Living National Treasures

I've been in Saskatchewan shooting exteriors for the CBC sitcom Little Mosque on the Prairie, on which I have a fun recurring role as the fundamentalist wannabe "Faisal." (We shoot the interiors on sound stages in Toronto and all the exterior scenes are saved for a shoot in Saskatchewan at the end of each season's work.)

This season, Jayne Eastwood has been added to the cast who along with Deb McGrath, who plays the town's mayor, serve as incredible models of comedy brilliance for me. It was heartbreaking to me to see how much of Deb's comic bits in last season's climactic wedding episode were cut out, I guess for time. I hope they resurface as deleted scenes on the upcoming DVD release.

It's amazing to be on the same set as comediennes of their calibre and I frankly think they are as good as any who have ever been on TV. They are in the same league as Lucille Ball, Bea Arthur or Jean Stapleton.

Naturally, being Canadian, they don't have the same name recognition to audiences--BUT THEY SHOULD.

I suppose the best they can hope for is an Order of Canada, but frankly I wish we could be like Japan and declare our great artists Living National Treasures. As a country, if we acknowledge anyone, it's usually too late. I'd rather Jayne and Deb knew how valuable they are to our culture while they're still around to appreciate it. The Japanese understand this.

I've got my own list of who should be Canada's living national treasures. It's time someone in power did too.

Playing games with Peter and Vera on the set of Orphan

I have a small role in the movie Orphan starring Peter Saarsgard and Vera Farmiga as the ICU doctor trying to save their little boy's life.

When I arrived on set in Montreal I reminded Peter that we'd acted together in a movie 9 years earlier, with me also playing a doctor. He didn't remember me--despite having lunch with him and Oscar-winner Estelle Parsons on set one day--but he thought it hilarious that I show up in his life 9 years later to play another doctor. Type casting. Sigh...

I told Peter and Vera about hearing a story from Liza Minelli at her appearance at the Canadian Film Centre years ago. Apparently on "New York, New York" whenever De Niro and she were doing a scene, and shooting her coverage, he would not feed her the next line until, as she put it, "he heard the truth." At first Peter was appalled at De Niro's apparent arrogance, but as we talked about it, we decided it might be kind of fun. So we proposed it to the director, an intense young Spanish whiz kid, who agreed to let us--well really them--do this and so that's how we played our scenes. We altered the game somewhat in that we weren't really waiting to "hear the truth" but just repeating lines so the other actor had another run at theirs. It was kind of fun and I really enjoyed being able to work on the same level as the stars of the movie. (I've found that once they are past the PR and the entourage, the star making machinery, stars are often like Peter and Vera, very willing to be actors, rather than movie stars with the day players like myself.)

Check out the movie and see if our acting game worked.

Why we act

Several years ago I wrote and was directing a half-hour episode of a TV series for children. The script was about a sixth-grader named Sam whose parents had split up. I had written the climactic scene describing Sam with tears as he admits a deception, which had been caused by his father. When it came time to shot the scene, the young actor playing Sam came up to me, very concerned. After talking to him, I realized he was afraid of two things: one, of being able to cry on cue and two, of crying. He was a boy and he really didn't want to cry in front of everyone.

In that moment, I realized that I didn't want him to cry on cue. Or cry at all, if that was how he TRULY felt. I wanted him to be real--and whatever real was, would have to be the right thing.

"But it says Sam's supposed to cry in the script. And you wrote it," he said.

It didn't matter. I wrote the script to be a good read, to allow the cast, crew and most importantly, the producers to be able to see the film in their mind's eye. But now we were actually bringing the script to life. And life isn't fake, why should acting be fake?

I told him to think about what had happened up to that point in the story and to focus on how that makes him feel, but only to worry about what he wanted to do in the scene, which was to defend his father from being blamed for what had happened. (In the story, remember, it was his father's fault.)

He was thunderstruck. I could practically see a light bulb come on over his head. What I asked him to do was really simple. He understood exactly what I meant and it was like a great weight of worry lifted off his young shoulders.

Then I add that IF he did cry as a result, he'd feel like a million bucks. Like he dunked ten baskets in a row. He was an actor and it wasn't him crying, it was Sam crying THROUGH him. He looked at me carefully, thinking hard. Then he nodded his head and went off to run the scene with the actor playing his teacher while the crew lit the set.

As soon as he left, panic punched a hole in my gut. What had I done? This was the most crucial scene in the film! It WAS important for Sam to cry. Yet, I'd told him he didn't have to? Was I crazy? What kind of director did that make me? Who was in charge? (Actually, it's the actor who's in charge, but don't tell directors that.)

I ran to set and told the crew that we couldn't "f*@k this up." (Great language for the set of a kids' film, but luckily none were in the room at the time--and remember, I was panicking.)

"We're not going to get lots of chances at this, so focus on the actors and stay sharp. Please." To their credit, they appeared to listen, then went back to work.

Just before we started shooting the scene, the terrific actor playing the teacher, Ivan Smith from Montreal, murmured to me, "It's going to be good."

The scene involved a little tricky camera move on a dolly and the first couple of takes we stopped before we got to the crucial moment as a result of some technical problems. On the third take, nothing bad happened, and as the camera moved in on Sam's face, his little lower lip started quivering and despite trying NOT to cry, a tear emerged from his eye and coursed down his cheek. His eyes filled up, he kept saying his lines throughout, a quaver in his voice. It was incredibly moving.

At the end of the take, I didn't call cut. I just walked over to him and put my arm around him and said, "see what I mean?"

He looked up at me, his eyes shining, his cheeks covered in tears--with a HUGE grin on his face.

The female first Assistant Director was sniffling when she called "cut." And the crew burst into applause.

I looked at the young actor and said, "I've been in this business for fifteen years and nobody ever clapped for me. You've been doing this three days and you got an ovation." He couldn't stop smiling.

That's why we act. Simple, but not easy.

Yes, that's me in that ad

My life as an actor has seen me appear in over 70 movies and TV shows, at least 25 radio plays, 4 stage plays and do voices for a few cartoon shows as well as a very cool gig recently doing a voice for a major character in an upcoming video game, Far Cry 2.

But I get recognized most recently for an appearance in a very well-shot commercial for hireimmigrants.ca--it's the one where two Indian business types are considering hiring a Canadian with his lousy Canadian degree and funny accent.  I thought the script was a fabulous twist on the stereotype--in fact, the reality of Canadians regarding foreign credentials and experience with suspicion.

As the commercial was sponsored by TRIEC, an Ontario-based agency, it only runs in Ontario.  If you're outside the province, you can see the spot here:

http://www.hireimmigrants.ca/resources/?resource=media

Let me know what you think.

The Golden Acting Moment

Acting is simple.  Bring a character to life.  But how?  What does that even mean?  It's just not as easy as it sounds.

Acting appears to require emotional resources.  If you have been blessed with the ability to cry on cue, you may have a future as an actor.  But if your "crying on cue" doesn't make sense within the context of a scene or the story the audience witnesses, your tears will likely have a weak effect, or worse, the wrong effect on the audience.  So in addition to emotional resources, acting does require the ability to know WHAT the crying is about.  If an actor can truly understand what the crying is about--which is essentially what's going on in the story at this point that would require this character to cry, the possibility then exists that the actor may make a more interesting choice than crying!  Perhaps he or she may not have even planned to make the choice, but because they understood the story so clearly, something far more organic and spontaneous emerges.

Such moments are gold for an actor.  To produce a moment that could never be duplicated, but that will always exist due to the permanence of a filmed record is an essential difference between the film actor and the stage actor.  Stage acting requires the repeatability of a performance for the duration of a run--without any record of that performance except in the audience's memory.  But for a film actor, that moment you never knew was going to happen is what we film actors live for.  It's a pure acting moment--when everything comes together and you end up doing something in character that you hadn't planned to do when preparing.  A golden moment.  After a couple of decades in front and behind the camera, I can remember each one I've had.  Years may have gone by between them!  Yet, each one reminded me why I need to do this with my life.

The one that springs to mind was actually during the recording of a radio play--Swimming Lessons based on a short story by Rohinton Mistry.  I played the lead character who had a crush on his beautiful neighbour in the same apartment building.  At one point he sees her in her bathing suit by the apartment pool and runs down to "accidentally" run into her.  When it came time to record the line where I described running down--I had been recording for a day and a half at this point and I was totally into the character and the story--I didn't plan it, but I ended up saying the line at warp speed.  I looked into the control booth and saw the producer and engineer laughing hilariously--I didn't even try to be funny but I had cracked them up.  I COULDN'T have preplanned it.  It came out organically and spontaneously--yet could only happen because I was completely in sync with the story of the play.  And I probably couldn't duplicate as well as I did it on the first take.  Happily, the producer didn't ask for a second.  He didn't need it.  My golden acting moment was in the can.