The Books: True and False: Heresy and Common Sense for the Actor, by David Mamet

Daily Book Excerpt: Theatre

Next book on the acting/theatre shelf is True and False: Heresy and Common Sense for the Actor, by David Mamet

This is an extremely obnoxious book which also has a lot of truth in it. Actors can get bogged down in looking for the “right way” to act as opposed to just, you know, “doing it”, and in that respect David Mamet’s book, with its vast broadsides against all acting teachers is a welcome tonic. I have seen actors ruined by acting classes. I am not exaggerating. I am thinking of two wonderful actors specifically, who went into a class free and open and spontaneous, and came out cautious, fearful, and self-obsessed. I would say, however, that that was because the teacher was bad, not acting classes in general. As Mamet has said, there are charlatans out there – a perfect word – who are looking to be gurus, and whose intentions are NOT benign. I have met these people. I was in one of these people’s classes, and it was a constant fight to keep my talent and natural ability out of her creepy bossy hands. I knew she would ruin me. The only reason I knew that, though, was because I had already been out in the world, had already had jobs as an actress, already had my own process. I didn’t need her to tell me I could act. Bitch, please. But for people without experience, for those looking for shortcuts, or a quick route to enlightenment and brilliance … these guru/charlatans can be very seductive. Some actors begin to feel that they cannot act at all if they don’t check in with the guru every 5 minutes to see if they are being truthful to their art. I’m not exaggerating.

So Mamet goes off on the charlatans, and they are words that need to be said. As a matter of fact, I would give this book to a young actor who is starting out. It’s a dash of cold water, but it could save a lot of people a lot of trouble. But I don’t think this book is particularly relevant to actors who already have experience. If you already know how to work, then Mamet’s hectoring words will just be obnoxious.

Who cares HOW you get there, Mamet? Don’t criticize how I get there if I end up getting there successfully. Eff you, basically. His criticism of the Method seems rather disingenuous to me, seeing as the actors who made his plays famous all came out of that tradition, and it is often the Method process that fills in the blanks in his sometimes thin and didactic plays. (I said “sometimes”. I like Mamet, and he’s fun to work on, but it definitely requires some filling-in.) People like William Macy and Christopher Walken and all the others who helped make his name … these are not people who “just get up there and do it”, as Mamet keeps telling everyone to do. These people work meticulously, they do backstory work, they do emotional work, they do all of the things that Mamet supposedly hates.

I think Mamet hates AMATEUR actors who use their process in an amateurish manner. And sure, I get that. You see young actors obsessing on their relaxation techniques or their concentration exercises, and sure, you can roll your eyes at them if that floats your boat. Technique is only bad if it STOPS you from actually getting up and doing it. And like I mentioned before, with the charlatan/guru brigade: sometimes technique is taught in a way that makes actors question every single impulse they have – which, my God, is the worst thing you can do to an actor in ANY tradition. An actor’s impulse – whatever it is – is money in the bank!

Mamet’s broad brush certainly makes a point. And I find much of his “common sense” advice to be wonderful and heartening and exciting. Don’t worry so much, actors. Don’t obsess so much on HOW to do it. Just make an attempt to do it. Don’t get caught up in the names of things, don’t say to yourself, “Okay, I need a good sense memory exercise here …” because then your work is stilted and too technique-based. The situation is the thing. Playing make-believe is the thing. Say the words the characters say and see what that does for you. Play the situation. Play the situation the writer wrote. Miracles may occur if you just stop worrying.

The book is angry, impatient, rude, and funny. You want to tell him to get off his high horse. You want to say, “Dude. If someone takes an acting class, what business is it of yours?” He dislikes amateurs, and he dislikes bad actors who use their technique as a crutch. Okay, fine, what do you want, a medal?

He has a lot of very good advice for actors here, though, and I would recommend it on that basis alone. Actors can get caught up in esoteric stuff way too easily. It is a way to deny how difficult their chosen path actually is. It is a way to feel like you are taking ownership of your craft, to talk about your technique, and how you work on something. One piece of Mamet’s advice to actors is absolutely invaluable, and I think of it often, and see it in the great performances that I love, the ones that move me.

Mamet says to actors that when playing a scene: “Deny nothing. Add nothing.”

This is a tremendously deep and exciting piece of advice. How often actors ruin their work by trying to “add” depth or complexity to something that doesn’t call for it. And also, how often actors ruin a scene by “denying” their impulses, or what they are feeling, or what they want to do.

I think of Clark Gable, bursting out of the bar in The Misfits, drunk and devastated, calling for his children. You can see Montgomery Clift and Marilyn Monroe in the background, staring up at him, with something like awe. I almost imagine I can see these two younger actors looking up at this older grand star from another tradition and thinking, “Jesus Christ, he’s fucking good.” Clift and Monroe were Method babies. Clark Gable, clearly, was not. But he decided to do that one scene using this Method shit he had been hearing about. Just to show the young whippersnappers that anyone could do it. It’s a wrenching scene, nearly unwatchable, in the pain in his voice, gesture, and manner. One of his greatest moments. Not because he’s using “Method shit” but because he was naturally a great actor who knew in his bones to “deny nothing” and add nothing”.

So. Without further ado, here’s an excerpt about auditions. This is good stuff. He is talking about being autonomous, about keeping a space around yourself where no one can get at you. This is good advice. Not everyone has your best interests at heart.

Like I said: this would be a wonderful gift for any young actor just starting out.

Excerpt from True and False: Heresy and Common Sense for the Actor, by David Mamet

There are many people trying to get into the theatre. Stage and screen cannot contain all of them, so some become teachers, agents, casting people, and most of these (just as most actors) seek the real or imagined security of a hierarchical system: “I’m just trying to do my job and to please my employers.”

But the actor does not have employers. The agent and the casting person are not employers, they are, frankly, impediments standing between the actor and the audience. Does that mean they should be ignored? Well, many times they cannot be. There the are. But they, and their job, should be kept in perspective.

One does not have to “like” them, and no amount of toadying will induce them to like us. Again, the Stoics say: “Do you want the respect of these people? Are they not the same folk you told me yesterday were idiots and fools? do you want the good opinion of idiots and fools?”

Remember it.

Don’t “confess” when you come offstage. If you have gained an insight, use it. They say “silence builds a fence for wisdom.” To keep one’s own counsel is difficult. “Oh, how terrible I was …” How difficult to keep those words in – how comforting they are. In saying them one creates an imaginary group interested in one’s progress. But give up the comfort of an imaginary group. This “group” that is judging you is not real; you invented it to make yourself feel less alone.

I knew a man who went to Hollywood and languished jobless for a period of years. A talented actor. And he got no work. He came back at the end of the period and lamented, “I would have been all right if they’d just sat me down on day one and explained the rules.”

Well, so would we all. But who are “they”? And what are the rules? There is no “they”, and there are no rules. He posited the existence of a rational hierarchical group acting in a reasonable manner.

But show business is and has always been a depraved carnival. Just as it attracts the dedicated, it attracts the rapacious and exploitative, and these parasites can never be pleased, they can only be submitted to. But why would one want to submit to them?

The audience, on the other hand, can be pleased. They come to the show to be pleased, and they will be pleased by the honest, the straightforward, the unusual, the intuitive – all those things, in short, which dismay both the teacher and the casting agent.

Keep your wits about you. It is not necessary to barter your talent, your self-esteem, and your youth for the chance of pleasing your inferiors. It is more frightening but it is not less productive to go your own way, to form your own theatre company, to write and stage your own plays, to make your own films. You have an enormously greater chance of eventually presenting yourself to, and eventually appealing to, an audience by striking out on your own, by making your own plays and films, than by submitting to the industrial model of the school and studio.

But how will you act when you, whether occasionally or frequently, come up against the gatekeepers?

Why not do the best you can, see them as, if you will, an inevitable and preexisting condition, like ants at a picnic, and shrug and enjoy yourself in spite of them.

Do not internalize the industrial model. You are not one of the myriad of interchangeable pieces, but a unique human being, and if you’ve got something to say, say it, and think well of yourself while you’re learning to say it better.