An Improvised Life (9 page)

Another way to approach the work was told to me by my son Matthew, when he was studying with Uta Hagen,
who, along with being a brilliant actress, was one of the most revered acting teachers in New York. Matt told me that his first months with her were horrible; it was like listening to my criticism of him all over again.

He went on to say, “Time and again I’d play a scene with a partner, and afterward Uta would ask, ‘What can you tell me about what happened?’ And I would tell her what I thought went right with the scene, what I had so carefully planned to achieve, what I felt I had properly executed. And she would listen and nod, and tell me it was very good, and showed a thorough understanding of character, circumstance, and objective, but that it all seemed planned and she could tell that I knew what was coming next. And I wanted to scream at her, as I so often wanted to scream at you, ‘Of course I know what’s coming next. I read the play! I’ve worked on the scene for two, three, four weeks!’”

Finally, in frustration and rage, Matt decided to show her. He was going to bring in a scene that he had done twice already, and he wasn’t going to do a damn thing. He was going to sit there and listen to his partner, and say the words, and nothing else. He was not going to inflect, he was not going to express an emotion or have a goal, nothing other than to show Uta that if you don’t plan what to do next, nothing will happen.

The scene began. Matt sat on the couch, sullen, listening to the other actor. But then, he told me, something odd happened.

“My heart started to race. I began to sweat and shake. I felt confused, and frightened, as if I was in the middle of a big lake at night, with no idea of the direction to the shore. I started to respond to the other character because I had to, because there was nothing else to do. Somehow, the scene made it to its end. Uta asked, ‘What can you tell me?’”

“It was terrible,” I replied.

“Why?”

“Because I didn’t know what was going on, I didn’t have any plan, I didn’t know what was going to happen from one moment to the next.”

“And,” she said, “it was the best work you have ever done in class. And you have done some good work.”

“But I was incredibly uncomfortable.”

Uta paused and looked at me sweetly (to which she was not given—she was not sentimental), before saying, “Oh my dear boy. Who ever told you that you were supposed to be comfortable?”

My suspicion is that Ms. Hagen was referring to the discomfort of the character, and not that Matt was supposed to be in a state of discomfort onstage for the rest of his life. At any rate, that was Matt’s breakthrough as an actor, and it involved his dramatically changing the place he worked from. He understood the power of story; that truths want to be told, have a will to be told, and that if we can simply exist in the scene the story and its truth will pass through us, willing itself into existence. It is our job only to
be
in the scene, to have the experience. That is
what audiences come to see. Of course it’s not a bad idea to be playing the character while all this is going on.

One of the things that happens after an actor has had an experience such as Matthew’s is that technique can come into play. It then becomes possible to remember the initial experience, and how you got there, and to create a close semblance of the event, so that in a long run you don’t become an emotional wreck by actually living the experience night after night. Because like it or not, the character and his feelings become your feelings. I guess a lot of actors from other traditions might feel otherwise, but I think the emotions and the essence of the character dig into us, whether we like it or not.

I remember Carol Burnett telling me that she’d been invited by Dr. Thelma Moss, a professor at UCLA, to try an experiment in the Kirlian aura lab. Carol was asked to place her hand on a photographic plate. A picture was taken by some technique that showed an aura around the hand, and apparently each person’s aura is unique. Carol was then asked to do a series of photographs where she was to
think
, just
think
of herself as each of about a half-dozen of the characters she was known for. On every occasion the resulting photograph was significantly different from either Carol’s personal imprint or those of her other characters. When Dr. Moss looked at the photographs she described, in detail, the emotional life of the characters that Carol was thinking of at the time. Carol said that in each case her description of the character was spot-on. This was a pretty
graphic demonstration of how thought, and the way we
think
of ourselves, becomes a dynamic that influences our many systems, and in many different ways, onstage and in life as well.

For many years my acting came from a place of surmounting some enormous obstacle, confronting some stern and faceless judge who would condemn me to a pit of hell if I didn’t achieve the “zone,” if even for a moment. Not a particularly happy place to work from. But as my interior work started taking me over, as the sensibility within me started to shift and change, I could no longer hang on to that stance.

Through my early years in front of a camera there had been no life whatsoever outside of my tightly focused eyeline. There was no crew, no director; there were only the specific actors I was working with. I was intensely focused on my subjects, and this came out of a ferocious attachment to my acting technique, which protected me from my own fears and a terrible sense of being judged, of being disliked, of needing approval. Now, as things started to crack open inside of me, as these centers began to open, I lost that tight focus. I would play a scene, working to the best of my ability, and no matter how hard I tried I could not shut out what was taking place in my peripheral vision—the knowledge that a crew was present, with a director behind the camera, and a lot of lights and trucks just off the set. When
that began to happen I felt as if I were losing my ability to act altogether. I would sheepishly check with the director to see if he’d noticed anything wrong with my performance. No one ever said a word. Then I would realize that for better or worse I had to incorporate my expanded sense of awareness into my technique. I wasn’t particularly happy about it, but there didn’t seem to be anything else to do, so I lived with it, feeling that my abilities as an actor had diminished to some extent. I had to accept it. There was no other choice.

Then, one day, I was reading a book by a Native American shaman and I came across a chapter on vision. The shaman maintained that as one’s consciousness expanded one’s vision got broader. Literally. One’s field of vision actually grew wider. He went on to say that tight vision belongs to a world of confrontation, to the hunter, and broad vision to a world of wider and more subtle perceptions. He also maintained that as one became used to this breadth of vision, the details of the tight vision could be sustained while everything else in the periphery continues to be seen and acknowledged. I had never encountered this idea before, and it gave me a sense, for the first time, that what was happening to me was constructive and developmental, and not just a sign that my acting ability was going down the drain. Nevertheless, I had to relearn how to act. I had to redefine who I was when I was playing a character. My work had to become more public, more accepting of the real world around me that was going on at the same time I was playing
a scene. But there is a strange and interesting phenomenon that takes place within our psyches. As was the case with Matt’s experience with Uta, and my own experience with expanding vision and many other such experiences, all of which were very positive indications of growth, initially and almost invariably they feel like aberrations. Like failings! In almost every case I’ve felt that there was something wrong with me, and it’s taken some time to adjust to the idea that: “Hey, this is good! I’m in a better place!” An odd state of affairs.

Another one of these shifts took place while I was doing
The In-Laws
. During the shooting, for the first time in my life I found myself having a good time while working. There was nothing I could do about it. There was no struggle involved, no mountain to climb. Out of nowhere, acting had become play, and for weeks I worried that I might get fired. Before
The In-Laws
I had felt that I had to work my ass off to get into some kind of state, into the zone, shot by shot, in order to do acceptable work. Now, in spite of myself, I was having fun.

For the first weeks of shooting I tried to jam myself into my old familiar work place. I tried to suffer, to constrict myself; I couldn’t make it happen. I kept looking at the director, Arthur Hiller, to see if he was disapproving, to see if he knew the terrible fact that I was
having fun
and not
working
. I looked at Peter Falk, my co-star, to see if he was hating me for enjoying myself; no one said anything. In fact, people seemed to like it. I even think my having fun
allowed Peter to do the same. I’m not sure that it’s a place he’s frequented too often in his career. He’s a terrific actor, but I don’t think
fun
is a word that he would apply to his work process.

Interestingly, over the years when people talk to me about
The In-Laws
, the first thing they say to me—and this has happened not once but literally hundreds of times—the first thing they say is, “God, it looks like you guys are having a good time in that film.” And more perplexing yet, it seems to mean something to them. When I answer, “Yes, we had a ball making
The In-Laws
,” I see people breathe a sigh of relief. It has happened over and over again, and after the fiftieth or hundredth time that someone said those words to me I began to wonder why they cared. What difference could it possibly make to anyone whether or not I had a good time making
The In-Laws
, or any other film for that matter? There are a few other movies I’ve made over the years that received similar responses from audiences, and amazingly it’s invariably the films in which I
was
having a good time that prompted people to ask me this question. These audiences of one always knew, and they always cared, and they always breathed a sigh of relief when I said “yes.”

And then I began noticing that I do the same thing with my favorite films or favorite musical groups. When I find out that the musicians of a string quartet that I’ve admired for years fight endlessly with each other, it fills me with inexplicable sadness. When I meet other actors and ask them about their experience in a film, wondering if it had been
fun to make, if I get a positive response it fills me with joy. This strange phenomenon puzzled me. Either people enjoyed the movie or they didn’t. Is everyone that much of a Samaritan that they need me to have a good time while I’m acting? I don’t think so, but I couldn’t find an explanation for it. It puzzled me for years until one day I tried an experiment in order to solve another problem of mine, and it took care of both of them at the same time.

I’ve always loved classical music, and I’ve always loved Carnegie Hall. Yet for years, getting myself to a concert there filled me with dread. It happened over and over again, and try as I might I couldn’t make any sense of it. Over the years it began to really annoy me. I only went to Carnegie Hall to hear music I loved, no one forced me to attend, it was always of my own volition, and yet each time I got near the place I’d struggle with terrible anxiety. I berated myself endlessly about it but never came to an understanding of what the cause could possibly be.

One night, thoroughly fed up with myself, I determined to get to the bottom of it. There was a performance of Beethoven’s 9th taking place at Carnegie Hall, which I’d been looking forward to for several weeks. I asked a couple of friends to come with me. It was a performance by an orchestra I’d been a fan of for many years through recordings, but had never seen. I told my friends about my problem and said I wanted to go with them as if I were blind. I thought limiting my senses and allowing myself to be cared for might relax me enough to get a handle on what was bothering me.
My friends agreed. I put on a pair of dark glasses and off we went to Carnegie Hall. I was fine until we neared the auditorium. As we got within earshot of the place, I began to pick up the excitement of the people waiting in the lobby for the auditorium to open. I began to hear snatches of conversation and also began to pick up the jarring collisions of emotional states of those waiting to get in. I could hear it and I could feel it. A lot of people were waiting with great enthusiasm. Others didn’t really want to be there; they were there to appease a date, a husband or a wife. Others were there because it was a corporate gift and felt they had to attend. Others went to keep a scorecard. They’d heard different orchestras perform the 9th and they were there to evaluate nuances of this orchestra, pitting it against the others, showing off their knowledge and hoping to add another notch to their expertise. Some attending the concert were musicians; they had friends who were playing that night. Others were present because it was their outing for the evening—tomorrow it would be the opera, the next day the ballet, in a continuous fix of culture.