"How do I act so well?" - Sir Ian McKellen on Acting!

Someone recently reminded me of this wonderful lesson by Sir Ian McKellen on Acting:

"I imagined what it would be like to be a wizard, and then, I pretended and acted in that way, on the day. And how did I know what to say? The words were written down for me in a script."

I'd forgotten that was how it worked. Thanks, Sir Ian! *

"How do I act so well?" - Sir Ian McKellen on Acting!

Casting Director Mark Bennett's "Thoughts on Compassion"

The prominent casting director Mark Bennett, whose recent credits include Kathryn Bigelow's stunning Hurt Locker, and Niki Caro's upcoming The Vintner's Luck, was kind enough to share his thoughts on compassion with us. I've known Mark for years, and have always found him to be smart and passionate, but I wasn't prepared for what he had to say about compassion. His thoughts truly echo my own, and it's no surprise that his work is of such consistently stunning quality given the genuine depth of his compassion. Thanks, too, to Monique Gabriela Curnen (full disclosure, an Authentic client) who Mark talks about in the piece.

THOUGHTS ON COMPASSION
Mark Bennett

Recently, an actress came in to read for me for a film that I was casting. She was one of the many in LA who are talented but are still struggling - and it was a big role. She was visibly nervous, and said so.

"Why?" I said. "We're all in this together."

She looked at me like I was speaking another language.

And in a way, I probably was. The movie business is rough, and we're told so often that it's a bloodsport that we start to believe it. I see it happen to actors: the first time I meet them, they're usually happy to be there, excited to be able to practice their craft. A few years later, some of the ones who haven't yet "made it" (and who are concerned with that sort of thing) start to feel jaded and bitter. They resent the process; they have a lot to say about other actors, always negative; they're bitchy in the waiting room and mean to the assistants. They are angry - and you can feel it in their work. They resent having been denied every role they've ever auditioned for, even the bad ones, mainly because they thought that that part could have led to a better part, which eventually would have led them…where? At what point would they have finally been happy?

When actors ask for advice on plotting their careers, the question I usually ask them is not, Whose career do you want?, but rather, whose life do you want? Will it really make you happy to get in that magazine? To make that much more money? No one lies on their death bed wishing that they had made more money.

I've been as guilty of this as anyone. For years, I chased imaginary carrots in front of my nose, trying to push to the head of the pack, and resenting those ahead of me. The problem with life is that there is always someone ahead of you - someone with more money, or more influence. Stubborn as I am, it took me years to learn this. I had bought the lie that society tries to sell us, that the world is defined by lack, and that the more that other people get, the less there will be for you.

Meanwhile, my life got incredibly small. I felt lonely a lot. In the words of Billy Wilder, "If you don't go to other people's funerals, they won't go to yours."

Now, I am a logical person; I am a big fan of whatever works. And I've come to discover that, more than anything, schadenfreude (rooting for other people to fail) is bad not just because it's bad for your karma but because it doesn't work. I see it with actors at auditions. The actors who book the jobs are the ones who are open, interested, who are happy to be there. It's the bitter or resentful ones that stink up the room, that get the bad reputations. Who wants to hire an actor who has a chip on their shoulder, who is full of resentment? Ironically, it's that same grim resolution to succeed that keeps them from succeeding.

We all come into this world innocent, full of hope. As long as babies' basic needs are met, they are happy. That's why young children are such good actors - they have come not to impress or to achieve, but to play. Then that innocence gets drilled out of us and we spend years trying to get it back; as Sainte-Beuve said, "There exists in most men a poet who died young, whom the man survived." But we still all have the desire to tap into our innate creativity, to experience that moment of transcendence in which we are most creative, and most generous. William Blake called this mysterious power the Imagination, and he said it was God.

So if you accept that we all start from that same place of innocence, then it is impossible not to feel compassion for others - and eventually, for yourself. Now, whenever I hear about a movie star throwing a tantrum on set, or a director dressing down some poor p.a., I think, Wow. They must be one frightened little child, to feel like they have to fight so hard to prove their own importance. And then I say a little prayer for them.

Now when I say a "prayer", I'm not referring to working within any organized religion or belief system. By prayer, I mean just good wishes, a happy little thought. Whenever actors are anxious about an audition, I tell them, "Say a little prayer, first for yourself and then for everybody else in the room - even the other actors. You'll feel generous and less resentful, and then your work will get better." And it does. I see it all the time.

I like to refer to my friend Monique Curnen. I first met Monique years ago, when she was an actress just starting out in New York. What always distinguished Monique, even more than her talent, was her generosity. She always showed up happy to be there, and eager to be of service. Because of this, people rooted for her, and she steadily built up her resume. Two years ago, I was delighted to receive a call from Monique, in which she told me she had to cancel our plans because she'd booked a role in a film.

The film? The Dark Knight.

Right after that, she booked a lead on a TV show, and has been working steadily ever since. Throughout it all, she has remained a really nice person, even since moving to LA (which is no mean feat).

She's going to have a very long career.

Like I said, I am a logical person: I practice compassion because it works. Simple as that.

Do you hear that, actors? Mark casts major movies, and he's telling you that compassion works. Not just in theory--in real, live practice!

Wow, Mark. Thanks so much. I'm sitting here trying to think of something to add, and I can't think of anything.

*

Casting Director Mark Bennett's "Thoughts on Compassion"

Paul Slovic on why we don't take action, and how actors, writer, and directors wield enormous power to change that

I just posted on the recent Nicholas Kristof column, "Would You Let This Girl Drown?" where Kristof references Paul Slovic's work, specifically his paper "If I look at the mass I will never act": Psychic numbing and genocide. Today I dug further and read Slovic's paper. The gist of the whole thing can be explained from this excerpt of his abstract:

"Most people are caring and will exert great effort to rescue individual victims whose needy plight comes to their attention. These same good people, however, often become numbly indifferent to the plight of individuals who are 'one of many' in a much greater problem. Why does this occur? The answer to this question will help us answer a related question that is the topic of this paper: Why, over the past century, have good people repeatedly ignored mass murder and genocide?"

Slovic goes on to describe affect, "the positive and negative feelings that combine with reasoned analysis to guide our judgements, decisions, and actions." Affect is simply the "sense (not necessarily conscious) that something is good or bad." It's automatic, and it's fast. And even though we're faced with facts that might lead us in another direction, we mostly make our decisions via "intuitive, automatic, natural, non-verbal, narrative, and experiential" means. That sometimes leads to us making choices that, in the clear light of day, don't seem to make sense. He describes studies that show consistently, that donors are more likely to make a donation that helps a single child, rather than donations that might help many children.

I'm not going to get into great detail about Slovic's work, but it's a great paper and I urge you to take a look for yourself. What's clear from the paper, though, is that our emotional, automatic responses to situations are what drive many of our decisions. In fact, we're likely to use logic and facts (our "analytic" system) simply to support the conclusions we've already made through our "experiental" system.

So what does that have to do with compassion and acting, writing, and directing?

You guessed it––plenty!

While Slovic points out that simple statistics, no matter how enormous, ultimately do not inspire people to take action, "images often strike us more powerfully, more deeply than numbers... we quickly grow numb to the facts and the math." "When it comes to eliciting compassion, the identified individual victim, with a face and a name, has no peer," Slovic says, and he points out many examples thereof including Baby Jessica, who fell into a well in the late 1980's; her rescue was the subject of massive media attention and her rescue caused nationwide celebration.

And this is where we intersect with acting, with writing, with directing. It's tough to convince billions of people to make their decisions in a different way; much of what we do is automatic. Slovic references Barbara Kingsolver, who wrote:

"The power of fiction is to create empathy. It lifts you away from your chair and stuffs you gently down inside someone else's point of view... A newspaper could tell you that one hundred people, say, in an airplane, or in Israel, or in Iraq, have died today. And you can think to yourself, 'How very sad,' then turn the page and see how the Wildcats fared. But a novel could take just one of those hundred lives and show you exactly how it felt to be that person rising from bed in the morning, watching the desert light on the tile of her doorway and on the curve of her daughter's cheek. You could taste that person's breakfast, and love her family, and sort through her worries as your own, and know that a death in that household will be the end of the only life that someone will ever have. As important as yours. As important as mine."

Slovic claims that relying on experiential systems, by using "powerful affective imagery such as that associated with Katrina and the South Asian tsunami" is hopeless. He points out that relying on this method creates the possibility of sensationalism, and requires consistent and powerful action on the part of the media. Slovic advocates clear attention to the facts, to compel governments to take action––in this case, against genocide.

But he himself points out how difficult it is to get anyone to pay attention to facts, to numbers. It is exactly these mechanisms, imagery, narrative, personalization, that artists must wield. And by doing so mindfully, their power is enormous!

By creating real characters, human stories that audiences identify with, we become compelled to take action on their behalf. Save the Children has known this for a long time: we're more likely to sponsor a real child with a real face, than to give money to a general fund for the well-being of children, even though the benefit might be greater.

I often say that in my work as a manager, I'm working my clients to create the world that I want to live in. So many artists want to make an impact with their work, and one surefire way to do it is to create real human beings that audiences automatically feel compassion for. This doesn't mean artists can only work on "issues," films about world tragedies, plays about human suffering. But it does mean that each time a story is told, there's an opportunity to create a space where an audience identifies with another human being's suffering, and is compelled to take action on it.

This might be on the scale of genocide, or it might be on the scale of family dynamics and relationships, or anywhere in between. Reading a paper about the American Dream, man's fear of failure and dreams of success, and family dysfunction doesn't inspire us to look inward. Watching a production of Death of a Salesman might. Hearing facts about addiction and how it can destroy a family is sad, but to watch Long Day's Journey into Night makes us look at our own families with compassion. To hear about 800,000 deaths in Rwanda is horrifying, but to watch Hotel Rwanda hits us in the gut, and inspires us to take action. To hear about millions of deaths in the Holocaust is gut-wrenching, but to read The Diary of Anne Frank, or to watch Schindler's List, or to learn any human Holocaust story through a human narrative makes us want to keep it from happening again. *

Paul Slovic on why we don't take action, and how actors, writer, and directors wield enormous power to change that

Casting Director Kim Miscia - "Compassion in the arts is just like compassion in one's everyday life"

Kim Miscia, who's a friend and a highly respected casting director here in New York City, shared her thoughts on compassion and how it relates to her work:

"Compassion in my field of the arts, casting, has shown its face to me in many instances over the years...

...like the face of the megastar TV and film actress/producer, who went out of her way to make a nervous young actress comfortable before she began her audition.

...or the face of a famous theater director who laughed heartily at every person's audition for a comedy--whether they were funny or not.

...or the face of an award winning writer, who, when an actor fumbled with his lines, reassured the young man that the words weren't important--he was getting the intention just right.

...or the face of the legendary actor teacher who, as an actress drowned in her audition monologue, took her aside and whispered in her ear, transforming her performance.

To me, compassion in the arts is just like compassion in one's everyday life--it's about putting yourself in another person's shoes and feeling empathy for them in that moment--letting them know that they're okay, and that they're not alone. Put more simply, compassion is about making the effort to let others know in tough times--not just in the sunny times--that you are no different from them."

What I really want to highlight in Kim's sharing is the presence of compassion in some of the most successful people in the business: a big TV star, a director, a writer. I'm going to reach a bit here, because I know who the people are she's referring to! These artists, their success, and the compassion in their hearts is not coincidental. The compassion she's talking about is evident in their work. When this particular actress takes on a role, she's so clearly and deeply connected to the character, and its impact on her audience, that people can't help but identify themselves with her. That's not something you turn on and turn off; it's her way of being. If an artist wants the ability to connect with an audience, to create a real emotional resonance in his or her work, compassion is utterly necessary.

Thanks, Kim! *

Casting Director Kim Miscia - "Compassion in the arts is just like compassion in one's everyday life"

Kat Foster on Compassion

Here's the beautiful and talented Kat Foster, known from Fox's TIL DEATH and soon to be seen on ABC's THE UNUSUALS, talking about compassion and what it means to her and how it relates to her work. How amazing is Kat??

I love the fact that Kat's definition of compassion is not all that different from Robert Thurman's, who's spent years studying it!

"Compassion is an ability to feel the pain of others, embrace someone's feelings as your own, to put yourself in someone else's shoes."

*

Kat Foster on Compassion