Professor David Peimer
Method Acting: Brando, James Dean, et al

David Peimer | Method Acting: Brando, James Dean, Et Al | 07.24.21

- So okay, all right. So you know, we’re two minutes after the hour, so if you wouldn’t, I’m going to hand over to you and whenever you are ready, let’s have a look. People are coming on now. Yes, they are coming in. So perhaps let’s give it-

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• Another minute or so, yeah.

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• And then whenever you’re ready

• Okay, thanks so much Wendy, you take care.

• Thanks, lovely to see you, thanks Lauren.

• Okay.

• Thank you.

• [David] That’s all right, thanks Lauren.

• We’re giving Judy time off.

• I know, I can see.

• A little bit of time off to spend with her daughter. Just to let everybody know.

• I think she definitely deserves it and needs it.

• Yeah, I think she does. I think she does. She’s responding to, I don’t know how many thousands of emails every week.

• I know.

• And I was just saying to her, “I need you to attend to other stuff, please.” So, thankfully we now have Lauren on board to help us, so thanks Lauren.

• I know, it’s fantastic.

• Very good, thanks.

• And yeah, absolutely. Thanks to Lauren and always to Judy, absolutely.

• Okay, very good.

• All right.

• [Wendy] So when you’re ready David, over to you.

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• Okay, maybe just give it another half a minute or so, ‘cause people are coming in and then start, okay? Just to say as people are coming in, okay. Okay, so hi everybody, and hope everybody’s well all over the world, and having the vaccine done and getting onto the next phase of everything.

So thanks again, and today I’m going to focus on method acting with Brando and James Dean specifically, just to give us a real sense of what it actually is, how it started, some of the key figures, why it was so important, and why it’s still relevant today as a serious and profound approach to acting and performance, especially in film, but also theatre, TV, and you know, other forms of entertainment. And how it, in a sense revolutionised acting in America and then spread out from there to the world.

So I think the real influence in particular was on a particular period of history in theatre and film, and how such powerful performances and iconic characters, actors happened as a result. Obviously not only method acting, but combined with the God-given talent of some of these extraordinary performers, and then the techniques in addition that come from method acting. As Lawrence Olivia described it, “The technique is like the jockey, and the talent, the raw talent is the horse.”

And you know, the one always needs to be controlled and guided by the other, the technique, and I don’t mean to underestimate that. So that’s what method acting really is, and what I’m going to do is primarily just give you an outline at the beginning and the context of it and the key players in it. And then I’d rather do it through examples from some of the movies of Brando and James Dean. Just show some of the short clips, so we can, you know, go through this little journey together on sharing the ideas in the actual performances, rather than a kind of, sort of menu of ideas.

Okay, so some of the the main people. Method acting was first of all, Stanislavsky. Stanislavsky was, as I’m sure many know, from Russia. And he basically, he and the small group working with him at the Moscow Art Theatre in the first couple of decades of the 20th century, 1900s, 1910s, '20s into the '30s, that he was the first to really codify, was really the first to systematically analyse what is acting, how does it work, how can technique be applied, how can it be explored to be appropriate for an emerging 20th century at the time, where it’s, obviously you have electric light, you have indoor theatre, you know, electricity. You have the beginnings of film, and the rapid development of film. So he was questioning, what is appropriate for a scientific age? Can it be taught, can it be trained, can it be learnt in a way that other techniques and expertise can be learnt?

You know, whether it’s schools or universities, wherever. He was the first to systematically explore the questions. His main book was “An Actor Prepares”, another one, “Building a Character”. But the main one I find, and I find that students and actors today still relate to, you know, he’s the Freud of, you know the grandpapa of acting theory, and the ideas are still employed today, not only through method acting, but all over the world. You know, from India to China, to Africa, everywhere. And some of the ideas more, some less, some have been transformed and made more culturally specific, fusions of Stanislavsky’s idea together with culture-specific ideas.

So you know, I’ve just been asked to, I’ve just finished a chapter for a book which has been published here in the UK, it’s called “Stanislavsky and the World”, which is applying Stanislavsky’s ideas from South Africa to other parts of Africa, you know they explore China, India, Australia, South America, Indonesia, the States, et cetera. So you know, his ideas continue, and I really would, I put him in a similar category in a sense, of the grandfather like Freud of psychoanalysis, and him in terms of acting theory and training. 'Cause the other important part that Stanislavsky brought was that there can be a trained, learnt art, given a certain modicum of talent, obviously.

And this put the whole approach to acting on a different level entirely. 'Cause you know, I’m sure everyone knows, the attitude to actors was pretty mixed of the previous few centuries, and we’re not exactly at the top of the social tree or status or celebrity tree in many ways. But I believe he really contributed in so many ways, so that acting was taken much more seriously, not only as an art, but as something that could be, that aspects could be trained and learnt, and therefore theorised, and academia and many other environments, which might have been pretty negative or judgmental towards it, really start to take it seriously. And out of him, if you like, the roots of the tree, comes an explosion of theories all over the world, but they all ultimately refer back to him.

The three with method acting are Lee Strasberg, who I’m going to talk about more. Stella Adler, and how Adler and Uta Hagen really took the ideas of Stanislavsky, and if you like, pushed very specific aspects of them more than others. And Strasberg was the first, he was the founder in America who really took the ideas and developed them from Stanislavsky the most. Set up the Group Theatre, which later became the Actors Studio in New York City.

Strasberg the founder, with a huge influence from Stanislavsky, it became simply known as the method, because it was, in Stanislavsky’s phrase, he was trying to systematise training and rehearsing acting. And then Adler said, Adler took some ideas and added brilliantly, especially huge influence on the Brando line of acting. And then Uta Hagen in another way herself. The three main, if you like, I hate to use the word disciples, but teachers, who gained an enormous amount of influence from Stanislavsky. And then from there from New York, how the Group Theatre they set up, and the Actors Studio, spread throughout the world, and massively into acting of that period.

The post-war period, the '50s, the '60s, the '70s through, '60s was a massive time of experimentation, but it came as a reaction to Stanislavsky. As I say, still taught today too. Okay, and these three are still taught today everywhere, whether maximally or minimally. Okay, just to start a bit with, that’s Stanislavsky in essence. And he was very committed to what he called the art of acting. Hadn’t really been called much of an art before. I mean, Shakespeare and other, you know writers, had mentioned the idea of it as an art, and theatre and the stage, et cetera.

But you know, to codify it, to systematise it, which is where the word method comes from, really to systematise an approach for a scientific age I believe, and the changes in technology, I think this really came from Stanislavsky. So Lee Strasberg was born, and forgive my pronunciation, he was born in Budzanow, in what was Austria-Poland, part of the Austria Hungarian Empire, and now part of the Ukraine. He was born Israel Strassberg. Jewish parents, Baruch Meyer Strassberg and Ida Diner.

His father immigrated to New York, the family remained in the home village. And only once, they remained living there with an uncle who was a rabbi. And his father, Strassberg, his father worked as a labourer in the garment industry in New York City. Saved money, 'cause he’s absolutely penniless, saved money and got enough to get the family out. So Lee and the family, his mother, et cetera, and his brother Zalmon came. His brother died of Spanish flu in 1919, very young, and this profoundly affected the family, traumatic.

Lee drops out of school as a result. He joins the Yiddish Theatre in New York, and he’s also a bookkeeper for a wick-making company. And that influence of the Yiddish theatre, as I’m sure we’ll discover later, was quite profound. Then in 1923, Stanislavsky brought the Moscow Art Theatre company to perform in New York, in the US. And as Strasberg said, he’d never seen such brilliant acting and ensemble work, the commitment to the group, the ensemble, to as much as possible, put the ensemble ego in front of the individual ego, the aim being produce the best work for the group, not only, you know, the individual versatile, brilliant actor.

Also what he did, what Strasberg took from Stanislavsky was the approach of psychology. Again the Freudian, obviously the Freudian, and many other influencers of psychology, and talking about the inner life of character. And I believe this is linked to the rise of democracy, or at least the awareness of human rights in democracies throughout many parts of the world. Because then it’s the rise of individuals and respect for the individual, or the human being as an individual at least. Some may call it, you know, the last legs of the Enlightenment, or at a certain stage on the journey of the Enlightenment.

But the role of the individual in society, and hence the individual character and the individual actor to be trained, to be taught, to work as a group and so on. Whereas before, this was not the approach at all. You know, basically you got part of a group, if you were lucky, and you got cast, you learnt the lines quick as possible, got on stage, don’t fall over the furniture and try to act. And I’m talking about in the previous, you know, the 18th, 19th centuries and so on, and I’m talking generally. So the inner life of character becomes so important, 'cause so many characters were acted, like from what Lawrence Olivier called the outside in, where there were stock characters.

Here’s the princess, here’s the king, here’s the queen, here’s the village idiot, the doctor, the soldier, et cetera. And it was just a case of stock physical exercises, stock physical performances, with a little bit of inner life. I believe it’s linked to the soliloquies of Shakespeare, you know, which as Brecht said, that Shakespeare was on the cusp of the end of feudalism and the beginning of individualist capitalism, where Shakespeare intuitively or consciously understood that the individual human being, the inner life of the individual and the character, hence soliloquies.

So I believe the inner life of character was beginning to be explored, and that’s what Stanislavsky pushed so much. “And this was rare,” Strasberg wrote, “rare on the American stage,” where there was little stress on the psychology of character. And he realised for himself, as he wrote in his diary, that he could make it as a theoretician and a teacher using some of these techniques, not as an actor, 'cause he didn’t think he was handsome enough. Arthur Miller also praised it as, “Beginning of the inner life of the character,” which of course he was trying to write, and many others, you know, before and after the war. That he was the theatre voice of his times, talking about Strasberg.

Then in 1947 Elia Kazan, the great, brilliant director who directed not only Brando, Dean, and many others, stage and screen. '47 they started the Group Theatre which, sorry. They started the Actors Studio, which had emerged from the Group Theatre, and in 1951, Strasberg became the leader. By this stage, the beginning of the '50s, they were auditioning over a thousand actors a year. They would choose a maximum of five out of a thousand each year. That’s how much it had become established in the American consciousness and psyche of theatre, film, and emerging, you know, TV series at the time.

For example, Jack Nicholson auditioned five times before he got in, Dustin Hoffman six, Harvey Keitel 11. Brando was trained primarily by Stella Adler, who he credited as really giving him the technique and opening the door for him, as a way of approaching it. And Stella Adler had a fallout, I’ll come to that in a moment with Strasberg, but not completely in terms of theory and approach. James Dean wrote in a letter in 1952 when he was 21, he wrote to his parents, “I’ve just been accepted at the greatest school of theatre. I’m amongst the youngest ever, and they took me first time in my audition.” So we got to see that, this is at the level, these guys are so young, all of them.

Not only Brando, Dean, you know, male, female, they’re all so young and they’re so, it’s like the tunnel the world has given them to get in. That is what Strasberg has established in New York, which immediately radiates to the world. Tennessee Williams wrote, “They produce actors who can do intense, honest acting. They act from the inside out. They communicate emotions. They really seem to feel, not just portray feelings. They give us a sense of believing in this life of the characters, believing in the inner life.”

So Tennessee Williams understood absolutely what Stanislavsky and and Strasberg were bringing, that inner psychological life, which I think has become, we don’t even think about it anymore. But if we can imagine ourselves in this period, from the '30s through to the '50s, you know, how revolutionary it really was, and how it began so much of performing afterwards. You know, the closeups, the intensity, the zooming, the zooming in, and the writing of characters, the writing of plays and films of inner life and outer life. And Olivier put it in one sentence, you know, “Approach from the inner life or approach from the outer life.”

The physical informing the emotional, or the emotional inner life informing the physical, and how the body would go. Okay, and most before had been outer, from the external. Then Elia Kazan wrote about Strasberg as a teacher. “He had the aura of a prophet, a magician, a psychoanalyst. And he was as if he was a feared father in a Jewish home. He was the centre, he was the core. Everything revolved around him. He was like an admiral, we were the sailors. And actors are as self-favoring as the rest of humanity. Don’t judge them, please. The only way to hold,” this is Kazan writing about Strasberg.

“The only way,” he understood, Strasberg understood, “The only way to hold a group together was by the threat of an authority they respected and feared. To win his favour was all the actor’s goal. His explosions of temper, which happened, helped discipline the group of high-strung people. Without the fear of this man, the group could have flown apart. I too was afraid of him and admired him. Lee was making an artistic revolution and knew it. A group like this needs the will of the fanatic and his vision, uncompromising. Lee knew this, he’d studied other revolutions, political and artistic. He knew what a revolution needed.”

And obviously Kazan is referring to, you know, Trotsky and many others that I know Trudy has spoken about. You know, if one can imagine this whole first couple of decades of the century, and you know the ferment, the fertile ground, before the war, before the Nazis, that was laid, and then what would happen after. So you know, it’s part of the general zeitgeist of the entire culture, I think in the West. James Dean dies in a car accident the age of 24. Briefly, Stella Adler was born in New York City, Jewish as well, and was very much part of the Yiddish Theatre, came out of that. Sarah and Jacob Adler were her parents.

Okay, just briefly, the key questions in this inner life of psychology, which we’ll look at in the clips, what does my character want? Not how truthful am I, but what does my character want in the scene, in the play, in the film? And my character wants to persuade X in order to get Y. My character wants to convince, my character wants to seduce, my character wants to get money. My character wants to manipulate us, my character wants to achieve his or her ambition, et cetera. You know, the vaulting ambition in “Macbeth”, my character wants ambition. So the key question was, what does my character want? And that gives rise to physical, what’s known in acting jargon as a physical action. It’s active, it’s an action.

So the psychological, inner life gives rise to behaviour. Not how truthful I am, but only, but what does my character want? And then as Peter Brook said later in the '60s and '70s, '80s, “It means, how do I make my character believable to the audience,” stage or screen, wherever. So it’s about being believable. Not trying to imitate life, but to make the stage live, to make the screen live. Trying to be believable so that inner life, through inner life, the character is believed as if real almost, as if it’s really the person, not just a character that we’re seeing. And that’s part of the whole influence of it.

There are many ideas of Stanislavsky and Strasberg. I just want to give the essence here. The next key question, what does my character want? What are the obstacles to my character getting what he or she wants? I’m Macbeth and I want to be king. What are my ambition, what’s my obstacles? I’m full of self-doubt, my lady is persuading me, if I have the milk of human honey, if I’m too full of the milk of human kindness, or if I’ve got the guts, and balls to be frank, to do it. Okay, and I’m full of doubt. And then I go overboard and become over ambitious, and disaster strikes. So what I, my character want, what’s the biggest obstacle for my character getting what he or she wants, and what do I do to get what I want?

This may sound pretty obvious and quite simple, but I mean, I was listening to, watching an interview with Ian McKellen, which was made just a couple of years ago. And he said when he was working on “Godot” with Patrick Stewart, what I showed last week, he said they began acting 101 with the question, “What do the characters want? What do Vladimir and Estragon want?” He says it in an interview that he held in New York, you know, six, seven, eight years ago. So it’s the key question. You know in England the approach, often the word, or in America and elsewhere, the word may be intention.

What’s my character’s intention? And what are the obstacles to my character achieving his or her intention, in the scene and throughout the entire narrative of the play or the form. Okay, then the main idea that Strasberg took from Stanislavsky was emotional memory. Lee said you have, you know, to look inside the emotion of ourselves as people, of sadness, happiness, or when I wanted ambition, when I wanted love, or when I wanted seduction, when I wanted money, when I wanted this job, not that. What’s the emotion? And then transfer it to the character. And just to give you one example of working on this, it’s not necessarily about the most traumatic emotions, 'cause I think that’s actually worse.

You don’t have to talk about death and funerals and well, the rest of it. I think that’s a misunderstanding. It can be much, a I find it much more beneficial if actors think of a very banal, simple example. So when I was rehearsing a huge play I did once a long time ago, and the actress at the end of the play had to kill somebody on stage. Obviously she never killed anybody and all the rest of it. But she’d remembered, a play I did in New York a long time ago, and she remembered coming, you know, coming on on the New York subway for an hour and a half in summer heat, boiling hot, the humidity, you know.

Getting home finally, and the cat was on top of the bookcase and jumped onto her and scratched her. And in a moment of rage, she picked up the cat and just threw it against the bookcase, cat survived. But in that moment, she could identify the impulse to kill. And from there, from that emotional memory, that banal simple one, could help to create, if you like, the believable feeling in herself of what it is to kill. So that’s just one example.

You know, De Niro took it to an extreme with “Taxi Driver”, practised driving a taxi in New York day and night for his work in Scorsese’s “Taxi Driver”, and many others. You know, Daniel Day-Lewis, before he acted Abraham Lincoln, you know, he didn’t bath or wash. And all these extremes have become cliched in newspapers we read about, I think that’s extreme. I don’t think Stanislavsky or even Strasberg meant that, but whatever helps the actor, helps. Once worked with an actor who loved reading comics before rehearsals and before a performance. Another one had to do, you know gym, another one yoga.

Whatever works for each actor, their choice. This is just to give the examples to try and illustrate. You know, then the third part is to create a psychological backstory, a bit of a fictitious backstory of the character’s life, history and so on, from the facts given in the play or the film. And that’s what Stanislavsky called the given circumstances of the scene or the play. So what are the given circumstances of “Macbeth”? He’s a general, he is under the king. He’s quite a few guys under it. There are other aristocrats around the king and other generals, how’s he going to, and so on.

What are the facts? What century it is, mediaeval, da, da, da. His wife, got no children and, so on. So given the circumstances, what’s my intention? What’s my character want in the scene? So this is all how to create inner a life of character. Before Stanislavsky and Strasberg, this was not done. There’s no record of this really being taught, trained or rehearsed with. And then of course comes concentration, comes physicalizing, the body work and so on, I don’t want to go into now. Yoshi Oida, who was a brilliant and is brilliant actor, worked with Peter Brook’s company for many years just outside Paris.

Peter Brook’s for me, the greatest director post-century, together with, you know, others like Kazan and so on, the most interesting certainly. And Yoshi Oida, obviously from Japan, where he studied acting and zen. And then you know, so he combined Eastern and the West, both approaches. And he writes at the beginning of his book, “An Actor Adrift”, “When I point at the moon on stage, all I want is for the audience to believe I’m pointing at the moon. That’s all that matters to me.” And Brook writes about this notion of believability coming from Strasberg, coming from Stanislavsky, how to make it believable.

And this is all new, this is revolutionary in terms of approaches to acting, stage, characters and so on. And it’s all about inner life combined with the external, the body, the physicalization, and how to give that inner life an extra charge of intensity, which can then, if you like, I hope I don’t sound over-romantic here, but radiate, you know, viscerally to an audience. As Peter Brook said, “It’s about making the invisible inner life visible or visceral for an audience.” Brando put it fantastically in terms of acting for camera. He said, “Your face is the proscenium arch.”

The face is the proscenium arch, like it is in theatre. And the your face with a camera is the proscenium arch. And it’s an amazing quick tip for actors to never forget when they’re dealing with a camera. Michael Caine, who lauds method acting approaches, I mean you know, various branches of method acting, not everything, you know, it’s not a Bible of commandments. Talks about looking at the camera, but only with one eye on the camera, and another eye on a spot there. So you always get that interesting mix between the eyes of the two. If you watch Michael Caine carefully, he’s brilliant with it.

You know, and that his other eye has got a point just on the left or just on the right of the camera. So he’s always got this idea of this world going on inside. And this is learned technique, and how far away from the camera, I can’t do it here, or close to the camera he is. And he practised this for ages, Michael Caine, or used to certainly, okay? It’s fascinating when he talks about how he’s modified approaches of Stanislavsky for the camera specifically, Brando as well. The last one or two things I wanted to mention, where Brando also said, “Never go for the cliche. Always figure out something that’s never been done.”

Even if your character wants, you know, to persuade, to convince, to manipulate, to get money, to whatever it is, never go for the obvious quick answer. Always try and find something original. And he worked so hard on that, James Dean as well. That’s how they created these iconic figures.

Brando acting in “Streetcar”, Kazan writes in his diary, you know, he’s got a fantastic chapter in his diary of working with Brando and Jessica Tandy on the stage version of “Streetcar”. Brando came to the first rehearsal, all lines learnt, full character proposition worked out, whereas Jessica Tandy came anxious, or much more anxious, to be fair. So Brando starts here and he ends up here. Jessica Tandy starts there and is going to end up here, and needed line-by-line rehearsal with Kazan.

For Brando, he used to go walking in Central Park and talk about the character, the social-cultural milieu of the character, ideas. You know, he’s Polish Stanley Kowalski, what does it mean? He’s Polish there, you know the city, the location, the world and so on, and plant ideas, and Brando would go off. And then he’d go and work rehearsal with Jessica Tandy, line-by-line readings, character talkings, and discussions, and then much later in rehearsals, brought the two of them together.

To give an example of how they worked, he could never go line by line. He just, all he did was plant ideas. And this is how hard the guy worked, you know, on these things. Then there’s the great phrase from Lawrence Olivier to Dustin Hoffman. 'Cause Dustin Hoffman is, you know as I said, trained in the Strasberg group. You know for example in “Marathon Man”, and Olivier says, “Look, why don’t you just try acting, instead of living day and night as if you were your character,” you know? So a lot of teasing and banter going on amongst the actors in all this.

A great example of an exercise showing Brando’s intelligence was when Stella Adler said, okay and this is, they’re all, you know, 19, 20, 21, 22. “Okay, you’re all chickens and an atomic bomb is about to land in New York in five minutes, act. What is your want, what’s your intention? What obstacle are you going to overcome to achieve it, knowing that atomic bomb is coming?” That’s the given circumstance of the scene. And all the other training actors run around the Group Theatre, da, da, da, you know. Brando sat in the middle of the space, took out a cigarette and started smoking nonchalantly.

She got furious, she said, “What are you doing?” And he looked at her and he said, “I never heard of a chicken that understands what an atom bomb is.” And she said from that moment she realised how brilliant and intelligent this guy was, 21 in fact. Okay, so I just give you these as examples. The only actor, screen actor certainly that Olivier ever called a genius, and he says this in an interview, 'cause he’s very hesitant to use the word genius. Lawrence Olivier says Brando was the genius, not only of their generation, but of generations to come as an actor.

He has this controlled fury, it’s controlled, you never know when it’s going to come out or not. And James Dean, in a more useful way had it as well. It’s an extraordinary intelligent insight of Olivier I think, and graciousness, of one great actor to another great actor. Okay, these are just a few examples I wanted to share with you, and how the system works. Just a couple of examples. De Niro, Warren Beatty all studied the same approach. I said Dustin Hoffman, Daniel Day-Lewis, Diane Keaton, Harvey Keitel, Paul Newman, Gary Oldman, Pacino, Meryl Streep, Charlize Theron, Benedict Cumberbatch, Diane Keaton, you know, Montgomery Clift, all of these came out of the Group Theatre.

All of them came out of this approach, these iconic figures of their time and our time. And you know, some of them going to much more extremes, about it greatly. Interestingly Hitchcock, and I had the fortune to work with Soyinka once, in New York on a play. And he freaked because he couldn’t get the actors. They were all so immersed in this approach of the inner life, and his plays, it’s much more the physical, you know, here’s the priest, or here’s the chief, here’s the, et cetera, the princess. You know, go for the type, what we would call the social type today.

Not necessarily the stereotype. The social type, rather than the psychologically informed inner type of acting. And he wanted social types, and he really battled with the play, 'cause he was working with actors who believed and trained in an entirely different way. So the Brechtian approach, he would argue, and Soyinka as well, you know, what about the social type? We’ve got to try and fit the two together when we have that. And certainly for, you know, certain kinds of character, you have to have that.

It’s much more physical, and using the social type or stereotype, for comedy over acting. Okay, now to show just a couple of examples, this is Brando talking about his own acting here. It’s a very short clip.

[Clip begins]

• [Marlon] Hey, when an actor takes a little too long as he’s walking to the door, you know he’s going to stop and turn around and say.

• Frankly my dear, I don’t give a damn.

• [Marlon] Jersey Joe Walcott, terrific fighter. He’d be boxing, he’d be throwing some punches, and boom, he’d have his fist in somebody’s face. You’d think it was going to come out of the southwest, and there it comes out of the northeast. He would never let you know where he was going to hit you.

• You.

• You never let the audience know how it’s going to come out.

• What is your name?

• Get them on your time.

• Emiliano Zapata.

• [Marlon] And when that time comes, and everything is right, you just let it fly.

• Oh judgement , thou art fled to brutish beasts, and men have lost their reason,

• [Marlon] Hit them, knock them over. With an attitude, with a word, with a look.

• I don’t like cops.

• [Marlon] Be surprising, figure out a way to do it that has never been done before.

• You got to put something down, you got to make some jive, don’t you know what I’m talking about?

• [Marlon] You want to stop that movement from the popcorn to the mouth.

• Cry havoc, and do not let slip the dogs of war.

• [Marlon] ] Get people to stop chewing.

• That this foul deed shall smell above the earth.

• [Marlon] The truth will do that. Damn, damn, damn, damn, when it’s right, it’s right. You can feel it in your bones. Then you feel whole, and you feel good. It was pre '60s. People were looking for rebellion, and I happened to be at the right place at the right time, in the right state of mind.

[Clip ends]

• He understood rebellion in his times, the '50s going into the '60s, you know, something rebellious, a controlled rage inside. He understood the larger zeitgeist of the culture, always brought together the bigger picture with the inner life, part of the brilliance of how he adapted the technique he learned with Stella Adler. Stella Adler pushed what’s called in the jargon from Stanislavsky, the magic if. Which you don’t try and do emotional memory. You know, can I remember when I wanted to kill somebody? Or you know, when I fell in love, out of love or whatever, but imagine if I wanted to kill somebody, how would I think and behave?

And that if is the imagination activated, rather than the inner psychology of an emotion from our own past life. And that argued Adler, and seriously had a difference of opinion and work. Brando just, you know, the idea is to get a box of, a treasure chest, and then take out different things at different times for whatever character, role and so on. The if or the emotional memory, whatever helps. Okay, then we go on to something much more iconic, which we know, of Brando.

The opening scene, watch his mouth, never stops moving. His eyes, his hands, where he meets Blanche in “Streetcar”. Watch that mouth.

[Clip begins]

• You must be Stanley, I’m Blanche.

• Oh, you’re Stella’s sister.

• Yes.

• Oh, hiya. Yeah, where’s the little woman?

• In the bathroom.

• Oh. Well, where you from then, Blanche?

• Well, I live in Auriol.

• Auriol, Auriol huh? Oh yeah that’s right, Auriol. That’s not my territory. Man, liquor goes fast in the hot weather. You want a shot?

• [Blanche] No, I-I rarely touch it.

• Well, there’s some people that rarely touch it, but it touches them often. Hey, you mind if I make myself comfortable? My shirt is sticking on me.

• Please, please do.

• [Stanley] Be comfortable, that’s my motto, up where I come from.

• It’s mine too, it’s hard to stay looking fresh in hot weather when why, I haven’t washed or even powdered. And here you are.

• Well you know, you got to be careful. You’re sitting around in a damp thing, you catch a cold. Especially when you’ve been exercising hard, like bowling is. Well you’re the, the teacher, aren’t you?

• Yes.

• What do you teach?

• English.

• Oh, I never was a very good English student. How long you here for?

• Well I don’t know yet.

• [Stanley] You going to, you going to shack up here?

• I thought I would, if it’s not inconvenient for you all. Travelling wears me out.

• Well, take it easy. What was that?

• Oh, those cats. Hey Stella, what’d you, what’d you do, fall asleep in there?

[Clip ends]

• Just how we can see how immediately Brando establishes what today in actor terms is about, is what we call high status as opposed to, the high status in the inside of the character and high status on the out. So how he establishes, to the physical presence, the mouth, the arms, the eyes, looking, and never rushing, never ever rushes, Brando. And one of the great techniques that he developed and contributed to acting, you know, so much of it was, “Don’t rush, use the eyes, look, use the mouth.”

As he said, “The face is the proscenium arch on the camera.” To understand this at such a young age, I find extraordinary. And to continuously never stop questioning, proving, trying to find new things, he didn’t stop, neither culturally, socially, nor in terms of his own, you know, experience and technique. Never just relying on it as sort of stock trade. And how he establishes, this is his space from the opening second. You know that character there, we get that relationship completely, and that brooding presence of his, you know, and that half-smirking smile.

The relationship is established, and what his character wants is completely there. And what his character wants, you know, the obstacle to overcome is clear. Okay, then another of the great moments from “Streetcar”. The only time that he ever shouted in this entire film, really shouted or screamed, which is quite amazing if you think about it.

[Clip begins]

• Hey Stella, hey Stella!

• [Neighbor] I wouldn’t mix in this.

• [Stanley] You don’t have to leave me, baby.

[Clip ends]

• What I find in this here is the extraordinary moments of vulnerability that come out, and we don’t know what to expect. And given, if we imagine the whole context of the play or the film, it’s the only time when the character really screams and freaks. So it’s just once, you know, in a two-hour play or movie. And trying to show that extreme, the levels of vulnerability, but contained within. Not you know, sort of free for all, fruit salad all over the place, but very focused and quite, trying to be still in that moment. You know, that’s all the character wants in that moment. Realises how much he hurt her, and all that can be done, to try.

James Dean said, you know, he tries to always combine, in his acting he tries to walk the razor’s edge between the defiance of Brando and the vulnerability of Montgomery Clift. And walking on that razor’s edge between the two, defiance and vulnerability. And when one can can find that duality, Meryl Streep also spoke about it, when one can can find that duality in acting, it’s extraordinary. 'Cause we as the audience are riveted, 'cause we never know where the defiance, and the hundred versions of defiance, or vulnerability, and the hundred ways to nuance and portray vulnerability can come out, we never know which is when.

And that’s part of the extraordinary approach that these iconic actors give us. They never just, you know, acting on one-dimensional level, there’s always something else cooking, or it could flip quickly into another mode. This is one of the great scenes now, from “On the Waterfront”, where as I’m sure you know, Brando plays, you know, the brother with the brother, and he’s been set up to fail and he’s lost it as a boxer, because he’s been betrayed by his brother and others.

Discovers it in this iconic scene, sitting in the back of the car, you know, on the waterfront. You know he’s working, you know, as a docker. But the dream of being a boxer has been smashed by the brother and others, as he discovers in the scene. And the most powerful moment for me, is when he gets the news he’s been betrayed, and the whole future of his own life changes, and he knows it, forever. And what’s the reaction? How to act that, which could be so cliched, and so stereotyped, how to act that?

And watch what he does with his hand when the gun comes out.

[Clip begins]

• I’m glad you stopped by for me. I’ve been wanting to talk to you.

• Yeah sure, kid.

• Where to?

• You just go to River Street, and I’ll tell you where to stop.

• I thought we was going to the Garden?

• We are, but I want to cover a bet on the way over. Besides, this will give us a chance to talk.

• Well, nobody ever stopped you from talking Charley, ah.

• Listen I, the, the grapevine says that you got, you got a subpoena.

• Yeah.

• I mean, you know, the guys would know you well enough to know that you’re not a cheese-eater, but they think maybe you should not be on the outside so much, do a little on the inside, have a few little things working for you down at the docks.

• A steady job and a couple extra potatoes. That’s all I want.

• Oh sure, that’s great when you’re a kid, but you’re getting on, you’re pushing 30, slugger. You know it’s time to, to think about getting some ambition.

• Oh, I always figured I’d live a little bit longer without it.

• Maybe. Look there’s a, a boss loader slot that’s open and the new pier we’re opening up. You see, now it pays six cents on every hundred pounds that goes in and every hundred pounds that goes out, and you don’t have to lift a finger. That’s two, three, $400 a week. $400 a week just for the openers.

• I get all that dough for not doing nothing.

• You don’t do anything and you don’t say anything. You understand?

• There’s more to this than I thought, Charley. I’m telling you, there’s a lot more.

• You don’t mean that you’re thinking of testifying against some people that we might know?

• I don’t know, Charley. I mean, I’m telling you I don’t know Charley. That’s what I want to talk to you about.

• Well listen Terry, you know how much those piers are worth that we control through the local? Oh right, you think that Johnny’s going to jeopardise the whole setup for one rubber-lipped ex tanker-

• Don’t say that.

• Who’s walking on his heels? What the-

• I could have been better.

• That’s not the point.

• I could have been a lot better, Charley.

• The point is, we don’t have much time.

• I’m telling you, I haven’t made up my mind yet.

• Well make up your mind before we get to 437 River Street.

• Before we get to where, Charley? Before we get to where-

• Listen to me Terry. Take the job, just take it. No questions, take it.

• Charley.

• Terry, take this job, please.

• Charley.

• Please take it.

• Charley. Oh Charley, wow.

• Look I, look kid. How much do you weigh, son? When you weighed 168 pounds, you were beautiful. You could’ve been another Billy Conn. That skunk we got you for a manager, he brought you along too fast.

• It wasn’t him Charley, it was you. Remember that night in the Garden? You came down my dressing room and said, “Kid, this ain’t your night. We’re going for the price on Wilson.” You remember that? “This ain’t your night.” My night? I could have taken Wilson apart. So what happens, he gets the title shot outdoors in a ballpark, and what do I get? A one-way ticket to Palookaville. You was my brother Charley, you should have looked out for me a little bit. You should have taken care of me just a little bit so I wouldn’t have to take them dives for the short end money.

• Well, I had some bets down for you, you saw some money.

• Don’t you understand? I had class, I could have been a contender. I could have been somebody instead of a bum, which is what I am, let’s face it.

[Clip ends]

• Okay, I’m going to hold it there. You know, the classic iconic scene, but why? It looks so banal, it looks so simple, and the writing, it could almost look embarrassingly cliched. But what he makes of it, together with the other actor of course, but what he makes of it, and that for me, the second that hand comes out, touches, you know, this is the moment of ultimate betrayal of every hope that this guy has, this character has had, that Terry the character has had his whole life, total betrayal by his closest person.

The realisation, the loss, the betrayal, the pain, the rage, the hurt, everything. And what is, he talks, he does it so subtly and so nuanced, and the hand is almost so sensitive, and just, you know, pats the gun. It’s almost like Caesar being stabbed by Brutus for me, in “Julius Caesar” in Shakespeare. Imagine, you know, if the Caesar character acted like, so I just feel that this is such a contemporary way that he brings, because of the inner life, because of the imagination, the if, because of always trying to find something different. “Never stop trying to find something original,” as Brando himself said.

And there’s that scene, so he doesn’t scream and rant and all the rest of it. I just find subtlety amazing, intelligence. Okay this is, we all know from the beginning of “The Godfather”, and you know, that if we remember, the Corleone family, Brando’s daughter is getting married, the wedding’s happening outside, and he’s inside. And one of his ex so-called friends comes and asks for a favour because the ex-friend daughter’s, a whole terrible thing has happened to her, and he wants to ask Godfather, Brando, Corleone, the Don, to help him get revenge and kill the guy who has terribly punished and ruined his daughter, in his eyes. And this is the opening time of Brando.

Now in this, in one of the takes, Coppola, as you all know, the director, just suddenly threw the cat. Wasn’t planned, wasn’t in the script, nothing. And look what he, as Stella Adler and Uta Hagen would say, “Endow every object you touch with meaning, with something.” Never just, you know, a cigarette, a coffee, a drink, a cat, never just let it, you know, just be there as an object, but endow it, you know, fully through the character imaginatively. And this is the cat just thrown completely by chance, Brando has no clue this is coming, and what he does.

As we all know, he was acting with, you know, those dentists’, like little cotton ball pieces inside his cheeks for quite a while. And that Coppola, because the studios were so anti Brando at this point, ‘cause he was regarded as too difficult and impossible to work with, so Coppola did a screen test. I mean, to ask Brando at this stage of his life and age, screen test? Okay he did it, and then showed it to the producers and they said, “My God, who on earth?”

He showed it, 'cause he’d worked out the whole character as he always had, before every audition, before everything, he did it for Coppola and did the screen test. And the producers, literally, this is the honest truth, sat around looking at the screen test for a couple of minutes and said, “Who on earth is this? It’s brilliant.”

And then Coppola says to the producers, the funders, “It’s Brando,” and they were stunned.

[Clip begins]

• That I cannot do.

• [Bonasera] I will give you anything you ask.

• We’ve known each other many years, but this is the first time you ever came to me for counsel or for help. I can’t remember the last time that you invited me to your house for a cup of coffee, even though my wife is godmother to your only child. But let’s be frank here, you never wanted my friendship, and you were afraid to be in my debt.

• [Bonasera] I didn’t want to get into trouble.

• I understand, you found paradise in America, had a good trade, made a good living, the police protected you and there were courts of law. You didn’t need a friend like me. But now you come to me and you say, “Don Corleone, give me justice,” but you don’t ask with respect. You don’t offer friendship. You don’t even think to call me Godfather. Instead, you come into my house on the day my daughter is to be married, and you ask me to do murder for money.

• [Bonasera] I ask you for justice.

• That is not justice, your daughter’s still alive.

• They’re going to suffer then, as she suffers. How much shall I pay you?

• Bonasera, Bonasera, what have I ever done to make you treat me so disrespectfully? If you’d come to me in friendship, then the scum that ruined your daughter would be suffering this very day. And if by chance an honest man like yourself should make enemies, then they would become my enemies. And then they will fear you.

• Be my friend, Godfather?

• Good. Someday, and that day may never come-

[Clip ends]

• Now hold on a moment. What does his character want? He wants respect more than anything, to be appreciated as he is, you know, the Godfather. What I find amazing, that little touch of the head in the beginning, and as we saw too in that very first clip, he never rushes. Take his time, look, you know, “Never let the audience get a minute or two ahead,” as Gertrude Stein said. The audience gets a minute or two ahead, you’re lost. Always try and stay ahead, taking time or doing something physical, whatever. A way of looking, speaking.

Okay, I’m going to just, I think just show this last one. I’m going to have to hold on James Dean, perhaps I can kick off with James Dean next week. What I’ll do is, is just show, this is the last one from “Apocalypse Now”, and it’s very short, this little clip. And the reason why it’s all formed in black is because by this stage, with Coppola, “Apocalypse Now”, you know for me, a glorious, you could almost call it an incredible, is it a failure, is it a remarkable film? Does it sensationalise the violence or doesn’t it?

It sets up that powerful tension in the entire movie. That’s another debate. Here, because he was so overweight, they covered everything around in the light all in black, so all that was lit was the face. And he’s playing the Kurtz character, you know, who’s this ex Special Forces Marine in Vietnam, who has set up this absolute jungle hideout camp of cannibalism, of the most extreme, primal, savage, barbaric behaviour imaginable. And you know, and he’s the ex Colonel Kurtz, the Brando character. But look how he deals with horror and evil as a character trying to act, what again could be utterly stereotype and cliche.

[Clip begins]

• I’ve seen horrors, horrors that you’ve seen. But you have no right to call me a murderer. You have a right to kill me. You have a right to do that, but you have no right to judge me. It’s impossible for words to describe what is necessary to those who do not know what horror means. Horror, horror has a face, and you must make a friend of horror. Horror and moral terror are your friends. If they are not, then they are enemies to be feared. They are truly enemies.

I remember when I was with Special Forces, seems a thousand centuries ago. We went into a camp to inoculate some children. We left the camp after we had inoculated the children for polio, and this old man came running after us, and he was crying, he couldn’t see. We went back there, and they had come and hacked off every inoculated arm. There they were in a pile, a pile of little arms. And I remember, I-I-I cried, I wept like some grandmother. I wanted to tear my teeth out, I didn’t know what I wanted to do. And I want to remember it, I never want to forget it I never want to forget.

And then I realised, like I was shot, like I was shot with a diamond, a diamond bullet right through my forehead. And I thought, “My God, the genius of that, the genius. The will to do that, perfect, genuine, complete, crystalline, pure.” And then I realised they were stronger than we, because they could stand that these were not monsters, these were men, trained cadres. These men who fought with their hearts, who had families, who had children, who were filled with love. But they had the strength, the strength, to do that.

[Clip ends]

• Okay, I’ll hold it there. If I had to capture the absolutely evil, in Brando’s character’s mind, you know, Mr. Kurtz from, as we all know, from Conrad’s “Heart of Darkness”, I had to capture that evil in such a nuanced, subtle way, you know, the workings and the internal workings of the mind. Okay, I’m going to hold on James Dean and a couple of those. Perhaps I can begin with that next week.

And thanks to everybody and yeah, let’s go into questions if you like.

Q&A and Comments

Q: Brandi, “How about Ionesco?” A: Wonderful idea, yeah Ionesco, and some of the others. Durrenmatt and others from Europe, of Absurdism and others.

“More Beckett,” great Hannah. Ramain,

Q: “Do these experts require their students to have analysis?” A: Really interesting question, Ramain. I don’t think they required them to go for psychoanalysis, but I think what Strasberg and the others incorporated was some aspects, if you like, of psychology and psychoanalysis in this, because it’s all about inner life, the inner psychology of the character. When it’s pushed too far is when the technique of emotional memory I think brings up things, which as I said are not necessary. So if I’m required to kill a character on stage, how am I believable? Obviously, you know don’t, you can find an example like the cat rather than a real traumatic event or something. Or imagine it, the magic, if I was the killer or the murderer in the scene, how would I behave?

Lorna, “Arthur Miller quite disparaging of Strasberg.” Yeah in “Timebends” he had. He had become because, I think it was because Strasberg, by this stage, by that stage, or the later stage rather, had become so much more of a guru, and was playing guru more than truly innovative, inventive leader. And I think that flipped it from the one to the other, where that persona of guru overtook the others, when I think a lot of them went anti him, to that extreme. And where it started to be, you know, taken to the extreme of living or breathing like a character for months, and so on. Although I mean, as Gary Oldman, Daniel Day-Lewis and others would say, you know De Niro, creators create sometimes remarkable performances.

Okay, Strasberg actually was in the last version of “The Godfather II”, where he plays Meyer, the other Meyer Lansky, Hyman Roth, sorry. Plays Hyman Roth, the gangster, and he was nominated for a supporting Oscar. And because Pacino had wanted his teacher Strasberg to be in it, because Pacino revered Strasberg so much. So, and Brando also criticised Strasberg a lot for a similar reason, which is why he went much more towards Stella Adler.

Okay Edith, “Came up,” Edith said, “both of them,” yeah. “Run by,” yeah absolutely, “modern plays,” also absolutely, this is great. Very much came out of the Yiddish theatre. I would mention the others, but you know, I can’t go through everyone.

Errol, former student and assistant, method acting. Yes, “Actors do create the reality in an imaginary situation,” lovely Errol, great thanks. Dale, “In 'Streetcar’, couldn’t take.” I know, and when we try to understand why he is so riveting, why our eyes go to him the whole time, and not to Blanche or to Stella or to any of the other characters, you know, we’ve got to try and understand what’s he doing consciously, I think mostly, as an actor.

Okay Gerald that’s, phew. Yep, we’d go into that, take more time.

Ron, “The Actors Studio memorandum brings back memories.” Ah okay, yeah and, “Stella Adler, Wally Cox, he’s all but forgotten,” absolutely. “He was brilliant in that role,” yes, I know of it. “Starring Sidney Poitier,” yep, exactly. You know, I think Brando had an enormous, you know, loyalty with friendship and people and so on, you know. “Joanne Woodward,” absolutely Sheryl.

Linda, “‘Streetcar’ scene when Stanley and Blanche meet,” okay, “revealing Lee’s technique, and her assumed status made the status possible.” Absolutely, I mean it can’t happen without Vivian Leigh, totally. But something for me remains of a period with Vivian Leigh. You know, whereas Brando I think transcends the decade or the era that he’s acting in. And I’m not saying she’s a bad actor, she’s brilliant and amazing, but I just think there’s a different level, you know, I keep thinking why am I, and it’s absolutely the interaction between the two. But there’s something a little bit more, I don’t know, roped to the period, the decade. Whereas these others somehow I think transcend it, in my opinion.

Linda, “Record Brando,” yep absolutely, great thanks.

Kaya, Cumberbatch yeah. We all talk about it, and the vulnerability, the movement between vulnerability and defiance, which James Dean was 22 when he made that comment, you know, the razor’s edge between vulnerability and defiance.

Joanna, “Stanford Meisner.” Yeah he’s also, like Stella Adler and Uta Hagen, comes a branch off Stanislavsky’s method acting and the Strasberg approach. But it could take another whole lecture or two to include Meisner, who’s wonderful as well.

Robin, “Striking the cat, opposite,” yep. He wants respect, but you never know, he could explode in a second. There’s something, you know, just very nuanced there of brooding rage underneath, and it’s so hard to act with a live animal. It’s almost impossible because they’re just being, a cat, a dog, a horse, you know, they’re just being. The cat could be doing anything at any time, you know? And he’s got to incorporate it in the take, just you know, spontaneously. Yeah, it was a brilliant moment of Coppola, and he obviously knew that Brando would improvise superbly.

Okay, well thank you so much everybody, and hope everyone’s well, and having a great summer, and take care.