a way to make me think.
you mean Eric Stoltz
@@raziel7148 Oops. Thanks for catching that.
I think even Eric Stoltz himself admits at this point he wasn't the right guy to play Marty McFly and to me it felt more like he was overthinking it more than anything else. Honestly though, as much as I love the movie, I think he actually had a decent point about the ending being kind of dark when you really think about it with Marty coming back to his home and now living with these bizarro versions of his family that are essentially strangers to him
Leading supposedly to this iconic exchange: "Hey, Eric..." "I'm Marty." "No, you're Eric, and you're fired".
Again method acting included assulting coworkers. I think the actor who played Biff in this case.
I mean Game of thrones directors decided to film the battle of the b******ds chronologically to make the actors act more exhausted by the end of it and ended up running out of time for the ending to work
Don’t ask actors to learn to hold their breath for 5 minutes either. That’s also abusive. Nobody’s doing a 5-minute oner under water. They make emergency air tanks that are about the size of a shampoo bottle. Give your actors the ability to take a few breaths every couple of minutes, and shoot just below the surface.
There's also the whacky notion of dry for wet photography.
@@damientonkin but then the hair wouldn’t float around like it naturally would under water. Why, one would need some kind of computer generated effects to make that believable.
When filming "The Marathon Man", young Dustin Hoffman tried to impress Sir Laurence Olivier by telling him the gruelling physical training he had put himself through "because Method!" and Olivier literally replied: "That seems a lot of hard work...maybe next time, just try acting!" I adore that story because I had always figured that a lot of stuff presented as Method acting (wrongly, as this excellent video enlightened me!) was a bunch of bovine feces...
I'm a former "Techie"- camera work, set design, and a whole lot more audio work ( trained and worked as a sound engineer, for the most part) so, take the comment for what it's worth: but maybe a lot of us have a bad relationship with "art". See, I've seen a lot of bad behavior in the name of "art". Everything from band members getting fired for having a beer, or wearing a T shirt, to putting people (including me) in mortal danger in the name of "art". Call me bitter and jaded if you want, but it seems to me that way too often we place a value of what is realistically just another commercial product over real human life. Look, I like art a whole lot, but I just don't think I can justify being a jerk over it.
Kind of adjacent to my theatre experience in Highschool- I was in theatre from 6-11th grade but eventually got fed up and quit for my senior year and I barely got to be in any plays, because they demanded hours of after school practice to a ridiculous degree and all the theatre kids I knew were miserable and overworked- it just wasn’t reasonable at all…. It’s not worth killing you self for art man, it’s just not.
One thing that I feel gets ignored by too many directors and actors is safety, and not just physical safety (the Joaquin Phoenix stuff on Joker REALLY pisses me off, particularly because if he kicked wrong, he could have given a stunt worker a permanent injury) but also psychological injury. Having to portray a character in a high-stress situation for an extended period of time can take a toll on your mental health, even if you're doing it for amateur theatre. Directors and actors both need to learn techniques to de-tangle themselves from characters as well as take care of each other after doing stressful scenes, so as not to cause lasting damage. We hear a lot about how "person x did thing y to actor z to get this result" but rarely how they addressed that incident afterwards.
The gender politics of modern Hollywood "method" acting are also really fascinating to me. Like, either it's male directors doing "enforced Method acting" to traumatize their actors, usually the female ones, or it's men using method/authenticity as their excuse for being garbage humans. With women, you still get the physical immersion, usually with weight loss or some kind of skill, like Margot Robbie learning to hold her breath for 5 minutes, or the dance training that Natalie Portman and Mila Kunis did for Black Swan. Occasionally, you get something like Meryl Streep giving Anne Hathaway a compliment, and then staying cold to her while they were making The Devil Wears Prada, but she seems to be the outlier in that regard. And none of those are things that would hurt their coworkers the way things like Kubrick, Leto, or Phoenix's antics would.
So basically, you're too lazy to Google the actual examples of females doing method acting by themselves.
@@WhaleManMan who hurt you whaleboy? Are you okay?
I heard once that Faye Dunaway went method for Mommie Dearest, but I don’t remember where so take it with a grain of salt
@@meowyowyow You have an entire essay’s worth of ranting up there and that’s the one you think is hurt? Get real. 😂
When you're a kid and you realize that Jim Carey is Ace Ventura
When you're an adult you realize that that is not a good thing
The problem with stories about great directors being awful is that beginning directors tend to equate being awful with being good. I was part of several amateur films and the director kept repeating the same scene over and over again with no input in between, no correction, no alteration, he just kept on shooting the same exact moment over and over again. When I asked him, why are we still repeating this, he said "Well, Kubrick did it the same way"
And trust me, the end product was no Kubrick. It was a typical passion project. It's bad, it's cringey as hell, but you can still enjoy the amateurish passion put into it...
I'd love for an actor in that situation to say "well I think we've got it so unless there are any directors notes let's move on!"
I had a good discussion with coworkers and friends that pretty much all method acting we hear about is for bad guy characters. I'd like to see method acting where someone has to play a philanthropist, so they actually try being a philanthropist haha.
Day Lewis did not "become" Lincoln no matter what he thought. One thing, unlike Lincoln, he didn't die at the end. The Joker was not sending dead rats to Harley Quinn...because they are not real people. Jared Leto was sending dead rats to Margo Robbie. So she should have smacked him and told him to stop. There's this whole work/life balance thing that some of these people do not get. You work...you have morning break and stop working. You work...you have lunch and stop working. You work and at the end of the day you go home...and stop working. If they REALLY can't pick up from where they left off...maybe they should find another line of work. Old saying: "Your right to swing your fist ends where my nose begins." Should be paraphrased: "Your right to go method ends when it spills into real life." The director hired a NON-actor and then slapped him because he couldn't act was wrong in EVERY way, because if he wanted acting he should have HIRED AN ACTOR....or go another direction in the scene...because that scene was not the be all and end all of the movie. People did not walk away thinking: "Gee! The whole movie pivoted on that non-actor crying." That was never gong to be the take away. Best guess: Joaquin Phoenix did not want the fight choreographed because he didn't want people to tell him he was doing it wrong. If he made it up as he went, then he avoids that. People sometimes already know they suck at fight choreography and use "acting choices" to cover it up. Loved your rant, by the way.
as far as i get it, "method" acting as we know it today falls into two easily publicized categories: acting decisions that are threatening/unsettling to the other cast and crew, and decisions that are threatening to the actor themselves. like, i know that joaquin phoenix doing something like improvising a fight scene is not only extremely dangerous to the other stuntpeople, but also himself: and as much as he and the director can say that "its all to make it the more real, man", its also a possible injury to an actor or a stuntperson which would slow the shooting, sue the production company, Fucking Die, or any sort of other unnecesary shit. as impressive as margot robbie learning to hold her breath underwater for five minutes can be, it still doesnt change the fact that it could have ended pretty badly for her! and i get that actors, like athletes and other performers, want to push themselves to the limit, to try new things, but when it borders on self harm... idk if i was the director id try talking to them to see if theres something else with that. id worry.
I remember when the story about Phoenix improvising his fights in Joker came out, and all of us in the SAFD were furious about it. We ranted for days on the topic. A few friends and I have worked on various ways of improvising fights (usually with swords b/c the distance gives us more time and the weapon gives a more obvious cue), and it's so frickin' hard. It's basically just doing actual sword fighting but in a way that's a little performance-y. Not something that should ever be done on stage or set.
Why is it that actors only need to “method act” when it gives them an excuse to act like an enormous asshole?
Like, you never hear about anybody method acting as a really nice person. There aren’t articles online about an actor who bakes everybody on set cookies to get into the headspace of a decent human being.
Like Harrison Ford actually building the replacement giant birdhouse his character knocked over and replaced in the movie "Witness"?
But there is also a factor of what kind of story travels and sells. The actor being super nice just doesn't make a good magazine story. It lacks conflict, edge, drama etc. People are looking for the social version of "if it bleeds, it leads"
Or Viggo Mortensen ranching every horse he ever worked with in any movie ever, and still being a great guy to others. Or how the reason he wanted Lurtz’ (The orc he fought at the end of Fellowship) actor to actually punch him as hard as he could was cause it was easier on Lurtz’s actor, because the makeup made it hard for him to ‘fake’ the attacks.
I gotta say, that slapping story seems kind of fucked up to me, no matter what the consequences for the movie would have been if they hadn't gotten the shot in a timely fashion. In no other job would it be acceptable for your boss to assault you in order to get better results. Even if I'm a maliciously bad worker, spending all day browsing twitter instead of filing reports or whatever, I don't think it should ever be acceptable for my boss to hit me as a motivator.
Unfortunately this is pretty normal for film. Do whatever you can for the take and never talk about it. Trust me their are worse horror stories then slapping an actor and not only sexual assaults and such
@@Nightsmith_After_Dark But that is minimizing assault. Assault in ANY form is disgusting and wrong, and this director should be in jail.
@@thedanespeaks oh I know that Im just saying that as someone in industry I dont see any changes really happening unless the general populace starts speaking out against it. Im just putting in the realisim of this all. Its why hollywood has such a sexual abuse problem.let alone film as a whole
@@thedanespeaks one such story is how a lady got run over by a train because they were filming on train tracks and hadnt cleared it with the station so the station didnt even know they were there and as the film crew tried to flee quickly one of them didnt make it.
@@thedanespeaks Film is genuinely a rough gig where your expected to not sleep, not eat, work 24/7 and dying young is considered normal as long as its for the art form. I remember when I first started I was waking up at 6am and going to bed at 1am and looking back at it I probably would of had a heart attack if I didnt stop and get the current job I have. But I do want to get back into it cause well its my passion.
I see method actors as those people at the D&D table who pick chaotic alignments and then do awful things in-game because "that's what my character would do".
I literally tried to keep a character's ideology and viewpoint in a performance of Richard III (as Stanley) and after two weeks of taking the role way too seriously realized that I got a better performance from just having fun backstage rather than committing 102% to the role. Thank you for this.
I’d always thought of it (in my very non educated kind of way) as very pretentious. It’s actors thinking that what they do is the most important thing in the world, which.... no. You’re doing something primarily to entertain people, you’re not curing cancer, or ending world hunger dude. You’re acting, get over yourself.
And when it crosses over into making things difficult for the people around you, it’s extremely selfish. Because they’re saying that they think that their acting, and the way they prepare for their role, is more important than anyone else on set, more important than any other role on set.
I guess for me it’s all about how much they’re huffing their own farts. Method acting tends to automatically go in that category, but it’s not the only way that actors walk around as if what they do is the most important thing in the world. Like, there’s a difference between taking your job seriously and being professional, and an actor thinking they’re an “artiste” and being a pretentious bellend. And it’s the latter that really annoys me.
Note: the way that some (not all, just some) actresses complain about corsets fits into that latter category. Women wore these things (as in, boned support garments) for almost 500 years, and yet you think that wearing one for a few months gives you some sort of acting trophy? What?
And it’s important to remember that costume people are probably making them wrong, or they’re ill fitting, or aren’t seasoned, and they’re almost certainly tight pacing them because they think that corsets alone gives the right silhouette, when it’s actually more about padding, which they’re probably not using, because they’re uneducated about dress history. And padding isn’t “sexy”, small waists are “sexy!” Even though the women of that time understood that most of that small waist was actually an optical illusion, brought about by padding and skirt supports.
So yes, all of that. But- some actresses do take it too far. They use it as an emblem of “look how far I’ll go for my art”, rather than “yeah, they’re not historically accurate corsets, and as such, they’re not always comfortable, a bit like wearing heels on set for most of the day”. There’s a difference.
Just like you could complain about the costume people putting you into a too small corset and then tight lacing it to get a very specific waist size. That happens. But to then say that you had to have a fully liquid diet, and the most terrible stomach pains because of it, when it’s mostly because you lacked the common sense to not have that liquid diet be bloody Diet Coke...
Of course adding a heap of gas to that situation is going to make things worse, Lily. That’s on you. Not on corsets generally. And no, Emma, wearing proper stays for that move is not anti feminist. Stays are not corsets. Your waist wouldn’t even have been reduced. But maybe the costuming wouldn’t have been so godawful. Don’t agree to do period pieces if you don’t want to wear period undergarments. And again - stays are not corsets. You physically cannot tight lace stays, writers of Pirates. No, women would not have been laced down to within an inch of their lives and faint from lack of breath. Those stays would have had hand sewn eyelets. You try putting that amount of strain on them, all you’re gonna get is a destroyed pair of very expensive stays, and the same waist size you started out with.
The same applies to fantasy regency shows. Only even moreso because regency stays aren’t boned- you literally cannot cinch them. And even if you could- why? You’re wearing a dress that completely covers your waistline anyway. It makes no sense.
And where are the chemises, Bridgerton and Alienist costume peeps? Seriously? I pity the poor laundry people that have to try to wash those disgusting things after you put people in them with no garment in between. Gross!
Sorry. That was a rant. A mostly off topic rant. But, while it’s true that Hollywood hates being anywhere near correct when it comes to historical dress, and loved using stays and corsets as analogues for misogyny and strict gender roles, the actresses often play into it. They want the credit for “suffering for their art”. Bitch, I wear corsets everyday I leave the house. There’s no suffering involved, not if they fit and you wear them properly.
And I really dislike how this inaccuracy travels around, be aiming this myth that most people believe, even though it’s just not true. And sexist, if you think about it. You really think women would have worn these awful things for 500 years if they were so terrible? Women still had shit to do! They weren’t going to make their lives that much more painful and difficult, especially not those women who had jobs besides being pretty and marrying well. It’s just not accurate, and it’s insulting to those women of the past. They weren’t stupid.
Anyway, I feel a bit better after that vent. Apologies for anyone who thought it might be related to the video topic. Sorry.
Night Vale mug getting you into character as a pleasant voiced narrator of increasingly bizarre stories 👀
I've always found the notion of method acting disability offensive. Like Daniel Day Lewis demanding to be spoon fed for my left foot. Let the bastard starve. I've only just realised that there's a connection between my distaste for this sort of thing and the fact that I am disabled myself.
YES! I love you! I hated that shit!
"i got a question that i couldnt fit as a piece of a qna" MKRE QUESTIONS FROM THIS PERSON PLEASE
I feel Jared Leto wasnt method acting in any way, he was just using it as an excuse to be a creep. Compare him to Heath Ledger (rest in peace you beautiful man) who was caught playing his role off set by continueing the mannerisms of the Joker he played to ensure he never lost that charm he had as the character. Or the LoTR cast constantly behaving in the way their characters did while not just being dicks about it. I think that it is possible and sometimes best for some actors to maintain the character to help them seem more natural in their roles. Directors forcing actors to be "method" doesnt seem natural and it should be up to the performers to decide how they carry themselves. It should also be clear to the people you work with that you plan on keeping up the face. I remember seeing interviews about the actor that played Snake Eyes choosing to be completely silent while in costume, which while frustrating sometimes he added to the fun of filming. As long as everyone is having a good time then I think it's okay considering how miserable most of Hollywood is.
This is a great, insightful video, thank you!
The more I hear about the behaviour of some 'method' actors, the more it irritates me - especially from my perspective as a disabled viewer. I felt very insulted by the story that Daniel Day Lewis spent the entirety of the shoot for My Left Foot in a wheelchair, and insisted that the crew feed his lunch to him. It's not the crew's job to also be his carers, and he didn't require a carer in the first place. It really rubs me the wrong way!
Same. I lost a bit of respect for him because of that
Friedkin: "Do you love me? Do you trust me?" ...Fuck no. Never trust anyone whose favorite movie musical is "The Band Wagon".
I Remember being very confused as to why David Ayer didn’t sit Jared Leto down and tell him to get his ass in line.
I think method can be... fine. As long as it's a personal choice and doesn't otherwise negatively affect the actor, their colleagues or the production. But there's a fine line between going "hey, I really like going method, so could you all maybe call me by the character's name? Oh, I was also thinking of mimicking their diet and general habits, so don't be too startled if you see me nibbling on Twizzlers a lot!" vs making the lives of your co-stars at best uncomfortable and at worst miserable and frightening.
And enforced method acting absolutely sucks. Unless we're talking about Lucy actually seeing Narnia for real for the first time. That story is great.
I feel like method acting, often the kind women do, can be super cool and useful. There IS an added level of immersion when an actor commits enough to change their body or behaviors a bit for the role, and if the actor is consensually doing so and not bothering others with it, I think it's pretty neat and admirable. I think the big issue is 99% of the time "method acting" is just male actors using excuses to abuse and harass female coworkers, ngl.
I went to a lot of conventions back in the day and 90% of the time it was amazing and fun when the actors got into character for the panels and essentially method acted when answering questions, etc. Added a real fun element. But you ALWAYS had that 10%, typically heterosexual white male actors, who used their characters to immediately abuse fellow coworkers and convention goers consistently, and to make hideous jokes and comments constantly. I think the same applies to most method acting in prep for movies and shows. The idea is neat and when done correctly, typically by people who understand social boundaries and are doing it for themselves, it can be amazing. It's just that most actors who do it are straight white guys who want an excuse to harass their coworkers and be sexist outwardly.
This video hit my notifications right in the middle of my zoom acting class, where we're discussing the Method. Excellent timing!
maybe i'm off-base, but i feel like i always hear stories of directors who demand dozens of takes in a row from their actors, and they're always like, "and in the end, i think we used the second take." 🤦♀
another one ?? BLESSED
I remember seeing in a documentary how director William Friedkin pissed off Gene Hackman while filming The French Connection; apparently the notoriously finicky and difficult Friedkin was rejecting take after take of Hackman's Popeye Doyle surveilling a suspect in the freezing cold because Hackman didn't "look cold enough." Finally, Friedkin just yelled at him "it's f***ing COLD out here! All you have to do is show me how cold you are! You don't have to act! Just show me how cold you are!" Finally, Hackman visibly demonstrated this by shaking, rubbing his fingers, stamping his feet, etc. That apparently was "method" enough for Friedkin, but the generally mild-mannered Hackman had enough, stomped back to his trailer and refused to work the rest of that day. Friedkin would go on to bring his directing ethos to The Exorcist, where he would do lasting psychological damage to a young Linda Blair.
After watching behind the scenes of Jim Carrey being Andy Kaufman in Man on the Moon, it's clear that some actors who insist on becoming the character they are pretending to be, often use it as an excuse to avoid responsibility for their own actions.
When I met Jerry Lawler, he said he was not a fan of Jim Carrey during the making of that movie. He did still very much miss Andy Kaufman though. I remember watching that, and finding out their rivalry was a fake, after seeing a documentary about it when I was younger. I cracked the hell up in the theater.
If it’s hard to get into and out of a role and it’s not impacting others I get it. Like Anthony Hopkins as Hannibal. Jodi never met Anthony until after the movie was made. She was a bit intimidated by him (but as far as I’m aware) he never did anything to terrify or be a dick to her or anyone else on set.
It shouldn’t never be an excuse for shitty behaviour.
Love your cadence as narrator, host, educator, humorist and public service patron saint of the arts. You rock
I was once an extra on an indie film about a cult. I was about 17 at the time, and by far, not the youngest person in the cast. During one scene, we are all supposed to be gathered in the chapel, while the main character confronts the cult leader about the shady shit they’ve been getting up to. So we’re waiting while everyone sets up, and then suddenly the actor who’s playing the main guy storms in and yells at the actor playing the cult leader that he stole his phone or something. It got really heated, and kind of scary, and there were kids as young as five or six in the room. It felt like they were yelling at each other for a solid 10 minutes, and no one was doing anything. We found out later, that this fight was staged, cameras were rolling during this, and they wanted to get shots of kids looking sad and scared without them having to be in the room while the actual dialogue was going on, which was much more salacious. I can’t remember what happened after that, since it was a decade ago but I do remember a lot of parents were PISSED and I was baffled as to why they thought that was necessary…
I think All actors should take advanced gun safety and actual shooting and fighting courses not only for guns but even swords
Because I can't count the times I cringed at certain scenic fighting and faults to gun safety
I can't remember specific actors or what they said, but I'd be interesting in hearing about the other end of this, and how that works. The actors who are just kinda get-in and get-out, don't need to live in the moment or bring the work home with them.
Maybe one of them was Robert Downey Jr., but that's just going off a vague memory of an article
I remember a possibly apocryphal story about Dustin Hoffman working with Laurence Olivier, and Hoffman was working Method, trying all these things to get into his character's head; then Olivier looks at him and says, "Have you tried acting, dear boy?"
"I don't like Kubrick very much" Hello, I'm new to the channel and this is the moment that I knew I would love it here cause hard same.
Thank you so much for this video. I have such deep respects for acting and it is a great love. It saved me when I was a kid and it still saves me till this day due to me always having to mask.
When I was younger, I would take it to the extremes, but I thought that is what you were suppose to do, and you know what it got me? No one wanted to be my partner because I always wanted to do something over the edge for high school. I tried directing for a school project and the first day I tried method directing, pretty much the people who was helping me with it didn't want to halfway through the day and I was lucky to be able to apologize and the ones that stayed and helped finished did.
I still may be along lines of method when it comes to my acting (sadly, haven't acted for around a decade or so,) but I have learned to read people and to talk to them on how they would want to go about the scene. Sometimes the method way isn't all that bad IF no one is getting harassed or hurt.
Years ago when There Will Be Blood was recently released, I remember having this argument with my older sister (who doesn't like movies that make her have to think, so perhaps I was wasting my breath), and she was defending Daniel Day Lewis' behavior in several movies by saying, "he's being method". And I countered with, "nooo, Viggo Mortensen in Lord of the Rings was method. Daniel Day Lewis is psychotic."
He literally is. How many mental breakdowns has he had already?
damaging yourself as an actor is so culturally romanticized and it needs to stop. method acting is DAMAGING. we have to stopppp. speaking as someone who has performed some EXTREMELY emotionally intense roles, it is /so much more/ fun and fulfilling and effective to just.... act. make yourself cry by drying your eyes out and changing your breathing rhythm, not by forcing yourself to focus on your own traumatic memories. have fun backstage with your castmates and then be vicious onstage because its FUN, and you can build an incredible antagonistic rhythm and chemistry with your costars when you have a natural safe rapport offstage or when the cameras aren't rolling. safety for the actors makes performances better, like... objectively.
All hail Stanislavski! Thank you for brining my favorite acting tool to light and explaining it so well.
Oh, I actually learned a little about this in an intro to acting course. I feel so smart. Had to read a book by Uta Hagen, very good stuff.
This is definitely a day where I needed to hear someone else rant about something
This reminded me about the butter scene from the movie "Last tango in Paris", in which the actor Marlon Brando and the director settle to make a "sex" scene, without talking with the actress Maria Schneider. They raped her in the process, just to get the "best" shot :(
Speaking as an actor myself, I hate the bullshit people do and justify it by calling it "The Method"
Your conclusion is perfect. What a wonderfully nuanced, lukewarm, sensible take. 10/10.
The bit about the roles of actors and directors makes it sound like Friedkin and Kubrick and Fincher are trying to take artistic ownership of their actors' performances.
Ever since the dawn of film theory, directors have been held up as the One Artistic Vision by certain theorists (and directors). But for the director to be *The* Author, you need to find ways to credit them for the work of cinematographers and editors and foley guys and so on-and the actors. If Kubrick asked Shelley Duvall to do X, it's hard for him to claim that as part of His Artistic Process; he just asked an artist to do their art. But if Shelley Duvall only gave that performance because of what Kubrick did to her, her performance can be attributed to his labor, his vision, his artistry.
I don't think that's what Kubrick was thinking, but that's the narrative implicit in "the director was abusive to actors to get the right performance out of them". The actors' performances were the result of the director's actions, the abuse was necessary to get those performances. But it wasn't! So if you needed another reason to wave the "Film is a collective artform!" flag, there you go.
17:30 et al: an older stunt person once told me that it used to be de rigeur to say actors did their own stunts and force doubles to work uncredited if that’s what the actor felt like saying
The example that I always use in reference to this kind of thing was a different instance on the set of "The Exorcist". Friedkin reportedly fired a blank gunshot right behind Jason Miller's head to get a reaction out of him, and Miller promptly went off on him, saying that he was perfectly capable of *acting* scared or surprised without any help and that Friedkin should back off and let him do what he hired him to do. I think you hit the nail right on the head when you said it betrays a lack of trust in the people around you if you have to resort to violence and coercion to get your point across.
HELL YEAH! Great video and great job getting signed to Nebula!
Method acting is where blurring the lines between simulated actions and real unsimulated actions is considered appropriate.
If it was taken to it’s logical conclusion porn would be considered method acting.
The arbitrary line drawn in the sand based on the attitudes of the time.
Not to say that there isn’t appropriate ways of employing the tenets of method acting to improve the experience and the acting.
It’s just arbitrary and often executed by pretentious male actors who wanna get away with socially unacceptable behaviour.
yooo, practicing by playing DnD as the character you've been cast to play? that sounds like a fun idea
Hell, Vin Diesel wound up playing a version of his D+D character when they made The Last Witch Hunter.
Viggo Mortensen just derping off on hikes and going fishing in full gear
Also breaking his toe is remarkably good method acting, right?
I mean, the breaking of his toe was an accident, he just capitalized on it in that split second.
And in fairness on the hikes, Sean Bean also went with him cause he was afraid of going up in the helicopter.
Sides, Viggo’s actually an example of a guy who uses method positively. Like learning actual swordsmanship for his role (fun fact, his master says he was the best swordsman he ever trained), or bonding with every horse he’s given in a role (and he still has and rides those horses to this day), and most importantly isn’t a dick to his fellow actors on set.
Glockenspiel in thumbnail solidarity!
I'm a director and I think you hit the nail on the fucking head. My job isn't to manipulate homunculi, it's to bring out the expertise in people I trusted to play these roles. And tell them where to stand while they do the things lol
I studied/did acting before going into directing and I'm not a fan of method. I think it can work in some cases in moderation, but I've seen it do way more harm than good every time.
32:00 in japan they have a method for improv fights, i think the old show monkey probably has the clearest example, you can see it in the big fights with monkey and the boys fighting like 20 anonymous goons. in fact, you may be able to see it in power rangers when they fight the putty patrol, for something people in the US might have seen.
Unimportant but the most Stanislavskian I’ve ever been is in high school. I was in some Murder mystery play as the older, semi-bumbling mystery writer who totally is gonna solve this thing. I was supposed to have some piece of evidence I was supposed to fumble in my coat pockets for before presenting, but in rehearsals I was TERRIBLE about actually having it on me when the time was right (it gets handed off to someone else and high schoolers are bad about resetting props).
On the night of first performance I had it and KNEW I had it, but I pulled from the memory of losing the thing so many damn times that I fumbled so well the guy I was supposed to present it to literally looked scared I’d fucked it up 😂
Only time I've enjoyed "method acting" was when reading Skip Beat, a piece of fiction about actors, and the context there is very much that it's not rule of thumb or impressive but that the main character (who's had no proper education on acting, bc this is initially a "from rags to riches" power fantasy manga about getting into show-biz to take revenge on your emotionally abusive ex) can only act a role by p much dissociating and "become" the character she needs to play for a time both on and off set, and it's something she's also slowly being trained out of so she can more easily and quickly switch between roles.
And then there's this whole thing of her and her love interest playing a pair of edgy siblings just so the love interest can learn to play edgy roles (so, uh, an actor pretends to be a different, made up actor to play and edgy roll in a drama. double acting? ..a dude playing a dude disguised as another dude) w/o losing control of his past anger issues and she's basically only there to keep him in check.
The very most method acting ever done in the manga as far as I've read.
I just remembered that Jared Letto filmed a vampire movies recently. I do not want to know what he did to "get in character."
In my childhood, I remember my brother preparing for a part in some play and I think he used this method bc he watched the Dark Knight many times just to get ideas from Heath Ledger's Joker performance.
Hot take: Method Acting works for some and doesn’t work for others. Without method acting, we wouldn’t get Daniel Day Lewis.
Tell me you didn't pay attention to the video without telling me you didn't pay attention to the video.
We know, and we're kind of fine with that.
“I needed this priest to act so i slapped him”
IDK Bill, maybe hire an actor and have them ACT like a priest?
William Freidkin fired a gun at actors constantly to get a convincing sense of surprise.
Real method acting is just like when you grab an apple know why you're grabbing an apple
I challange leto to method act a decent person who gives to charity and fosters kittens
I can't stop thinking about the fact that William Friedkin slapped a priest! Out of all the things I expected to learn from this video...
Hitchcock pretended to lose the key.
Method Acting seems to get all the focus (especially after Brando) but what are the other schools/philosophies of acting?
Honestly, I think the core issue here is that professionalism should be a trump card for every other issue. It's bad enough when it's a D&D group and a player is using their character's edgelord vibe to monologue for ages and stall out the game so nobody else gets to actually play, but that's just a group of friends who has that one guy who's kinda a dick. If you're acting, particularly at the level where you hear these stories about method acting nightmares, you're a professional actor working with coworkers. Act like it.
Take Andreas Katsulas's example - he played G'Kar in Babylon 5 (among many other roles) and while he did stay in full regalia and kept using the voice and all that, he'd also just be a decent guy, super friendly to coworkers, make small talk, pop out for a quick smoke break...and then pop back in and be the fanatic, passionate revolutionary who terrifies the hell out of any Centauri character the moment the camera turns back on (that's early Babylon 5 G'Kar - he has a pretty impressive character arc and is easily among my favourite characters of the video medium (TV or movies) because of it) (If you're wondering where this example comes from, it's from the commentary tracks on the DVD set of Bablyon 5 - the show's writer comments specifically on the contrast between the on camera persona of G'Kar and the reality of Andreas just being a coworker while still having the unsettling red eyed visage of G'Kar)
Maybe you need 10 minutes to switch from affable coworker to whatever role you're playing - certainly if you're doing something like Heath Ledger's Joker I wouldn't expect you to be able to just switch it on like a lamp but...you know when the cameras are rolling, you can plan out that prep period pretty much to the second. But when the cameras aren't rolling, you aren't your character, you're yourself, and the fact that you're playing a character who's an absolute dick is no excuse for your being a dick yourself.
I love this video so much and I love your lipstick!
As much as I love the intimacy in this video, I feel a polished video made from a script built off of the answers you gave in the Q&A etc. was warranted. There's so much material here, and on a personal level I want to see this channel grow, and I think a polished video strategically released for the next "method acting" controversy could really ride the algorithm.
At the same time, I enjoy this video as it is.
No mention of Sanford Meisner, especially regarding this topic? His method is more pertinent, and the subject of "prep" is an integral part of the technique.
Acting is not like any other job, it's a craft and one that (in Hollywood) you get paid WAY more for good work.
The thing is Method acting gets a bad rap
in Hollywood true Method acting is
about the training and craft of acting.
Not what some of these Hollywood directors
tell they’re actors to do and call it
“Method” acting when they don’t know
what they are talking about.
Lee Strasberg’s Method acting which
is based on Stanislavski is not about
being crazy and treating people like shit
it’s about the work.
I will never get over Leto doing all of that just to give the most mid joker performance I've ever seen and only be in that movie for maybe 5 minutes anyway... Proof that these guys are just looking for excuses to be assholes and it's not about the art at all
9 minutes is and it's "like", you know, "like", "like" holy shit, like
Macabre storytelling just did a video about elia kazan, who worked with strasberg, if anyone is interested. Not so much about method acting, but has a lil nugget in there.
Jared the toe Leto "method acted" just to end up doing a "The Mask" impersonation. Somebody stop him.
Great video!
I learnt a lot from this video- thanks!
pretty sure i remember stanislavski said 90% character 10% ACTOR... the 10% is STILL IMPORTANT lol
Ayye awesome FilmJoy t-shirt
As a dnd role player, never in my mind would I ever think I had to work up to being mean or chaotic for a character. (Honestly it's such a moral dilemma for me that I can't play an evil character in any game form) but the idea of what my character does isn't what I do applying to method acting is so messed up. Literally don't be the character when they're an asshole. Don't method act an asshole. Its that simple
Jackie Chan did all of his own stunts.
UA-cam actually sent me the notification noice
Her shirt is very appropriate.
i've always had the opinion that if you consider yourself a method actor, then you can't act. like could you imagine if a nurse couldn't properly do their job unless they were constantly in the same headspace they were in while at the hospital? if you find yourself unable to slip into a role without losing yourself entirely in it, then maybe acting isn't the right fit for you. you don't got it, kid!
I dunno if method acting sucks but I feel comfortable saying Jared Leto does indeed suck.
I don’t nessacerily think method actingis bad if you do things like going into the woods and living a similar lifestyle for a little while if you are playing a character who does that, providing you are safe about it. Or learning to skydive if you are playing someone who does that so you can incorporate those feelings and experiences into the role. But the problem comes with things that actually start affecting people around you, and if you go so far that you put your physical or/and mental health at risk.
here from razbuten
Ayyy same!