Lives Worth Acting
May 5th, 2008 by Micah Tillman | 3 Comments |
I have two questions. But first some background:
The Wife and I have been watching season 1 of Six Feet Under on DVD. Michael C. Hall, a fav of ours from Dexter, is one of the stars. Frances Conroy won a Golden Globe and a SAG award for her excellent work.
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That got me thinking. Ms. Conroy clearly decided to become an actress rather than an undertaker’s wife. And yet, as an actress, she chose to play an undertaker’s wife, did it excellently, and won awards for it.
It was a life worth acting, for her, but not worth living.
(Not that she had the opportunity to marry an undertaker and chose the stage instead, of course. But bear with me.)
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The contrast is even more stark (perhaps so stark that the dichotomy no longer shows up as a dichotomy) in cases like Charlize Theron‘s Oscar-winning portrayal of a prostitute/serial killer in Monster.
The life of serial killing is one that is not just “not worth living,” but is actually worth not living (e.g., by living in a different way). And yet it’s evidently worth acting. In fact, by acting it, you can make your own life seem more worthwhile (e.g., you get awards).
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Between the examples of the undertaker’s wife and the serial killer, there lie examples like Nicole Kidman‘s Oscar-winner portrayal of Virginia Woolf in The Hours. Woolf is a famous author, and yet was so depressed she committed suicide.
Was that a life worth living? It seems to have been one worth acting. And the win Kidman got for acting that life made hers even more worth living.
She was living the way she wanted to live by acting a life she (probably) didn’t want to live.
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So here are my questions:
(1) Could you find a life of acting lives you don’t find worth living, worth living?
(2) Would knowing that your life was worth acting, for someone else, make it seem (more) worth living to you?
Fascinating questions.
Let’s see:
#1) Yes! 100%. There’s a whole slew of reasons. Perhaps the most banal but also most significant is this: the life I might potray is one that I only inhabit for a few hours each day. And really, it’s the most interesting parts of each day. A well-written show implies the boring parts of an existence but doesn’t show them. You don’t have to be the undertaker talking to the boring old clients on the mundane old burial. You only have to balance the boring old books until the phone rings and some kookie thing happens to set the plot in motion.
Additionally, you do it from afar. You do it scripted. In some sense, you commentate on the life rather than live it. The actor has read the script and isn’t a slave to what happens, rather the actor participates in making the happenings authentic or entertaining or whatever. But no matter how method-y an actor is, there has to be some level on which a disaster for the actor is simply an oppurtunity to meditate on, or even make a sort-of body language commentary on the events.
#2) No, not really. Knowing that my life was worth acting would tell me that there are parts that could be distilled out that would make an impact if somebody watched them. The few portions of my life that would make a good movie were actually quite Hellish to live through. My wife almost dying, for example, that’d be a great Drama. Frankly, it sucked to be there. Restraining screaming schizophrenics in residential hospitals would be fascinating television. It was horrible to experience it.
(There were grim jokes made about a first restraints: various comparisons made to losing one’s virginity, etc.) So, I’d say quite the contrary to #2, please give me lots of boring, non-cinematic moments in my life.
Jeff speaks for me as well. The parts of my life worth making into a play or movie are parts I have no desire to live over again and, quite frankly, I would rather have never happened. All the happiest parts of my life would be painfully boring and would be skipped in any dramatic treatment. There’s an old saying that a happy life makes for a boring biography, but I’d rather be happy than interesting any day of the week.
Great comments, both of you! This is something I think about now and again, and haven’t really been able to figure out for myself. It helps to have other people’s perspectives on it.
The primary issues, of course, are “meaning” and “vocation.” And whether we’re actors or not, those are fundamentally important.
Ironically, this week’s episode of House was about an actor struggling with the meaning and importance of his role.