The Directing Process.

Stanley Kubrick

Now we come to the directing process and all that goes with it so I am likely to ramble on a little bit here. This is the one where directors will write to me and tell me I don't know what I am talking about and they may be right. As regular readers will know, and there are regular readers, I don't profess to be an expert on anything.
Some of those regular readers, by the way, read this within minutes of publication – how does that happen?
I have directed a few times; the first time was when I was in a film being produced and directed by a fella from the pop music business with plenty of money. He was also starring in it and I was doing a scene with a well known TV actor – I was playing his bank manager and we were talking across a desk.
We did his medium shot, close up and then they started to set up the shots on me; but instead of setting the camera up in front of the other fella they put it behind his head; in other words they crossed the line.
Great directors like John Ford and George Stevens have crossed the line and got away with it but this guy was making his first film.
Now 'the line' comes easier to an actor than it does to most directors and before I go on I'll explain it better – I hope.
If you cross it with the camera you will give the affect that (in our scene) one actor is looking at the other but the other one is looking away.
If you watched a game of tennis from the side or even a football match the camera has to stay on the same side of the field of play all the time, or the audience wouldn't know which person was hitting the ball in tennis or which team was kicking which way in football.
Also when people are moving in films – like someone running after someone else – they should be going the same way from shot to shot. Let's say from left to right; so when they come to a corner and turn it, the camera is always on the other side of the street keeping the subjects moving from left to right.
The audience watching these films are not aware of these rules, which were instilled into film makers by Charlie Chaplin and D.W. Griffith, but they would certainly notice it if they weren't followed.
Anyway – I said I'd ramble – we pointed out to our director that he was crossing the line and he changed the shot.
Later, when he had cut the film together, he showed it to the well known TV actor who said that it – the film - didn't make sense. So the well known TV actor wrote some scenes which he wanted me to direct.
Actors learn a lot about directing from working with directors and the best ones are in the theatre – the live theatre. They do proper directing. The crossing of the line and the other technicalities of actually shooting a film through the camera should be sorted out by the Director of Photography (the DP; DoP in Britain) in consultation with the director. The director should be directing the actors.
In early movies – look at the credits – they had dialogue directors. George Cukor was an uncredited dialogue director or a 'fill in' director on early movies; mostly uncredited.
When they asked me to direct the extra scenes in the movie I looked at the formulaic TV dramas at the time – Kojak etc – and copied those shots more or less: establishing shot, medium shots and close ups.
I also asked for a tracking shot and shot one of the scenes – involving a child – in one continuous shot.
It all worked out well and one shot we did with a mirror turned up on the DP's show reel; the mirror, which I had asked for, changed the dynamic of the whole scene.
All that was great fun – the film disappeared in a mountain of dysentery with all the other crapola films of long ago.
But the hardest part of the whole process is directing actors. As I have said actors work with great directors and terrible directors. They all manage to be there in the mix – in the theatre, in movies and in television and we know the difference.
Most directors in TV don't direct at all; they just set up the shots. It's the same in movies!
I was doing a commercial in Dublin once and, whilst we were having lunch in the Shelbourne Hotel, the DP mentioned he had made a film which was directed by a well known writer Wolf Mankowitz; someone asked him if he was any good and the DP said 'he just said action and cut!'
That film, also, disappeared into a mountain of dysentery!
Some terrible directors sometimes make good films; the DP, the sound crew, the actors and not forgetting the Cinderella men and women in Hollywood, the writers, bring the film in to an acceptable standard.
In the fifties the new wave directors came along and made wonderful French movies which have never been bettered. They advocated the auteur theory where the director is the sole author of the whole shooting match – his vision and his vision alone is what we, the audience, see on the screen – well the DP, the sound crew, the actors and not forgetting the Cinderella men and women in Hollywood, the writers, may have something to say about that.
I mentioned in a post before about famous directors of the past, and Woody Allen in the present, expect actors to direct themselves and come along on the day with their lines learned, their motivation and attitude all there. Their choices already to work with another actor who has also directed them self and come along on the day with their lines learned, their motivation and attitude all there hoping that it doesn't clash with the other guy's.
One of the scenes in Eyes Wide Shut, directed by Stanley Kubrick and starring Tom Cruise went into about 90 takes; yes ninety takes.
Is that good directing? A good director may only say one word to the actor which can fix everything but 90 takes? It is quite obvious that this very successful director who knew everything about lenses, cameras, lighting and only auditioned actors via video tape, didn't know what word to use to get the scene right from Tom Cruise.

Acting, writing, searching for characters . .

The other day I went into my agent's office to make a recording; I do this quite often and my agent sends the recordings off to some people who are looking for a voice for their commercial; sometimes they want my voice and sometimes they don't so after I make the recording, which I usually do in one take, I go away and forget about it and if the commercial happens it's nice.

As I walked into the office, which is actually a house in Hollywood, I saw a friend of mine talking to another actor – there to put their voices on tape – and as they noticed me I did rather a big 'double take' which got a huge laugh from the other actors there.

The actor that was talking to my friend said “do you do comedy?”

Now the thing is 'yes' I do comedy – but doesn't every other actor; the question if we do it well?

But the laugh I got in the office is nothing to do with the laugh I might get on stage – or even on film; although on the stage you 'time' your laugh and know when and how to pause after the gag line in case you 'step on' the next line and in film you are left to the sense of humour of the editor which is why some editors are good at comedy and others good at action and drama; by the way most of the really great actors look for comedy in everything and the others usually have their heads stuck up their own arses; nothing is that serious!

Going back to that actor in the office, he went on to suggest that I put the big double take into my repertoire for future reference; well it was already there, if I have such a thing as a repertoire, but I try to approach everything with a fresh perspective – or at least I think so or try to.

The guy went on to say that he sits and people watches to find characters; I people watch a lot but not to find characters; I do it for fun especially when I'm with my wife; we even give the people dialogue and we were doing it before we saw Woody Allen doing it in Annie Hall.

I've also heard the phrase 'I go into actor's mode' or 'writer's mode' – well I don't.

I think if I did that I wouldn't be taking part in life. I'm one of those people who like people and spying on them would spoil the fun – it's a bit like being analytical about sex; how can you enjoy sex if you are doing it for research?

So when I write stories of my experiences and other things from the past they are there in my memory and when I write them I am sure some of the experiences are how I remember them and not a hundred percentage accurate.

When I was in Scotland, many years ago, on the SAS course I wrote about here while back, I was going through a forest with my pal 'Gary;' we were carrying SLR rifles and a small pack and we were trying to find our way back to the rendezvous where we were told to join the other troops.

As we walked through the forest we heard gun shots and they were being aimed in our direction. First of all we thought they were blanks and then it became clear that it was live ammunition so we dropped and took cover.

We looked at each other not quite believing what was going on; the shots continued for a few seconds, which felt like hours, and then one of us spotted a target on the ground not too far from us.

We shouted 'stop firing' or whatever and the shooting stopped.

Then we heard some kind of reply and went walking towards the voice.

It was coming from a middle aged gentleman, I seem to remember him being dressed in tweeds and hat, with a rifle. I don't know what he must have thought when he saw us walking towards him carrying our weapons as he probably didn't know they were unloaded but we had a chat and went on our way.

I spoke to my pal 'Gary' via Skype on his desert island (as my friend David Delderfield called it) last year and he mentioned it and I said 'there he was firing at us with his SLR and 'Gary' said 'it had a bolt action.'

For all of those years I thought we had compared our rifles and that they were the same but he was actually using a bolt action .303 – the same as I used in the army cadets.

So it shows how wrong you can be.

Another post I wrote was about my friend almost drowning and is true but another friend of mine, from those days, thought it was him that almost drowned. Well it might have been but not the day I was there; the day I was there it was Freddie Bishop.

When I was about 20 I went to the doctors and as I sat in the waiting room who should walk in but Freddie Bishop. Still the same kind of shy kid and we were within 200 yards of the swimming pool where he nearly drowned.

He sat next to me and was as quiet as he had been before; his big problem, looking back, is that he had no confidence.

At school people would make fun of him as he didn't know anything about sex and didn't know how women had babies. He might have been too shy to admit to knowing anything about the facts of life and sometimes other kids were cruel to him.

He was a good footballer and a pretty good bowler at cricket. One thing you have to do, as a bowler, is appeal for LBW; if you don't appeal the umpire will not give the batsman as being out.

So Freddie would have done better as a bowler if he's learned to shout an appeal - 'HowZat?” you shout and the umpire will either shake his head or stick his forefinger in the air which says to the batsman 'On your way!”

I hadn't seen Freddie, on that day in the doctor's waiting room, for 5 years as we had both left school at the age of 15, and I wondered what he had been doing, what he had been up to.

The shy boy who didn't know anything about sex at the age of 20 was married with 4 children; so that's what he'd been doing so somebody must have told him!