091 Let's Talk About an Iconic Career

Another solo episode fellow daydreamers! This week Charlie discusses the legacy of Norman Lear, thoughts on the NYC production of Danny and the Deep Blue Sea with Chris Abbott and Aubrey Plaza, and the movies May/December and Past Lives. Charlie also shares some insights from the actress Sandra Hűller on how she approached playing a Nazi in the film Zone of Interest. 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 grew up in the 1970s, a proud Gen Xer. And if I had to name one person, culturally, artistically, that really influenced me, that left a mark on me. It's got to be Norman Lear. Now, Norman Lear, he just died at the age of 101. Norman Lear is responsible for some of the greatest television that has ever been put up. And his influence, the doors that have been opened, the work that came as a result of him, unparalleled.

(00:40):

I think the best show that I know that I grew up watching and that I'll watch even today as much as I can, All in the Family. There's Maude, Sanford and Son, Good Times, The Jeffersons, One Day at a Time, all created by this guy. I'll talk a little bit about that and I got a couple of other things. I saw Danny and the Deep Blue Sea. I'm going to talk about that. A couple of movies, past lives and May December, which I found interesting. And a great article on the actress Sandra Hüller and her work in the movie Zone of Interest. So it's a solo episode, I got some shit to talk about and then we'll get out of here. So put the phone back in your pocket, Creating Behavior starts now.

Lawrence Trailer (01:23):

(Singing.)

Charlie Sandlan (01:26):

Well, hello, my fellow daydreamers. Yeah, solo episode today. I got a couple of things to talk about. I saw Danny and the Deep Blue Sea here in New York City, down at the Lucille Lortel last week. And I was very excited to see it first off because I've worked on that play for quite some time. I will give it out in class every once in a while when I have the right actors to do it. You need a really good Danny and you got to have really two people that have a lot of inner volatility to be able to pull it off. It's such a densely written play. If you don't know it, I suggest you read it. John Patrick Shanley, one of our really great contemporary American playwrights, he's written the Italian American Reconciliation, he wrote Doubt, among many others.

(02:52):

But Danny and the Deep Blue Sea is a very tough play to read. It's about two people that meet in a bar, both damaged and you would think damaged beyond repair really. He is coming into the bar after just nearly beating someone to death. He's very violent, he's got a lot of rage, a lot of anger, a lot of pain. And she's also fucked up. She ended up really giving her father a blow job of all things, as an adult, of her own free volition. And both of them are really damaged, lonely people, incapable of tenderness. And it's a really great play, but it's a very challenging play. And I'll tell you, Chris Abbott and Aubrey Plaza, they really nailed it. I was really impressed. It actually broke me a couple of times, I came to life.

(04:01):

The danger of the play is that you can just have two actors yelling at each other on stage and that's really all that it falls into when you have bad actors that do it. And they were really able to mix that kind of volatility, the physical violence of the two of them with real tenderness. And you just saw these two people find each other and maybe for one night, maybe that's all it is, find love. And love, it was really beautiful and I'm glad I saw it. And it was not an easy ticket to get, let me tell you. I'll tell you, the ticket prices here in New York City, it's fucking unbelievable. Lucille Lortel, they were $220 a fucking ticket. I mean, can you believe that? I mean, Broadway's bad enough, but this is why they get the big name actors. And the thing about Aubrey Plaza, first thing she ever did on stage, her first stage appearance, and when it first started, I was like, "Ah, I don't think she really knows how to sustain a performance for 80 minutes. Does she really understand actions?"

(05:10):

I didn't get that she was really doing something, but I'll tell you, she settled in. And we were lucky on the night we went, Christopher Abbott, he hurt himself on the Sunday performance. So we're talking about three or four days later, he was on crutches, he couldn't really walk on his right foot. And that guy fucking committed fully. They used the crutches, there were a number of moments in the play where they actually used it. Lines meant something completely different, moments meant something different. They brought a lot of humor to it. And they've got this physical, beautiful kind of interpretive dance they do in between set changes where it really has to do with them finally making love and consummating the night. And they do it in this poetic, physical ballet almost. And the crutches are used in that too.

(06:04):

It was really just a great way to use something that... Injuries happen, you think, fuck, how can we do this? But they made it work, it didn't take away from the show at all and it was worthy of a standing ovation. That's what I'll say. I'm not one that stands up. Everybody stands up now like it's nobody's fucking business. Oh yeah, standing ovation. And it makes actors think that what they're doing is phenomenal because they've got 1000 people every night standing up, losing their shit. It's just so ubiquitous. I refuse to fucking do that. I will not just stand to stand. I'll be the asshole that sits in that chair when everybody else is up on their feet. To me, a standing ovation, it needs to be earned. And this was earned. I'm telling you. It was really good. Glad I saw it.

(06:53):

I saw two movies since I think I last spoke to you. One was Celine Song's debut film, Past Lives. If you have not seen it, it's another great film put out by A24. I mean, these guys are the Miramax of this generation, the films that these guys are putting out. Past Lives is a wonderful film. It starts Greta Lee, John Magaro, Teo Yoo. What I loved about it is first off, it's in two languages. It goes back and forth between Korean and American. It spans a number of decades. And it doesn't play out the way you expect these typical Hollywood movies to happen where the protagonists get their lover and they live happily ever after. It was a far more nuanced way of looking at our human experience with people and relationships. You don't always get what you think you wanted or what you wished you had. And there's always a life of just a little bit of inner longing and sadness that comes from what if.

(08:22):

And to me, that's the biggest thing about this film, it is just a big what if. You follow these two Korean kids when they're young, 7, 8, 9 years old, 10. I think at the age of 12, Greta Lee character, her family just moves and emigrates to the United States and this little crush that was forming between these two kids is snuffed out. And then you fast-forward 11 years and they reconnect and the crush is still there. But she's in New York, she's a writer and starting her life in America, he's back in Korea. And then you fast-forward another 12 years and then they finally meet and they get to spend some time together, she's married and it's just a really beautiful film. And it ends with, I don't know how to say it, but I think I would just call it feel good sadness. That's what it was for me. New York is a beautiful backdrop on the film. It's well acted, it's interesting and I highly recommend it. I think you can stream it on Amazon. Fucking watch it, it's fantastic.

(09:49):

And then there was another film. I thought it was okay, but there are two really interesting moments that I think are worth looking at from an actor's perspective. I watched May December with Trish on Netflix. It's this new film that came out with Julianne Moore and Natalie Portman. It's based off of the tabloid scandal of Mary Kay Letourneau. If you've ever heard of her, she was the 30 something grade school teacher that ended up having an affair with a 12-year-old, got arrested, went to prison, they had a couple of children, she got out of prison, and then they actually stayed together. And I don't know if they married or not, but they were together until her death. She died of cancer in her early fifties. So the movie is about that.

(10:36):

I thought that Nelly Portman was okay, I didn't think she was fantastic, but there are two moments. Each actress has a really interesting moment that I think is can be insightful for actors. Julianne Moore plays the teacher. She's got this moment where she's laying in bed and she is a wreck. I mean, she is crying, she's upset, she's so angry and just devastated. You would think someone died when you walk in there. So her student who is now a young man in his late twenties, early thirties, comes in and sits down to try to console her. She was so upset because her baking was falling apart. She was trying to sell cakes or something like that to people around town just to stay busy and make some money and the order got canceled.

(11:38):

So the previous circumstance is the scene is that her neighbor who had ordered a bunch of cupcakes for a party, canceled the order. Was still going to pay for it, so she said she was still going to pay for it, she just wasn't going to take the cupcakes. She's so upset. She sobs in her husband's arms. She's so angry and she whales out in this primal, just deep, guttural heartbreak. It was just like, wow, this woman is fucking crazy is how you interpret it when you watch it just because of her reaction to the circumstance. So it was a really interesting thing to look at from an acting teacher's point of view because you're saying to yourself, "Okay, well, that's a previous circumstance. You just found out that your cupcake order that you had just fulfilled, it's been canceled. You're still going to get paid, but it's been canceled."

(12:40):

It was rooted, you could see it, rooted in the chord of rejection, of being rejected. She was so hurt. So as an actor, if you're going to approach that, you have to particularize that, you're going to have to what if that, there's no way that you as an actor are going to be able to come to a full rich life if you just sit with that circumstance. You have to find something that has to do with real rejection in you, that if it were true would bring you to that kind of interesting devastation. What that is though, I don't know, you could have been daydreaming about a breakup, about somebody leaving you, about the ending of a relationship, somebody cheating on you. It was that kind of response. You had to be able to particularize that so that you can understand it. And as an actor, the first thing you got to be able to do is see the kind of behavior you want to create.

(13:41):

It was clear that Julianne Moore, she had this idea of the kind of response that was needed in order to really illuminate the character and she did it. So it was a really great moment. I would watch the film just for that. But there's another moment from Natalie Portman, who I thought overall phoned this performance in, but she has a really great, interesting moment. She's given a love letter. So Natalie Portman is the actress that's going to be playing Julianne Moore in a movie about this whole scandal. And so she's there visiting, doing homework. She gets a hold of a love letter that she wrote to this kid way back in the day. And it's this really simple scene. You get that Natalie Portman's character has memorized that letter, memorized it.

(14:37):

And it's just a simple shot, it's one shot, there's no cuts. She's looking in the mirror. And really she's not even looking in the mirror, it's facing her. So she's really facing the camera if you think about how it's shot. But you get the sense that we're the mirror that she's staring into. And in this very simple way, she uses that letter as a monologue, as if she's talking to him directly face-to-face. And she acts it out with such subtlety, it's so simple, she comes to a nice, vulnerable life. It was really great. It shows you what's possible when you understand text, when you can implant meaning, when you have simplicity and ease and you have an instrument that can allow an emotional life to flow in and out of you. It was a nice piece of acting. Two moments, whole film, it was worth it for those two moments, I suggest it.

(15:49):

Norman Lear. I know I talked about him in the open, one of the most influential, if not the most influential person in the history of television. I think that my favorite show of all time, I'm talking hour long dramas, sitcoms, the show that resonated with me, that affected me was All in the Family. I think it's one of the greatest shows ever put on television. It was so ahead of its time. This is what's so amazing about Norman Lear's body of work, is that it ages so well. They were doing things, saying things, putting things on television that had never been done before. You think about the '60s, if you know anything about the history of television, you're coming out of these, The Dick Van Dyke Show and Leave It to Beaver and My Three Sons and all of this just corny white family, certainly white centric view of America.

(17:03):

And then you get into the 1970s and Norman Lear, this white guy, starts to look through that white experience with a different lens. And to put an uneducated buffoon, a bigot like Archie Bunker on the screen and to argue and to talk about all of the racist tropes that we talk about in the privacy of our bedrooms, our family dynamics with our daughters and our kids and our in-laws and the arguments we have. His liberal daughter, played by Sally Struthers, her husband, Mike, the meathead, Rob Reiner, who went out to become a really great director, Jean Stapleton playing his wife. The arguments that they had, the embarrassment that you get by watching it, listening to his stupidity and also liking him and finding him funny, being able to laugh at it, to be able to be challenge to think about the things that are being said, to be offended by it. It was just way ahead of its time.

(18:23):

And there's one episode in particular where Sammy Davis Jr. plays himself, he ends up somehow, I don't know, a wallet or something was lost or found and he comes to the Bunkers to deal with it and he ends up kissing Archie on the cheek. It was a powerful moment, funny moment, iconic moment in television. Great show. If you want to see a great fucking piece of acting, you've got to watch Carroll O'Connor. I mean, you can stream All in the Family now. You could watch the entire run of shows. It was the number one show on television for five years in the early '70s. But the other body of work, Sanford and Son, another really funny show. And you look at Sanford and Son, you look at Good Times, you look at The Jeffersons, it was the first time where the black nuclear family was put on the screen and they were great shows.

(19:33):

Good Times, my goodness. This working class family, living in the projects, living like all of us do, the issues that come with parenting, that come with raising children, that come with grappling with racism in their lives. It was a wonderful show. So was Sanford and Son, Redd Foxx, iconic, incredible standup comedian who owned a junkyard, lived with his son and all of the relationships and the issues that they dealt with. The Jeffersons, come on. The Jeffersons, putting a upwardly, mobile, successful black couple on television had never been done before.

(20:23):

Now The Jeffersons was a spinoff of All in the Family. The Jeffersons appeared originally in a number of episodes of All in the Family. And The Jeffersons really takes place after they move out of Queens and the Jeffersons move into a high rise apartment in the sky, up in Manhattan. And it's about their lives, their neighbors, a mixed raced couple, white man, black woman. I mean, these are things that just were never fucking done. And Tyler Perry has said many times that he would not have a career if it were not for Norman Lear. The influence that Norman Lear had on all of the work that has come since... Black-ish. All these shows that are just influenced by the road that was paved by Norman Lear. One Day at a Time, another great show about working class, single mom and raising her adult daughters.

(21:24):

It's a great show. I would suggest taking a look at all of these shows, even if you just watch an episode or two so that you can educate yourself a little bit on some important television history. Norman Lear was a major force in the history of television. And it has influenced so much of the work that has come after it that I think as an actor it's important to consume. And I think you'll have an appreciation for how sharp the writing was, how insightful, how risky and dangerous it was to think back in the 1970s.

(22:15):

There's one show in particular, Maude, who was played by Bea Arthur, also a spinoff of All in the Family. Maude appeared a couple of times in All in the Family as a friend of Jean Stapleton's character. So we're talking 1972. Okay. So Bea Arthur, who plays the title character of Maude. It's a two-part episode and this was happening right at the time that Roe v. Wade was being settled and a woman's right to an abortion was ultimately going to be something that was a federal law. The episode was titled Maude's Dilemma. All right, so this is 1972. The whole premise of the show is that Maude, now Maude is 47 years old, she gets pregnant by accident. And it's a two part episode about how she comes to term with her decision to have an abortion.

(23:17):

People were losing their shit. Advertisers were pulling their ad buys. People were losing their minds over the fact that Norman Lear was going to put this topic on television. I mean, even today it's a little radical when you think about this topic of abortion and a woman actively just discussing whether or not it's worth having the child. It's controversial today, for fuck's sake, can you imagine 1972 putting this on TV? But you can't appreciate the audience size back in the '70s. There was no cable, there weren't alternate forms of consuming media. You had three channels, that was it. And in that 1972, 1973 season, this episode, Nielsen said 65 million people watched it, at least one part of it, 65 million. You can't touch that today, it's not possible, in the first episode as she's contemplating this. And it's clear she doesn't want it and there's really great conversations between her and her daughter. There's a line that Maude says that says, "Listen, at 62, I'd be the mother of an Eagle Scout." And her daughter responds and says, "Mother, I don't understand your hesitancy."

(24:56):

She does not want her mom to have an abortion. Interesting conversations, it was a controversial episode. And the first part, she decides to have the baby. She decides to have the baby because she thinks her husband wants her to have the baby. Her husband doesn't say anything, doesn't say not to have it because he thinks she wants to have the baby. And then they have this very serious, very deep conversation where they both realize they were saying yes because they thought the other wanted to. And once they realized that, that that was the case, the decision became easier and she decides to have the abortion. There's a really great article on this episode, I recommend reading from The New York Times, it's titled, Remembering Norman Lear's Most Controversial Episode.

(25:45):

And I'll just say about Norman Lear, he really made and helped and challenged America to rethink how we saw the black family. With those three shows, Good Times, The Jeffersons and Sanford and Son. There's a insightful article in The New York Times from December 9th titled, Norman Lear Reshaped How America Saw Black Families. The article begins with an interview with Tyler Perry and I'll just read a little quote he said about Norman Lear. "Had it not been for Norman, there wouldn't have been a path for me." Said Perry. Whose film and TV empire has made him one of the most powerful figures in Hollywood. "It was him bringing black people to television and showing the world that there's an audience for us."

(26:33):

It's hard to find anyone that is as highly regarded as Norman Lear was in this business. I think he had a big impact on how our current contemporary storytelling has been shaped. There's a quote in the article by Kenya Barris who created Black-ish and the quote was, "It's about as impactful in modern media as a legacy could be." There were just so many issues, so many things that were hit upon. And I just go back to the 1970s, you didn't see it. Civil rights, activism, abortion, as I said, alcoholism, drug abuse. It was just such a multidimensional way of looking at the black family that we had never seen before. I mean, really we're talking about the first two parent black family, the first really upwardly, mobile, successful black family with The Jeffersons. And then like I said, All in the Family, Sanford and Son. So I think an appreciation for Norman Lear is important. Check out his body of work so that you just have a greater sense of the history and the impact of the work that came before.

(28:00):

And then there's this really great article in The New Yorker about Sandra Hüller. And Sandra Hüller is having a moment. She's got two films, one out and one's coming out, Anatomy of a Fall and Zone of Interest. Now, Zone of Interest is what this New Yorker article is dealing with. And the title of the article is How Sandra Hüller Approached Playing a Nazi. And Zone of Interest, if you haven't read anything about it yet, is a film about real life couple. The husband was the Commandant, the Nazi soldier that ran Auschwitz and his wife. And they lived in this really beautiful house on the other side of the brick wall that separated them from the concentration camp.

(28:57):

And what's so disturbing about the film is it really focuses on the mundane day-to-day life of them living in this little idyllic house with the yard and kids and what you would think is a normal life. While on the other side, hundreds of thousands of Jews are being exterminated, killed, tortured, shot. And you never go into the camp, you see it from the distance, you hear it from the distance and as the watcher exactly what's going on over there. And the article had to do with how she approached playing this woman. And she said some very interesting things that I'll just share with you because I just thought they were insightful. I'll just read this here.

(29:47):

So this is a New Yorker article by Rebecca Mead from November 27th. And she had some very interesting things to say about how she approached the character that I thought I would share with you because I found them very interesting. "Her solution to the artistic challenge of playing a Nazi was to withhold her own humanity from the character." Sandra says, "I wanted to use my power as an actor, not to give the character any capacity to feel love, joy, fulfillment, connection, all these things, just take them away. The idea was to make the story as boring as possible, to give them as little excitement and joy as possible. They live the most unfulfilled life that someone can imagine and they don't know it, but we know it."

(30:43):

Great insight. And what a choice to say, when you're approaching a part, I need to remove the character's humanity. No capacity to feel any pleasure. How could you? You don't think that they knew in some way what was... Or she did? He did, of course, because he was over there all the time. You don't think she knew exactly what was going on? Of course she did. It was 100% complicity. How can you have any kind of joy or pleasure or happiness when you know that that kind of death and destruction is going on in your backyard? And she had some really interesting things to say about how the influence of her theater background really helped her with this. She said, "I don't have to have visions in order to play them. I have enough imagination to picture what it means when you see something that really isn't there."

(31:43):

Yeah, I'll just read that again. I think it's interesting. "I don't have to have visions in order to play them. I have enough imagination to picture what it means when you see something that really isn't there." You fucking kidding me? That's it. That's it in a nutshell, the imagination, your ability. And I say this to my students, "You have to be able to envision and see what it is you want to create. You have to see it in your mind's eye. If you can't see it, you're not going to be able to create it." She articulates that in such a great way. "I have enough imagination to picture what it means when you see something that really isn't there." That's talent, that's creativity, that's a great line.

(32:37):

And her thoughts about acting, she said, "You got to let everything that happens on stage really happen in your head or in your body or in your heart. It's not about hiding anything. Everybody knows that it's you wearing a costume. So why would you pretend to be somebody else?" I love that quote. And what was interesting about this film she talks about is that they had cameras placed all throughout the house that were mounted and constantly running so that you didn't really know when you went in from one room to the next as the actor, if you were being shot, not being shot, what was being filmed and what wasn't.

(33:20):

She said, "We could go from one room to another or be on the stairs and everything would be covered. You were there all the time. You were constantly on, constantly in character." Man, what a experience as an actor. And they rebuilt a replica of the house that they lived in, which still is there today, and they shot a scene or two in the actual basement of that house. They couldn't use it for the filming, so they built an exact replica. But to be able to walk through the actual house and then to enter into a replica. Wow, what an experience for these actors.

(34:03):

So before we wrap up here, I'm going to read the last paragraph of this New Yorker article because I think is really interesting and it says something about how daunting it can be to really step into really dark material. And I just thought it was worth sharing and we'll get you out of here on this. "Before filming began, a guide took the actors and crew members on a tour of Auschwitz. They visited the former barracks and crematoria and also saw display cases containing heaps of material that had been seized by the Nazis. Leather shoes, prosthetic limbs, eyeglasses."

(34:51):

"These vitrines, which embody the film's aesthetic, horror, viewed clinically are featured in the film. Hüller said of the tour, 'I had the reflex to expect some kind of cathartic moment. It's a romantic thought. You're in Auschwitz as a German, and suddenly all the guilt of your ancestors falls away and you understand and you are free. And then the ghost is gone.' She went on, 'The first thing I learned is Auschwitz doesn't do that. It says, you will have to live with this forever. Humanity has to live with this forever and there is no way of escaping it.'"

(35:36):

Well, my fellow daydreamers, thank you for sticking around and keeping that phone in your pocket. Please subscribe, follow the show, share it with your friends, tell them about this really great podcast for actors. You can also go to iTunes, leave a written review, I'd appreciate that. You can go to https://www.creatingbehaviorpodcast.com Go to the contact page, hit that red button. I use SpeakPipe, you can leave me a message, ask me some questions, I will get back to you. You can also go to https://www.maggieflaniganstudio.com if you are interested in seriously training as an actor here in New York City. And you can follow me on Instagram @maggieflaniganstudio, @creatingbehavior. Lawrence Trailer, thank you for this song, my man. My friends, please continue to stay resilient, playful out with yourself and don't ever settle for your second best. My name is Charlie Sandlan. Peace.

Lawrence Trailer (36:26):

(Singing.)