Go Johnny Go Go!

Oh man, this song has been spinning in my head all day long, SONG OF THE DAAAAAAY.

I have been through about fourteen chapters (i.e fourteen classes) of Stella Adler's book "The Art of Acting" and it's really fascinating (wow that was a damn hard word to spell). To basically put it in layman terms, acting is about using your imagination, and building circumstances around you and just react and play a long with it. You don't act feelings, actually you don't act at all. You DO.

Like Sir Ben Kingsley said in his "Inside the Actor's Studio" episode, the camera is allergic to acting, it doesn't like it or take it in one bit. If you "act" in front of a camera people will spot it in a second. The camera's achilles heel is BEHAVIOR. Behavior, behavior, behavior.

What a long strange trip this is going to be. I am of course still dreaming about New York Film Academy and that scholarship. I've gone through it time and time again in my head and yup, if I do get that scholarship I'm off, great isn't it? I can't imagine anywhere else to study to be honest, not a single place in the world, except under Stella Adler herself but alas. NYFA just attracts me something immense.

My idea book, where I write down all my small little ideas I get is getting a little bit thicker by the week/month.

I am going to leave you with this though, although I have already given you too much, some insight to a great mind, mine. (HA!) and a CLASSIC song (still got it playing as I write this in loop). Here is a amazing short film from... Yes Uzbekistan, how did you guess? :) Based on Ray Bradbury's short story called "There will come soft rains" which I am guessing is based on a poem by Sara Teasdale. And I am giving you all three bitches!

The .pdf short story.

And the poem, three is a charm. Cha cha

" There will come soft rain and the smell of the ground,

And swallows circling with their shimmering sound;

And frogs in the pools singing at night,

And wild plum-trees in tremulous white;

Robins will wear their feathery fire

Whistling their whims on a low fence-wire;

And not one will know of the war, not one

Will care at last when it is done.

Not one would mind, neither bird nor tree

If mankind perished utterly;

And Spring herself, when she woke at dawn,

Would scarcely know that we were gone.

Sara Teasdale"

Sir Ben Kinglsey

So I've been watching a lot of Inside The Actor's Studio lately with James Lipton. It's really wonderful to listen to these amazing artists speak from their heart and tell us all the things we want to, and don't want to hear. What they have went through and the hardships and heartaches.

One theme that I seem to see is that a lot of the great ones have done a lot of theater, that's the way they started out, which of course makes a lot of sense. A lot of them were absolutely fine with theater and then got in one way or another into movies. This is really refreshing since I have always felt that I think that I would somehow like theater. It seems a bit more over-the-top melodramatic stuff (sometimes), which is great.

I really wish Stella Adler or Stanislavski were still alive. I want to study under them so much it's not even funny. I need to find the new Stella, and the new Stanislavski. TEACH ME!

Which leads me to the topic of this post... Sir Ben Kingsley. First of all his episode might be my favorite of all Actor's Studio episodes. I wish Mr Marlon Brando would've had gone there to but declined for some reason.

Sir Ben Kinglsey teaches us the virtue of PATIENCE. Patience. One step at a time. I'm going to link to the final bit of his episode but you'll find all of it if you click on the youtube window.

The sound on this episode is really low so turn your speakers or headphones up up up.

The first question is great, I'd like you to listen to the second question and answer, at 2:06.

Enjoy and thank me later.