101 Cry the Beloved Tears

Daydreamers! A solo episode this week. Charlie shares a few tidbits on human tears, and his thoughts on the films A Different Man, Emilia Pérez, and Anora. We've also lost a few titans of the art form in James Earl Jones and Maggie Smith. Charlie reflects on their careers, along with some words on the passing of dancer Michaela DePrince. And of course you know what you can expect from Charlie, so he's going to challenge those of you who want a professional creative career. What are you willing to sacrifice? 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. To leave a voicemail on SpeakPipe, or contact Charlie for private coaching, check out https://www.creatingbehaviorpodcast.com and his NYC acting studio  https://www.maggieflaniganstudio.com.

Transcript

Charlie:

Do you ever wonder why humans cry? Never really thought about it, but did you know that we are the only species that shed emotional tears? I find that very interesting. Did you know that there are three types of tears? You've got the basal tears, which lubricate the eyes. You've got the reflex tears, which protect you from dust and dirt, et cetera. Then you have emotional tears. Now that's where the real money is. Did you know that emotional tears are filled with water, oil, mucus, antibacterial proteins, electrolytes? We've got special tear glands underneath our eyebrows. Didn't know any of this. That's why I thought I would share that with you here in the open. I also didn't really understand this. When you're a baby, you don't cry. You wail. You don't develop tears until you're about a month, month and a half old. We're going to talk about that a little bit and some other tidbits on this solo episode, my friends. So put the phone back in your pocket. Creating behavior starts now. Well, hello, my fellow daydreamers. Tears. You know why I started thinking about tears? It's because the week of the election, and it's been a few weeks since that bomb dropped on us, that's all that was going on at the studio, a lot of tears, a lot of really upset, devastated, angry, enraged, infuriated people. The demographic at the studio is under 30. I would say I have a number of students, maybe 20% that are in their thirties, forties, fifties, sixties, but the majority range anywhere from 18 to 30. It was their first real taste of getting punched in the gut politically as an adult, the first time where many of them actually really started to give a fuck as much as they can at that age. Man, I'll tell you, it was some heavy lifting that week for me and for a lot of the teachers, the feeling of despondency, of outrage, most of the women at the studio, and rightly so, right? Just so deeply, deeply offended, upset, angry. I spent a lot of time just listening, and it was a very profound couple of days. The last Friday of class, we didn't even work. They weren't even in a position to be able to do the work in class. So we sat and talked. It really turned out to be one of the more profound days of my entire teaching career. Oddly enough, I went into class, irritated that because I knew that we weren't going to be able to work and there were things that needed to be discussed. And the conversation just slowly turned into something very interesting. We covered a lot of really deep topics, personal things, and a lot of tears were shed. It got me thinking about why humans cry. It was very interesting. I didn't know that there were three different types of tears. A lot of animals wail in distress. Mammals do it, and we do it in infancy, but humans are the only species that emotionally cry. It's interesting as actors because when you become an actor, all you want to do is be able to come to an emotional life. And often acting can get mischaracterized as how much you can feel, how easy you can cry. Even right now at the studio, I've got students that can come to life like they're walking down the street. It doesn't really take that much for them. It's easily available to them. I've got students that struggle mightily to come to an emotional life, to cry really is what we're talking about. They'll come to me and talk to me about how frustrating it is for them because they want to be able to do what their classmates do. They want to feel, they want to come to life. So the actor puts a high commodity on tears. But what was interesting that week is, in the feelings of despair and despondency, I was reminded of something that Maggie Flanigan said to me during the pandemic when everything was kind of crashing down. We didn't know what was going to happen to us. She said, "These are the times. These are the times where you need to save your life and you need to save your art." That stuck with me. I will never forget those words and I'll pass them along again to you now. In the times when you are filled with despair, where there's hopelessness, where you're filled with outrage and anger, if you're an artist, then use your fucking voice. What are you going to do about it creatively? What can you say? What can you create? What can you put into the world to address the things that you care about? How can you put something into the world that can get someone to think, can get someone maybe to change their mind about something, to see the human condition in a different way? Can you put something into the world that might just spark another human being's empathy? Because I think that's really what we lack in this country is empathy. Really, I think you can break the country down into two camps honestly. We are a 50 50 nation. I think half the country is deeply empathetic, can put themselves into the shoes of another human being and understand different aspects of the human condition and be moved by it and be moved to one to do something about it. Then you have people that aren't as empathic, that don't really have the ability to put themselves in the shoes of another human being. I think those are the people that need art, that need to be provoked, that need to be challenged to think. So I put that to you as you try to grapple with how you're going to navigate through the next four years, because that's what we got. So be creative, speak your truth, put those feelings into something that is worthy of being watched or listened to. So on the season premiere, I mentioned a couple of films that were coming out that I was excited to see. I finally saw a couple of them. So I thought I would share my thoughts on A Different Man and Emelia Perez. A Different Man I thought was very interesting because of their take on not really an original idea. This story of a man who has a life-changing experience that ends up unraveling and ruining his life. It's directed by Aaron Schimberg. It stars Sebastian Stan and this really interesting actor named Adam Pearson. So the whole idea of the movie is that this actor is suffering from real disfigurement. There's a long technical name for it, but if you ever saw the Elephant Man, it's that kind of a disease where all these big tumors are growing on your face and it's really disfiguring. It's disturbing to kind of see, shocking. He has this opportunity to have an experimental procedure done that removes all of those tumors and voila, you get the good-looking Sebastian Stan. From the moment that happens, his whole life starts to fall apart and he meets this other actor played by Adam Pearson. Now the thing is, Adam Pearson actually in real life has this disease. So there's no prosthetics, there is no makeup, there is no enhancing what he looks like. That is him. Sebastian Stan's character is falling apart, and you meet this guy who suffers from the same disease and he is loving life. He's so charming, so funny, so personable, so creative, so easy-going. His life is thriving in every possible way, and it's inventive in that sense. I thought it was very clever. It's a non-original journey, but the idea was really clever and the style of the film, I thought it was really ... and the style of the directing, it reminded me a lot of Cassavetes' 1970 films, a little bit of Woody Allen at times. It had some Charlie Kaufman sensibility to it as well. It had kind of a gritty kind of earthy feel to the tone of how it was shot. I thought it was really enjoyable. So I recommended it, and what an opportunity for Adam Pearson to be able to help carry a film like that, going through life grappling with that kind of a disease. What an opportunity. Great to see that. So check out A Different Man. The other film that I talked about was Emilia Perez. You can stream it on Netflix right now. It stars transgendered actress

Karla Sofia Gascon. It's got Zoe Saldana who is just having a career resurgence right now, and Selena Gomez.It's about the leader of this drug cartel in Mexico, ruthless young man who really identifies as a woman and he decides to fake his death and transgender into a female. It's a musical, so that's what makes it even more interesting to watch. Now, it's not necessarily my cup of tea, but I really enjoyed the whole concept. I thought it was inventive. You could tell that there was a lot of Lin-Manuel Miranda inspired numbers. Zoe Saldana kills it, and it's an interesting story and what made me appreciate the film even more is that she plays the male version of herself, the drug cartel, Kingpin, made up to look like a man, and then she plays her transgendered self. There's some really good moments. There's a scene with Zoe Saldana and Karla's character pre-transition. They're talking about how they're going to make this happen and it becomes kind of a personal conversation and you start to see that feminine energy, that feminine identification just kind of creep to the surface in this guy. You're looking with the gold teeth and the tattoos and the long hair and just this menacing kind of what a ruthless drug cartel Kingpin would kind of look like and act like. To start to see the feminine in him come to the surface was a nice little piece of acting. If you don't want to watch it, there's one moment in particular that I think as an actor you will appreciate. It's about 38 minutes in. So when you get to about minute 38, there's the scene. Zoe Saldana's character who was hired by the drug dealer to transition made like $2 million off this deal, didn't have to do too much. There's this scene, she's in the car backseat. She's just left and it's the emotional life that Zoe has. It's all of a sudden there's this well of heartbreak relief and the joy of realizing that she's set for life financially and just watch how she goes from pain, heartbreak. She's crying, she's laughing, her eyes light up, back to crying again. It's just in a span of I would say maybe 30 seconds. Fascinating, deeply lived through rich moment, and that's talent right there. To be able to catch that, it was very nuanced and for me, it was the best part of the film. Those 30 seconds as an acting teacher for sure, I deeply appreciated that. But the numbers are fantastic. Zoe Saldana, she's got this number at a gala that she just breaks out and dancing on the tables and the whole gala is involved. It's fun. It's a fun film. I enjoyed it. I'll say something about Zoe Saldana, if you want to see some range, watch that film. Go watch Avatar again, which she is incredible in. And watch The Lioness. I know I've mentioned it on this show, the Lioness. It's another Taylor Sheridan production CIA. It's heavily female-oriented. It's a lot of action. It's an intense show. She's phenomenal in it. It's one of my favorite shows right now. She's a hell of an actor. The other movie that I went to see, and I have to say it was great, one of the best films I've seen in a while, Anora directed by Sean Baker. If you don't know Sean Baker, he's putting together quite a resume. He shot Tangerine on an iPhone. That's a great story about transgendered sex workers. Red Rock, and the Florida Project, which will break your heart. Great film. And now here, Anora. It won the Palme d'Or at Cannes. I can totally understand why it did that. It stars a young Mikey Madison. Now, I had never heard of this actress. She's been working since she was a kid. She's been in a lot of things. She's Pamela Aldon's daughter on that FX show, Better Things. I mean, she's been working, but this is it. This is the breakout performance. This is going to put her into the mainstream. What a film. If you're an actor, these are the roles you dream about. It was offered to her. Sean Baker had seen her in a couple of things and wanted her to do it. Esther offered her the part. She stars opposite this young actor, Mark Idlestein, who plays Ivan. It's about a sex worker, a stripper who starts to spend some time with this son of this rich Russian oligarch, and they fall in love and they get married. The majority of the film is what happens as a result of them getting married after knowing each other for a couple of weeks. I think she's completely mesmerizing in this part. What she has to do, the dancing, the earlier part of the movie, which a lot of it takes place in the strip club, the dancing, the nudity, the sex. It requires a lot of courage, a lot of guts, and she gives over to it. She covers so many aspects of her personality, the fun, the naivete, the sexuality, the playfulness. Then you see this fierce mother-fucker, this vulnerable woman that will punch you in the face. She's gritty, she's caustic, she's naive, she's sensitive. She is so well-rounded as a character. Her acting is excellent. I will be shocked if she does not get nominated and win the Oscar. I think it's an Oscar-worthy performance. What I found so fun about the movie is that you think it's going to go in a certain direction as soon as you start to deal with Russians and power and money, you think the film is going to go in a certain direction and you're braced for that, the anxiety of what you think is going to happen and then something completely different takes place. That's what makes it such an enjoyable film. Sean Baker kind of busts out of some of the typical tropes and expectations you would think with a film like this. Honestly, it has different genres. It just goes from one thing to the next. It's romantic comedy and the playful fun of that kind of rom-com story, and then it has some screwball to it, and then it gets into just this manhunt, this vulnerable, intense kind of situation. It just was thoroughly enjoyable. The journey her character Annie goes on is endearing. It's heartbreaking. It's just a lovely thing to see this woman who's been sexualized probably since she was a young teen, caught up in this life, which ultimately doesn't, I don't think necessarily lead to good things if you're in it too long. You see this woman who's just seen as this sexual object and is reduced to that and the journey by the end of the film and the slow progression of this woman who actually slowly starts to be seen as a human being, as a woman, and what happens to her when all of that gets stripped away and she's there, that vulnerable, it's incredible. I'm going to see it again. I'm going to drag Trish to it now. I never go to the movie theater. I always wait until things get streamed. I went to the theater for that and I'm glad I did. So if you haven't seen Anora, you are behind the times. Get your ass into the movie theater and watch it and appreciate a first-rate piece of acting. Everybody in that show is good. All of the guys that play the Russian family and this kid who is opposite her, talk about free and open and playful. It's everything you want to be able to do as an actor. These two are doing it. So that's my take on Anora. A lot of the people that I end up learning about, I don't discover until they're dead. That's because I read the New York Times every day and I'm always going through the arts and leisure section, and the obituaries always come through and one will grab me and I go down the rabbit hole, as you know. There was this really good article in the New York Times by Alyssa Goodman, and the article was about this Indian actress named Go-Won-Go Mohawk. It's G-O-W-O-N-G-O Mohawk Go-Won-Go Mohawk. She was an actress in the 1860s, eighties and nineties. This New York Times, they do a series of important people that were overlooked during their lifetime. Why I found it interesting is because she was an Indian in the 1800s, which in and of itself is problematic for that person, right? She was an actor. She wasn't enjoying the roles that she was given and the way that American Indians were being portrayed, which is usually savages, the tragic martyr, helpless drunks, all of these tropes. So she started to write her own material. She wrote plays for herself, plays where she could be the hero of her own life. In 1888, this young woman was the sole copyright of a play that she wrote. She wrote these plays playing a man. She did Vaudeville in the early 1900s. She made it to Broadway in 1900 in a play called The Flaming Arrow. She traveled all over the world. She performed in London, she performed all over the United States, her plays, they dealt with interracial coupling. They dealt with issues of indigenous power and autonomy. She rode horses, she fought, she did her own combat. Fascinating life, never heard of her. I'll just give you this quote that she said in 1910. Okay, so this is what she had to say in an interview. "I said to myself that I must have something free and wild that would fit with my own nature. I wanted to ride and wrestle. And I thought, well, I can't do that as a woman. I must act as a man or, better, a boy." She did just that. Un-fucking believable. What a great life. Do a little dive on Go-Won-Go Mohawk, read that New York Times article and get inspired. The other artist unfortunately, that I did not even become aware of until she passed was the dancer, the ballet dancer, Michaela DePrince, who died a month or so ago at the age of 29, unexpectedly. I discovered her by reading her obituary, and I was really taken aback. And then of course, I went down a rabbit hole on Michaela. Fascinating life. We think that we have struggles. We can bitch and complain about our life and what's going on in us, but man, you listen to some life stories and it can put your own life in perspective. It can kind of just reframe some of the things that you're grappling with. This is a young woman that was born in Sierra Leone. Both of her parents were killed in that just ongoing civil war, which has been raging off and on for decades. So both of her parents are killed, and we're talking young. She's about two, three years old. So she gets sent to an orphanage in Sierra Leone at the age of three. It was a pretty hellacious place to be. We're talking about beating, we're talking about starvation. God knows the assaults that were carried out there. When she was a little kid, four years old, probably, she saw a picture of this ballerina that had been torn out of a magazine, and the wind kind of blew it up against this fence. She saw this ballet dancer, and she was just absolutely stunned, taken aback by it because it was the first time where she actually saw the picture of somebody who looked happy, who looked happy. It was a foreign thing to her. She was like, wow, I want that. I want to look like that. I want to be able to have that. And it stuck with her. Now, she was lucky enough to get adopted. She got adopted by a couple here in the United States, came over here five, six years old and started taking ballet classes. She also suffered from vitiligo, which if you don't know what that is, that's the pigmentation where you have can have splotches of lighter skin and darker skin, almost like a leopard-like kind of pattern on your face and hands and body. So you're talking about a young black woman from Sierra Leone who was adopted, come to this country. She has vitiligo and she starts to carve out a very successful empowering dance career. By the age of 17, she was at the American Ballet Theater. In her short career, she worked for the Boston Ballet. She worked all over Europe. She worked for the Dutch National Ballet. She worked for the Dance Theater of Harlem. She was the youngest principal in their history, the youngest principal dancer in the history of the Dance Theater of Harlem. I mean, come on. When she was a kid, this is back in Sierra Leone, they were worried that the orphanage was going to be bombed. So her and all these other young girls walked seven miles barefoot to a refugee camp. That's really where she got discovered by this American couple who ended up adopting her. But I just think about that journey and what it must have been like those early years for her and the imprint it would've left on her life. Then of course, when you're young, you're growing up and you're black and you have a skin condition like that, everyone's telling you you can't do it. Not possible. She said that when she was eight years old, she was told that the world was not ready for a black ballerina. When she was nine, this teacher told her parents that black girls were not worth investing in. So this is the kind of shit that she had to come up against. In 2012, she went back and was able to perform in South Africa and danced there for a while. She was living a full life. She was an inspiration to so many aspiring young women, young dancers. She was in Beyonce's Lemonade. If you watch that video, she's featured in that. And then all of a sudden, boom, she's gone. But at 29, to have left a mark like that, to have had a body of work that was substantial, to have inspired so many young people. Then I also say to myself, wow. It took an obituary for me to learn about her, but at least now I know I who she is. I've looked at a bunch of her work on YouTube. Just go to YouTube, just type in her name. Appreciate kind of what she was about, appreciate her life and her artistry and what she put back into the world, and to have done it all by the age of 29, to have lived her full life. It's very inspirational. So rest in peace, Michaela DePrince. We had two icons pass away this fall. James Earl Jones, I'm sure you all know who James Earl Jones is, passed away a couple of months ago. If you're not familiar with his life, he grew up we're talking the 1920s and thirties. He was from a very poor family, and I'm talking destitute if you don't know. He suffered from a very bad stutter as a kid. Very bad stutter, so bad in fact that he went number of years in his childhood without speaking. He was mute for three, four years, too afraid to speak. He was abandoned by his parents as a child. He was actually raised by a grandmother who was a pretty nasty person, evidently, and spent a lot of his childhood in silence. But the career that man carved out is iconic, one of the great actors of his time, his combination of, I would say force and subtlety. He could go back and forth between the two of those in the blink of an eye. He commanded your attention. His presence was undeniable. 6'2, 200 pounds. He walked on stage, stepped into a frame, and he was someone that had to be dealt with. And over a career, we're talking 120 movies, 90 television shows, and hundreds of plays, he played every major role you could possibly think of on the American stage. Kings, generals. He could play garbage men, he could play bricklayers. He did the whole gamut. Tony Award-winning actor. If you want to really just see some of his stage work, just watch Fences, watch his portrayal of Troy in Fences, won him a Tony, incredible performance. The voice of Darth Vader, the voice of CNN. You hear his voice, my God, you know exactly who it is. Even in the 1960s when he was first getting a start in television, he was doing daytime soaps. He was one of the first black actors to be cast as a doctor. Today, you don't think that's something odd, but in the 1960s to see a black man cast as a doctor on television, that was a big deal. That August Wilson production of Fences was in 1987, and it was a Tony Award-winning performance. So read his 1993 memoir, Voices and Silences give you a real good insight into his artistic journey. He won three Tony's overall. He even had a Broadway theater renamed for him, the James Earl Jones Theater. That happened in 2022. Come on, talk about an honor. What really put him on the map, if you want to see a really good film, it's based on a Broadway play that he won Tony for in 1968 called The Great White Hope. It's based on the real life boxer, Jack Johnson, and it's a take on his life story, great film. He had some interesting things to say about his early years in silence and his stutter and the journey that led him to his career as an actor. He said, "Just discovering the joy of communicating set it up for me, I think in a very personal way. Once I found out I could communicate verbally again, it became a very important thing for me, like making up for lost time, making up for the years that I didn't speak." Of course, you can just see that over the totality of his career and that the voracious need he had to speak to take words up off the page and put them out there. It was incredible. He said, "Because of my muteness." Now this is interesting. This is from his Voices and Silences memoir. He said, "because of my muteness, I approached language in a different way from most actors. I came at language standing on my head, turning words inside out in search of meaning, making a mess of it sometimes, but seeing truth from a very different viewpoint." That's authenticity, right? That is authenticity. To be able to look at a piece of material, to be able to put those words in your mouth and to express them, to put your spin, your take on the meaning of what it is you're saying that's unique to you. And he did that. He was the first African-American to win a best actor Tony. So he has that to his credit as well. He studied the acting studio with Lee Strasberg, so he was trained in the method. He had a way of working. He had a process, an incredible life, an incredible career. Rest in peace, James Earl Jones. And Maggie Smith passed away at the age of 89, one of the best actors of her generation. Nobody could play smart, sharp-tongued, stubborn, witty, dry, eccentric, the way Maggie Smith could. She won four Emmys, two Oscars, six Evening Standard Awards, which are big in Britain. It would be kind of the equivalent of a Drama Desk Award here. She was nominated six times for an Oscar. She won Tonys, BAFTA's and she spent most of her life under the radar. She could live her life, go about her business. People didn't really recognize her. She was acting all the time. Her whole career was rooted in period dramas, period pieces, right? My goodness, whether it was 1600s, 1700s, 1800, 1900s, she could do it. She could do film, she could do stage. She had utter command of the English language. Her sense of humor, her comic timing was impeccable. And once Downton Abbey hit in 2010, forget it, then she became famous. She couldn't go anywhere without being recognized. It's one of her greatest roles, the Dowager Countess. If you've never watched Downton Abbey you're culturally bereft. Get on there and watch at least the first season. You'll get a real appreciation of her. The Harry Potter movies, Minerva McGonagall, I think she did what, six or seven, maybe eight of those films. She was in Sister Act, First Wives Club. She became a Dame in 1990. Absolutely YouTube some of her stage work so you can see that, and I'll give you just a couple of films to watch that will give you a sense of what she could do. Go all the way back to 1969, the Prime of Miss Jean Brody. She won an Oscar for this great film about this 1930s school teacher who's very progressive. She has very progressive views about teaching, about her love life. The film is about all of the complications that come from being a woman in the 1930s that has a progressive way of looking at life. Great movie. I would also recommend California Suite. It's a Neil Simon comedy. It's got an all-star cast, Alan Alda, Walter Mathau, Michael Caine, Jane Fonda. Basically, it takes place at this hotel in different suites, different couples, the night of the Oscars, and what happens to all of these different couples. Very funny. She's great in that. Highly recommend that film. She did this little gem called Travels With My Aunt in 1972. It's based on a Graham Greene novel of the same name. She plays a very eccentric world traveler, and she's got these money making schemes, and it's how she tries to pull this off. Very funny. A lot of comedies. 1976, Murder by Death. It's a great Neil Simon film for a couple of reasons. It's a parody on the murder mystery, but it's also good to watch because you're going to see a horrible, horrific Asian trope, Peter Sellers playing what you would think of as the most outrageous, racist, inappropriate Asian character through our lens today, incredibly offensive. Back then, funny as fuck. So it's worth watching just to appreciate what was acceptable and what was done. That was 1976, Murdered by death and like I said, watched out in Abbey, an incredible career, iconic. Rest in peace, Maggie Smith. To just do a little follow-up here on crying, there's a really great article in The New York Times by Dana Smith. It's called Why Humans Cry. One little point that I thought was interesting, they did a study, thousands of people from around the world, and they asked about the last time they actually shed tears. More than half reported feeling better after the cry. 40% felt no different. 10% said they actually felt worse, which to me seems crazy. I've always found crying to be very therapeutic. After a good cry, I feel like you've processed something, you've got it out, got it out of you. So I wonder, how do you feel after a good cry? Think about the last time you cried, and I mean really let one go. How did you feel afterwards? Often crying alone can be very self-therapeutic. It can force you to really think about what you're crying about, to deal with it emotionally, to deal with it cognitively. It's a way of processing whatever is upsetting you. I'm a big believer in crying, especially when you are dealing with heartbreak, grief, something that's has really truly upset you. Have a good cry. Don't bottle it up. Don't shut it down. Don't stifle it. It's got to have its way with you. When that happens, you can really process. Acting, when I'm training my actors, it's about letting that emotional life get fluid inside of you. You want it to have its way with you. You grapple and squeeze and suppress it, it just gets bottled up. But fluidity as an actor, remember that, the fluidity of your emotional life is very important. I thought I would pull up an acting note from the Maggie Flanigan Studio Instagram page and talk about the latest one that I just posted a couple of days ago, and this is what I had to say. You're an artist? Then what are you willing to put on the line? You want a professional, creative career? Then what are you willing to sacrifice? You want to rip an audience's heart out? Then are you capable of illuminating the human condition? You're here with me because you want answers to those questions. So I put those questions to you. What are you willing to put on the line? What parts of yourself are you willing to access? The hidden parts, the most vulnerable, the parts of yourself that you really don't want anybody to see? Those are the places you have to go if you want to do compelling work as an actor, that takes a lot of courage. What are you willing to sacrifice? If you really want to do this with your life, and I don't care what the art is, whether it's acting, dance, music, painting, photography, what are you willing to sacrifice for it? Because it's going to require sacrifice if you want to do it with your life, and you're going to have to give up some things and make some tough choices. Are you willing to make those tough choices? Does it mean enough to you? One way or the other you're going to answer that question, and the audience experience is everything. I know a lot of artists will say, I don't give a fuck what the audience thinks or how people view what I do. I do it for myself.I do it because I have to. I get that. But as an actor, as a performer, it is about the audience's experience. And if you want to move them, if you want to give them something to think about, then you really have to have a deep understanding of the human condition. It goes back to what I was talking about earlier about empathy, about how much empathy do you have? Can you read something and put yourself in that experience? Listen, if you want to act, you have to figure that out. How many parts, how many shoes can I step into? That takes a versatile instrument? It takes a very vivid imagination. It takes a body that's pliable, that's capable of transformation. It takes a voice that's flexible and versatile and can go to different octaves that can be placed in different areas of the mouth that can resonate in different areas in the body. This is mastering your instrument. I can't tell you how many times in my class I have to talk about fucking speech, the fact that I can't hear you or I can't understand you, or I don't know what you're saying. Most actors do not put a high premium on their vocal instrument. But I will tell you, you will really fuck yourself if you don't have command of both your physical and your vocal dexterity. You're going to be a very, very limited actor. This all goes into your capacity to be able to able to bring yourself fully to a piece of material, and not just the physical and vocal transformation, but the emotional accessibility. All of that has to come together if you want to give an audience an experience. So those are some things to think about, some questions to ponder as you are grinding out your artistic life. So I thought I'd wrap it up here, get us out on an Ethan Hawke quote. And listen, I don't think Ethan Hawke is the greatest actor in the world. I've seen some things that I've really liked him in, and I've seen some stage work that I just thought was so tense and so forced and so strained that it was hard to watch. That being said, he's a fucking artist to his core. Anytime you have a chance to listen to Ethan Hawke talk, he's dropping dimes left and right. This guy has an incredible way of articulating the artistic process and what it means to be an actor. So if you're not following Ethan Hawke, or if you haven't watched any of his interviews, go down a little rabbit hole, you'll have a deep appreciation for what he has to say. So here's a little gem from Ethan Hawke about the actor's life. "It's kind of like how one hears about the joys of doing drugs. You just want to do it again. It's such a wonderful feeling because you don't feel alone. There's a strange double-edged sword to being an actor, which is that on the outside you get celebrated in success, but the true joys of performing are in disappearing. You feel yourself disappear and become part of this dream. And that's the feeling that's so wonderful, and you see the dream live in other people, and that's where the high comes from." Well, my fellow Daydreamers, thank you for sticking around and keeping that phone in your pocket. Please, if you've got a few seconds, go to iTunes write a written review for the show. I would love that. Spread the word. Tell all of your friends about this great podcast for actors and artists. You can go to https://www.creatingbehaviorpodcast.com. Go to the contact page, hit the red button. I use SpeakPipe. You can leave me a voice message. I will respond with one right back to you, and I'll answer any questions or comments you might have. You can go to https://www.maggieflaniganstudio.com if you are interested in training with me at my New York City Conservatory. 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.