5/7/23
Newsletter #329
The Crack of Dawn
In her book, The Making of The African Queen, Kathrine Hepburn tells of what she considered one of the best bits of direction she ever received. She came to the director, John Huston, on the first day of shooting and asked, “Who is this character I’m playing? I know that she’s a middle-aged spinster, but who is she really?” John Huston said, “Do you remember how Eleanor Roosevelt smiled?” Hepburn said no. Huston said, “She had bad teeth and was ashamed of them. Every time she smiled she covered her mouth with her hand.” Hepburn nodded and said, “I understand.” She said that other than blocking, that was all the direction that she ever got from Huston during the entire shoot, and it was enough. That little bit of business got her to understand the character, and that’s all she needed.
In the Xena episode, Warrior…Princess…Tramp, Lucy Lawless played all three parts. Lucy had already played the princess character in a previous episode, so she knew who the princess was and how to play her. Due to scheduling, we shot all of the scenes with Xena the warrior and the princess first, then didn’t get to all of the tramp’s scenes until the end. We set up the tramp’s first scene and shot. When everything was ready to go, Lucy took me aside and said in a worried tone, “I have no idea who the tramp is or how to play her.” Given that this was the exact moment we were about to shoot, this could have been a terrible problem. Luckily, I’m not the world’s worst director. I said, “My buddy Scott used to work at a grocery store with a redneck idiot named Bub. Scott asked Bub what he did that weekend, and Bub said he went to the movies. Scott asked, ‘What did you see?’ Bub, being a complete moron, replied, ‘Hell, ‘spect me to remember.’ Lucy grinned and said, “I got it.” And she had it. Her moron tramp character, Meg, was so funny that it was reprised several more times over the course of the series.
As a director who is hyper-aware of the schedule, I generally shoot three takes, maybe four. All I need to do is to get the scene to work correctly once. Many directors go another three or four takes in an attempt to get it to work again, but better. Maybe it will get 10% or 15% better, or quite possibly you simply won’t get it to work again at all, and soon you’ll be on take ten and your schedule has going down the shithole. To keep everybody on their toes, every now and then I buy the first take and move on, which isn’t done on TV (producers demand choices). It isn’t done in movies, either, except for Clint Eastwood. I did, however, go to 15 takes on Xena once, but only once.
Lucy is a pro and always prepared (which are my favorite kind of actors). However, in six seasons, I did have the privilege of seeing her arrive on set once when her brains were nothing but scrambled eggs. Naturally, the day began with Lucy having to deliver a long line of dialogue that was pure exposition. Expositional dialogue is the most difficult kind of dialogue to remember because it’s a laundry list of plot information and character names, which in both Hercules and Xena were all difficult, ancient Greek names. So, this was how it was supposed to go: Interior Aphrodite’s Temple, Xena, Gabrielle and Joxer enter and walk toward the camera while speaking, which brings the camera to Aphrodite in the foreground who has a bit of business, cut.
I say, “Action,” the three actors enter, walk toward the camera, and Lucy bungles this long, complicated line. Big deal, it happens to the best of them – although rarely to Lucy – and we go again. And again, and again, and I start to lose it. It’s simply too funny watching someone who always has their shit wired, suddenly have no control. Take five, take six, take seven . . . I was laughing so hard behind the monitor, and covering my mouth, but I was still about to fuck up the sound, that the script supervisor reached over and also covered my mouth. And meanwhile, this was so unusual that Renee O’Conner and Ted Raimi were about to lose it on camera. Take ten, take eleven, take twelve, take thirteen, take fourteen and Lucy nailed it. The camera finally got to pan to Aphrodite (Alex Tidings) in the foreground, and since we had not gotten to her in the previous thirteen takes, she had completely forgotten that she was in a TV show. When the camera panned to her, Alex looked up and asked, “Am I in this scene?” Well, I died laughing, and was certainly loud enough to be heard on mike. I called for take fifteen, and now everybody was on edge – could anyone make it through this? Of course, we got it, but in the show it looks to me like everybody is holding their breath.
I note that what made this so funny was watching a pro do it. When I see an unprepared actor do the same thing, it’s not only not funny, but I am inclined to hit them with a C-stand, although I’m proud to say that I never have. I did seriously once ask a 1st AD, “What happens if I hit him with a C-stand?” The AD said, “I don’t know, but I’m sure it’ll slow us down,” which is a perfect AD response, so I didn’t do it.
The day is nigh.