ON ACTING.

I have been acting for now 14 years of my life. I've been to various conservatories and repertories and colleges, been destroyed by it and uplifted by it, but I've loved it and I’ve been mesmerized by it even longer, since I was a little boy watching classic movies with my father that featured Humphrey Bogart, George Saunders, Bette Davis, Cary Grant, or the 80s movies with Schwarzenegger, Keanu. My favorite actor growing up Denzel Washington. I knew then this was my favorite aspect of filmmaking, though I was to scared too even think about wanting to be an actor. Learning the craft though has definitively changed my perspective. It was Sanford Meisner's “On Acting" that first dramatically changed how I view, watch, and entertain actors, and on that journey, that sense of discovery, in that time spent being interested and curious about the work I noticed a divide between me and many of my compatriots and peers in criticism- most especially as it pertains to actors. The great and invaluable writer Angelica Jade Bastien has many times tweeted and spoke to the egregious nature of opinions on actors, the problem of which lies not in liking certain actors or disagreeing about performances, but in the constitution of the ideals behind it. The superficial nature of what warrants praise or condemnation for actors coming from those who watch tell us a lot about how little time many of the folk speaking spend making themselves knowledgeable about the craft. How much they depend purely upon their own perspective as an objective arbiter of truth in the work leads me to believe they feel acting is almost completely subjective. The way this continues to show up extends well beyond just critics and into the industry itself. To be honest most directors I hear talking on the subject clearly dont understand what actors do, they just know what they want, and if and when that meets with an unconscious bias around actors, or with the weird tangled ego of actors, the tensions in the relationship of these communal groups end up as yet another example of how people that share similarities can be disdainful of each other. The likes minds like the aforementioned Angelica Jade Bastien, or Dan Callahan & Sheila O'Malley, Matthew Zoller-Seitz and Danny Bowes are as far and few in-between, as the likes of a De Sica, Chaplin, Scorcese, Tarantino, or Eastwood in conducting precise understanding of acting even if they themselves do not study not practice. They do however pay close attention to what the actors do on screen in particular to produce an emotion, and they are keen at sensing bull**** and inauthenticity. They are the oddities on the subject, the rest are far too given to putting mustard on performances that overly rely on histrionics, or falling in love with a performance that relies too heavily on quietness or stillness when sometimes you need to go big, or coming down too hard and confusing stylized grandiosity with “hamming it up”. Acknowledging that history as a gauge or rather a bar is vital to discussing actors and their performances, having that bar, based on a philosophical and educated understanding of the craft rather than what amounts to mysticism allows you not to stumble into the celebration of mediocrity, having that bar, that standard allows you to get specific about what it is you’re seeing, and where exactly it lands on a spectrum rather than a this or that binary. One cannot simply just look at a performance in a vacuum without consideration of what the top tier level of that work looks like, might look like, several ways it could be performed. Without considering whether it's wth words powering it, or the actor, or both. Any and every performance involves several levels of technique, then they erase it or throw it away, you have to trust that it's there and let it go. and I don't know that I can name them all, I don't know that I could articulate them all, but I will endeavor to explain some here based on what I believe was important and vital to Denzel's performance as Malcolm X. And I'll start with presence, and take it even a step further and go power. To play a transcendent figure you yourself must be transcendent. It is what Stella Adler spoke of when she lamented ; “In our theater the actors often don't raise themselves to the level of the characters, they bring the great characters down to their level. I'm afraid we live in the world that celebrates smallness.” By the time he was cast as Malcolm X Denzel had already displayed a level of talent and grandiosity that called out to the masses in a very similar way to Malcolm X. You watch Glory and you see it, you felt it in him yelling “Tear it Up!” , in his antagonistic behavior towards Andre Braugher and the other characters, and of course in one of the most recognizable and memorable moments in movies, his single tear. He drew and draws your attention right through Morgan Freeman, and despite the fact that the star of the movie is Matthew Broderick. Stella Adler continues: “There was a time when to play Oedipus you had to be an important actor. Until 30 or 40 years ago to play any major role whether it was Hamlet or Willy Loman, you had to have size. Write this down: you have to develop size”. This is something fairly new to on screen actors like Thatcher or Kingsley, but something they can develop by continuing their work and taking work that ask them to take it to Spinal Taps very infamous “11”. As acting teacher Marilyn Fox once told me “You have to be willing and allowed as an actor to take it too far and then there understand that there is no such thing as too far because” she said “It is beyond those boundaries that you find the performance”. Let’s be VERY clear, Thatcher and Adir-Kingsley are extremely talented, and they are both clearly well trained. They had an elite level of understanding of what and who their characters were and their responsibility to them, but they do not yet have that elite level of magnetism of presence and of size, so they depended totally up on training and skill and understanding of the role, a role that is essentially about one of the most charismatic and large figures in American history. Even if you want to make them more vulnerable, make them more approachable, humanize them in a certain way, you cannot afford to lose that grandiosity. Denzel as Malcolm did all of those things, and he was HUGE. Riz Ahmed in “The Sound of Metal, has that magnetism. Ahmed has what I call a natural standing belief, and by standing belief I mean just standing there you believe anything Riz Ahmed has to say . There's a natural built-in sincerity to him that comes out in his acting so that no matter what he's trying to sell you- as long as he understands it, and as long as that understanding is somewhat built into the work - he’s very hard to ignore or disbelieve as a character . He is a vulnerable actor, and he is a great listener, and maybe most importantly he is willing or seems willing to unlearn. In a recent interview with Matthew Zoller-Seitz, Matt asked about Riz Ahmed's walk, Riz immediately went into talking about the forms of non-verbal communication, “So once you come to SURRENDER to the script and to the technical process of preparation you do find that your body is telling you in a different way". “Acting is in the doing” Sanford Meisner ( maybe my favorite of the acting teachers besides Hagen) once said, and Riz is a doer, if I had to pick an actor that was next after Lindo from what I’ve seen this year itd be Ahmed. If I had any advice for Mr. Ahmed it would be go bigger. This doesn't mean I want the man to play in a Scarface film, (though in actuality that might be very interesting) but it does mean I want to see him try on his particular strengths in a suit that calls attention to them in a way that gives him this very size to match his self awareness, and deep earnesty. I'm saying it would be cool interesting to watch him in a Michael Corleone type role. Al Pacino found alot of his size ( and this is long before he started to rely on a few histrionics himself) in that role - in his stillness, proving it’s not all about big things, but the character has to be big, every actor needs a “Hamlet“, a “Virginia Woolf" For Pacino it was Corleone. His size, it's there when he closes the door on Diane Keaton's “Kay", and it’s there when he burns a hole into her with his eyes just before he violently slaps her. Ahmed has this kind of quiet size at the very end of “The Sound of Metal” but to pardon and unintentional play of words- that film and that role are far too muted inherently and purposely to be the kind of role that I’m talking about. If there's anything killing this era of acting, its the style that is being preferred, this fetishization of small subtle acting. I want to be clear - this too can be very powerful and in many cases it's necessary, but when you look back into the wide pantheon of performances that whether a cinephile or not people dont stop talking about, the ones celebrated over and over and over again, I guarantee you, you think about 99% of them and one word you must associate with it is Big. Whether you thought of it or not, it's there. Size isn't just about yelling or exaggeration and the effect it has on the audience, (which I think sometimes gets too much credit becomes a easy way into getting or being celebrated) ultimately at its core it is about purpose and goes back to Greek Theater where these actors had to play to audiences in large amphitheaters. Many of them wore special shoes in order to enlarge themselves, large masks, that they might be better seen, and they spread their bodies and their voices out in very exaggerated motions, and their form of speaking became very exaggerated as well and their delivery very deliberate. When Whoopi Goldberg smiles in The Color Purple it’s a smile that can be seen from a distance. Large, grand, beautiful, her own little rebellion in the onscreen fishbowl. Jimmy Stewart throws his lanky gaunt and lithe frame across the room in a fit and bout of fiery indignation in Mr Smith goes to Washington ans then he collapses and its a seismic as the rest of the performance, its a grand overture a final swing for the fences, THATS what you should always feel when watching a performance. Watch Nicholson in A Few Good Men, or the Last Detail, doesn't matter thw role might be detailed and subtle, but Nicholson is gonna bring it to you with a hammer, go back a ways and everything about Gloria Swanson or Toshiro Mifune is large, impactful in either Sunset Blvd or Rashomon. Jack In One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, Meryl Streep in Sophie's Choice, (it's quiet but she still a large) Mae West, Al Pacino,Bette Davis, Robert De Niro, James Earl Jones, Elizabeth Taylor, Angela Bassett, Marcello Mastroianni, Paul Richter, pick any one of these names pick their best role, you'll find something about it that has scope, a sense of gravitas, and most definitely a sense of size. I can bet on Delroy, because performances like this dont come around but so many times in any given time PERIOD. If Yuen, (who I have not seen yet in Minari) Boseman, Ahmed, and Lindo are the best male performances of the year ( they are) and if they are in the same category in the Oscars ( that should be debatable) some of the things that I feel have corrupted and muddied the waters of the decision-making of those who are discussing these performances is worthwhile as a discussion not necessarily for the subjective battle between these actors but for the actor, and for all actors. Acting and or actors as a subject or as people have been discussed terribly. Performance reduced down to it’s most gawdy and banal quality-likeability, personality, these things do matter but thr cache of celebrity has entered the sphere and convoluted any real idea of what actors actually do, what it is, ctaft is rarely discussed and a number of adjectives lonk together to describe the complete and total dominance of the subjective as if there are no defintive waya to look at performances. For quite some time -and I think the advent of social media has really brought to bare in ways that one might not been able to have perceived before - the lack of curiosity about the craft, the lack of care for the work, and the lack of understanding of what it is you’re watching and at times it borders on atrocious. This piece is a labor of love, and respect, because as a movie goer, and as an actor this is important to me, this is special to me.

THE MAGIC ACT

One of the problems of the discourse that continues around actors is that there are very few people who in any real way understand what it is actors have to do. That is most people speak about actor performances in a way that is in the most classical sense of the word - selfish, self centered. It has so much more to do with how “I feel” about your performance, and less to do with the work involved in your performance, or the craft involved in your performance. It makes for the kind of takes that don’t draw the line between things rhe writing is doing and things the actor is bringing. So that we may like an actor like Tom Hardy and see a character that is pretty well defined by what he does, watch Hardy repeat and lean on his skills but also-ran tendencies and not critique that in his role in “The Revenant” which was really a continued repeat of the character he formed in movies like “Lawless” and nowhere near as revelatory or profound in what he found in his more interesting roles like “The Drop” or “Bronson”. More of that mumbling, lack of enunciation and his patent thousand yard stare, and so a slilled actor gives a somewhat distilled version of better work that mixed in with a great character, but unlike Sandler in Uncut Gems its not a discoverybof a new depth, its superficial. Roles like that become known partially because the focus becomes how the performance made “me” feel almost in total, and in that realm acting is completely subjective and thus any and every disagreement can be oversimplified as subjective, but there are as many ways to objectively grade acting as there are any other portion of the craft of filmmaking. The Last Dragon may be your favorite movie of all time, but most people who love that film ( Its ME, I’m most people) would hesitate to call it one of the greatest of all time without a sense of intentional irony or absurdity. This is because people have a sense of the history of filmmaking. They read and study even when they're not directors about the discipline. They go to Q& A's and lean on the words of directors and watch films especiallly to learn the quality of good filmmaking. It gets at and by process of elimination it implies almost directly the underlying problem and difference in how we view acting and especially I think American acting. I think it's at least worth noting culturally that European countries like France, Sweden, and of course England patronize and support the Arts and especially acting schools as a state function. Culturally they see it as a vital aspect of society. I think it's also worth noting that the Brits actually give out Knighthood to their actors! This is not to say that we should mimic this behavior, (personally I feel it’s a bit much) but it does tell us how important they see the art of that specific field. Here in America we've always had a conflicted relationship with actors. On the one hand we have at various occasions in our time bordered on deifying them. We hang on their every word, give them certain cultural and political abilities that they in fact might not and probably don't possess. We magnify their importance as overall people, but this is only when they become celebrities. The working actor does not enjoy this kind of a stage. A actor for the community is a joke, wasting his her or their life, and does not earn or command an iota of respect not even as a job holder. To this day acting as a career field is looked down upon as frivolous and flighty, the kind of pursuit not based in any real work, and that exists because of the divide between working as an amateur and a professional actor. Getting even the smallest paying job as an actor is difficult, because it’s not simply a job here, it’s not work. You are either on TV or on Broadway or your'e impractical and you're a bum Jules. I say that half in jest, using the quote from the diner dialogue in Pulp Fiction, but in many ways it's not that far off. All of this directly contributes to the mystification in an already murky institution, and in some areas the reduction of acting as a pursuit of craft, rather than of capital, which shows itself in all kinds of ways from the aforementioned lack of respect for the job to the erasure of the varying layers a performance. You don't have to be Jeff Bezos in order to be respected as the owner of a business - owning a small bar that does well in the town of the community would be well enough. Craft wise if a singer were to go on nothing but runs that feel exhaustive and overly performative most people can call that out but when an actor does a very similar thing many times in the public eye they're rewarded for it. The Divide between the amateur and professional shows itself in ways that present in the industry as a veteran professional actor being given far more adulation for poor or mid performances than they deserve. Denzel Washington most recently gave what I thought was a particularly lazy if not confused performance in “The Little Things” and still there were people saying that he was doing exceptional work there. If anybody else were acting like Denzel was acting in that movie they would get dragged from here to the amalfi coast and drowned, but its Denzel, and that is part of the problem. How little people know about what acting in a way makes it resemble magic. As a matter of fact many times what actors do is referred to as magic, whether talking about a sort of consequence of the effect, or their abilities. Many times it can be endearing, but I think it's dangerous in this respect; acting is not magic, it is a craft that actually depends upon knowledge, not ignorance for its effect. A craft of coming as close to truth as possible, as my acting coach once told me “acting is what you do out there, here you're here to give truth”. Acting is not (as commonly thought) about creating illusions, and unlike magic I don't think there should be so much of a mystery behind what actors do. Sure some actors believe in keeping some sort of mystery between their lives and their work but the work itself shouldn't be mysterious. Magicians depend upon the mystery of their work if you know what goes on in the act it is immediately ruined, but that's not the case with acting in fact I would argue the more we know about what actors do and what they have to do then the better the act becomes.

BE CURIOUS

This YouTube video of Michael Caine teaching a class specifically on movie acting is an absolute gem and it's one of a few, if not maybe the only thing of its kind available on the internet, and that specifically speaks to, answers, reveals what goes into our understanding of acting, because understand movie acting is (in a number of ways that I can't afford to go into here) decidedly and explicitly different from stage acting (although I do HIGHLY recommend being on the stage at some point during a career). Around 15 minutes into the video he goes on to talk about the difference between movie stardom and movie acting but recommends knowing and understanding what movie stardom is and how it can work for you in movie acting. This is the kind of information a writer of a recent opinion piece on Angelina Jolie could have used before writing a devastatingly bad take on Angelina's career. Too many times in our current era actors celebrity is directly linked to the way that people see, and read their work. This writer was unable to separate how she saw Angelina's celebrity from how she saw Angelina's ability to act, which has for some time now been significantly better than much of the media has been willing to admit. You get the distinct feeling sometimes that to some it can feel as if one person has too much, and to give them yet another thing, to add yet another thing onto their list of abilities or accomplishments just feels like an admission of your own lacking. In other cases we make the mistake of being angry disgusted, repulsed, by the cultivated, curated celebrity of the person (Think Tom Cruise's cringy inauthenticity in his real life) and we let it affect our ability to look at their work objectively, he's a helluva an actor who deserves more respect. Hell, sometimes our viewing, our perception of an actor's celebrity or the being-in-the-public eye portion of their work starts to affect the acting portion of their own work. Johnny Depp and Gary Oldman are two whose troubles behind the scenes (and it's just a theory) have affected in Depp's case and are starting to affect in Oldman's their art. I think for some time in the American coverage and understanding of acting - stargazing has dulled our senses and our perception of acting. We spend much too much time glaring at their brilliance paying attention only to those who burn the brightest within a Hollywood construction of stardom. When if you really want to know what the craft of acting is about its those who are deemed the “Character actors” that maybe have the most to say, that maybe most reliably portray to us what the work is.. the honest work free from the shackles of what Michael Caine discusses here or the base saturated sort of curation that goes on behind trying to make a career. Some of what the all-time great movie stars, (and I mean not just the stars, but the ones who could actually act their asses off man) - some of the most important aspects of what they have/had you can't teach. You can't learn that megawatt, god given you’re born with it “something”, but you can learn how to be such a megawatt born with it version of yourself may you shine just like them. For example, for the most of us, you may not ever be as cool is Paul Newman (just ain't happening I don't know what to tell you) but you can be just as affecting and memorable as a Paul Newman if you just watch and learn from what George Kennedy is doing in “Cool Hand Luke” because thas exactly what he did. John Cazale, Ruth Gordon, Angela Lansbury, Loretta Devine, Debbie Morgan, Joseph Cotton, Ned Beatty, Harry Dean Stanton, Bill Cobbs, Andre Braugher have a lot more to say in the craft, about the work of an actor than many of the superstars we put so much time and attention into. In essence the superstar, the movie star is a construct, and much of what they do is larger example of what Michael Caine advises against in his scene direction when he tells the young man “You were doing that for an audience, you have to do it as if you’re doing it for a friend” The great great stars do or did some of both, but stardom always asks of you, tries to nudge you into some manner of inauthenticity, it’s one reason why so many struggle with it. Acting cannot be about playing for an audience, it can't be about placating an audience and when we write about it I don't think it should be strictly about the audience. There's something disconnected and off about careers spent grading and discussing actors ability to perform with very few questions asked over their history to build a foundational idea of what it is actors are looking to do and looking to accomplish over a wide variety of roles and characters overtime that would aid in an understanding of why actor A or B is falling short. I think we understand because so many people have been so curious in the past about what it is directors do a lot more. It's all those questions, and all those essays, in all those books, and all those interviews strictly talking about directing, about auteur theory, and style over substance that interacts with our own developed tastes that has led us to understand and have a basis for when we decide “this doesn't appeal to me”, “this does appeal to me”. When talking about actors that seems to run purely off of a very subjective sense of feeling and ultimately entitlement that lacks a foundational education. In any case all of this, whether actor or critic- points to two obvious tragedies; a lack of interest in self interrogation and a lack of interest in the work. The latter is my concern. There is a profound lack of interest - or curiosity rather -in what actors do in their process. A valid question to ask is if we don't even know what it was an actor's intention or goals were, or what kinds of intentions are typical to the asks of a given role over a period of time because that has rarely been asked - then how can we really say we know for sure whether actors performances are good or not? What Caine teaches the student about camera acting and the different asks of the stage and the camera, and why the performance becomes gradually better as he warms to the idea that Caine presents is amazing to watch and should pique curiosity about the many other ways actors find ways into character or work, how they arrive at what they do. Too many times when an actor goes on interview or press run the questions lean towards their private lives and praise of the work, but not curiosity about how they came to create the work, or an oral history of the craftsman portion of creation of the work. No one seems to care that much about what actors are doing besides how it makes them feel. The amount and kinds of BTS ( behind the scenes) videos and content about what a director is doing, how special effects are created or recently the boom in curiosity about cinematography as compared to behind the scenes content around actors backs up my assertion. The misconception that Heath Ledger's death was in some way related to his performance in The Dark Knight backs up my assertion. The long-standing demand for memoirs on actors that have very little to do with how they worked each one of the roles that made them the legends, the troubles of finding and making a connection with what kind if actor they want to be with what kind Hollywood sees them as, the fact that there's a video of Christian Bale screaming his head off about below-the-line technician getting in his sight line but very little about why that was important to him backs up my assertion. The far and wide crevice between the mention of autuer theory and who created the framework for direction and those who created the framework for acting the Stella Adler's, the Lee Strasbergs, the Uta Hagan's, and the Sanford Meisner's backs up my assertion.

COLLABORATION BETTERS ELABORATION

A distinctive and cultural bias that moves towards reductionism, sloppy silly ideas like an A-list, and the nepotistic and political nature of Hollywood has caused us to miss out on so many astounding careers. Even character actors like Brad Pitt, Kevin Bacon, who made it sometimes struggle as Hollywood tries to force them into the role of being superstars. Too often in Hollywood functioning in its role as hand to capitalism - roles are based on what the audience wants or what it perceives the audience wants, or both, rather than building up on the skill set the actor clearly is showing a proclivity towards. Character actors are forced into being secondary and tertiary characters when they are actually well worth being leads. I promise you Katherine Hahn could hold your whole movie, and Don Cheadle outshined even the great Denzel in Carl Frankins noir classic “Devil in a Blue Dress” only to be misused and reduced to being Robert Downey's Roadie…literally. This kind of built-in bias not only harms careers like that of let's say Taylor Kitsch who definitely if any actor is a character actor, but it leaves a gash in our understanding of the collaborative nature of acting. In many ways I look at the way actors are treated by the public as similar to the way that Quarterbacks in American football are treated by the public, ( in this specific aspect of treatment not in role) put simply in some cases they are given far too much credit and in others they're given too little. In both cases this extends from the ways in which the collaborative nature of the discipline and the teamwork involved are ignored in a way that picks and chooses when to be conscious of it. In American football a quarterback is nothing without his offensive line. It matters a great deal what kind of receivers he has to throw to, and of course the NFL running back is integral to the ability of the quarterback to be able to do his work. Everyone knows it, but it tends to tell on bias who they choose to be aware of it for. As actors we aren't much different, directors, editor's and especially writers are vital to our process. Many times we are givien sole credit for our performances when they are the result of this very precious and precarious collaborative process. Just as well many times the performance is blamed solely on us when the direction, editing, or the depth and layers of the writing are ignored. I saw that many critics found Gary oldman's performance in “Mank” to be severely lacking, but rarely did I see a direct connection made between it and the material, I saw no pieces that informed anyone as to hoe if thrnidea of who Mank is is Fincher and his Dads vision, that Oldman bares the brunt of the balme for what came out? What was it about his craft, hia work, that didn't work, his age is such a superficial aspect, it’s not that it doesn't matter its that theres no way thats the most important aspect of what doesn't work, and id it is, thats too small a piece of the pie to even speak on Oldman. This is not to say that Oldman deserved no blame or isn't accountable for the way that performance turned out, but that as a collaborative process at least partially, the lacking in his performance is connected to the people around him just as much as if it were great, the greatness of the performance would be directly tied to those people around him. In the NFL it can be noted (if one wants to pay attention to it) that when the defenders arent defending and the offensive line isn't holding and the receivers aren't catching and the running game can't seem to get off the ground, then the quarterback is left to his own devices, and you may start seeing him forcing instead of letting the game come to him and this can lead to interceptions and fumbles and what is known in the game as Happy Feet. In acting the same thing can happen with actors, when a directors vision isnt clear, or is off, when writers write material that is lacking in places to explore or is incredibly inconsistent about character. When the editor is misreading and misinterpreting what is needed, even what is good, the actor may be left to their own devices and even with the greats this is not a good thing. On the other hand actors can still end up doing this even when all those things are there. Misinterpretation of the source material is one of the most common causes. A lack of interest in the layered, complex nature of human nature can also lead to this. Stella Adler always talked about life experience as being inextricable from good acting, not only in the sense of having no clue about the experience your portraying to pull from, but him the ways that can lead to you characterizing the part through a variety of superficial stimuli or gestures, meant to age you up, or suggest trauma you have no understanding of. - but in the way a lack of experience tends to reduce people down to the most basic motivations. It's very hard for actors who see the world in very limited terms to explore the ways in which a character is acting without relying on obvious stereotypes. In the world judgment can be a necessary component to being able to read people to being able to interact and deal properly with other people. I mean hell, it's evolutionary. If we didn't learn that spots on a four-legged animal means danger, maybe we’re the story of the Leopards digestive tract instead of an apex species. In acting though, quick judgement is a very dangerous component. Actors simply can't afford the luxury of judging, or reducing the characters they're playing to villains like we do many folks in real life ( and righteously many times I might add) the lack of empathy that many exhibit towards people who f*** up or act egregiously in politics and in various other aspects of life is a death to an actor. This is one of the reasons why I think actors don't necessarily make the best political commentators. In some occasions I think it's okay to admit that our judgment is a little bit skewed, leans a little bit too much towards empathy - though there are other occasions where I think those who live outside that fraternity could use a little bit of that particular quality. Knowing this I think it’d be a lot more interesting and we'd learn a lot more as critics and as an audience from some of the bad performances we've seen or some of the performances that fall short in our minds - if we were to ask to interview actors specifically for this reason. What's behind Jared Leto and Rami Malek doing some of the things they were doing in “The little things”, what were their ideas? What was asked of Gary Oldman in “Mank” and how does he see or interpret the character of Herman Mankiewicz, especially concerning their age difference, did he have any concerns? And while we are asking these actors we should be asking ourselves what is it specifically about this I don't care for? How would this scene be better made? What scene like this one contextually makes for better understanding of the text, better insight, and feels more connected, than the one I’m seeing, and how could that be replicated without asking that the actor simply mimick something that lives and exist in a different world under different rules in a different play or film. Bias is the enemy of the actor, but it is the enemy of the critic every bit as much. There needs to be an extraction of this idea at the root of much discourse around acting that what I like or what I feel strongest about is synonymous with what is best. A deconstruction of the centering of celebrities, and leads, and the marring of what actual Movie Stars are, as the only ones worth doing big spreads on. I want critics who interview a Shelley Duvall to ask not about what went on between she and Jack Nicholson, or how she got along with Stanley Kubrick, but I want them to ask her about the work. I want them to go film by film and talk to her about her processes for each one of those films. I want questions like “what was the role she was most terrified of”? “The role that she felt as though she never quite nailed, didn't understand, and why she felt as though she didn't understand the role. Did she maintain acting coaches on a retainer for all of her roles or did after a certain point she feel as though she could go on her own, and which roles did she do by herself and which roles did she do with the aid of an acting coach, and what did they offer, and what stuck with her? What are her fundamental ideas about acting, “Five Rules by Shelley Duvall for actors”. This is what I feel we need more of. Full spread interviews like these for Clifton Collins Jr and Charles S. Dutton, CCH Pounder, Lil Taylor S. Epatha Merkerson and beyond.

My point in all this is not to condescend to anyone, it is to recommend a reframing of the way in which we talk about actors because I believe it is absolutely necessary. Because I believe our obsession with celebrity has tainted and marred our ability to perceive conceptualize who actors are, what they're doing, and grade the work. I read once somewhere that Fred Williamson said there are too many actors who don't deserve to work who are working and too many who do deserve to work who aren't, and as critics I think it's worth it to acknowledge the role we play in heloing to prop that. Too many times I've heard some version of an ideology that says that grading performances is purely subjective and that is the problem. It's not that there isn't portions of the craft (and especially watching it) that absolutely are subjective, it’s that that kind of attitude is not should not be so lazily sat upon when we talk about someone's ability or inability. It's that when we talked about someone's to sing or someone's ability to play an instrument, or weld, we don't leave it as that, and that if we truly respected acting we’d know and act like it is not that much different. Arthur Lessac was adamant that acting is the use of your body, your voice, your mind as an instrument. The better you know about the way that that instrument functions, about the collaborative process of timing and execution, even as a critic- the better you're able to grade the difference between someone who has talent but over perceives it/ uses it, someone who doesn't, someone who does, what is effective and what is not, and more importantly why. Better understanding of the separation between celebrity and acting will get less takes that suggest that Angelina Jolie or that Jared Leto are simply not good actors or talentless, and more what they might be better served using, or why it is we don't like them in certain roles, or how it is they're being deployed. It would lead to more effective interrogation of great actors who turn in work that is actually half done, that feeds and lives purely off of the transcendency of their own talent, and tendencies for a reliance on their own over bearing sense of the actor self, wherein we might call both Joaquin Phoenix's performance in “The Joker” and Denzel Washington's in “The Little Things” dare I say it… bad. More curiosity from those not initiated in the form itself would lead to a lot better of a foundation , a lot more sturdy, solid and less subjective framework of the discourse around acting and actors. No, you're never going to get rid of people's feelings that some people don't do it for them, but I can tell you that the Beatles have never done it for me without saying they weren't great musicians. We need to afford actors that same level understanding, and interrogate our conflicting relationship with the craft. Stop associating it with that that lies almost purely outside the realm of objectivity and start acting as if there are definitive factors that play into good performers. This foundational reframing I believe will lead to a lot better conversations and discourse around performances, so that someone like Delroy Lindo who gave a performance that reaches out beyond decades, eras, generations, and other variables to stand alone as a uniquely definitive piece of classic American acting on a level that touches upon being a supernova will not fall behind in institutional discourse or conversations around the best actors are acting nor in informal conversation or discourse around the best actors or acting this year. We can't afford to push that aside, to reduce that kind of performance and we damn sure can't forget it, because it matters not only in giving actors like Delroy Lindo his proper due, but in giving future actors something to aspire to, to understanding what the craft actually involves so that they too may seek to arrive at that level of craft and talent. I am not among those who believe that there is some inherent superiority of British actors. There are a number of factors that play into that particular form of bias, I dont have the time to get into here, but I do believe there is something to be said about how that foolishness is directly connected to American culture around acting and the way it has devolved into something that is craven and crass and simplistic and almost completely utilitarian, if not for our obsession with beauty. It would do us good to remember that on several occasions when Hollywood has been stuck in a rut of producing unoriginal monotonous properties built around thier capitalistic fever before it has been foreign countries whether France, Italy, Japan, Korea, Iran, or Senegal that had to kick our ass to remind us of what this film s*** is all about. I think of that particular problem or aspect of that particular problem as it pertains to British and American actors as related. What do you say when on a widespread level you are coaching young actors in workshops to focus on developing a social media following to try and get work. When so many hard-working and deserving actors lose good jobs to those who are merely creating another revenue stream from another discipline such as music. When someone such as Common who I am sorry could not act his way out of a paper bag - ends up with what can be defined as a career. When people write thinly veiled hit pieces saying that Angelina Jolie is not completely deserving of her status as a great actor, that at the base of it all she's just beautiful and I guess that's okay is your thesis. When something as silly as the genre you're working in could keep you from getting your proper due for the work you've put in which is phenomenal, ( yes I'm talking about Toni Collette and Lupita Nyong'o and the wide and vast litany of mostly female actors who are ignored in the horror genre for performances that are out of this world) when so many questions in and around the craft are about things that have nothing to do with the craft. When being an actor is still even now a joke of a living. When there is a Royal Academy as a state funded school for actors there, but no State performing of Arts function here. When places that were never supported by the state in any way in the first place, or in very small ways like the Actors Studio and the Beverly Hills Playhouse are deteriorating, cracking, and still other ones almost already gone and when those places are almost only to be found in and by coastal areas and even then truthfully and only two major places Los Angeles and New York. When thousands of years into a very ancient craft, hundreds of years into the form of it that takes place on film-we still have done very little to understand it - well then maybe that's worth taking a look at as possibly a reason as to why so many people use silly logic to go out and draft British actors to take American jobs, because of course they would, this industry and most around conceptualize and characterize the work so poorly it only makes sense they would look to somewhere else where their own blind ineptitude couldn’t convolute their perception save to exaggerate the abilities of foreign bodies. I don't want a bunch of self-important pontificators walking around with pipes in their mouths explaining to everybody the seriousness of acting. I just want us to be more empathetic and understanding to what is actually involved in the work, and do the work of separating all of the things that the various incarnations of oppressive studio systems and the various inner workings and minutiae of trying to be a professional in Hollywood have done to hurt the actual work, and to reduce our ability to interpret it, to read it, to judge it.