088 Notes From Acting Class

It's another solo episode this week fellow daydreamers! This week Charlie talks about the importance of digging into the past with two silent films, Buster Keaton's masterpiece Sherlock Jr., and the 1932 cult classic Freaks by Tod Browning. There's also some thoughts on Timothée Chalamet, and Theater for a New Audience's current production of Waiting for Godot. Charlie also discusses some recent acting notes from the classroom. 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 I wonder how many of you have seen a silent film recently that wasn't in a classroom setting, right? I think it's very important if you're an actor, writer, director, producer, you name it, if you are in this creative field, you need to go back deep into the archives and watch some of the work that was foundational and inspirational to the actors and artists that followed.

(00:29):

So I'm going to point you in two directions. We're going to talk about Buster Keaton's classic film, Sherlock Jr., the cult classic from 1931 called Freaks, which really fucking disturbed me when I saw it for the first time. We're going to talk about Timothée Chalamet, a great article in GQ that I think is worth reading. And I saw a play last night, Samuel Beckett's classic, Waiting for Godot. We're going to talk about one actor in particular that blew me away. And we're going to go over a few notes from Acting Class. It's a solo episode, my friend, so put the phone back in your pocket. Creating Behavior starts now.

(01:39):

Well, hello, my fellow daydreamers. I'm going to get right to it today, have no time for idle chit-chat. Let's just talk about a few things and see if we can get out of here quickly. All right.

(01:53):

Silent films, listen, it's been a long time since I've seen one, a couple of years at least. And I think they're very important to go back to those 1920 films when people were trying to figure out this whole idea of movie making, this camera, what it could do, what was possible, and some of the best performers, greatest directors we've had even to this day, came out of the 1920s. And I think my favorite was Buster Keaton.

(02:29):

Now, if you don't know who Buster Keaton is, he was an incredible actor. He was a comedian. He was a director, actor. And really from about 1920 to about 1929, this guy worked without stop and the number of films he made are most of them classics, The Electric House, The General, Steamboat Bill Jr. If you've ever watched that, that's a great one from 1928, cops with some incredible stunt work and chase scenes from 1922.

(03:05):

But I want to talk about this film called Sherlock Jr. from 1924. Now, you can stream this on Amazon. It's like a couple of bucks, maybe two or three bucks, and you can watch it. It's maybe 45 minutes, hour at most. The great thing about Buster Keaton, and I think what he mastered and people have taken and stolen from this up to the present day is the deadpan look. And deadpan humor really is just the display of emotional neutrality.

(03:39):

 You can't tell anything that's going on with that person. It's a straight face, no smile, no frowned, you name it. While the rest of the world, the ridiculous, absurd is going on around them, it's absolute deadpan, and it's funny. Well, he was great at this. So Sherlock Jr., it's a screwball comedy. That's what we would call it. Now, mind you, this is 1924.

(04:04):

What this guy was able to do in a span of 45 minutes is amazing. Even to this day when you watch it, an incredible motorcycle chase, quick costume changes. The guy makes a trick shot on a pool table, this story within a story where he jumps into a movie screen and joins a film that's being played in a movie theater.

(04:36):

Now, he's had films where he's had more amazing stunt work. I think Steamboat Bill Jr. for sure. There's this one scene in Steamboat Bill Jr, where the whole house collapses on top of him. It's amazing that the guy survived. The movie, The General entire steam train goes off a bridge, but I think Sherlock Jr. in particular is one of his most important films. I think it's visually stunning. And there are some technical things that happen in this film that are really truly astonishing.

(05:16):

And in many ways, it's a film about films. So the plot of the film, Keaton plays, he's a projectionist in a movie theater. He's kind of depressed, lonely, certainly looking for love, and he wants to win over the beautiful woman in town. She's called the Girl in the movie. But, of course, there's a romantic rival called the Local Sheik. He's got the curly villain mustache. But the physical comedy, this is what I think is important to watch with Keaton, is the physical comedy.

(05:55):

There's this one scene where he's on the trail of the girl who's been kidnapped, and he has a scene where he is running away. He jumps through the window. And in the window, there's a case with a dress in it. This guy jumps through the window through the case, rolls on the ground and stands up, and the dress is on him.

(06:21):

And you're saying to yourself, "How the fuck did he do that?" There's a motorcycle chase that literally goes on for maybe two, three minutes. He's sitting on the handlebars while the police officer is riding the motorcycle. And then, the guy falls off, and Keaton's on this motorcycle all by himself, and you're saying to yourself, "How the hell did these guys pull this off without anybody dying?"

(06:50):

But he suffered a lot of injuries in his time. He broke his neck in this film. He didn't realize it until years later. He's on this water tower, and he's climbing and hanging off of it. And this water comes pouring down on him, and he fractured a vertebrae, and didn't know it for until years later.

(07:11):

But what I think is the most interesting part of the film and mesmerizing even to this day, if you watch it, you're not going to figure out how the hell he did this. So there's a scene. The projectionist, he's sleeping on the job while the film's playing, and he sort of wakes up. It's a ghost apparition. He separates from his body. And you see this happen. He walks down into the theater and jumps into the movie screen, and the next thing you know, he's living out this fantasy in the movie.

(07:44):

Now. I mean, come on. This is all pre-digital, right? It looks seamless. It's completely mystifying, and it is a joy to watch. A silent film in the 1920s was, I mean, come on, simple as simple can be, fixed cameras, hammy acting. And he was a vaudeville performer since, I mean, he was a kid, five, six years old. But he understood storytelling, and he understood physical comedy, editing, framing, pacing, you name it. He understood it. And now, we're talking 100 years later, 100 years later, I'm telling you, you will sit stunned when you watch this unfold.

(08:26):

I've watched it a number of times. I still can't figure out what the hell's going on, how he pulled it off. And through it all, he is deadpan as hell. It's great. But I think it's a film worth 45 minutes of your time. And when you look at it, you'll see some of the current influences, Jackie Chan, for sure, his physical comedy. I think Wes Anderson, you can see some of Buster Keaton's influence on his work. So I think it's an important film. Check it out. When you watch it, let me know what you think about it. You can go to creatingbehaviorpodcast.com. Go to the contact page, hit that red button, and leave me a voice message. It'll get emailed to me. I use SpeakPipe, and you can share me some of your thoughts about Sherlock jr.

(09:20):

Now, I'd like to talk about another film that has always stuck with me when I first watched it as a teenager, shocked, stunned at what I was seeing. It's a 1932 film called Freaks by Tod Browning. Now, Tod Browning, he's a very big director in the '30s. Most notably, he directed Bela Lugosi in 1931's Dracula that kind of put him on the map.

(09:46):

But this film from 1932 called Freaks, another film that you can stream on Amazon, it's like three bucks, the movie was so disturbing, so shocking that the studio tried to shut it down. When they started to screen it for audiences, people were fainting. A woman had a fucking miscarriage while watching this film. So the plot of Freaks is about a traveling circus in the 1930s. You've got your trapeze artists, your clowns, your flamethrowers, right? And then, you have the sideshow, Freaks, as they were called.

(10:30):

And these were real people, okay? These are real people with real physical disabilities. We're talking about conjoined twins, people with major disfigurements, whether it's the size of their head or someone born without arms or legs, all they were, were a torso. And I mean just a torso with a head, what we would call as, I don't know, height challenged people today. I don't even know what the right word is. But back in the day, it was dwarfs, midgets, all of the insensitive ways that people with disabilities were characterized. They are the stars of the show. And so, it's about what happens at this circus.

(11:22):

So a plot by the tall humans, one woman in particular named Cleopatra, she's trying to woo one of the short men to try to fleece him from all of his money and take advantage. And it's kind of what happens over the course of that plot. But what was really just jaw dropping was seeing these people that are really on the underbelly of society. These are the people that are discarded that we don't talk about, we don't look at, we turn away in repulsion often when we see them. They were put on display, right? Carnival barkers, "Come and see the freaks. See the sideshow. See the conjoined twins."

(12:11):

Now, Tod Browning, he was part of a traveling circus when he was a teenager. Now, we're talking about the late 1890s. He went all over America with this kind of carnival folk. He worked as a clown. He was a contortionist. He was a carny barker. So it laid the groundwork for this film.

(12:33):

Now, this is also in the time where a lot of the classic horror films were coming out. Dracula came out, Frankenstein with Boris Karloff in 1931. You had Lon Chaney in The Wolf Man. So this was considered a horror film just because of the fact that you were looking at people that horrified you.

(12:54):

But I think what gives it the moniker of a horror film is the scene. It's a very disturbing scene. It's shot so well when these freaks realize that they've been taken advantage of by this woman, Cleopatra. And they hunt her down in the woods at night in the dark with torches. It's really, really disturbing.

(13:20):

But what I thought was really special about it is that Browning, he really steps back in a very neutral way and lets you see these performers as real people just living their lives, just getting by, dealing with the insults and the slurs that came from the non-disabled people who they were working with. But I'll tell you, that hunt in the woods, these guys, they break out their switchblades. They're going through the mud in the water to find Cleo. She's screaming for her life as they chase her.

(14:03):

It's not a long sequence. It's short, but very gothic in nature, primal. And then, at the end, you see that Cleo has now become one of them. She's performing in this pit clucking and squawking like a duck. Her legs are missing, her hands are deformed. It's fucked up. There's no other way to say it. This is really fucked up.

(14:26):

Now, the very original version of this film it no longer exists. The studio was so disturbed by it. They recut it. They re-edited it. And the version that you see today, that's it. But it's not what Tod Browning had originally intended. But even so, it's still worth watching. But people were appalled when they started screen testing this. It was banned in England for 30 years because they felt it was too brutal and too grotesque. But I do think that Browning had a tremendous amount of compassion when he shot this. And even though there's a lot of sadness in that film, it can make you laugh and can put a smile on your face at times. But at its heart, it's broken and disturbing. And I'm interested in what you guys think about this.

(15:29):

Go to Amazon Prime and watch it, and let me know what you think. I'm really curious about that. I think these two films will stay with you, which I think is important. When you consume art, that kind of leaves a mark. And there's also a lot of content online. You can read a great deal of criticism and insights and thoughts about Freaks. And you don't think it's been influential on other musicians or directors or writers. Well, it has been.

(16:03):

David Bowie even mentions the movie in his song, Diamond Dogs, great song from the 1970s. The Ramones used it as inspiration for their song, Pinhead. It even is mentioned in the first season of Sopranos. I think Meadow and one of her friends are talking about how disgusting it was and how callous her classmates were talking about the film. It has even been quoted in popular culture.

(16:29):

There's one scene where the small person who's being taken advantage of by Cleopatra, he's at the banquet table. And he has this line singing, "Gobble, gobble, we accept you, one of us." Well, they used it in South Park. It was used in The Wolf of Wall Street. It was used in the Player, great film with Lyle Lovett. So it's been influential, and we'll just leave it at that. So check out Freaks.

(17:06):

GQ always comes out with a good article here and there. And the writer, Daniel Riley, has come out back in October with his third major piece on Timothée Chalamet. It's the third time that he has been on the cover of GQ and has been profiled. And Daniel spoke to him, I think early on in, 2018, spoke to him during the Pandemic in '20, and now has this article that came out on the 17th of October.

(17:38):

It's a great article about how he has been navigating his fame, trying to keep himself safe and healthy as an artist, the things he does to nurture and satiate himself. So I just want to give you a couple of quotes from the article that I just think are worth hearing. He's looking back at that COVID period, certainly 2020, '21. We were all very isolated. He said, "I had spent a lot of time after high school with my head in the clouds, imagining a life as an actor and totally oblivious to the life I was actually leading. I was out of touch with an in-touch life. And during COVID, it flipped. And I was forced to become very in touch with my increasingly out-of-touch life. It was not good for me."

(18:34):

I can understand that when you're hit with immense fame early on. Something you've been dreaming about, you've got it. But what does that mean? What does that mean about who you are as a human being, just trying to live your life outside of the art? Yeah, I get that. But when Call Me by Your Name came out, it really just blew him up in a way that I don't even think he could be prepared for. You had to really figure out how you're going to reckon with that kind of immediate fame. When you think about, I'm living this life, this life I want, and then you start seeing other people, your friends, your age, and you start to question things. Another interesting quote he says, "You start going on Instagram, seeing people from your high school getting married, friends having kids, and you start going this balls-to-the-wall thing even at this amazing level I'm at that probably couldn't have gone better, you still start wondering, "How long till you have to change?"

(19:37):

I think it's a great thing to hear somebody of his stature talk about, especially when you have people talking to you, interviewing you on talk shows, saying, "Just don't change. Don't ever change," which he hears all the time. Just stay the way you are. I mean, I don't know if that's the best advice, but this is the shit that gets said to him.

(20:00):

The article talks a lot about his preparation for getting ready to shoot the Bob Dylan biopic, A Complete Unknown. He has been working on this for years in preparation to shoot, talk about being scared shitless to take on and play someone as iconic as that, the amount of work, the artistry that's got to go into being able to pull that off, really great insight into how he's been preparing for this film. It's worth reading. He talks about Bones and All, his preparation for that, his time on Don't Look Up working with DiCaprio and Jennifer Lawrence. They talk about his time shooting Wonka and his preparation for that, and how he dealt with the death of his grandmother while he was shooting.

(20:49):

So here's a little piece of the article that I'll just read in full because I just think it says a lot about him and how his time at LaGuardia, the famous art school here in New York City, kind of laid a foundation of artistry, and this is talking about training and preparing for his role as Willy Wonka. Riley says, "He trained in New York and London with Tony-winning choreographer, Christopher Gattelli. "Sometimes, with someone of that caliber, it's almost like a chore to get them to do things, especially if it's out of their comfort zone," Gattelli said. "But he was the exact opposite. He wanted to go and go and go and do it over and over." "Chalamet hadn't previously studied tap, among the hardest forms of dance to learn. But once he gained his confidence," Gattelli said, "he couldn't get him to stop."

(21:44):

He would Skype with his mom and his grandma just to show them because you could tell that he was genuinely proud of himself of what he was picking up, but also of the way he was sort of carrying on this family tradition from his grandmother and mother, both trained Broadway dancers. He would joke about it like, "It's in my blood." And I was like, "It is. It literally is."

(22:08):

And you talk about finding your own heroes, people that inspire you. Well, it's no different for when we look at as these ageless celebrities and how they can change and be influenced. I thought this was a very interesting insight from him. So let me read this part of the article. It's about how Timothée Chalamet was inspired by Austin Butler when they were beginning the first Zoom rehearsals and read-throughs for Dune: Two.

(22:40):

"It started on Zoom," Chalamet said, "When we did a cast reading." Here's the thing, he was already talking like Stellan Skarsgård that is on day one of the first read-through Butler had already dialed in his way all the way into the character, the heir to Skarsgård's Baron Harkonnen. And then, Chalamet says, "I can't overstate how inspiring it was to me personally because here was someone who's a little older than me. But generationally, we're similar. And I don't know how he would put it, but his journey was different than mine.

(23:17):

But he takes the work incredibly seriously, and I feel like I had not seen that among someone my age, whether it was in drama school or on set that did take the work that seriously. But then after cut is this tremendously affable, wonderful man." And then Riley said, "This was all just acting, of course, but here was someone who Chalamet felt could push him like, 'Man, I better practice harder.'"

(23:42):

I mean, I love that. So I'll just wrap up this little segment here with a quote in the article by Eric Vetro, who's the vocal coach working with Chalamet for the Dylan Biopic talking about Chalamet. "It's taking on all the characteristics of Dylan's voice and his mannerisms and his speech patterns and bringing that into the music so that when you hear Timothée do the music, what you're really getting is the essence of Bob Dylan. You're not getting an impersonation of him. It's breathing new life into that voice that we know so well."

(24:17):

And quite honestly, that is the key to really good character work, is to not imitate, especially if you're playing somebody who really lived or you're using an acting idea of somebody for your interpretation. It's always the essence from you as opposed to something you're trying to imitate. It won't be authentic if you're doing it that way. So I just think that's a very good thing to hear as actors.

(24:47):

Saw a great play last night, one of the classics, I think one of the top 10 most important plays written in the 20th century, Samuel Beckett's Waiting for Godot. It starred Michael Shannon and Paul Sparks. I loved it. It was fantastic. And I want to talk about Paul Sparks in particularly because I thought he was phenomenal.

(25:08):

Now, I say this to my students all the time, I think it's very, very important. I know I've said it to you. When you are creating a part, it's not about the lines. You have to get behavior first. You have to really understand the character. You have to be able to improvise from the character. You have to have an acting idea for the part. You've got to get behavior first. The lines, the meaning of the lines, all of it runs through your behavior. And that is what Paul Sparks created, un-fucking-believable.

(25:40):

This guy was a behavior machine. And there was just one thing in particular that I tipped my hat to. There's this line way in the second act of the play where he puts on Lucky's hat. So he changes the hat he's been wearing, and he puts on the hat of Lucky who appeared in act one. He's talking about how much he likes the hat, and he has this line. He goes, "This hat," and he's talking about the hat he originally was wearing, "made my head itch." That's it, one line. But he set that up from the very beginning. You see him in the beginning of the play, all through the first act. Every once in a while, you'd see him just take off his hat. He'd look at it. He'd kind of take his hand and do something on the inside of the brim, almost like he was shaking something out of it.

(26:31):

He probably did that four or five times over the course of the play, all because of that one line. That's an actor that saw that line and said, "Ah, this hat made my head itch." And all of a sudden, he had an idea, and it gave him behavior maybe four or five moments.

(26:52):

But man, it was a payoff. And it just said to me, "That is a smart, interesting, creative actor." I thought it was the most interesting Vladimir I had ever seen. And no knock on Michael Shannon, he was fantastic too. But Paul Sparks created just something very, very original. And it was inspiring to watch. It was at theater for a new audience out in Brooklyn. I'm so glad I saw it. Anytime you have a chance to see one of the great plays, I mean one of the greats, you have to go see it.

(27:28):

This is the fourth or fifth time I've seen it in my lifetime, and it's always good. It's like you're revisiting old friends, and it's a very contemplative piece. It'll make you think about your life, about existence, about the meaning of life, your relationship to God, if you have one, kind of just the utter stupidity of spending a few decades on this planet. It's very, very important play.

(27:54):

And Paul Sparks was incredible. You don't get to see really great work like that very often. So I felt very fortunate. And Paul Sparks has had a hell of a career. His Mickey Doyle, his great performance in Boardwalk Empire, also playing somebody who actually lived, gangster from the 1920s, he was great in that. He was in House of Cards. He's so funny as the mall owner in Physical, if you've watched that show. He's had a very long career on stage, on Broadway, on film and television. This is a guy that can do it all. So anytime you see Paul Sparks is going to be on stage or he's in something, check it out.

(28:39):

So now I'd like to talk about some of the acting notes that I post on the Maggie Flanigan Studio Instagram page, talk about them and give you a little context for it. Here's one from November 9th. "Now, you're starting to look like a couple of fucking actors. That's what professional work should look like. Hopefully, now, you have a deeper understanding of how much work it takes to produce the flawless illusion of life. It's the work no one sees. This is why every hack that comes to this art form thinks they can do it. Now, the thing to remember is that this took six weeks to get to. And by the end of the year, it should only take a week.

(29:22):

That's what a pro can do. You're on the right track." And for any of you that have been in my classroom or Maggie's classroom, you know when you hear those words, "You're on the right track," that, that was a good class. That's about the extent of my compliments when it comes to students. You're either on the right track, or you're not.

(29:43):

So what does that mean? Why was it so good? I had two students. They were doing a scene from Shining City. It's a really great Conor McPherson play. It's a breakup scene, really. The guy is breaking up with his life partner because he realizes that he's gay. And what makes it even more disturbing is that they just had a baby a few months ago, and he's breaking up with her. It's a long scene, very long scene. But what I was so impressed with, with my students was that they had done so much homework.

(30:20):

Now, they've been on these scenes for weeks, six weeks, working on these scenes, and it's their first round scenes in school. So they're learning a lot of things about actions and line intentions and how to implant meanings and the need to create impulses and justify text.

(30:37):

It's a lot. And it really is going to take them the rest of the school year to put it all together. So these first scenes sometimes can be a real shit show. But what they were able to do is really leave themselves alone, trust that they did the homework, and then just really live it out. And then, a lot of surprising things happened to them in the spontaneity of that. It looked, and it had some effortlessness to it, and it was alive. It was experiential. They had really gotten to a point where they understood the scene so well that they could live it through. And it felt like you were voyeurs, which is what you want as an audience to feel like you're just eavesdropping into someone else's life.

(31:22):

And they did that. Now, it took them six weeks to get there. And so, the thing that they needed to understand is that where they were after working on that scene for a month and a half, that really is where they need to be in the first week of rehearsal. That's where they need to be. If they're going to put something on tape for an audition, you got to be able to put something really close to the finished product on that tape, or if you're auditioning for theater, they've got to get that, "Hey, I think with three weeks' worth of work, and you're already here, that we can do something really special." So I was proud of them. And that's a very difficult thing to do. What happens, a lot of actors, they do whatever homework they do, and they get into the contact. And then, they just start doing the homework at each other. They lose the importance of listening and taking in and letting things just happen in process. So that's very important.

(32:21):

Here's another note. "I walk into class, and you guys are goofing around like it's a high school recess. There's nothing artistic about how you are preparing to work today. Do you think actors roll into the theater right at eight o'clock when the curtain opens? You need to begin to treat yourself like professional students. What are your artistic habits that prepare you to create vivid behavior?

(32:45):

If you don't have a physical and vocal warmup, you better get one. If you aren't in movement and voice, what the fuck? You are going to be competing with actors who give a shit about their craft and are obsessed. Start looking like serious artists." This happens every year. Every first year class at some point, I have to have that talk. I have to say that. They'll come to class. If it's a 10 o'clock class, they're rolling in at 10 o'clock. They're rushing to get through the city. And they've got their bag and their backpack, and they're out of breath. And class starts in one minute, or they show up 15 minutes before, and they just sit around and talk and chat and shoot the shit. And it's like a social occasion.

(33:32):

And then, they think they're going to get up there during that class and do interesting vivid work. And so at some point, I have to have this talk with them. You have to treat yourself like a professional. You have to warm yourself up. The work they do, my students, certainly in the first year and second year of the Meisner technique, it's deep work. It's potent work. It's your emotional accessibility to your rage, your heartbreak, joy, feeling this grief, shame.

(34:06):

You can't just roll in, put your bag down and think you're going to get up there and do something that is compelling, interesting, vital, and alive. Actors, if it's an eight o'clock curtain, they're at the theater at six o'clock. They're warming up. They've got a vocal regimen, a physical regiment that gets their body and their voice in a position to start to create good work.

(34:34):

And thankfully, my students always respond to that. So now, my students, they show up. If it's a 10 o'clock class, nope, they show up at 9:30. And I can hear them all throughout the halls and in the other room and the movement and voice room warming up, doing their work on their body, getting themselves centered. They've got their headphones on. They're trying to get themselves in the zone to be able to put their soul on the line. So that's very important.

(35:01):

If you really are going to do this with your life, you have to create some habits as it pertains to how you approach the work. And just taking an acting class is not going to fully train you. If you want to do compelling stuff, if you want to be able to do major parts, lead roles, character roles, you have to have utter command of your physical and vocal instrument.

(35:33):

So get into a movement class, get into a voice class, start to build some ways of keeping that instrument pliable and adaptable. And then, you work on it every day. Even on those days that you're not necessarily in class or you don't have a show or you're not in a production, you have to work on yourself constantly so that when the opportunity does come, you're fucking ready to go. It's very important. And I'll just share one final note from the IG page. This was from October 4th. "I'm not interested in the sappy sentimentality of being an actor and indulging and throwing around the word artist with a bunch of feel-good bullshit. A professional, creative life is really hard. You may love acting, love your creativity, but it doesn't mean it's worth other people paying for you to do it, no less paying to watch it. This life is something you earn through hard work, a relentless spirit and the grit to navigate the dismal times, which will absolutely come."

(36:38):

I think we can get caught up in the sentimentality of being an actor, of being an artist. And I look at a lot of the other studios that post their content on IG. And a lot of it just makes my head spin because it's just wrapped up in, "Oh, you want to be an artist? That's all you need is just the love of acting, the love of writing. You can do it. Anybody can do it." That's bullshit. Not everybody can do it. It's really difficult. And just because you love acting or want to be an actor doesn't mean that you can be one.

(37:12):

And if you really want to be somebody who's going to be paid to do this, if you want people dropping two, $300 to see you on stage, then, you have to work your ass off. You've got to have a lot of grit. You've got to be resilient. You've got to have an artistic process. You've got to find the ways to navigate the real dismal times that are going to come because they will those times where you're not working, and I mean like year, two years, three years where you're still waiting tables, you're still bartending, you're still grinding out a life of a struggling actor to hold on to your artistic integrity to continue to try to move forward. It's very challenging.

(37:57):

So I think if you're going to call yourself an artist, you have to earn that right. Yeah, everybody's creative. Everybody's got an imagination. Everybody can create shit. That's okay. That's wonderful. But there's a big difference between being a creative person and being someone who is a professional that's getting paid to do it. And if you want to get on that side of the fence, then, you've got to train. You've got to take yourself seriously, and you've got to work really hard.

(38:25):

So that's what I have for you today, my friends. I know I say, I'm going to get you in and out of here quickly, and then it ends up being a 45-minute episode, but such is life. I hope that you enjoyed it. Please, I'm interested in some of your thoughts about what's being shared here. Again, go to creatingbehaviorpodcast.com. Go to the contact page, hit that red button, and leave me a message. I will get back to you. I will respond to you. You can also email me charlie@creatingbehaviorpodcast.com. I will respond to you.

(38:56):

And I'll just leave you here with a Timothée Chalamet quote that I think is worth reading. "You need your ability to imagine, your ability to observe, and your ability to experience. And if any one of those is compromised, your ability to create is compromised in some way."

(39:20):

Well, my fellow daydreamers, thank you for sticking around and keeping that phone in your pocket. Please subscribe, follow the show wherever you get your podcasts. If you got a few seconds and you can go to iTunes and leave a written review, that would be fantastic. Share this podcast with your friends. Tell them about CBP. Again, go to https:/www.creatingbehaviorpodcast.com Go to the contact page, hit that red button. I use SpeakPipe. Leave me a message. Let me know what you're thinking.

(39:45):

You can also go to https://www.maggieflaniganstudio.com  if you are interested in starting to seriously train yourself as an actor. My next first year Meisner program starts January 4th. You can follow me on Instagram, @maggieflaniganstudio, @creatingbehavior. Lawrence Trailer, thank you for the song, my man. My friends, stay resilient, play full out with yourself, and don't ever settle for your second best. My name is Charlie Sandlan, peace.