book reports

I'll Be in My Trailer: The Creative Wars between Directors & Actors
John Badham and Craig Modderno
Studio City, CA: Michael Wiese Productions, 2006.

Badham claims that he was spurred to write this entertaining and informative book when a student asked what to do if an actor refused to cooperate. The result is a mixture of general precepts and concrete do’s and don’ts, larded with anecdotes and doses of cattiness. (Cher comes in for a page-long dig.) The central emphasis is very Hollywood: Keep the focus on what each character needs to achieve in the scene. “What does the character want or hope to get in this moment?” This “crowbar principle” of acting meshes with the screenwriter’s aim of designing a plot that’s driven by each character’s goals. And of course it’s all about story. “Nobody,” notes Dennis Haysbert, “goes to see a movie for the shots. They go because they like the people. There never was a movie where people said, ‘Oh, honey, there are some great shots there, let’s go see it.’” In my household, Dennis, such conversations are common.

The book’s emphasis on specificity of performance is reinforced by lots of quotations from directors and actors. James Woods refuses to have anything to do with backstory, Betty Thomas hates it when actors toy with eyeglasses, and Jodie Foster gets annoyed by those who dart their eyes around before saying their line. There are sections on scene-stealing, which has definitely been under-played in film studies, and a nice diatribe against the video assist. There are also a few research leads. Does Barbra Streisand really give only medium shots to her co-stars and save the close-ups for herself? Some passages make you laugh out loud, including Peter Hyams’ reminiscence of Richard Brooks, “the angriest man who ever walked the earth. Richard Brooks woke up each morning in a state of abject fury, and then got progressively more pissed off as the day went on.