Brian: Yeah, I mean if you miss something, you’re much better to keep going on, fix it, than stop and make them start over. Always better. Yeah.
It doesn’t have to be perfect at an audition. It’s one of the (unintelligible) …an actor on Monday. He kept wanting it to be perfect and I said, “Would you stop that!”. They want your ability to be free.
Jon: Perfection is death, man!
Brian: If you get a sentence turned around or drop a couple words…
Vassili (aka James Karis): …I was on set and the director kept saying, “Go, go, go, go!”. Every take, “Go, go, go, go! Scene, scene, scene, scene!”. And he say, “Okay. We tape.”.
Brian: Yeah. They’ll pick the one they like. As long as you…look, as long as you remember the story, guys, and you’re in the boundaries of the story that’s all they care about. Now, if you’re doing a David Mamet production and he wrote it and he’s directing it and he’s sitting in a car with you with a camera shooting it… Yeah, he wants it letter perfect. But that’s David “Fuckin’” Mamet. You know.
Stephen J. Cannell was like that, too. The guy who did “Rockford Files” for years. At the end of every show he’d be the guy at the end typing on the typewriter. He wanted everything letter perfect. I worked for him a couple times. But, uh… Shonda Rhymes…wants it letter perfect. Uh…Sorkin, Aaron Sorkin…letter perfect. Most people give you a little leeway, you know. We’re humans.