Speaker 1: This is Alec Baldwin and you're listening to Here's the
Speaker 1: Thing from iHeart Radio. My guest today is an author, critic,
Speaker 1: and theater director. His most recent book, The Method, How
Speaker 1: the Twentieth Century Learned to Act, has been named one
Speaker 1: of the best books of twenty twenty two by The
Speaker 1: New Yorker, Time Magazine, the San Francisco Chronicle, and Vanity Fair.
Speaker 1: Isaac Butler has studied acting since childhood, performing in Washington,
Speaker 1: d C's theater scene. He is now an adjunct instructor
Speaker 1: of Theater History and Performance at NYU Tish. Butler is
Speaker 1: also the author of the World Only Spins Forward, The
Speaker 1: Ascent of Angels in America. His writing on theater and
Speaker 1: film has appeared in numerous publications such as New York Magazine,
Speaker 1: The Guardian, Slate, and The Los Angeles Review of Books.
Speaker 1: I was curious to know Butler's opinion of the three
Speaker 1: great actors he mentions in his book, Lee Strasburg, Sandy Meisner,
Speaker 1: Stella Adler, and how he came to write The Method.
Speaker 2: What I wanted to do with the book was, since
Speaker 2: I had never met Lee or Stella or Sandy or
Speaker 2: any of those people. They were all, you know, dead
Speaker 2: before I went to college, was to really try to
Speaker 2: take as seriously as possible the opinions of those who
Speaker 2: knew them right, because I wasn't there. And much as
Speaker 2: like when you're an actor trying to create a role,
Speaker 2: you know, you want to understand that role as deeply
Speaker 2: as possible, even if you don't agree with one hundred
Speaker 2: percent of that character psychology or the choices they make
Speaker 2: in a play. I think most characters who are interesting
Speaker 2: are ones who we wouldn't necessarily make all the same
Speaker 2: choices they do, because plot comes from.
Speaker 1: When you're playing. You got to give it everything you have,
Speaker 1: exactly right.
Speaker 2: And so I wound up having, you know, very complicated
Speaker 2: and mostly positive feelings about all of them, Do you
Speaker 2: know what I mean? I mean Lee, who I didn't know,
Speaker 2: but by all reports was an incredibly difficult person to
Speaker 2: get along with, way did not ever say hello or goodbye,
Speaker 2: did not make a lot of eye contact, yelled at
Speaker 2: people when he very at the drop of a hat, unnecessary,
Speaker 2: very imperious, Yeah, very imperious. And you know, at the
Speaker 2: same time, so many actors would say, even people who
Speaker 2: hated him personally, he changed my life and maybe the
Speaker 2: actor I am today, and so you have to respect
Speaker 2: both of those things. It is certainly not the case
Speaker 2: that Lee's method is good for every actor. And I
Speaker 2: think the big problem that Lee and to some extent
Speaker 2: Stella and some of the other people ran into is
Speaker 2: getting a little high on their own supply about that
Speaker 2: that there was one true way to get to the truth.
Speaker 2: There's all sorts of different ways to get to the truth.
Speaker 2: And Lee would give lip service to that. Sometimes he'd
Speaker 2: be like, you know, Laurence Olivier gets to the truth
Speaker 2: by finding the right shirt or whatever. He didn't really
Speaker 2: accept that if his students did it, you know. And
Speaker 2: so I think that what actually is most important is
Speaker 2: that the student find the right teacher for them. And
Speaker 2: what's been interesting since the death of that generation, or
Speaker 2: actually started when late in life, how many people would
Speaker 2: take classes from both Stella and Sandy or you know,
Speaker 2: would go to see Lee and then go to udhah
Speaker 2: Hagen or whatever and try to kind of get the
Speaker 2: things they were missing from each and create their own
Speaker 2: way of doing it. Because ultimately, after years and years
Speaker 2: and years in a career, you found your own technique.
Speaker 2: It might be based on their technique. But there's stuff
Speaker 2: that's useful to you, there's stuff that isn't, and you
Speaker 2: find your own way.
Speaker 1: I think for me, Strasburg was somebody who the number
Speaker 1: one thing, which they made the number one thing, and
Speaker 1: maybe they didn't emphasize it enough, maybe not enough of
Speaker 1: them completely grasp the necessity of relaxation. Right. You got
Speaker 1: to turn off all the pipes and vowels of your day.
Speaker 1: You got to go to work, you can't talk to people,
Speaker 1: you can't be on the phone with your girlfriend breaking
Speaker 1: up with her. You got to cut all that off
Speaker 1: and just be here now and sit in a chair.
Speaker 1: And if you want to read a book, don't go
Speaker 1: to your trailer. Go to your trailer when the scene
Speaker 1: is over and it's a break. But we're during the
Speaker 1: shots of that scene said on the set, stay connected
Speaker 1: to this, all these things of connection, relaxation, concentration, and
Speaker 1: then you have a shot at the other things happening.
Speaker 1: You have no shot if the other things don't happen.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, Stanislavsky was very serious about relaxation, you know,
Speaker 2: and Strasburg is adapting a lot of those ways that
Speaker 2: Stanislavsky developed. You know, he started doing yoga. He was
Speaker 2: very interested in breathing exercises, a lot of stuff that
Speaker 2: we associate today with like mindfulness. You know, Stanislavsky was
Speaker 2: doing to try to figure out how to totally relax
Speaker 2: as an actor, because he was totally all about that
Speaker 2: that it was only once you were relaxed that you
Speaker 2: could actually do the work, because otherwise it's all getting
Speaker 2: contained in your body and it's not going anywhere.
Speaker 1: You know, when you talk about a method acting performance,
Speaker 1: you're talking about Brando obviously, and Clift and I studied
Speaker 1: with Mirror Rostova, Oh amazing Cliff's teacher. You know, she
Speaker 1: was in her nineties. She taught in the living room
Speaker 1: of a friend's apartment and she would teacheck and she
Speaker 1: changed my life because she talked to me about how
Speaker 1: actors very often are playing the scene at the expense
Speaker 1: of the the act right listening, oh Jack Lemon thing
Speaker 1: where you have to be really really be very acute
Speaker 1: and you're listening and responding and so forth. And she
Speaker 1: really changed my life because I was doing a soap opera,
Speaker 1: and soap opera acting is defined by an actor walking
Speaker 1: and going. You know, you're not going to take over
Speaker 1: those shares of Paul my industry's day. Let me tell
Speaker 1: you that right now, right, and the next time, the
Speaker 1: next scene, it's like, I love you, Mary, goddamn it,
Speaker 1: I love you. You know, they play the same cadence
Speaker 1: and the same emotional register, regardless of the same right.
Speaker 1: Was she a yeller to Mirah?
Speaker 2: That's interesting because a lot of the Russians, I mean,
Speaker 2: where Strasburg and Stella yelled a lot too, right, And
Speaker 2: where they got it from was was this student of
Speaker 2: Stanislavsky's name Maria Ospinskaya of course, who's also very famous
Speaker 2: you know film actor.
Speaker 1: Later, Yeah, the Wolf y. You know, I just showed
Speaker 1: my kid The Wolf, Mam.
Speaker 2: We're doing the Universal Horror and I was like, oh
Speaker 2: my god, it's Maria Osbanskaya. And then, you know, my
Speaker 2: kid looked at me and was like, who's that? Why
Speaker 2: do you care? And I had to explained she was
Speaker 2: Moscow Art Theater, Moscow Art Theater, yeah, and then the
Speaker 2: first studio, and then you know, she was when the
Speaker 2: Moscow Art Theater came to the United States in the twenties,
Speaker 2: there was a group of them who had to stay behind.
Speaker 2: They were fired from the company and exiled from the
Speaker 2: Soviet or from Russia, you know, because the political wins
Speaker 2: were changing, and she was one of them. And she
Speaker 2: and another exile, this guy Richard Boloslavsky, who for any
Speaker 2: actors who are listening, as the guy who wrote acting
Speaker 2: the first six Lessons, the very first book in English
Speaker 2: about Stanislavski technique, Love It. And he also directed Ospinskaya
Speaker 2: later in a movie. But Richard Boloslavsky and Mario Ospinskaya
Speaker 2: were the two fundamental teachers at the school. The American
Speaker 2: Laboratory Theater where was that it had a number of
Speaker 2: different locations. It moved all around because it was here
Speaker 2: in New York, and it was this model that's actually
Speaker 2: sort of the conservatory model now, but not exactly where.
Speaker 2: You know, you studied very hard for like two years,
Speaker 2: and then you joined the best of them joined the
Speaker 2: rep company that was associated with the school, and so
Speaker 2: they were sort of running all of those those different things.
Speaker 2: And you know, Harold Klerman studied there, Lee Strasburg studied there.
Speaker 2: Stella Adler's studied there. You know, a lot of the
Speaker 2: key twentieth century theater makers study there. Ospinskaya was a
Speaker 2: notorious dragon in scene study class. She among other things,
Speaker 2: she was an alcoholic, and so she would have a
Speaker 2: bottle of what she claimed was cough medicine. It was
Speaker 2: jin and she would drink medicine. Yeah, but she would
Speaker 2: drink you know, table switch to be like, oh my
Speaker 2: cough is worse I need And then eventually she subbed
Speaker 2: it out with a pitcher of water that was actually
Speaker 2: gin and would just you know, like a little vermouth
Speaker 2: with my yes exactly. And so I mean she would
Speaker 2: just devastatingly destroy people if she thought they were being lazy.
Speaker 2: I think, like any art, and acting is of course
Speaker 2: an art as well as a craft at a job
Speaker 2: and all sorts of other things. There's a kind of
Speaker 2: osmosis of the world around you that you engage in.
Speaker 2: You know, like when I am writing a book, there's
Speaker 2: often like three albums of music I listened to while
Speaker 2: writing it, and even if they're.
Speaker 1: Not, can you share what they are? You've rather not.
Speaker 2: A lot of the method was written to this piece
Speaker 2: of music called Canto Ostinado, which is a piece of
Speaker 2: mut music that it's a little difficult to explain. It's
Speaker 2: sort of a minimalist piece of music. It's about forty
Speaker 2: five minutes long, and there's a particular version on Spotify
Speaker 2: that's all Cello's doing it, And so there was that.
Speaker 1: I listen to that a lot.
Speaker 2: I have a playlist whenever I'm on deadline, I have
Speaker 2: a playlist of the most kind of loud, percussive guitar
Speaker 2: solo heavy songs by the Bandiola Tango or my favorite band,
Speaker 2: And so I listen to that and just words come.
Speaker 1: Flying out, I thought you'd say, and not that I'm
Speaker 1: predating Adagio for streets right right, right right.
Speaker 2: And then there's a jazz composer who I've worked with
Speaker 2: a couple of times named Darcy James Argue, who's a
Speaker 2: very close friend whose work I love, and so I
Speaker 2: usually have one of his albums.
Speaker 1: This is the stuff that carries you over the threshold.
Speaker 2: And part of it is just I've written to this
Speaker 2: stuff so much. There's like a sense memory almost, you know,
Speaker 2: like now it's time to write.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 2: It's like it just does something to my subconscious and
Speaker 2: then away we go. But you know, if I was
Speaker 2: writing something sad, I might listen to sad.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 2: I've definitely had those like, oh, this scene has this
Speaker 2: certain emotional feeling. I'm going to listen to music that
Speaker 2: has that emotional feeling.
Speaker 1: Not words. Can never have words if you're writing for
Speaker 1: me anyway. Yeah, for me in acting, I played the
Speaker 1: audio clips only of movies that make me sad. Oh really,
Speaker 1: so there's a scene that breaks my heart, I'll play
Speaker 1: that scene in my ear. I knew.
Speaker 2: I interviewed one actor who told me to prep for
Speaker 2: a scene he would watch because it had a similar emotionality,
Speaker 2: totally different scene. He wasn't trying to copy what DeNiro did,
Speaker 2: but it was just this that that feeling of total devastation,
Speaker 2: the scene where DeNiro's punching the wall of the jail
Speaker 2: cells and raging bull and he would just watch that.
Speaker 1: And I've not a vast but a limited library of
Speaker 1: those scenes that I watched a trigger with certain emotion
Speaker 1: in me. Yeah, that's like if you say, you know
Speaker 1: the de Niro thing, it's like Brando, you know, we
Speaker 1: see don't leave him lying here. I'm gonna take it
Speaker 1: out on this skulls. Yeah, when they don't leave me
Speaker 1: here like this CD when he finds Steiger's body who
Speaker 1: betrayed him, right, But I mean that makes me cry
Speaker 1: even out his brother betrayed him, but he's still it's
Speaker 1: his brother, you know what I mean? He plays that
Speaker 1: like he just an inescapable thing.
Speaker 2: You know what line? And I'm not an actor anymore.
Speaker 2: But the line that always, like, when I just even
Speaker 2: think about it, I start to get worked up is
Speaker 2: when Hamlet says I loved Ophelia forty thousand brothers. That
Speaker 2: line about like forty thousand brothers cannot, with all their
Speaker 2: love makeup my son or something like that. And there's
Speaker 2: just something so first of all, it's a shitty thing
Speaker 2: to say to a guy whose sister has just died,
Speaker 2: but it's also so emotionally overpowering that if I think
Speaker 2: about it long enough, it'll trigger something.
Speaker 1: Same the littlest things. Yeah, when you realize how deeply
Speaker 1: deeply individualized this is and subjective and personal, I'll never
Speaker 1: forget when Jamie Sheridan, the great actor he played Fortinbrass
Speaker 1: and the production that pap did of Hamlet?
Speaker 2: Where is that the Diane ve noora one that thank you,
Speaker 2: This is really a treat we're gonna be come back
Speaker 2: with through two episodes.
Speaker 1: No, seriously, because because Diane Venora plays the first female.
Speaker 1: Hammi Joe puts it right. I wish, I wish I
Speaker 1: saw it. She was magical. Yeah, she was absolutely wonderful.
Speaker 1: She was the fact that she didn't go on from
Speaker 1: bird and have a great she played his wife right
Speaker 1: with Forrest Whitaker. Yeah, now she does this and and
Speaker 1: when everybody's dead at the end, and she comes on
Speaker 1: and Jamie Sherion plus Fort and Bruston comes in and
Speaker 1: just the honor in his voice of a dead soldier,
Speaker 1: soldier to so he comes from the Battley comes in.
Speaker 1: He goes, oh, proud death, and he's kind of eulogizing
Speaker 1: in his ordinary statement of this. And I started sobbing
Speaker 1: when he said this, And whenever I think about it,
Speaker 1: I could have pushed me over the edge because it
Speaker 1: was so rich in that there was a context. I
Speaker 1: got it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean one of the weird things. And people
Speaker 2: said this happened at the actors studio. Maybe you witnessed
Speaker 2: it as well, that there could be a certain fetishization
Speaker 2: of crying, right, It's like you just the actors just
Speaker 2: really wanted to cry. And I think that's really fascinating
Speaker 2: because first of all, it is totally possible to be
Speaker 2: filled with devastating sadness and not cry. There are all
Speaker 2: sorts of people who don't cry that much. To cry
Speaker 2: or try not to cry is always more interesting than
Speaker 2: crying on camera or on stage, right, whether.
Speaker 1: It's worth the take, it's the playing against right.
Speaker 2: And then the other thing is that there are all
Speaker 2: sorts of things that we respond to with tears that
Speaker 2: aren't necessarily sad, because again, emotion is so individuated. And
Speaker 2: I think part of what Strasburg, the thing that Strasburg
Speaker 2: was getting at that I think is really key and
Speaker 2: why it was so revolutionary, you know, that is the
Speaker 2: idea that each person responds differently to everything. And so
Speaker 2: if you want to be not cliched, you need to
Speaker 2: harness what's individual about you and figure out a way
Speaker 2: to put it into the character. Because the way that
Speaker 2: you know, Alec Baldwin tries not to cry and then
Speaker 2: cries is different from the way that I would.
Speaker 1: What's one thing you thought about? I mean, because you
Speaker 1: were acting and you talk about it well, First of all,
Speaker 1: talk about that when you go back into your college
Speaker 1: dormitory room and have a mini nervous breakdown after some
Speaker 1: of the work you did. Oh my God.
Speaker 2: That was the experience that it didn't put me off
Speaker 2: acting in terms of my interest in acting, but it
Speaker 2: made me realize I was not actually tough enough to
Speaker 2: be an actor. And I think we think a lot
Speaker 2: of times of actors as not particularly tough people.
Speaker 1: But there's a.
Speaker 2: Unique toughness that being an artist requires, and there's a
Speaker 2: unique toughness that being an actor requires, which has to
Speaker 2: do with being vulnerable and then not vulnerable. You know,
Speaker 2: you have to open yourself up to the world and
Speaker 2: you have to be able to shut it out. You
Speaker 2: have to be able to get up in front of
Speaker 2: people an audition and you know, deal with that rejection
Speaker 2: and humiliation over and over again. And you also have
Speaker 2: to be able to do this thing where, particularly if
Speaker 2: you're going in a kind of Methody Stanislavsky direction, you
Speaker 2: know you are plumbing often in a play, if it's
Speaker 2: a deep play, a serious play, into the shit, and
Speaker 2: you have to be able to get out of it.
Speaker 2: You have to be able to turn it off, you
Speaker 2: have to be able to walk away with it. And
Speaker 2: this is an example when I couldn't really do that.
Speaker 2: I it was my freshman year of college. I had
Speaker 2: had a couple years of kind of Stanislavsky ish education
Speaker 2: at like an acting conservatory run by a local theater
Speaker 2: in DC. And I had been a professional actor as
Speaker 2: a kid, so, you know, I thought I was going
Speaker 2: to do that would you do as a kid?
Speaker 1: I was.
Speaker 2: I did voiceover for an industrial or two. I was
Speaker 2: in a couple musicals and a play and stuff like that.
Speaker 2: I was in the musical Falsettos, playing Jason the twelve
Speaker 2: year Old Boy, if you know that show. I was
Speaker 2: in a musical about the AIDS Quilt that then performed
Speaker 2: at like the Smithsonian. Do you remember when the AIDS
Speaker 2: Quilt came to d C. Yeah, yeah, so we performed
Speaker 2: as part of that. We were also at the University
Speaker 2: of Maryland. And it was a life changing experience. Among
Speaker 2: other things that it is what politicized me. I mean,
Speaker 2: growing up in DC, you're always political, yeah yeah, but
Speaker 2: but in this case it was, you know, working in
Speaker 2: the theater and knowing gays and lesbians, knowing people with AIDS,
Speaker 2: you know, who are my friends?
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, me too. And started in the business of
Speaker 1: the eighties, it was all just royaling then, yeah, exactly.
Speaker 2: That was really life changing. I started going to protest,
Speaker 2: so I started really caring, you know, about something. And
Speaker 2: so anyway, when we get to college, I was at Vassar,
Speaker 2: I was, you know, a month into school or whatever,
Speaker 2: and I got cast as the lead in Eric Bagosian's
Speaker 2: Talk Radio. And uh, for anyone listening to this who
Speaker 2: doesn't know Talk Radio the play, the movie's actually kind
Speaker 2: of wonderful.
Speaker 1: It's very panematic. I forgot that you're in that's so funny.
Speaker 1: Sign of age.
Speaker 2: No, I just think of it as just as just
Speaker 2: Eric bagoshin and you sort.
Speaker 1: Of forget play the station manager to do or no, no,
Speaker 1: you're the station manager right right. Obviously not memorable. But again,
Speaker 1: it's been a while since I've seen because I have
Speaker 1: a traumatic relationship to this material. So I haven't seen
Speaker 1: the movie in a while.
Speaker 2: And so for those of you who don't know the play,
Speaker 2: if you're playing the Eric Bagosian part and Talk Radio,
Speaker 2: you are on stage chain smoking for ninety minutes and
Speaker 2: then you have a three page long nervous breakdown. That's
Speaker 2: the arc of the character, right. And so it was
Speaker 2: two student directors, bless their souls, didn't know what they
Speaker 2: were doing, and so I just went. Really I used
Speaker 2: everything I knew about how to go deep into the
Speaker 2: self right, which was not enough to be able to
Speaker 2: control what I was messing with. I was messing with
Speaker 2: dark forces that you know, like a like an apprentice wizard,
Speaker 2: do you know what I mean. It's like, you know,
Speaker 2: Mickey causing all the yeah and the brooms are just
Speaker 2: all my self hatred. And on top of that, I'm
Speaker 2: literally chainsmoking during the play. And I was a half
Speaker 2: a pack a day smoker at the time. I've quit
Speaker 2: for over twenty years now, but I was smoking like
Speaker 2: a pack and a half cigarettes on stage. So I
Speaker 2: was making myself physically and mentally ill on stage at
Speaker 2: the same time every night, and you know, like the
Speaker 2: performance would end, and you know, there was this girl
Speaker 2: I had a crush on, and I made sure she
Speaker 2: came and saw the show, and the only thing she
Speaker 2: said to me afterwards was I'm worried about you, right,
Speaker 2: And I would just go home and I smelled terrible,
Speaker 2: and I hated myself because the character hates himself, that's
Speaker 2: the core of that character. And I would literally stare
Speaker 2: at the painted white or probably beige center block wall
Speaker 2: of my seven x ten dorm room, and I would
Speaker 2: just fucking stare at that wall until I could feel
Speaker 2: myself come back together, like I had obliterated myself and
Speaker 2: I had to come back together. And one week of
Speaker 2: that was enough for me. I was like, I can't
Speaker 2: believe anyone does this all the time for a living. Now,
Speaker 2: the truth of the matter is, you actually get a
Speaker 2: lot of training, and you learn how to do that
Speaker 2: without destroying yourself.
Speaker 1: Or you don't. You develop a drinking probably, and it's
Speaker 1: called acting. Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 2: And so I was like, you know what, I can't
Speaker 2: do this. And then I realized that I really liked
Speaker 2: telling people what to do, and I knew a lot
Speaker 2: about theater, and so I should try directing. And so
Speaker 2: I called my parents to tell them this, Hey, I
Speaker 2: don't think I'm an actor anymore. I think I'm a director.
Speaker 2: And it was exactly like a coming out scene from
Speaker 2: like an early nineties play, do you know what I mean?
Speaker 2: They were like, well, do you think this is just
Speaker 2: a phase? And I was like, no, I think this
Speaker 2: is for keeps, you know. They're like, well, you know,
Speaker 2: you might go back to it sometimes, like I don't know,
Speaker 2: you know, It's exactly like that, and then I.
Speaker 1: Didn't think they would disappoint somewhat of you giving up acting. Well,
Speaker 1: they had been so supportive of act. You've done it
Speaker 1: for a while. I've done it for a while, and it.
Speaker 2: Really saved my life. I was in a really bad
Speaker 2: place when I got cast in that play as a
Speaker 2: twelve year old. I was I was bullied a lot
Speaker 2: as a kid. It wasn't physical, but it was very
Speaker 2: you know. That's where all those brooms came from. That
Speaker 2: I Mickey style called up. I was bullied a lot
Speaker 2: as a kid, and I just you know, and theater
Speaker 2: had really saved my life, and so I think they
Speaker 2: were worried that I was too casually throwing any siblings. Yeah,
Speaker 2: I have three siblings. I have three siblings. I have
Speaker 2: an older brother, an older sister, and a younger brother.
Speaker 2: My older two siblings both went to boarding school, so
Speaker 2: they were kind of out of the house by the
Speaker 2: time I was, you know, ten or whatever.
Speaker 1: They were smoking a pack and a half a day. And yeah,
Speaker 1: exactly exactly. And then many of them in the business
Speaker 1: and entertainment.
Speaker 2: No, no, no, not no, my younger but well, my
Speaker 2: younger brother's a like works for a nonprofit now doing
Speaker 2: a library stuff and educational stuff for kids. And so
Speaker 2: I told them, you want to go to directing. I
Speaker 2: told him I wanted to go in directing, and I
Speaker 2: just started doing it all the time. I became like
Speaker 2: a directing monster. And I loved it. I absolutely loved it.
Speaker 2: And also I felt like I could help actors, having
Speaker 2: gone through that experience and having had some training, you know,
Speaker 2: I could work with them in a way to try
Speaker 2: to bring out the best of them, in a way
Speaker 2: that wasn't abusive. It was about creating a welcoming room.
Speaker 1: So being a facilitator became more important to you. It did. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that was the opposite in the sense that I directed
Speaker 1: one film, and it was. It was a horrible experience
Speaker 1: from a financial standpoint and from a business and production stamp.
Speaker 1: But what did you realize as a director that you
Speaker 1: liked about directing? Because I hated having to control other
Speaker 1: actors into doing what I wanted them to do.
Speaker 2: No, I will say that part of it eventually grew tiring,
Speaker 2: do you know what I mean? But I loved the
Speaker 2: sense of community. I loved the sense of all of us. Yeah,
Speaker 2: and I loved it film. Yeah, And I loved the
Speaker 2: thing the thing I miss because there's there's things about
Speaker 2: directing I don't miss, right, the thing I'm having to
Speaker 2: tricks other people out of money and twelve people into
Speaker 2: coming into a room so that I can practice my art.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 2: Now, all I need is a pen and a piece
Speaker 2: of paper, and I'm practicing my heart, you know, Like
Speaker 2: that was that was the grind. The professional grind is
Speaker 2: the part that really wore me down. But to me,
Speaker 2: the pleasure of like everyone thinking together in a room
Speaker 2: and solving these problems in real time, in physical space,
Speaker 2: in community together was so beautiful when it worked. It
Speaker 2: doesn't always work, but it was so beautiful when you
Speaker 2: got there that it was worth the times where it
Speaker 2: was like, oh, this one actor is actually I didn't
Speaker 2: realize it, but they're drunk, you know, and they're calling
Speaker 2: me at three in the morning because they drink two
Speaker 2: bottles of wine when they come home from rehearsal, and
Speaker 2: they have lots of notes.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 2: It's like it was you know that happened to me
Speaker 2: once I escape, it was it was worth putting up
Speaker 2: with that to get to this other thing, and that
Speaker 2: was really beautiful and I loved working with writers on
Speaker 2: their plays. Is before I realized that I was a writer.
Speaker 2: I loved giving, you know, giving no and hearing their
Speaker 2: notes to me and having them in the room. And
Speaker 2: it's just kind of, you know, idea of a community
Speaker 2: of people making each other's ideas better.
Speaker 1: Author Isaac Butler. If you enjoy conversations about acting and
Speaker 1: the performing arts, check out my episode with Ellen Burston
Speaker 1: and Estelle Parsons celebrating the seventy fifth anniversary of the
Speaker 1: Actor's Studio.
Speaker 3: And I say to Peter, the director, Peter, I have
Speaker 3: eight different things to go through here and no line.
Speaker 3: And he smiles like the cheshire cat and says, I know.
Speaker 3: I said, well, am I supposed to do that?
Speaker 1: He said, think.
Speaker 3: The thoughts of the character, and the camera will read
Speaker 3: your mind. That's the best advice and the director ever
Speaker 3: gave me.
Speaker 1: To hear more of my conversation with Ellen Burston and
Speaker 1: Estelle Parsons, go to Here's the Thing dot Org. After
Speaker 1: the break, Isaac Butler talks about acting training today and
Speaker 1: his conversation with Ellen Burston on young actors. I'm Alec
Speaker 1: Baldwin and this is Here's the Thing, Isaac Butler has
Speaker 1: directed numerous productions throughout his theater career, including classic Shakespeare
Speaker 1: performances and new original works such as Real Enemies and
Speaker 1: The Trump Card. I wanted to know what pieces Isaac
Speaker 1: Butler had most enjoyed directing and what he would like
Speaker 1: to direct in the future. I don't know that.
Speaker 2: They're probably not plays that anyone will have heard of
Speaker 2: because they were in you know, they were off off Broadway,
Speaker 2: their in basement. So now I think if I was
Speaker 2: to direct again, it's actually, you know, classics I would
Speaker 2: want to do, or or lost backlist plays or whatever.
Speaker 1: I mean.
Speaker 2: You know, I teach Shakespeare. I loved Shakespeare. I'd love
Speaker 2: to take another crack at Shakespeare. Haven't done that.
Speaker 1: I haven't directed a Shakespeare play since college. You know.
Speaker 1: There's the Williams O'Neill's Shaw. Yeah, I mean, I love
Speaker 1: all that stuff.
Speaker 3: Shaw.
Speaker 1: It's very hard.
Speaker 2: I do not actually feel like I have the background
Speaker 2: to do Shaw, but I love all of that stuff.
Speaker 2: You know, there's a lot of this. Last semester I
Speaker 2: taught New American plays of the twenty first century, so
Speaker 2: it was only plays that had been done since the
Speaker 2: change of the millennium. At NYU. It was a dramatic
Speaker 2: literature class, but four Tish kids, right, And it was
Speaker 2: really fun to revisit those. And there were some of
Speaker 2: them where I was like, I would I would love
Speaker 2: to take a crack at this play. And then there
Speaker 2: were others where I was like, this play is too hard.
Speaker 2: I don't even know how they did it. What I
Speaker 2: especially loved, actually was when you were doing the second
Speaker 2: production of a new play, you know, like you had
Speaker 2: worked on it in a workshop or whatever, and you
Speaker 2: would learned all this stuff about it, and then you
Speaker 2: actually got to use what you learned, which came back
Speaker 2: you know, which doesn't necessarily happen if you direct, you know,
Speaker 2: if you direct a view from the bridge or what ever,
Speaker 2: it's like, who knows what.
Speaker 1: You told me? When I interviewed him about him doing
Speaker 1: repeated productions of Salamea and The Mammot American Buffalo, speaking
Speaker 1: of which I'm wondering, you're gonna know that Glengarry's on
Speaker 1: Broadway right now? What do you think of Mammot and
Speaker 1: his very arch, very mammot. I watched an interview with
Speaker 1: him the other day, really, and he was talking to somebody.
Speaker 1: He says you know when someone comes in there. You
Speaker 1: know he didn't say this, but it was along the
Speaker 1: lines of, you know, the guy comes in and he's
Speaker 1: your friend, Jeff's got a cast on, and you say,
Speaker 1: oh my god, what happened? What do you need to
Speaker 1: prepare for that? But he's not understanding is you don't
Speaker 1: have to prepare for it, for a lot of it.
Speaker 1: But there are things you do have to prepare for,
Speaker 1: much of which contextually is not in Mammot's pieces. People
Speaker 1: aren't going through and e canthartic emotional experiences Mammot's pieces
Speaker 1: all or it's cut. What's that film? Maintain you and
Speaker 1: his ex wife Lindsay Kraut House of House of Games?
Speaker 1: So House of Games. When I see that movie, even then,
Speaker 1: I thought to myself, well, this is obviously a kind
Speaker 1: of an experiment in the theater. I mean, you're having
Speaker 1: everybody flatten out all those lines. No, Bob, No, I
Speaker 1: won't do that. I won't do that because and the
Speaker 1: cadence and the rhythms of it are something that is
Speaker 1: so arch.
Speaker 2: But if you watch like State and Maine, which has
Speaker 2: you know you're in it, Philip Seymour Hoffman's in it,
Speaker 2: w H.
Speaker 1: Macy is in it.
Speaker 2: You know, there's actors who have a lot of experience,
Speaker 2: who work at a very high level, and they can
Speaker 2: really playfully bring those lines to life in a way
Speaker 2: that not every actor can, using the true and false
Speaker 2: that's the name of his acting book, using that sort
Speaker 2: of true and false methodology. It is also true that,
Speaker 2: like you said, it's like, you know, his language, his
Speaker 2: dialogue is incredibly stripped away. It's it's very you know,
Speaker 2: not only is everything you need in it, but he
Speaker 2: hasn't given you anything else.
Speaker 1: No, do you know what I mean? Bob enters, Bob,
Speaker 1: what time is it? Exactly? No, Bob wearing a beautiful
Speaker 1: cream colored suede jack, none of that shit?
Speaker 2: Or what would those those those you mentioned Shaw? You know,
Speaker 2: Shaw's stage directions are like seven pages long. It's like
Speaker 2: Bob was born on a cow farm and you're like,
Speaker 2: what the you know, O'Neill does that lactose exactly? Any
Speaker 2: Latergin does that too. His stage directions are very novelistic, you.
Speaker 1: Know, not that, but it's not really very useful.
Speaker 2: Well yeah, I mean it depends, right. I mean I
Speaker 2: think they're useful for him in creating the characters. I
Speaker 2: think that if you try to do a lot of
Speaker 2: you know, fruit for All or whatever you want to
Speaker 2: say with Mammot's lines, it's going to be a disaster.
Speaker 2: It makes sense why he doesn't like that stuff, do
Speaker 2: you know what I mean? But if you try to
Speaker 2: do the incredibly stripped away Mammity way of doing Fagan
Speaker 2: or Shakespeare or whatever it's going to be, that's also
Speaker 2: going to be a disaster.
Speaker 1: You're right, it would apply obviously to his his text
Speaker 1: because I think that, you know, actors can bring in
Speaker 1: my time of doing this, they can bring ideas, and
Speaker 1: you have to just understand how much of your ideas welcome.
Speaker 1: Like if I were ever to work for Spielberg, let's
Speaker 1: say it's a salute and yes sir and no sir,
Speaker 1: because I'm very confident, I'm supremely confident he knows exactly
Speaker 1: what he wants. But what I also do with people
Speaker 1: is don't tell. I don't talk. I say, let me
Speaker 1: show you, right, show, not tell. I'm going to go out.
Speaker 1: And but we got everything as written, you're happy, you
Speaker 1: got what you want. Let's just do one more take
Speaker 1: and I'll show you a little idea I had nothing
Speaker 1: that changes the set or the budget or so forth
Speaker 1: of the casting. It's all inside that template. But I
Speaker 1: really really have become more subtle, but more and more
Speaker 1: management and collaborating with them, because I think that a
Speaker 1: lot of younger directors today, it's not so much that
Speaker 1: they don't know what good acting is, not that they
Speaker 1: don't know what they want. The thing they're lacking, it's
Speaker 1: going to sound strange maybe is they lack the ability
Speaker 1: to communicate it to you. Right, they kind of know
Speaker 1: what they want, They kind of have an idea what
Speaker 1: they want. They can't get it out to you and
Speaker 1: make you understand that a way that's practical to you
Speaker 1: to speak actor, which I hate that idea. I said
Speaker 1: to this one director, I goes, tell me the story
Speaker 1: of your movie. Tell it to me as a story.
Speaker 1: What happens. There's the longest spouse you could ever imagine.
Speaker 1: He goes, Oh wow, man, he goes, I don't think
Speaker 1: I could do that. That's wild. We're fucked.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you know, there's it's an interesting iadd for a
Speaker 2: director once, and you know, the thing he didn't really
Speaker 2: do tablework. You know, they weren't sitting all around people
Speaker 2: weren't sitting around making little backslashes in their script for
Speaker 2: the beat marks or you know, he just he didn't
Speaker 2: want to be intellectual about it, right, And part of
Speaker 2: what you're talking about here is that you want to
Speaker 2: avoid over intellectualizing your choices. You don't want to get
Speaker 2: into a long, wordy, intellectual conversation with a director. Yeah,
Speaker 2: but also you.
Speaker 1: Wanted that day's work and get it done.
Speaker 2: But it's it's it's so much easier actually to show
Speaker 2: the director than it is for you to get into
Speaker 2: an abstract conversation about, well, what if what he really
Speaker 2: wants here is blah blah blah blah blah, when actually
Speaker 2: what you're going to do is emphasize a different word.
Speaker 2: Just emphasize a different word, you know. And what he
Speaker 2: did instead of tablework was he was like, I just
Speaker 2: want us to go around and say, beat by beat,
Speaker 2: what happens in the play? No, no feelings, right, Like,
Speaker 2: never say he feels blah blah blah, Just what does
Speaker 2: each person do? That was all the book work we did.
Speaker 2: I know that, but you know what, it was really
Speaker 2: hard to just do that. You get so wrapped up
Speaker 2: and he feels X I did the.
Speaker 1: Carol Churchill play Serious Money and Love Love Them, but
Speaker 1: someone's got to do that play again. It's nine eighty eight.
Speaker 1: And then did we did the American Company and they'd
Speaker 1: come here to the public with Gary Olb and Fred
Speaker 1: Molina to play the two lead roles. So I replaced
Speaker 1: Gary and we go to Broadway. This would when Pap
Speaker 1: Joe Papp was in that mood he head periodically to
Speaker 1: force write certain cultural Is that Max Stafford clarkter Bravo,
Speaker 1: thanks you. Yeah. So Max Stafford Clark who says to
Speaker 1: me one time, he who says to all of us
Speaker 1: were at the table, Kate Nelligan and all these other people,
Speaker 1: and he says, he says, I want you to write
Speaker 1: down along the margins of your scripts a transitive verb
Speaker 1: what you're trying to do in that scene. And then
Speaker 1: he sat with us, all one by one and he
Speaker 1: sat there with me and he goes, now this line here,
Speaker 1: what do you think you're trying to do there? And
Speaker 1: I go, I don't know. Encourage He goes no, I
Speaker 1: go seduce no. And finally he goes and he goes,
Speaker 1: I've got it. Enlist You're trying to enlist them into
Speaker 1: your cause and I go, that's great, enlist I write,
Speaker 1: and we had to do that for every line. Yeah.
Speaker 2: He called that actioning, and that is Stanislavskis script analysis.
Speaker 2: That's a very basic thing Stella Adler taught her students
Speaker 2: to do that. You do it as an infinitive verb
Speaker 2: with Stella, But that was a very Stanislavsky script analysis
Speaker 2: thing that like, every line has an action behind it,
Speaker 2: and that's the thing you're trying to do. And so
Speaker 2: write it down as you know, to enlist, to enlist,
Speaker 2: and try to keep those you know, those words, be
Speaker 2: really specific and keep the stake.
Speaker 1: It was a great director. So as you as you
Speaker 1: come into this business, as actors come into this business,
Speaker 1: and writers and directors and everybody having consumed a diet
Speaker 1: of other material. I watched films as a child. I
Speaker 1: was obsessed with films. There was no cable back then,
Speaker 1: no streaming nowadays. What people have out there to bathe in,
Speaker 1: to lather their body with and to try to get
Speaker 1: some essence of the of what movies are in acting
Speaker 1: is just abysmal. I call it the training table of donuts.
Speaker 2: Well, it's interesting that you say that, because you know
Speaker 2: I do often use the food metaphor when talking about
Speaker 2: one's cultural diet, right, and then it's like, you know,
Speaker 2: I like donuts. There's nothing wrong with having a donut,
Speaker 2: do you know what I mean? Medoships, Yeah, but a
Speaker 2: diet that was all donuts, I think we would all agree.
Speaker 1: The other are in the potato chip business right now.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I mean there's a lot of kind of
Speaker 2: flooding the zone with hastily made violent violent. That acting
Speaker 2: is often very kind of surface y, you know, there's
Speaker 2: nothing required of it, there's nothing required of them. I
Speaker 2: remember who was I talking to, may have actually been
Speaker 2: Ellen Burston and I were talking at one point. She
Speaker 2: was talking about how little training a lot of the
Speaker 2: people she, you know, the younger actors she was working with, have,
Speaker 2: and she's like, you know, it's enough to get you
Speaker 2: a Netflix show, but it's not enough to make you
Speaker 2: a good actor, which I think the way that she
Speaker 2: phrased it, people today don't care about being a good actress. Yeah, yeah, no,
Speaker 2: I mean some people do. And I think those people
Speaker 2: who really care, I think.
Speaker 1: That that they're less than before.
Speaker 2: Totally totally, but like you know, my students, anytime I
Speaker 2: mentioned a movie this. I had a really great group
Speaker 2: of students this semester. They blew my mind with how
Speaker 2: amazing they was a school at YU. Are you a Titian?
Speaker 1: Yeah, are you really?
Speaker 2: I'm in the dramatic studies departments. It's like the liberal
Speaker 2: arts part of the theater degree. So undergraduate for undergrads,
Speaker 2: for the for the BFA programming. Yeah.
Speaker 1: In your bick with they mentioned that new school.
Speaker 2: That's because when the book was published, I was at
Speaker 2: the new school and she started just recently, like a
Speaker 2: couple years ago.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and so they, you know, any time not just me,
Speaker 2: but anyone in class mentioned a movie that they hadn't
Speaker 2: heard of, they wrote it down. I saw them do it.
Speaker 2: Paths of Glory, write it down that Paths of Glory
Speaker 2: is an incredible movie. We could turn this into your class. Yeah,
Speaker 2: I'll come visit your class please.
Speaker 1: Dude. Oh, I'd love to tell my view of movies
Speaker 1: they should watch to improve their acting. Yeah. Yeah, no exactly.
Speaker 2: And so you know, I do think there are people
Speaker 2: who are hungry for that, just like I think that
Speaker 2: like when you eat only junk food, like it's fun
Speaker 2: for a while, but you do get to a point
Speaker 2: where You're like, am I poisoning myself?
Speaker 1: Or this is wrong? But I think the business itself
Speaker 1: is not encouraging people to appreciate a history film acting,
Speaker 1: and so for the film in general, from an historical perspective.
Speaker 1: You go out there. Now, there are films now that
Speaker 1: when the Oscar you would never watch a second time.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, that never never.
Speaker 2: I mean I am such a big fan of the
Speaker 2: Criterion Channel that I just started pitching them until they
Speaker 2: let me do things my Criterion lists.
Speaker 1: Oh great, I did my Criterion list of ten movies.
Speaker 1: That's great.
Speaker 2: I'm actually doing an event with them tonight where I'm
Speaker 2: the interviewer. So the interviewing Brian Cox.
Speaker 1: No, yeah, yeah, yeah, it's good. I worked with Cox.
Speaker 1: Hell the Nuremberg Trials for TT. Yes, he talks about it,
Speaker 1: and he plays Goebbels, Yes, he plays Gourbls. And you
Speaker 1: were the prosecutor, right, I was a Jackson, the judge
Speaker 1: who was sent by Roosevelt to go over there in
Speaker 1: form the ural right, right, amazing? Yeah.
Speaker 2: He talks about that in his in his memoir and
Speaker 2: finding that role. And you know, how was it that
Speaker 2: Goring was able to sort of tap dance around the
Speaker 2: people asking him questions and you know, so how to
Speaker 2: get into the psychology of that person without judgment because
Speaker 2: you have to bring them to life.
Speaker 1: And of course you see guys like them score late
Speaker 1: in their career. He did that succession. They're going to
Speaker 1: gasp of a look at him doing this TV show
Speaker 1: and just running the ball all over one hundred yards
Speaker 1: down the sideline with that. I mean, he was really
Speaker 1: really took a lot of chances and he was great
Speaker 1: in that show.
Speaker 2: I mean there's decades of history, right, decades of roles
Speaker 2: in that role, in getting in getting the logan, you know,
Speaker 2: in getting the logan role, And.
Speaker 1: How are you going to play those roles if you're
Speaker 1: not playing the roles for decades. I always say to people,
Speaker 1: I say, just give yourself a couple of years in
Speaker 1: the theater when you graduate, right, because if you graduate
Speaker 1: from college and you have a degree granting program from
Speaker 1: a university, I'm not so sure that the acting part
Speaker 1: of that is that pungent and that good. If you
Speaker 1: want to go to class and work in a classroom
Speaker 1: for another year or two, great, But after two years
Speaker 1: of classroom acting, you're going to become clas get the
Speaker 1: fuck out of there and go and audition for shows,
Speaker 1: and you know in a show.
Speaker 2: Bobby Lewis was very worried about that with regards to
Speaker 2: the Actors Studio. You know, he felt like there were
Speaker 2: a lot of people with good reason. Yeah, you know
Speaker 2: Bobby Lewis who was one of the founders of the
Speaker 2: Actors Studio, and then he and Kazan got into a
Speaker 2: He and Kazan had a falling out as Kazan was
Speaker 2: one to do with various people, and he quit the
Speaker 2: Actors Studio. And that's actually why Kazan brought Lee Strasburgh in,
Speaker 2: because Kazan had originally iced Lee Strasburg out of the
Speaker 2: studio and did not want him involved because he had
Speaker 2: so they had sort of a father son drama relation,
Speaker 2: kind of very dramatic relationship, and so that's how he
Speaker 2: brought Lee in and how Lee wound up taking over
Speaker 2: the Actors Studio. So a few years after that, almost
Speaker 2: Lewis gives this series of lectures called Method or Madness,
Speaker 2: which are collected in a book that isn't it's out
Speaker 2: of print, but it is one of the most extraordinary
Speaker 2: books about acting and in the Method or Madness lectures,
Speaker 2: Bobby Lewis says the problem with acting class and he
Speaker 2: says this as an acting teacher, is that you get
Speaker 2: stuck in classroom acting. You only know how to do
Speaker 2: scene study, you don't know how to do you know,
Speaker 2: you only know how to do the big moments. But actually,
Speaker 2: like seventy five percent of the actor's job is like,
Speaker 2: how do you pour a picture of glass of water
Speaker 2: out of a picture?
Speaker 1: Nothing? How do you do nothing and be comfortable with me? Listen? Right?
Speaker 2: It's like, you know, there's that sort of running joke
Speaker 2: within the industry that we all know of the background
Speaker 2: actor who does too much because they know they're being
Speaker 2: observed by the camera and so like, I can't do
Speaker 2: it because background actors can't talk, they're not allowed to.
Speaker 2: But they're making lots of faces, they're pointing there. Yeah,
Speaker 2: I mean there's an amazing Saturday Night Live sketch about
Speaker 2: that with I think Fred Armison and Sherry Oh Terry,
Speaker 2: and you know, it's that thing of like how do
Speaker 2: you actually just be when you know you're being observed?
Speaker 2: So simply and Strasburg actually had a lot of exercises
Speaker 2: for that private moment. I'm sure you've had to do
Speaker 2: private moment in your time or some dance and stuff
Speaker 2: like that, and how do you And those were all
Speaker 2: designed to make you forget that the audience was there, right,
Speaker 2: But then you get to scene study and you're just
Speaker 2: doing the huge moments you never loved me mom right,
Speaker 2: as opposed to the like, oh your arm's broken.
Speaker 1: Author Isaac Butler, if you're enjoying this conversation, tell a
Speaker 1: friend and be sure to follow Here's the Thing on
Speaker 1: the iHeartRadio app, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts.
Speaker 1: When we come back, Isaac Butler talks about the original
Speaker 1: disciples of method acting and his thoughts on actors like
Speaker 1: Marlon Brando and al Pacino. I'm Alec Baldwin and this
Speaker 1: is Here's the thing. Isaac Butler's book The Method chronicles
Speaker 1: the history of Stanislavsky's method of acting. The book details
Speaker 1: acting coaches such as Stella Adler and Lee Strasberg, who
Speaker 1: refashioned Stanislavsky's method for the next generation of actors. Both
Speaker 1: Stanislavsky and Strasburg would often say that the actor can
Speaker 1: only be ninety percent of the character. I was curious
Speaker 1: as to whether or not Isaac. But the regrees with
Speaker 1: this statement. It's actually impossible to fully become the character.
Speaker 1: That's madness.
Speaker 2: I mean, if you were to fully become Hamlet before
Speaker 2: me right now, well, for one thing, you wouldn't be
Speaker 2: speaking an iambic pentameter. That doesn't make any sense because
Speaker 2: no one speaks an iambic pantaminter. But also instead of
Speaker 2: being able to cross the stage or whatever, you just
Speaker 2: be like, holy shit, my uncle killed my father.
Speaker 1: What am I supposed to do my mother? Yeah? Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 2: You wouldn't be like, oh that this two two solid
Speaker 2: flesh would melt thowed result of itself into a dw
Speaker 2: You know, you wouldn't be doing that shit. You'd be
Speaker 2: like comatose. So fully becoming the character is a form
Speaker 2: of madness. Only you know that it's not actually possible.
Speaker 2: Stanislavski's whole idea, this idea of what is translated as
Speaker 2: experiencing the Russian word is perishavanya, this thing where it's
Speaker 2: like the actor's consciousness and the character's consciousness meet and
Speaker 2: they sort of have a baby.
Speaker 1: Do you know what I mean?
Speaker 2: That's what you're doing. You're really in the moment, you're
Speaker 2: feeling these things. You're live to the imaginative reality. But
Speaker 2: you're also not going to walk off the lip of
Speaker 2: the stage and fall into the orchestra pent or whatever.
Speaker 2: You know, you're trying to fly, yeah, yeah, yeah. And
Speaker 2: also you're going to do the blocking you've been told
Speaker 2: to do, you know, because you've agreed to do the blocking.
Speaker 1: So much of what you're doing is almost all with
Speaker 1: few exceptions. I mean, even monologues have some context this
Speaker 1: way with inside the play, you're performing with other people
Speaker 1: on stage with other people. And when you do that.
Speaker 1: What I always try to do, not even recently, from
Speaker 1: not from the beginning, but as I was going further
Speaker 1: and further, is what was the disposition of the character? Right?
Speaker 1: And I always talk to people that about dispositional acting.
Speaker 1: When you are you weak? Are you strong? Are you
Speaker 1: boo Radley where everything terrifies you and you're frail and
Speaker 1: fractal in the world and you're not brave and confident?
Speaker 1: Are you boisterous? Are you affable and backslapping? What is
Speaker 1: the nature of that person terms how they talk, how
Speaker 1: they behave, are they happy, sad? Are they strong? Weak? Whatever?
Speaker 1: You got to kind of get that adjusted. I think
Speaker 1: from the The word we use is authorization. Yeah, for
Speaker 1: that I do want. I need authorization if I go
Speaker 1: to see a surgeon. I watched Hours of Surgery before
Speaker 1: I did the movie Mallie, why not to study surgery?
Speaker 1: But the point, what were the disposition of these men?
Speaker 1: Did they really yell at nurses? Did they really throw
Speaker 1: the instruments on the ground? Did they really play ac
Speaker 1: DC at seven o'clock in the morning, Yes, they did.
Speaker 1: They had to go into another zone. They had to
Speaker 1: empty their mind. So then get in there and do
Speaker 1: stept couple bypasses at SEMN I can barely watch the
Speaker 1: Today Show at seven thirty in the morning, let alone
Speaker 1: do fucking stept couple bypassers. You know that's interesting.
Speaker 2: There's this play called Men in White, which births the
Speaker 2: hospital drama genre. Right, it's where er comes from. Really,
Speaker 2: if you think about it and the group it's a comedy, no, no, no, no,
Speaker 2: it's a legit play won the Pulitzer Prize. It's the
Speaker 2: thing that put the Group Theater on the map. Lee
Speaker 2: Strasburg directed it. Oh, the Group Theater was, of course
Speaker 2: the company that Lee Strasburg and Harold Clerman and Cheryl
Speaker 2: Crawford founded that all of twentieth century American acting comes
Speaker 2: out of this organa Stelle is there, Bobby Lewis is there,
Speaker 2: Kazan is there, John Garfield's there. Anyway, So they did
Speaker 2: this play called Men and White, and they would do
Speaker 2: these summer retreats. Most of them were juice. They were
Speaker 2: often in the Catskills. They would do these summer retreats
Speaker 2: where they're rehearsing these plays. Okay, so they rehearsed Men
Speaker 2: in White and they kept doing it, and they were
Speaker 2: sort of like, you know, they they went and they
Speaker 2: met doctors and nurses because there were doctors and nurses
Speaker 2: around this hotel, and they interviewed them and they looked
Speaker 2: at what they did. And Lee Struser said, we're going
Speaker 2: to learn what doctors do. Let's learn what doctors do,
Speaker 2: and let's bring those habits into the play. And they
Speaker 2: were doing these run throughs and they're like, something is
Speaker 2: not working. And I think it was actually Lee who
Speaker 2: figured this out. He's like, doctors don't reveal this much
Speaker 2: emotion actors do. Like, doctors are actually very you know,
Speaker 2: when they have a patient who's going to die that
Speaker 2: they're worried.
Speaker 1: Is going to die.
Speaker 2: They're not like, oh my god, he's gonna die. They're like,
Speaker 2: we're losing him. Bring me that ido the other room. Right,
Speaker 2: they're not, And that's actually a thing. The pit is
Speaker 2: really great at. If you've watched that TV show that
Speaker 2: you know, there's a level of you can't get worked
Speaker 2: up about everything. This happens to you every day. You
Speaker 2: can't let this bobby the deck of the carrier. And
Speaker 2: so it was through that little bit of withholding, you know,
Speaker 2: pulling back five or ten percent on the emotionality that
Speaker 2: allowed the play in its power to come to life
Speaker 2: because they had seen how those people really work in
Speaker 2: the world.
Speaker 1: Now, let's talk about in a couple of minutes we
Speaker 1: have left about some of the disciples of method acting
Speaker 1: that people were. I mean, I was a fan of Brando.
Speaker 1: I was drawing. He was a beacon to me like
Speaker 1: anybody else. But as the years went by and I
Speaker 1: saw how much he was just sending up his career
Speaker 1: and other people, and he was so bad. When I
Speaker 1: tell people what's the flame? You know, when Pacina, I
Speaker 1: mean I could cry in this when John Randol was
Speaker 1: trying to put the shield on Pacino's chest, and surproco,
Speaker 1: here's your shield, Frank, and he's like, doesn't want it
Speaker 1: shot through the cheek. Pacino was the one that made
Speaker 1: me want to be an actor. Brando kind of then
Speaker 1: that ended, yes, because Brando's just you know, his antics
Speaker 1: just turned me off, whereas Pacino was the person that
Speaker 1: made me want to be a movie actor. What do
Speaker 1: you think about Brando's contribution.
Speaker 2: Well, I mean there's a point where Brando stops doing
Speaker 2: the wonderful thing that he can do, and it's after
Speaker 2: the failure of One Eyed Jacks. You know, he was
Speaker 2: so mad about how that movie had been treated, which
Speaker 2: was his directorial debut. And you know, he always had
Speaker 2: an ambivalent relationship acting anyway. He wanted to be a
Speaker 2: jazz drummer. It just turned out he wasn't a genius
Speaker 2: a jazz drumming. He was a genius at acting. You know,
Speaker 2: sort of almost dragged into acting. You know, his sister
Speaker 2: was the one who cared a lot more about being
Speaker 2: an actor. And so there's a point where the joy
Speaker 2: you're going to get from his performances is not the same.
Speaker 2: You know, it's going to be like, wow, that's a
Speaker 2: really weird choice. And sometimes it works, and that's interesting.
Speaker 2: He did this movie called Missouri Breaks where his performance
Speaker 2: is insane. I mean it is legitimate. It's actually I
Speaker 2: find it brilliant and delightful. It is not a conventional
Speaker 2: performance that works. He is an Irish bounty hunter and
Speaker 2: then at one I don't know why he's doing an
Speaker 2: Irish accent, but he has a brogue throughout it. And
Speaker 2: then later on he disguises himself as an American and
Speaker 2: does literally does the scene as Brando doing an Irish accent,
Speaker 2: doing an American accent. It is breathtaking. It's insane. Why
Speaker 2: would you do that. There's another scene where he's like
Speaker 2: dress up as an old woman. It's almost like Looney Coconuto,
Speaker 2: you know. And that movie is delightful. It's delightful. Is
Speaker 2: that conventionally good acting?
Speaker 3: No.
Speaker 1: I think he's someone who and again the essentiality here
Speaker 1: that he had the youth. Yeah, he had the sheen
Speaker 1: of his youth. He's a street cud, but he's twenty
Speaker 1: four years old on Broadway. I had the street crum
Speaker 1: bro I was thirty. That's ten years is a huge difference.
Speaker 1: And you were the actual age of the character when
Speaker 1: he's too young for he was. But the thing is,
Speaker 1: I think that he's someone who again with my lame
Speaker 1: analogies here in metaphors, they hand him the Rubik's cube
Speaker 1: when he's twenty four years old, and he looks at
Speaker 1: it for a minute. Then he goes, zizit and he goes,
Speaker 1: you mean like that right, and they go, oh my god.
Speaker 1: I mean he puts the pieces together before anybody. You
Speaker 1: have to be forty right before, you know, but the
Speaker 1: time you old to play Hammick, you're too old to
Speaker 1: play hamm at that old line. And he puts the
Speaker 1: piece together while he's young and beautiful, and he got bored,
Speaker 1: you know, I mean he got bored.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean you can see, you know, his Julius
Speaker 2: Caesar when he plays the marc Antony, the film of
Speaker 2: that with a John Gilgood is he's great in that.
Speaker 2: I mean he worked as ass off that there's a
Speaker 2: period where he's working and then he sort of stops working.
Speaker 2: The early I am also really interested in, you know,
Speaker 2: a couple of other of that earlier generation. One is
Speaker 2: of course Montgomery Cliff. But the most natural screen presence
Speaker 2: of that generation, I think by far, there's that idea
Speaker 2: of public solitude. Strasburg talks about that, Stanislawski talks about
Speaker 2: that that you're not you don't know your private or
Speaker 2: public to be. No one is better at that than
Speaker 2: early Montgomery Cliff. But the other one of that era
Speaker 2: that I think, you know, I constantly talk about and
Speaker 2: want more people to go back to is John Garfield,
Speaker 2: who is the first method actor. He's the first actor
Speaker 2: trained by Strasburg to break out in Hollywood and be
Speaker 2: a star in his career is very sadly cut short,
Speaker 2: but first by Hugh act and then by his death
Speaker 2: of a heart attack after he was all but blacklisted,
Speaker 2: and he is an extraordinary screen presence.
Speaker 1: In a sense, I also view method acting in the
Speaker 1: way that was among other things in that period the fifties,
Speaker 1: on a labor relation sense, but in a psychological sense
Speaker 1: that method i've can become the unionization of acting. Right this,
Speaker 1: this is what we do. We decide what we do. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we You don't decide what we do. We'll tell you
Speaker 1: what we do. I'm going to go to work now
Speaker 1: and I'm going to educate the director. Now, We're going
Speaker 1: to do this this way. And I found that fascinating
Speaker 1: as it was almost like them kind of claiming in
Speaker 1: order to do good acting, in order to do better acting,
Speaker 1: more preciselycing, I couldn't rely on directors anymore to help
Speaker 1: me get there. I couldn't. It's the advent of what
Speaker 1: I call the self directing period of acting. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: mean that makes a lot of sense, and that SUSPC.
Speaker 1: I mean.
Speaker 2: The other thing that's happening that encourages that is, right
Speaker 2: when method acting is emerging, the studio system is falling apart.
Speaker 2: So you're no longer in this factory essentially making seven
Speaker 2: movies a year like Clark Gable did.
Speaker 1: We're doing what they told you it was in your
Speaker 1: interest and paid back then you know, eighteen hundred dollars
Speaker 1: a week.
Speaker 2: Right, right, right, fortune, right, So you're not on salary anymore.
Speaker 2: And one of the things that the breakup of the
Speaker 2: studio system does is for the actors who are successful,
Speaker 2: it empowers the actors and especially their agents. You know,
Speaker 2: that's a huge change in the industry. When the studio
Speaker 2: system falls apart and method acting is totally wrapped up
Speaker 2: in that, right that it's like, well, now I actually
Speaker 2: do want to be a serious actor. I don't want
Speaker 2: to sign a seven year Montgomery Cliff is like, I'm
Speaker 2: just going to sign a one year contract and I'm
Speaker 2: going to go back to doing place, because doing place
Speaker 2: what a serious actor does, and I want to be
Speaker 2: a serious actor or you know, whatever it is that
Speaker 2: maybe they want to live in New York, you know,
Speaker 2: maybe they don't want to be full.
Speaker 1: Time in film. Finally, yeah, yeah, yeah, you know, And.
Speaker 2: That's that is a huge change in the industry. And
Speaker 2: method acting is right there helping the fuel.
Speaker 1: In this online interview, I see a little clip of
Speaker 1: Merrill and she's saying to somebody, you know, the condition
Speaker 1: of the actor really is that life itself is so
Speaker 1: unpredictable and so uncertain, but especially so for actors. Yeah,
Speaker 1: their lives are more uncertain than the average person. Last thing,
Speaker 1: So Angels in America, your previous books. Yes, I am
Speaker 1: of the mind that you know. Obviously, great musicians, composers, writers,
Speaker 1: and so forth have a houseyon period. Then they run
Speaker 1: a little dry as time goes on. Now, I'm not
Speaker 1: going to suggest that Angels in America sapped Kushner of
Speaker 1: all of his creative abilities. That's far from true. But
Speaker 1: you wonder, did you get the impression. You talk to
Speaker 1: him many times, so I admire him beyond anything. He's
Speaker 1: just the most amazing individual, one of the most amazing
Speaker 1: people I've ever met in this business. However, I wonder
Speaker 1: I sometimes look at Angels like, go, this must have
Speaker 1: nearly killed him.
Speaker 2: Oh, I mean it didn't. Only yeah, I mean Angels.
Speaker 2: The story behind Angels. You know, my co author Dan
Speaker 2: Koyce and I it's an oral history because we were like,
Speaker 2: there's no way that we can write better than Oscar
Speaker 2: Eustace and Tony Kushner and Joe Mantello and all these
Speaker 2: people can talk, you know, so we're just we're gonna
Speaker 2: interview them, We're going to range their quotes. There's nothing
Speaker 2: we could possibly write in a sentence as good as
Speaker 2: something Tony says. And so we did an oral history,
Speaker 2: and it's got interviews with two hundred and fifty plus
Speaker 2: people in it. And what you learn is that that
Speaker 2: play nearly kills anyone who comes in contact with it.
Speaker 2: I mean, it's the mountain, it is really the mountain.
Speaker 1: It's Lear.
Speaker 2: It's fucking leir, you know, like it's actually two lears,
Speaker 2: because it's you know, it's eight hours long and you know,
Speaker 2: the theater company that developed Angels in America, Eureka Theater
Speaker 2: that Tony Tacone and Oscar Eustace ran it basically went
Speaker 2: under in the process of doing Angels. The original woman
Speaker 2: who played the Angel died of breast cancer over the
Speaker 2: course of developing the play.
Speaker 1: You know, it.
Speaker 2: Requires the totality of your being to do that play right,
Speaker 2: you know, to do both parts right. It requires so
Speaker 2: much of you, and it required so much of him
Speaker 2: to especially finish the second part. A lot of the interviews,
Speaker 2: the parts of it that were so difficult for him,
Speaker 2: had to do a lot with. You know, the first
Speaker 2: part was a huge hit, critically acclaimed, Gonna Go to Brabba.
Speaker 2: He hadn'tritten the second part yet, you know, figuring out
Speaker 2: how to finish the thing that he had started took.
Speaker 1: Millennium was first.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Millennium was first. And you know, Millennium's like a
Speaker 2: perfect play, Like a high school production of Millennium is
Speaker 2: still delight.
Speaker 1: It's not gonna be brilliant engage. You're still gonna have
Speaker 1: a great time. You know.
Speaker 2: Parastrika is very hard. It's a brilliant play. It is
Speaker 2: incredibly hard to do. If you do it right.
Speaker 1: It's incredibly fun.
Speaker 2: Wat Yeah, but it's you know, the interplay of ideas
Speaker 2: and imagery, and it takes so much of your theatrical imagination.
Speaker 2: And you know, for the actor playing Prior especially, it's
Speaker 2: so hard. And part of that is because of how
Speaker 2: difficult it was, I think for Tony to finish it,
Speaker 2: you know, because he's a guy who you know, he
Speaker 2: obsesses over every word. Every word has to be the
Speaker 2: right word. You know, He's really deep in the nitty
Speaker 2: gritty of everything. And that's why that took so long.
Speaker 2: You know, Lincoln took like a decade longer than he
Speaker 2: expected to to write, and it's because he really wants
Speaker 2: to do right by the things he's choosing to write about.
Speaker 2: And I just find it incredibly admirable. It is not
Speaker 2: how I necessarily approach my own writing, but it's just
Speaker 2: you can't argue with the results of it.
Speaker 1: It's so brilliant. How long did it take you to
Speaker 1: write that book? The Angels in America book?
Speaker 2: It started as an article, and so the article was
Speaker 2: originally we spent six months working on the article, and
Speaker 2: our first draft of the article was forty thousand words long.
Speaker 2: But when we handed in was forty thousand words long,
Speaker 2: and they were like, are you nuts going yeah, and
Speaker 2: so we had to cut twenty five thousand words out
Speaker 2: of it, you know, something like that. And so the
Speaker 2: only way we could deal with the heartbreak of that
Speaker 2: was to be like, we're going to turn it into
Speaker 2: a book.
Speaker 1: It'll go in the book.
Speaker 2: Don't worry about it, you know, don't delete it. Put
Speaker 2: it in this file to put.
Speaker 1: In the book.
Speaker 2: And then the article was a hit when we were
Speaker 2: able to sell it as a book, and I think
Speaker 2: it came out a year or two later.
Speaker 1: How long did it you to write the method? Two
Speaker 1: ish years? Two ish years.
Speaker 2: I would have maybe gotten it done a little bit
Speaker 2: faster than that, but.
Speaker 1: The pandemic happened.
Speaker 2: The third part of the book was written mostly in
Speaker 2: my mother in law's basement during the pandemic because we
Speaker 2: had left the city and so we were in the
Speaker 2: middle of nowhere in Virginia, and I was sitting in
Speaker 2: the basement watching a movie every day. And then you know,
Speaker 2: writing the third part. And after the book came out,
Speaker 2: my mother in law, who I love very dearly, we
Speaker 2: have a very good relationship. My mother in law said
Speaker 2: to me. You know, when you were living in my basement,
Speaker 2: I kept thinking, I'm watching this guy's kid, and he's
Speaker 2: watching a goddamn movie, you know, every day, And now
Speaker 2: I get it. Thank you very very much, Thank you
Speaker 2: so much for having me.
Speaker 1: This was a joy. Yeah, my thanks to Isaac Butler.
Speaker 1: This episode was recorded at CDM Studios in New York City.
Speaker 1: We're produced by Kathleen Russo, Zach MacNeice, and Victoria de Martin.
Speaker 1: Our engineer is Frank Imperial. Our social media manager is
Speaker 1: Danielle Gingrich. Hi'm Alec Baldwin. Here's the Thing is brought
Speaker 1: to you by iHeart Radio