I Know You Are, But What Am I?

So, back in the day when Pee-Wee Herman was popular, and someone would call him a childish, derogatory name, he would respond with "I know you are but what am I?" That saying keeps going through my head as I try to mimic a very famous actress in five-second intervals. I feel like this exercise is taunting me, daring me to minimize my focus down to 5 second segments. I keep wanting to see the "big picture" as they say. That is, I want a beginning, a middle, and an end to this person and a completion of my interpretation of who this person really is. I feel secure in presenting that creation but I do not feel at all confident about simply mimicking movement with no feeling or character development connected with it. The actress I am doing is known for her big personality even though she was physically a tiny person. I'm not sure I am successfully weaning out my feelings about her as I mimic her every movement. I wonder if this will be an impossibility for me because I invest everything I do in life with some sort of emotion. And if it is not possible, can I at least tamp down that impulse enough to be somewhat successful with this exercise? After trying it again tonight, perhaps I will feel more confident about it.

Acting, at it’s highest level, is equal parts technical and emotional. If you can eliminate the desire to perform during the technical part of your work, it may help with gleaning what you need to create something believable. Making sense out of the work is the roll of the writer. Our job is to bring it to life. Part of that is climbing into another person. It is done in steps. One of them is pure imitation, then expanding into the character.

So Jon, I just thought of something. Do you remember the now iconic conversation between Laurence Olivier and Dustin Hoffman regarding the scene in Marathon Man where Hoffman gets a root canal from Olivier without an anesthetic? Hoffman stayed up for days preparing for it and was a wreck when he arrived to do the scene whereas Olivier had done something like had a lovely continental breakfast after playing a round of tennis or something like that. Laurence Olivier, upon discovering Hoffman's total exhaustion, uttered this famous line, “Why don't you just try acting?” The exchange is oft-quoted to show the difference in thinking between classical actors and modern film actors. In essence, Hoffman's method became acting legend. However, Olivier's technique through decades of training was perfection and equally as stellar.

Yes, oft quoted and incomplete. Olivier did extensive research, dialect perfection, character immersion and endless reading of the text. What he objected to, correctly, was that you don’t have to punish yourself to achieve believability. Work should be done in preparation to act, not act your preparation. I agree. This quote has been used for decades by actors to defend laziness and non- preparation.

Fascinating - thanks Jon! :-)