Acting Counts: Lackluster… to Not Bad… to Spine-Tingling 

I’ve made three movies. One was so bad I destroyed it after I showed it to my 12-year-old son and his two cousins and they trashed it. The next was almost good because it was written and directed by a cult film maker who was famous for making bad movies. The third actually won some awards, including a “best” at a film festival in Liverpool. It wasn’t good. But I like to think that it wasn’t bad either.

I spent a silly amount of money trying to be a “film maker.” I would have gone broke trying except that K made me agree not to fund another one unless I miraculously made a profit on the other three. (That’s coming along… I’m earning about $120 a month on them. I’ll be in the black in about 3,248 years.)

I did, however, learn some things about making movies, including something that contradicted a prejudice I had adopted from reading a few books on its history. My prejudice (which, by the way, was held by the director of bad movies I mentioned above) came from the auteur school of film criticism, which I believe was born in France. And it was that the quality of a film is 90% the result of the director and that the effect of the acting is itself a product of good direction.

I discovered that was not at all true. I discovered that a good actor can make a bad script work and a bad actor can ruin the best script.

In this video, Tristan Spohn takes a scene from Brokeback Mountain and compares three pairs of actors playing it. First, two people that have had no training in acting. Next, two people that had about two years of training. And finally, the two actors that played the role.

The difference is big. Big as in lackluster… to not bad… to spine-tingling!