| | Sheesh, I need to get down on myself more. Now I'm going to be in
a film with James Franco, the guy who played Peter Parker's best friend
in "Spiderman"!
The film (entitled "Grasshopper") is a short, running perhaps 12-15
minutes, and is being done through the American Film Institute AFI with
director Eric Kmetz. I get to play a waiter in a sushi restaurant.
Years ago, I would have prepared to audition for this small role in a
purely technical fashion. With only three actual lines, I would
have written in my script "tired - slow", or perhaps "happy - fast,
high pitch", and so on, coming up with specifically different ways to
say those lines. It would be just like putting on a different hat for
each line, purely a physical, technical, and easy way to act.
In many ways, that is not acting at all.
Thanks to my acting teacher Drew Snyder, I no longer look at my acting
jobs through such a black-and-white lens. It makes my life much
more difficult, but makes acting so much more fun and interesting!
For the audition on Monday afternoon in Hollywood, I almost forgot to
prepare, because the role was so small. But I realized I needed
to take the audition seriously, otherwise I would go in and come off
bored, uninterested, and lazy. And that would guarantee that I wouldn't get the job.
I began, after reading the script, by identifying some basic questions about this sushi restaurant waiter's situation.
- Where is this restaruant?
- Is it in a small town, or a big city?
- What's the date and time of this scene?
This is what Drew calls "finding the character's psychological
position". In this character's case, these were the four basic
questions I decided I needed to answer, and in turn, those answers
would naturally tell me WHO this guy was, and how he would behave.
For example: the answers are 1) The restaurant is in Castleton, New
Mexico; 2) it is a small town, and 3) It's mid-July, after 11pm on a
weekday.
These answers naturally lead to other basic questions:
- What the heck is a Japanese sushi waiter doing in Castleton NM?
- Does he like his job, the location, the hours?
As you can clearly see, the answers change the character's basic
psychology. For example, a Japanese guy in the American Southwest can't
help but feel out of place. And having to work a late night shift would
undoubtedly make him a little grouchy. And how the heck did he GET
there in the first place?
Isn't this a lot more fun than saying "I'll say this line with my left eyebrow raised, and then cross my arms"?
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| | Posted 3/24/2006 1:03 AM - 61 Views - 10 eProps - 7 comments
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