Ricky Gervais: making mistakes is the point
From his website, Ricky Gervais gives a long and thoughtful ode to being successfully creative. First, what is creativity?
Basically mucking about with the stuff you have in front of you. Experimenting with it, seeing what happens, and keeping the stuff you like I guess. In fact Scott Adams said, "Creativity is allowing yourself to make mistakes. Art is knowing which ones to keep."
But how do you create? For Ricky, it is back to that old idea of "play."
You have to let yourself go to be creative. Children possess this quality but then seem to lose it as they are told, "it's not the done thing". Pablo Picasso summed it up well; "Every child is an artist. The problem is how to remain an artist once he grows up".
The answer is simple. Never grow up. I don't mean don't become an adult with responsibility and the weight of the world on your shoulders. I simply mean if you're writing or directing give yourself enough time to play. Play the fool.
"Never grow up" is an old actor cliche: play in an imaginary world like you did when you were a kid. It is good idea in theory that is often stale in practice. Because when people do this, they tend to literally act like the teenage versions of themselves. And that looks manufactured. Nothing worse than watching forced freedom. They don't look like a human being, sort of thing one about good acting. The key for actors: act your age with the inhibition of a child. Where the goal is creation and mistakes aren't a problem but part of the process. That is what kids do. Ricky on mistakes:
People have assumed that, because I don't listen to critics, or take studio notes or whatever, that I think I'm perfect and have never made any mistakes. This could not be further from the truth. Making the mistakes is the point, is the fun, is the important bit.
MAKING MISTAKES IS THE POINT.
Friday Movie Time: Halloween edition
First, Ghostbusters. Such a weird and super scene. Not an intense acting scene so mostly, it's here because... ghosts I guess. But if we break it down far more than is necessary (which I guess I'm gonna do right now) there's moments everywhere.
- Dr. Peck is as angry as I've ever seen anybody in a movie. Not just in this scene. Throughout.
- I love the mayor and the archbishop. I don't know why but it is a compelling exchange. It doesn't quite fit with the rest of the movie- a little like these two were in a play around the corner from the set and the producers picked them up and dropped them off here.
- Watch Murray in the background. He has this expression of glee on this face whenever anybody says anything. What an odd and great choice.
But since it is Halloween, here is the creepy and triumphant climactic scene from Let the Right One In (obvi, spolier alert). What's creepier than weird Swedish kids?
Crying on cue? How about laughing?
The obsession with producing tears as a barometer for "good acting" obscures the fact that it is just as, if not more, difficult to laugh genuinely. From a UCLA study on laughter:
For the study, Bryant recorded the spontaneous conversations of college roommates. From these recordings, he collected 18 spontaneous laughs, which he considered to be genuine. He then enlisted a different group of co-eds to laugh on command. From this exercise, he recorded 18 fake laughs of the same length as the real ones....In the first round, the participants were asked to determine whether the laughs were real or fake, and the students could usually tell the difference.
Apparently fake laughter and real laughter are controlled by two different muscle groups, making the reproduction of genuine laughter difficult, mostly having to do with how quickly the windpipe can open. Ignore the following if science is not your thing.
With real laughs, the proportion of breathy parts in the call was consistently greater than with fake ones. Bryant attributes that to the particularities of the emotional vocal system. The emotional vocal system has more efficient control over the opening and closing of the windpipe, thus allowing people to emit air rapidly during genuine laughs. In fact, during genuine laughs, the windpipe can open and shut at a rate that approaches the apparatus's maximum potential...
In contrast, the speech system, which is responsible for fake laughs, controls the dynamics of the vocal tract differently and can't open and close the windpipe as quickly...
Humans, Bryant says, have evolved a particular sensitivity to fake laughs because the stakes of making a mistake can be very high. Researchers have found that genuine laughter releases the soothing hormone oxytocin, which promotes a feeling of affiliation and cooperation. False laughter that succeeds in passing as the real thing can therefore be used to take advantage of another person.
"You have to be vigilant, because you want to discern whether people are trying to manipulate you against your best interests or whether they have authentic cooperative intentions."
What, David Harewood? You think you are all that?
Well, I guess he's right. From the endless trove of goodness that is the NYT In Performance vault. David Harewood and his arms do Oberon right at you. Seriously right to your face.
There sleeps Titania sometime of the night,
Lulled in these flowers with dances and delight.
And there the snake throws her enameled skin,
Weed wide enough to wrap a fairy in.
And with the juice of this I’ll streak her eyes
And make her full of hateful fantasies