A Quote by Matt Besser
You can do a whole scene in acting without ever checking in to what the other guy is saying - it's not going to come off great, but you can get through the scene - whereas in improv, that's gonna be impossible.
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I think with improv - and I say it all the time because it's become such a catch thing that you talk about improv - if the scene is well-written, you don't need to improv. But that being said, if something strikes you in the moment and, most importantly, you know where the scene is supposed to go, it's no different than method acting.
What I don't like is when I see stuff that I know has had a lot of improv done or is playing around where there's no purpose to the scene other than to just be funny. What you don't want is funny scene, funny scene, funny scene, and now here's the epiphany scene and then the movie's over.
One thing my old improv teacher taught me is when you're not in the improv scene and you're standing back watching your partners, you ask, 'What does the scene need?'
I love actors and I understand what has to happen within a scene. Any scene is an acting scene and actors never act alone, so there has to be an interchange. If it's a dialog scene, if it's a love scene, it doesn't matter because you need to establish a situation.
It's wonderful. It's amazing. I mean we have such a great music scene and art scene and there's just a great group of young people, you know, temping their way through their 20's doing other amazing things. And I've been in...I spent like 10 years working here without ever having been shooting in Toronto. And it's so frustrating because it's a great city. And I remember seeing Montreal actually used as Montreal in that Ed Norton-Robert DeNiro.
I don't want to make decisions about what I'm going to do before I'm doing it because I base my acting off my partner and off the other people in the scene.
I actually went to see 'Rushmore,' and I came late, and I missed myself. It was great, that scene. I caught that scene the other day on TV, funny enough, the first scene that you see with Jason Schwartzman and myself, where we talk about his grades. That's a brilliant scene, and I have to say, we play it brilliantly.
That scene that I have with Brad Pitt in Meet Joe Black is one of my favorite scenes that I've ever done. He's very modest. He's a real hardworking actor. I think he was going through something difficult at that time, and he never brought his personal stuff - not once! - on the set. He was a real pro. I remember doing that scene, and as I was acting, I thought, "I understand why this guy's a movie star." Because there was just something that he did when the cameras rolled. There was some kind of energy that was really magnificent, a real aura about him.
In the old days, you cut out a scene that might've been a really great scene, and no one was ever going to see it ever again. Now, with DVD, you can obviously... there's a lot of possibilities for scenes that are good scenes.
I like to go off the other actors in the scene, which kind of stinks when you're acting with someone who's not that great.
You can write ten versions of a scene, and then, on the day, discover that something in the original scene worked. It's hard on writers. Hard on actors, hard on editors, hard on me, hard on the producers, who require patience and confidence. But I can't get to the end without going through this process.
I often tell my students that you can't worry about the end of an improv scene because the end is not up to you. You just play as hard as you can until someone changes the scene. The scene has changedthe end is not up to us.
When I moved to New York at 22, I didn't know what I wanted to do. I took an improv class, and the first scene I did, I felt like 'I want to do this for the rest of my life.' It was the first time I ever felt like that about anything. I tried to make a living off improv.
You can't feel sorry for a scene. If the movie works without the scene, then you don't need the scene.
Certain guys are different. A guy like Marshawn Lynch, he's more of a running through a guy. Mine is to get a guy off balance and going through an arm tackle, go through a shoulder, those types of things. Get them going one way and try to hit the other side.
I thank Henry James for the scene in the hotel room, that I stole from Portrait Of A Lady… This particular scene is the most beautiful scene ever written.
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