Just putting this at the start after proofing myself; I’ve been on set and in character today. Without that context it’s a weird read.
Early start today might leave me tired now, but I’m enervated. It’s been a solid day. The guy I’ve been working with is prolific, and my goodness he works fast. He is DOP and director, calling all the changes, auteur and instigator. I’m lucky he liked me, getting over my impostor syndrome and just getting stuck in. It’s a dry part in a bright script, and that’s my job, been that for a while, to find an honest lightness in the dry or the dark. Not a comedy. Just a colour. It’s the torch I carry now. I’ve been an optimist in a hard industry for three decades. I was trained well at Guildhall to claim perspective on myself. Before that I was at those institutions that try and train people to disable their empathy. “You’re sad about being away from mummy and daddy? You need to toughen up.” Dad always taught me to examine the source, so even when I was eight I found myself questioning the wisdom of those who gave me that opinion. They seemed weak, empty somehow. They were weak, of course, but through the fault of the institutions, I can’t blame them. It was the easiest route to follow, the “pretend you’re strong by disabling empathy” thing.
This was doubled down when I met the poor kids at secondary school. “public” school. These kids were almost drained by then of anything but basic self preservation and promotion of those like them. Not all of them, but many of them … shells, estranged even from basic kindness. Stage 1 we separate it from its parents, stage 2 we nourish it with rhetoric about how great it is. Stage 3 it perpetuates the same lie. Stage 4 Good officer / manager / perpetuator. The kids who held their heads up high, we still know each other, and we know what we had to put up with to get to the stage where we could do it.
But I’m not here today of all days to run the old saw about how my expensive education – and one that brought me many benefits – brought me into contact with shocking numbers of people who have never evolved into emotional adults.
It’s cos I was playing one of them today. That’s why it’s at the front. I was in cosplay as the guy I might have been had I not found the arts. Had Martin Tyrrell not cast me as Camille. And I’ll always go into bat for my character, as TC would have it. You have to love yourself and think you’re doing the best. So I’ve been emotionally supporting myself in a character very like me who I wouldn’t be friends with at all.
“What do you think our relationship is,” asked Anthony, young actor, his first time in a credited role, playing my secretary. “I don’t think I’ve even noticed you beyond how you serve my needs,” I tell him. I’m not method, that’s tedious and I don’t find it helpful enough to warrant it. I’m just playing who I might have been if art hadn’t taken me. My guy is one of three partners in a law firm, a solicitor, letting my junior do the dirty work and picking up the slack. Lazy, entitled. I have been sitting wide all day, unfussy slob physicality. I know these people I’ve been playing well. Take up all the space, bring nothing to the table but a sense of self importance, be suspicious of anything unfamiliar.
It’s a good movie. I’m a lucky boy. I’ve worked fucking hard too. Fffff. More to come. I haven’t actually signed an NDA but I haven’t read my contract so I’m saying nothing.
AlBarclay 