Method to the Madness

Alright, for those of you who haven't figured it out already, there is a method to my madness. I haven't mentioned the movie I'm working background on by name nor mentioned the actors by name, only by initials, so that if someone Googles the actors or the movie, my blog will not come up in the results. My posts regarding a movie that I worked background on earlier this year got linked to the actor's fan site, and then to the message board on the actor's IMDb page -- I deleted the posts after I found that. (My stat counter shows what links were used to get to my blog, and which page on my blog was linked.) Plus an actor friend of mine was writing on her blog about a movie job she had, the production team found her blog and she nearly got fired even though she hadn't written anything disrespectful or negative, or even anything specific about the movie itself or the actors involved. She ended up having to delete all of the entries she had written. So I am making every effort to keep my blog posts about the movie I'm working on under the radar, and not give away anything about the plot.

So with this method in mind, I got to see this movie on TV the other day. Since I started doing background last week, I've been wanting to check out JH's other movies (I hadn't seen any of them), especially the one I just saw. I've read a lot of articles about it over the last week, interviews with JH about how he created the character, and I've also read a lot of the comments on his IMDb message board.

I thought JH did an awesome job with the character, I thought his performance was very subtle, like the bit in the beginning where he throws the action figure out of the bus window; the kid asks him "What are you going to do today?" and he blows the kid off, but then you see him pull out the action figure and glance so subtly to make sure he still has the kid's attention, and he loves that he still does, makes sure the bus driver isn't watching, then he throws the figure out the window on a string. So much of his performance was in his body language, not his face. And I couldn't help but wonder how difficult it was for him to maintain that listless facial expression, I actually tried it, keeping my eyes half-closed, my mouth slack, and it was freaking hard! After 15 seconds I totally felt like a zombie. So I think it's super cool that JH was able to still be connected and expressive through his body language, even with that motionless, limp body, especially when he had big emotional reactions to things that happened. I could almost feel JH as an actor stuff down the impulses to react more fully, but maybe I'm projecting my own experience onto his performance. Or maybe that was just part of the character as well, don't let anyone see you react.

And something I admire about the work I've seen him do on the set these last couple of weeks, JH is very present and open to reacting fully in the moment. There was one scene we were filming where WF's character might be hurt, and none of us are sure (the audience or JH's character) if he's hurt or not, but then WF's character says, "I'm okay!" For the filming of this scene, JH was standing with his back to us, and we all start clapping on WF's line, (as instructed by the AD) and then I just went with the moment and shouted "WOO!". JH reacted immediately to that, glancing back at the audience with a grateful "That's so cool!" grin on his face, glad that WF's character is okay, glad that the audience is supporting the two of them as a team.

And he's always seemed fully in the moment with all the dialog and action between himself and WF, totally connected and present. I'm really looking forward to seeing some of JH's other movies, especially this one and this one.

And this is so freakin annoying to write about this stuff in a general, un-identifiable way. Grrr...