Movie Monday

This is going to be a little different today because on Thanksgiving I saw FBI’s Most Wanted, Part 1. Ok, don’t go looking in IMDb. It’s an amateur production. Though this year we did have a script and a director.

Every summer, two young children and I produce a movie which is shown to the family later. We do have adults as cameraman and editor (this year, our editor reformatted his computer and lost his editing program so movie release was almost delayed) but this is basically a kids’ production as you can tell from our past titles: The Broken Bone and The Lost Trains.

Until Thanksgiving, I didn’t know what was in the movie since my role as the spy (FBI’s Most Wanted) was to sit on the couch while the FBI (the kids) searched behind me for secret plans.

I was very impressed to see the kids’ acting. They were so natural and poised, nothing stagey about them. I, on the other hand, stunk! Really bad! I can’t act. I can’t even talk. It all comes out so high and shrill. Even my second role as the unseen, but heard, FBI Director was so phony as my lowered voice sounded like my lips were trying to meet my chin.

I remember reading an analysis of Norma Shearer’s acting and it said, at her worst, she would use hand gestures or vocal mannerisms to clue you into what she was feeling. (Back of hand to forehead: anguish.) She had the excuse that she came from the silents. I have no excuse: I’m just a bad actor.

But since it was family, watching it was a hoot and we’re planning next summer’s production already.

This brings me to the business of movies. Or rather, the business of acting in movies.

I once read in a very funny, but sadly defunct blog, You Can’t Make This Up, that after the blogger was an extra in a movie she could never look at movies the same way.

And then, just the other night, Elvis Mitchell interviewed Richard Gere about acting. Gere said you spend so much time preparing for the scene but the take is about 2 minutes long and you (the actor) have to be completely “on” during that short time.

The good actors are. But it’s all so phony. Like the poignant scene at the end of The Return of the King (which was on last night) where Frodo is saying farewell to the other hobbits. Peter Jackson has said that this final scene was shot very early in production before the hobbit actors had a chance to bond. Additionally, the scene had to be shot three times due to film and continuity problems. Yet, watching that sad farewell as it is finally captured makes the audience feel their sorrow.

But it's only actors working their craft, and working it well. And except for emotionally draining scenes when the actor may need time to re-compose, actors can and must turn these emotions on and off in an instant.

We’re taught to be real and not to be phony. Yet we shed tears, race our pulses, cringe in horror as we watch images on the screen, concentrated on that small area the camera sees, while a wide pan would reveal the everyday working movie world which closely surrounds a powerful screen shot. (As the picture in a LOTR book of Aragon fighting Sauron with two men in modern clothes within a yard of Aragon watching and drinking coffee.)

I know all this. Yet tonight, I will be watching some movie, suspending belief, caught in the moment of the drama. Is it like the protagonist figured out in Sullivan’s Travels: even in the worst conditions movies can truly transport you from your troubles, if only for a while.