078 Season 3 Finale!

We've come to the end of Season 3 fellow daydreamers! This week Charlie wraps up the last sixteen episodes with some favorite clips from his guests. He also shares a few thoughts on Michelle Williams acting in The Fablemans, and Andrea Riseborough's extraordinary performance in To Leslie.  CBP will be back in May with Season 4! In the meantime, stay resilient, play full out with yourself, and don't ever settle for your second best. You can follow CBP on Instagram @creatingbehavior, and Charlie's NYC acting conservatory, the Maggie Flanigan Studio @maggieflaniganstudio. Theme music by  https://www.thelawrencetrailer.com. For written transcripts, to leave a voicemail on SpeakPipe, or contact Charlie for private coaching, check out https://www.creatingbehaviorpodcast.com

Transcript

Charlie Sandlan (00:03):

So yesterday in class, I had a student ask me, Charlie, what do you do when your tank is empty, when you've got nothing to give? There's nothing going on inside of you, and yet you've got to come up with something? And this was my response. I said, "The creative process always needs to start with inspiration. And you got to be willing to put the work aside for a day, two days, couple of hours, and just take in the world. Take a walk, feel the breeze on your face, embrace some solitude. Be alone with your thoughts. Go to a museum, take in art, listen to some music, read a book. These are the things that are going to help fill up your tank. Reconnect with some friends, travel, get away from your home for an afternoon or a day." It all starts with inspiration, my friends. And that is how we're kicking off the season three finale. So put the phone back in your pocket. Creating Behavior starts now. (singing)

(01:43):

Well, hello, my fellow day dreamers for the final time of season three. So we're wrapping it up here. Hard to believe. 16 episodes in the can. 78, that's what blows my mind. I've done 78 of these fuckers. Crazy. Who would've thought when I was back in Guatemala in that little cinder block of a room trying to do something different, get out of my comfort zone? And now, here I am, 78 episodes in. So I thought today I would just go over a couple of things that have struck me, a couple of performances in particular, and there's some thoughts on this and that.

(02:26):

And then I'll share with you some clips, some highlights of the last 16 episodes. First thing I want to talk about is Alec Baldwin and the impending manslaughter charges. Now, as an actor, this has got to really scare you and it needs to instill in you as you are pursuing your career, already engaged in it. Listen, you are the last person, if you are dealing with weapons, you are the last person that is going to have contact with that weapon. Yes, it's coming from an armorer. It's been checked, you're told it's cold, it's given to you, and you're the last person that's going to use it.

(03:16):

You have to be the annoying asshole that wants it to be checked right in front of you. You have to. You have to check it and recheck it. And it doesn't matter if it's annoying or if someone gets pissed off at you because you're being difficult. He was the last person to touch the gun. And then the other thing he did is that he pointed it at somebody. You just never do it. He said something in an interview recently after the shooting, and he said, "Listen, I was told it was cold." And then he said, "I didn't do anything wrong. I was told that it was empty. And then the director of photography is instructing me on the angle of where to point." Well, okay, you better ask, is anybody on the other side of this? Is anybody in my line? Get out of the way. And he didn't do that. He just took the armorer and the DP's take that the gun was cold, and that was it. And now he's facing manslaughter charges. Now, it doesn't help that he is an asshole.

(04:35):

At least, that's the reputation. And I bet you that in New Mexico, whoever is in that DA's office and is bringing up these charges, I doubt they're Democrats. You can't spend four years bashing Trump on Saturday Night Live and have Republicans not revel in your downfall. So I'm sure they're coming for him. I do feel for him. But listen, let this be a cautionary tale. Check every fucking weapon that is put in your hands if you're lucky enough to get to act with them, because they are fun. Shooting guns and playing with knives. Good times, but be responsible. I also thought, since we aren't going to talk to each other for a few months, I'll give you a couple of books. These are the last four books that I've bought and that I hope to have finished actually by the launch of season four. The first one is called Hollywood, The Oral History by Jeanine Basinger and Sam Wasson. Sam Wasson happens to be a great biographer, excellent biography on Bob Fosse, if you want to pick that up. But Hollywood, The Oral History.

(05:55):

It's incredible film history. That's really what it is. It is the history of that town, of filmmaking, of cinema, and it has conversations and interviews and excerpts from just about every important filmmaker, actor, creative of the last 100 years. It's incredible. The next book I'm reading is Quentin Tarantino's Cinema Speculation. It is a very dense, very interesting book of film criticism, really. I'll just read a little bit from the flap. It says, "Organized around key American films from the 1970s, all of which he first saw as a young movie goer at the time. This book is intellectually rigorous and insightful as it is rollicking and entertaining. At once film criticism, film theory, a feat of reporting and wonderful personal history, it is all written in the singular voice, recognizable immediately, as Quentin Tarantino's. And with the rare perspective about cinema possible only from one of the great practitioners of the art form ever."

(07:04):

I mean, come on, I'm going to dig into that. This next book, I was actually surprised to see it on the shelf. It's called Madly Deeply. It is the diaries of Alan Rickman who passed away a few years ago, incredible actor. He was a prolific journalist, and this is a collection of his diary entries. And I've read a little bit of it. It's profound. It's incredibly poetic, insightful, creative. I think that any actor, any artist, this is a book you have by your bedside. You pick it up, you read a few pages here and there. I think when you're talking about inspiration and trying to fill up that tank, his diaries are going to help you do that. The next book I'm reading here is called An Immense World by Ed Yong, Y-O-N-G, How Animal Senses Reveal the Hidden Realms Around Us.

(08:05):

Now, I had never heard of this book, but I was looking at Barack Obama's favorite books of 2022. This was on it, so I was like, I got to read it. It's fascinating. I'm in the first 40 pages or so, and Ed Yong is talking about dogs in particular and their sense of smell and how it differs from ours. And it's just a fascinating insight into how other creatures on this planet interpret the world in ways that are different than ours, which is very fascinating. So those are the four books I recommend. Hopefully they'll fill up my tank.

(08:44):

And there are two particular performances that I want to bring to your attention, because I think they're phenomenal. The Oscar nominations are out, and they're all of those performances that are there. Two in particular though struck a chord with me. The first performance I want to talk about is Michelle Williams, who plays Mitzi in the Fabelmans. Now, if you haven't seen the Fabelmans yet, you have to do it. It is an autobiographical take on Steven Spielberg's life. It's his latest film. I think it's an excellent, excellent piece of cinema. And Michelle Williams, she's exquisite. That's how I would describe what she did.

(09:31):

Early on in her career, I didn't really find her particularly interesting. And over the years, I think she's a prime example of an actor who has truly come into their own, who has continued to grow and to push themselves and really has turned themselves into a transformational character actor. Man, this part of Mitzi, she really does do that. She transforms, and what I love about what she does is she catches the artistic spirit of this woman who was an artist to her core. A piano player, became a mother, but never lost that sense of playfulness, of openness, that free spirited kind of artistic sensibility.

(10:23):

There is one scene in particular for those of you that appreciate the craft of acting. Emotional preparation is a very big thing, very important part of what actors need to be able to do. There's one scene, so when you're watching this film, or if you've already seen it, you'll know what I'm talking about. There is a scene where she is in her son's closet. He is showing her a little film that he's made, especially for her. And this little film exposes a very deep secret that she's kept from the family that he caught on camera. And he puts it together in a way that kind of hurt her, to expose her. And he leaves the closet and she's sitting there and the film cuts to her son sitting on the bed. And the scene is her coming out of the closet after having just watched this. Now, she is wrecked. She is humiliated, embarrassed, devastated, and you see her crawl out on our hands and knees.

(11:40):

You hear action, you have to come out of that closet. You better be fully fucking alive and related to the previous circumstance. And she is. And that scene is very, very painful to watch. It's excellently done, and I just think it's a first rate piece of work. There's a great article, it's a conversation in the New York Times with reporter Kyle Buchanan from January 4th. An excellent talk with Michelle Williams. She has an insightful quote about herself and about her own journey as an actor. And I'll just read this to you. She said, "I felt like the journey in my 20s was to finding an authentic way to center myself so that I felt natural inside of my own skin and could offer that to other women that I was playing. But then I wanted to shed that skin completely and be able to find entirely new ways of relating to characters that didn't always bring me along, that didn't bind me to just myself for the rest of my working life. That required breaking myself down and then rebuilding myself in somebody else's image and making bigger choices."

(12:55):

I love that. To me, what she's saying there is I didn't want to spend a career where I'm just bringing all of this material down to my pedestrian life, to just who I am. And that is what most actors do. That's certainly what a lot of celebrities do, and most actors are just playing themselves under different circumstances. They bring everything to themselves. It's not very interesting. And her quote really is just a great example of an actor who had a vision of the type of work that they wanted to be able to do and did the hard work on themselves. And it's paid off because she is exceptional in that film. So, check out the Fabelmans. And the next performance I'd like to talk about is, for my money, the best acting I have seen in a long, long time. And it is Andrea Riseborough in To Leslie, a film directed by Michael Morris. If you have not seen To Leslie, you need to run to your fucking television screen, get to Amazon Prime, and screen this motherfucker. It is extraordinary.

(14:15):

It rocked me to my core. It unnerved me, it moved me. It's one of those performances where the actor absolutely and utterly disappears. It is work without vanity. It is work without ego. It is an extraordinary psychological piece of work. So the movie is about this Texas woman who wins, I believe 180, $190,000 in the lottery. Blows it. Blows it all. And when the film opens, you kind of see her post blowing the money. She is an alcoholic, a functioning alcoholic. She's emaciated, she's homeless, she's in a really, really bad place, and yet she's trying to function. She goes to visit her son, she tries to clean herself up, and she can't. It's a very painful thing to watch. But what I love about this film is that it's not riddled with exposition. You're not being forced to listen to really poor writing.

(15:32):

.Everything you discover about her and about her relationships just comes out in the contact. Some of it you're like, ah, what happened? What's going on? What happened to her? You piece it together slowly. And watching her journey and where she ends up and what it took for her to get there, it's exceptional. It's vivid. It is visceral. Her impediment work is second to none. And within all of that, she still is able to bring to the surface the character's personality, her sense of play, her sense of humor. There's a childishness about her, a playfulness about her amidst all of her pain and a resilience to grind through life. And she ends up coming out on the other side. It's just a wonderful film. And when you start having first rate actors, and I'm talking A-list people, start posting and talking about your work, you know something's going on.

(16:48):

And that's why she got an Oscar nomination for this. Ed Norton who never posts on social media, I mean, never, decided he wanted to post something about this performance. And this is what he said on Instagram. "I don't post a lot about films or actor performances. Maybe I should more often. But for those interested in really great acting, I'll share that Andrea Riseborough's portrayal in To Leslie just knocked me sideways. It's about the most fully committed, emotionally deep, physically harrowing performance that I've seen in a while, just raw and utterly devoid of performative BS. It's a tough but really elegant and compassionate film by Michael Morris where the emotion is really earned. I happened to catch it, and wow, I was really staggered by the depth she reached. Very rare. Check it out."

(17:47):

Here's a quote from Sarah Paulson. "I was just struck by its authenticity. I felt like I was watching a movie from the '70s, a time when so many of my favorite films were made. Coming Home, Tender Mercies, Badlands, movies about the human experience made without judgment or commentary, just that magic of watching people behave. Andrea's performance affected me profoundly, achingly human and without vanity. And I do not mean vanity in terms of appearance. I mean, without awareness of how one is perceived or how one will be perceived. Just total embodiment. Immersion. Movies like this made for little money that are this powerful and true should be given the same attention and consideration as those that have huge studios and therefore budgets behind them. Anything I could do to help bring eyes to it would mean I was doing something for all of us as actors and movie goers."

(18:52):

Kate Winslet, Jennifer Aniston. I mean, you go down the list, just go online. Look at all the people that felt compelled to say something about this woman's performance. I mean, what's that tell you? Paulson said something in this quote that I wanted to point out. She said, vanity, a performance without vanity. The awareness of how one is perceived. And I'll just say this as I compare this to what Kate Blanchett did in Tar. Listen, Kate Blanchett's an incredible actor, first rate. She's also transformational. But we know when I watched Tar, to me, that's a very vain performance.

(19:39):

I never forgot that I was watching Kate Blanchett do a really great piece of acting. And yes, I mean, there's vanity and there's ego in the part, right? I mean, she plays a very arrogant person, but I was always aware that it was performative. Not with To Leslie. My God, all I could see was this broken, emaciated alcoholic who is just getting beaten down by life. There was no actor. She had completely disappeared. And that's why, to me, if you're an actor or you're serious about this art form and you don't see this film, come on, get a fucking grip. All right? Go see it. Stream it. And I'll just point out one article, really good article. I'll tell you, if you guys don't get the Hollywood Reporter on your feed, your newsfeed, you should. There's a really good article by Rebecca Keegan. They do these round table discussions with actors, and this one's a particularly good one.

(20:50):

The title of it is There is So Much Change at This Table, and it's a great conversation between Claire Foy, Danielle Deadwyler, who's incredible in Till, Emma Corrin, Michelle Yeoh, Jennifer Lawrence and Michelle Williams. It's a great back and forth. Highly recommend that. And now I thought I would just share some of my favorite clips from the last 16 episodes. I always tell you guys, there are a couple of things professionally that you have to be able to do. And in my classroom, when I hand out scenes in first year and students are expected to memorize their lines for the first time, I give them a week to memorize their lines. A week. Never fails. That first class, when scenes are up at the table, maybe three or four of them know their lines. They can't remember them. They maybe can get a paragraph in and they just go blank. Unacceptable. It is one of the worst things that you can do. So here's a little clip from episode 64, Rolando Chusan who came on and talked about the importance of knowing your lines.

Rolando Chusan (22:10):

One of the big offices that I was a reader for, I remember, and this is very similar, just how important it is to have your work there. Once you are in big offices, you need to come in absolutely prepared. Because some casting directors don't care about memorizing your lines, but a lot of them do. There's this one guy who came in and he flubbed one line, just one line, just one little tiny little thing. And I thought he did a great job. I was like, oh, wow, this is cool. This is whatever. But you could tell it was a flub. It wasn't like a choice. It was just like, ah, he just messed up. And the cast director looked at me and she said, "You memorize your lines or you're not hired."

Charlie Sandlan (22:49):

I think one of the great things about teaching and training actors are the people that come into my life, and what I learned from them. And in episode 65, my former student, Pooya Mohseni, came on. She is a transgendered Iranian actress. Grew up a young boy in Iran, was able to get out with her parents, came to the United States, and for the last 20 years has really carved out a sustained acting career, which is very, very difficult to do. And she's also doing it under a transgendered identity, which poses its own problems and struggles. But growing up in Iran certainly is not something I'm very familiar with. And in this anecdote, Pooya talks about the time she was arrested by the morality police for being gender nonconforming, laughing in a public square in a way that they found offensive. And this was her story.

Pooya Mohseni (24:04):

I think the most violent time that I remember, I was literally walking with my friend. We were next to this park in midtown Tehran, if you may. It was on a Friday night or Thursday night during summer. And I was wearing a black T-shirt and I think white jeans or something. And I was walking with my friend and he said something, and I started laughing. Apparently my laugh was considered offensive because as I was laughing, I felt this pain on my wrist. And as I understood, it was like somebody just swiped and grabbed my wrist and started dragging me. And it was morality police. They dragged me, they put me in the back of an SUV along with other boys, and at that time, they could see that I was kind of different from these other boys, because you can get arrested in Iran for many things. Women for not having the right hair covering, boys for wearing things that are considered not in accordance with whatever, it's like modest, appropriate Islamic wear is supposed to be.

(25:18):

And here I was, I think 16, maybe 17. And they put me in the back of the car along with the soldiers being like, be sure not to touch these boys. It's like that stuff. I'm like, okay. So you put me literally cramped together. And then they took us to the precinct. And I still just remember it was a basement cell, these old cells that hadn't been cleaned. It wasn't even a singular cell. There were individual cells, but they were all open. But it was like this holding area, almost like a barn, something from a horror movie. There there were drug dealers, there were people who were there because they'd assaulted somebody, somebody who had been accused of killing somebody. And here I am, this 17 year old kid, and I don't know what was going through my head.

(26:19):

That was one of the times I was incarcerated. And I think, it's going to sound bizarre, I fainted. I fainted. And I remember coming to, and it was my dad outside next to a watering pole, and he was trying to put water on my face. And yeah, that happens to a lot of people. I mean, in my case, I can say, well, it was because I was gender nonconforming. I don't know how gender nonconforming I was. My hair was down to my ears, and I was wearing a black t-shirt. Overnight, my dad had to sign an affidavit that I was going to cut my hair, and he also had to pay a fine. And I was lucky because my friend told my dad what had happened. But had my dad not come, I would've been there.

Charlie Sandlan (27:14):

My friend Jillian Marshall came on episode 67. She has her PhD in ethnomusicology. If you don't know what the fuck that is, listen to episode 67. But in this clip, why I love it is because she was talking about finishing up her dissertation, and there was some technological fuckups, and she had lost a lot of it. And she was really given two paths. Take the easy road and cobble together what she needed to do to get her dissertation done, or go the hard path and have to go back and rewrite. And it would be very tempting to take the easy path. And here, Jillian talks about the rewards that she found by taking the hard road.

Jillian Marshall (28:06):

In those moments where you really feel like, oh, I can't go on, that's oftentimes I've found where the big breakthroughs happen. And I remember finishing my doctorate. It was hell. My computer couldn't, by the time I finished writing my dissertation, my laptop, which I wrote the whole thing on, but by the end, it was just so glitchy and it wouldn't save my document. And I ended up having to redo my footnotes twice. I had 400 footnotes, and it was horrible. And after I defended, I had to make a couple edits my committee said, and I couldn't find the Word doc, I could only find the PDF. I couldn't find the Word document that was the latest version that I could actually update. And I literally thought, I had almost zen in the art of motorcycle maintenance style, I freaked out. It was two in the morning.

(28:59):

I remember I couldn't sleep. And this I had just discovered earlier that day. I might have to retype my entire dissertation by hand. I might have to just retype it. I had the PDF, but we're talking three languages, all these pictures. Just the act of typing it all would've taken me way more time than I had. And I remember, it was two in the morning, I couldn't sleep. I had a full-on, call it a panic attack, call it whatever you want. I just broke down. I was just crying hysterically. And I wrote my advisor an email, and I said, I cannot do this. Please just accept the pre-defense draft. That's all I had. And he wrote back and he said, "I know that you can do it. And we can hire you a typist if you want, but we will figure this out. And you have to push through because I want you to produce the best, the document that I know that you're capable of producing."

(29:48):

And man, oh man, did I hate him in that moment. But let me tell you, I pushed through. I did find, not the latest, but a later version that I had originally found somewhere in the cloud. And I pushed through and I typed it up, and I pushed send, and let me tell you. It made the reward of getting those letters, P, H, and D, all the more sweet, because I really had to earn it. And I know I had to earn it, and I had to push through something. And I grew as a result of that. Because with those moments when you don't want to do something, the breakthrough is growth, and that's a souvenir for a lifetime.

Charlie Sandlan (30:22):

Tara Westwood came on episode 68. I love Tara. She's a very good friend of mine. I've known her now for almost 15 years. This is a woman who has raised two children, moved out of New York City for a number of years to raise them. She became a Mormon, married a Mormon, then got out of the Mormon church, came back to New York, finished her training, raised her kids, and has been carving out a career, making her own work. And she knows the value of craft. And here she shares her insights on how important listening is to the actor. It is the bedrock of acting. It is the foundation. It is the most important thing that you can do is listen to what's being said to you. And here are Tara's thoughts on that.

Tara Westwood (31:14):

The value of listening as an actor is the same as a human being. It's everything. Because words are words. If I get a script, it could be a comedy, forget how it's spaced, forget how it looks. Words are just words. So how I say them is going to be differently than how someone else says them and what my intention is. So if you're not really listening, you're not going to hear what someone's really saying. And if you're not listening as an actor, then maybe your homework that you've done is so in your head, you're not really hearing what the person's saying, because the words are the same. How you've imagined they're going to say it and how they say it, if they're off book and they're saying verbatim, it's the same words. But maybe the actor sitting across from you is giving you a golden nugget because they're doing something differently than you'd had in your head. And unless you're really, really, really listening, you're going to miss it. So you're actually robbing yourself. It's everything.

Charlie Sandlan (32:20):

Episode 70, Simone Serra came on, my former student who has carved out her first decade pursuing a professional career. And here's the thing about, you train, or you move to New York or LA and you have this idea of how you think your career is going to go. You do. It never goes that way. And if you would've said to Simone when she got out of school that she was going to have a sustained career as a voiceover artist, that that's what was going to carry her through the first decade of her career, she would've laughed in your face. And yet she has. She was able to enter the voiceover market and sustain a career, be able to make money, be able to pay her bills so that she can pursue her acting. And in this clip, she talks about imposter syndrome and how her own inner monologue, the inner critic, really did a number on her in her early years, and her thoughts, and I think her insight, on how she navigated her way through that might resonate with some of you who also battled with your inner critic.

Simone Serra (33:38):

Oh, totally. That I really actually didn't know what I was doing. When it's time to rise to the occasion, I would fall apart, that I wasn't strong enough to be able to handle carrying a show or a scene or a play or anything that I knew and had solid training behind. Because there's this inner saboteur that's saying to you, no, no, no. No, everybody's going to see that you don't know what the fuck you're doing. When I look back at it now, I'm like, oh man, I'm glad that this is now the path that I had to go on this path in order for me to really see and realize that what I was doing was completely getting in my own way. But at the time, oh God, I was so ready.

(34:22):

I felt so ready when I got out of school. I have everything at my fingertips. I was like a gladiator, right? I had the fucking heart. I knew that I was an actor, artist, whatever it is that you want to call it. But I didn't have the armor. I didn't have the helmet. I didn't have the sword. And there was no outside threat. I was the threat to myself.

Charlie Sandlan (34:47):

Episode 71, Andrea Osvárt came on. This is a Hungarian born actress. She's been working for over 25 years internationally. She's become a life coach for actors and artists. It was a great conversation. And this clip, what I love about it is she was talking about those moments in your career where there's failure, where there is, you can't book a role, there's nothing going on. You couldn't get arrested if you wanted to. Those times are going to happen. You're going to get them. The pendulum always swings. You work, you work, you work, and then nothing. And that could last for one month, three months, three years. And it's how you sustain yourself through those downtimes that are going to be very telling as to whether or not you can be doing this for 40, 50 years. And in this clip, she has some thoughts about being able to look at your downtimes as part of your overall success, to be able to step out and look at it perhaps in a different lens.

Andrea Osvárt (36:04):

One has to be very clear about their own overall objective of why they're doing this job, or this is like a profession or a devotion, what we have to work as an actor. And what is our main purpose? Why? What is the why why we chose this profession and why we chose to be actors? And I think once a person is clear about that, in the difficult times, in those dark moments, we can go deep inside and find that again and answer that. Let me give you an example. I want to make my mom proud, or I want to make my brother proud, or I want to make my nation proud.

(36:52):

These kind of motivations can really help you through those moments when you feel abandoned, lonely, neglected, overlooked, forgotten. And then it's just a period, it won't last forever. And this is exactly part of the success, what we have talked about at the beginning. These downtimes are part of the success. So you just have to keep it tight and just wait a little bit because these dark moments will pass. And if you make it, and if you don't give up, then I am mostly sure that eventually it will be a road to success.

Charlie Sandlan (37:40):

Episode 73, my movement teacher at the Maggie Flanigan Studio, Sara Fay George, came on. Great conversation about the actor's body and the physical instrument and how that needs to be developed and trained. If you want to be able to do certainly the kind of work that you see Andrea Riseborough do in To Leslie, Jesus, you better have a hell of a physical instrument. And that also includes your ability to be able to process emotion, to have it be something that's fluid and easily processed in your body so that it's not forced and strained or pushed.

(38:22):

Your emotional life, ultimately, as an actor, needs to be aesthetically pleasing to watch. And there are some parts of your emotional palate that are going to be more difficult to access than others. And I'll tell you as a teacher, one that I think is challenging for just about everybody is joy. It's a beautiful thing to see, people whose hearts are bursting with that kind of emotional light, but it's very hard to give over to it. Because we know in life that we're judged. I mean, how many times do you see somebody giddy and silly and full of that kind of joyful life, and you roll your eyes or you judge it, or it's just like, Jesus, and you're always told as a kid to tamp down, tamp down, stop. Don't be so loud. Don't be so noisy. And in this clip, Sara Fay shares some of her thoughts on why joy can be a difficult emotion to access for actors.

Sara Fay George (39:23):

There's a lot of vulnerability in joy. It's a very vulnerable place. And as children, as children we have it innately. It's a very innate part. It's like every emotion is completely innate to the human experience. But we live, again, in structures and forms where children often don't have a lot of permission and place to express their innate joy as it bubbles up out of them in given moments, right? They're told to listen, to be still, to be quiet, to tone it down, to not play so loud. It's too much. Everywhere they turn, whether it's at school, at home, on the playground they're able to go and be free. But at home, no, be quiet. I have a headache. It's too much. It begins to create a pattern. When you express something like that that is so pure and it's shut down, and it's no, and make it smaller. And over time, the more we're told that, by the time we get to adolescence, it's too cool for school. That kind of becomes the attitude. It's like, oh, no, I'm too cool for joy.

Charlie Sandlan (40:56):

Episode 74, Guy Lockard came on. Guy, former student who had just wrapped up a full season, 23 episodes of Chicago Med, season seven. He made a decision to leave the show, to pursue something else, to do something new with his life, which is a very scary thing to do, to be able to jump off the cliff like that and walk away from something that's consistent and financially beneficial. Had a lot of time on set, a lot of time working at a high level. Series regular. You know how many people come in every week, every episode, day players, guest spots? Those series regulars, that crew, they're together every week for months and months. And so when you're an actor coming onto a set and you're not prepared, or you don't have your lines down, it's highly unprofessional. And Guy had some thoughts about that, about knowing your lines and what happens to actors that show up on a set unprepared.

Guy Lockard (42:10):

It is literally one of the most unprofessional things you could ever do. And it's one of those things, nobody even talks about knowing your lines, because it's just like, and I've been in situations where actors, guest stars weren't solid on the lines, and nine and a half out of 10, we got to go with it. So we have to either do something else while you work on that, or tape your lines up behind camera, which by the way, a lot of people do. Nobody cares about that. Do what you got to do. But you won't be getting called again. You know what I'm saying? And your agent will hear about it, and you won't be treated very kindly and not the reputation you want on a set. And you think you did good because you got two takes and they turned around. No, they're just done with you.

(42:57):

You're a guest star. They're just going to cut away from you. And maybe they'll bring you in later, a month after you. Now you know the lines because you're in a studio looping it, but your face isn't on the camera. They cut away to one of the series regulars. And your voice is throwing those handful of lines you were supposed to know a month ago. You can't use that on your reel. You know what I mean? You got paid for it, but that's the only check you'll get. And the casting director's going to know, and they will not be calling you sir.

Charlie Sandlan (43:27):

In episode 75, my voice and speech teacher, Midori Nakamura came on. I was so happy this season to get both Sarah Fay on here, to get Midori on here to talk about the voice. And that's another part of your instrument. If you're really serious about being able to create behavior for a living, you better have a voice that's resonant and clear. Diction is crisp, that you have range and the ability to be able to create character vocally. It's very important. And when you listen to a lot of actors talk, really first rate actors, character actors, they talk a lot about the voice. Finding that voice, where that lives in the body, the pitch, the octave, the tenor of it, the dialect. And in this clip, I don't know, there's something even poetic about what Midori is saying here about the voice and the actor's body. And it's worth sharing here.

Midori Nakamura (44:39):

Kristen used to always say, your voice is you. And I always thought, well, that's a very pretty metaphor. But it's actually not a metaphor. She used to say, anything that happens to you, happens to your voice. Anything that happens to your voice happens to you. Any changes, any shifts, any growth happens to you. And because of that connection, anything that happens to your voice also changes your art and deepens your art and grows your art, because it's a triad. It's one thing. Your voice, your art, and you, right? That's a piece that cannot be missing.

Charlie Sandlan (45:19):

Well, that's all I got for you today, my friends. It's been a pleasure being able to come on here for the last 16 episodes. All 78. I enjoy it. I have come to really appreciate the support that I've gotten from you and all of the kind words and the encouragement. It's good to know that there are at least some of you out there that are resonating with what I'm sharing with you. And it means a hell of a lot to me. So when we come back in May, we're going to elevate our game a little bit, Creating Behavior. We're going to have a YouTube channel. It's going to be video as well as the audio. So we're going to try to step it up a little bit, bring on some more guests, and continue to provide you with some inspiration, I hope. When that tank is low, listen to the podcast.

(46:18):

So before we go, I'll leave you with a quote here from Michael Morris who directed To Leslie. This is what he has to say about actors. "An actor isn't someone who says lines and stands on a certain place. An actor is someone who brings their entire history and experiences to a role and is somehow able to harness them into a specific moment." And on that note, my friends, thank you for keeping that phone in your pocket for the last 78 episodes. You can follow and subscribe the show wherever you get your podcasts. And if you have a few seconds, please go on iTunes, go to the podcast page and leave me a review. Let me know what you think of this show. I'd really appreciate that.

(47:03):

You can go to my New York City acting conservatory, the Maggie Flanigan Studio. Go to https://www.maggieflaniganstudio.com My Six-Week Summer Meisner Intensive. It starts June 12th. Get your ass to New York City and get some serious professional training for six weeks. Get a little taste of the Meisner Technique. You can also follow me on Instagram @maggieflaniganstudio and @creatingbehavior. Lawrence Trailer, thank you for this song, my man. I love it. It means a lot to me. And my friends, stay resilient, play full out with yourself, and don't ever settle for your second best. I'll see you in a few months. My name is Charlie Sandlan. Peace. (singing)