Brian: And cut! Okay, how was that?
John: It felt fine. I was having trouble with the dialogue a little throughout it. You know, there were points there where I was kind of, like, oh my gosh, this feels like I’m going up a mountain of peanut butter.
Simone: I felt the same thing. I feel like, it’s a lot of, like, one liners.
John: Yeah, I’m finding that, that if I’ve got a lot of dialogue in these scenes you’re giving me, that, somehow, even though it’s, it takes longer to learn, it’s easier than these one liners.
Brian: I know. But, see, that’s, that’s the whole point. The majority of work, as you know, the majority of work that you’re gonna get right now, where you are as actors, is gonna be these little one line scenes. You’re not gonna get a big monologue to do with a five and under or a co-star role. You’re just not. You know. If you get a little paragraph, thank God that you got it. You know. But normally it’s gonna be this kind of dialogue. So the more comfortable you become with it the easier it’s gonna be for you to book because you’re gonna go, “Oh, sh*t, that’s like the piece I did with Simone. I got that nailed. I can do that.”.
So it’s just, as you and I talk about, John, all the time: it’s the consistency of doing it. It’s the repetition of doing it, and doing it, and doing it, so that the more you do it… I said this probably a million times since I’ve known you: the only way the uncomfortable becomes comfortable is by doing the uncomfortable.
And John has a wonderful quote from Bruce Lee. In case you guys haven’t heard, John share that quote. ‘Cause John is a very, very established black belt in the martial arts.
John: The quote is- you can practice a thousand kicks one time but you’re better off if you practice one kick ten thousand times.
Brian: It’s that act of repeating it over and over and over. Because people look at specific actors and say, “Oh, I could do that!”. No, you can’t. You couldn’t do it. You know. You couldn’t do it. You couldn’t be still in front of a camera, with an 85 millimeter lens in your face for twelve hours and make it look natural. That takes craft and skill. You know.
And so, you guys are smart to be studying.
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