The Art of Not Knowing | The Art Of Film-Theare

In acting, it’s best if you really don’t know.

-Jack Nicholson

Everything Happens As If for the First Time

The Art of Not Knowing is reacting to every experience as if it were happening for the first time. Even though you think you know what is going to happen in a scene, you don’t know, and you don’t want to know. Because when you figure out ahead of time how you are going to act in your scene, you put a limit on your own creativity and will most likely give a mediocre performance. So don’t try to figure it out ahead of time.

A personal idea is any bias not directly related to the reality of the scene, and it will stifle your potential for having a creative experience. Through Not Knowing you become free of personal ideas. Judgment, which is one form of a personal idea, stops you from clearly seeing what the other actor is feeling or doing. When you judge, you prevent yourself from getting emotionally involved. And when you are not emotionally involved, your performance suffers.

Judgment

Personal judgment ruins a scene. Kim, a volatile and generally open actress, is doing a scene in the workshop. She is working on Demo by Barbara Bowen, with Adam, an outrageous actor. By outrageous I mean you never know what he is going to do next, a great quality that makes for great actors. At an intense point in the scene, Adam makes an obscene gesture. Kim (the person, not the character) is offended, but she ignores her real feelings.

KIM

(caring)
. . . I think that’s the cause of our problem.

ADAM

Do we have to talk about this now?

KIM

(caring)
When are we supposed to talk about it?

ADAM

(angry)
Later, okay?

JEREMIAH: Adam, what is Kim feeling?

ADAM

(to Jeremiah)
She is being a bitch to me.
(He looks at her for a moment.)

ADAM

(to Jeremiah)
Damn it! You’re right, I’m in my head. She’s loving.

KIM

(loving)
No, it’s not okay. You keep saying later and later never happens.

ADAM

(coming on to Kim)
Kim, this report is due by tomorrow morning.
(Kim keeps her eye on the page and reads her lines. Kim never looks at Adam. Adam yawns.)

KIM

I’m having a tough day, a tough week, a rotten month, and I need you . . .


JEREMIAH: Kim, what did Adam just do?


KIM

He is putting the moves on me.

JEREMIAH: Your concentration was on the page, not on Adam. You missed what he did. He yawned.

(Adam, continuing the scene, picks up her hand and kisses it.)

ADAM

(coming on to Kim)
I’m not like you, I don’t analyze things to death.
(Kim smiles then continues. But when she says her next line she gets angry and pulls her hand away.)

KIM

You’re supposed to be my best friend, you’re my husband. I need to talk to you, but you’re never available.

JEREMIAH: Kim, what did Adam do to make you angry?

KIM

(to Jeremiah)
He never communicates. He’s always too busy working.

JEREMIAH: Forget that. That’s coming from the script. I want you to relate to
Adam. What is he feeling. He’s loving, right?

KIM

(to Jeremiah)
Yes, but my mother has breast cancer and I’m not interested in him being loving. I want to talk.

JEREMIAH: I understand that, but respond to his feelings.

(Scene continues.)

ADAM

(loving)
I’m available, just not now.

KIM

Then when?
(pause)
You’re never there for me. It’s taken this long to realize it. You wouldn’t need to talk about your mother having breast cancer?

ADAM

No way, that’s personal between you and your mother.

KIM

That’s my point. It is personal. It’s part of my life. I’m upset about it. I’m on eggshells when my mother and I talk.

ADAM

You’ll figure it out. You always do.

KIM

It’s getting to me, Adam. I need to off-load some pressure and I want to do it with you. I need to talk. It’s who I am.
(Adam goes to kiss Kim, but she rejects him by putting her hand on his chest and pushing him away.)

ADAM

(angry)
Sure you do. But I can’t right now. This report is due by tomorrow. You’re just over reacting.

(Kim reads her lines without looking at Adam. Her performance is bad.)

KIM

Overreacting?
(Adam responds by making a masturbation gesture. The class laughs.)

KIM

Do you remember when your brother got hit by the car? Your mother was calling at all hours. You were there for her.

(She is still not looking at him. Although he is not saying  anything, his action tells us how he feels about Kim’s directing her lines to the page instead of to him.) 

JEREMIAH: Kim, what is Adam doing?

(Kim looks up. It registers. The class laughs. Kim picks up on the laughter.)

(Even though she is laughing, she is angry and suppressing it.)

(Kim continues. She’s still not dealing with Adam, and she’s still not dealing with her anger.)

KIM

(not looking at Adam)
Maybe, but you coped at the time. You needed sex, I gave it to you. Now I needed you to listen. Can’t you do what I’m asking? Don’t you love me enough? What if, God forbid, something should go wrong, my mother is your family too . . .

JEREMIAH: Kim, what is Adam doing?

KIM

(to Jeremiah)
He’s being obscene.

JEREMIAH: How does it make you feel?

KIM

(to Jeremiah)
I’m not going to work with him anymore. It’s degrading.

JEREMIAH: You’re letting a personal idea take control. Use your lines and take
out your anger on Adam. Let him have it!

KIM

(to Jeremiah)
I’m not angry.
(We can see her seething anger, but she tries to ignore it instead of using it.)

JEREMIAH: (to class) See how angry she is?

The class can see her anger. It’s obvious.

JEREMIAH: Kim, I want you to yell your next line at Adam.

It took several tries before Kim touched the core of her anger. The anger forced Kim to deal with Adam and get past her personal reaction of “I’m not going to work with him anymore. It’s degrading.”

Practicing the Art of Not Knowing often leads to unexpected brilliance. Your subconscious mind, along with the material, can take you to some wonderful places. Kim did not know that Adam was going to make the gesture hedid. It was a great opportunity to be brilliant by truly reacting through her lines as her character, not as herself.

Kim took herself out of the scene by letting her personal judgment block her emotional response to Adam. She has a belief system; part of her identity is tied into it. Her personal opinion of that obscene gesture took over and stifled her emotions. I know she is religious. Some of the anger could have been selfdirected because she was laughing at Adam, which, in her mind, would not be an appropriate response. Had she immediately dealt with the situation as the character—using the words of the script and responding emotionally—it would not have become personal. She then would have had an unplanned experience. But she bogged down with her self-restricting personal judgment of Adam’s action. When an actor does something in a scene that is offensive to you, let your character acknowledge it, allow it to affect you, respond to it as the character not as you yourself, and then forget it.

READ MORE: Stage Acting Versus Film Acting (Part One)

Being Intimate without Taking It Personally

Be intimate without having your own personal ideas, opinions, beliefs, stereotypes, generalizations, or judgments override the present experience. Make all your reactions in response to the content you receive from the other actor’s dialogue and action. In the preceding scene, Kim, the actress, allowed Kim, the person, to take over the scene by making an irrelevant personal judgment about obscene gestures. She ignored Adam’s emotions. The result: Kim came across as unbelievable and amateurish.

Beginner’s Mind and Logical Mind

You have two minds—your beginner’s mind and your logical mind. Your beginner’s mind sees, smells, hears, touches, and tastes everything with curiosity, wonder, and excitement. It is clear and uncluttered. Your logical mind has rules and always tries to be in control. Your beginner’s mind is curious. Your logical mind thinks it knows everything. Your beginner’s mind does not know, but is willing to discover. Your logical mind has a history, which means that everything it thinks is tainted by the past. Your beginner’s mind has no preconceptions and sees things as they really are. It is childlike in the best sense, just as children under the age of two are totally experiential. A baby who is attracted to a tin cup looks at it without judging it, picks it up, smells it, tastes it, drops it, grabs it again, loses interest, and moves on to another object. In her first year, a baby, through pure experience, learns half of everything she will learn in her entire life. Think of your beginner’s mind as the mind of a child, open to all the possibilities, nonjudgmental and playful. Your beginner’s mind has all the qualities you need to be a great actor.

Let your beginner’s mind make you a good actor. Get rid of personal ideas— opinions, beliefs, judgments, or generalizations based on your past experiences— and anything related to your thinking. Personal ideas hinder you from using your beginner’s mind, and they limit your potential emotional experience.

After the Scene, Forget It

In the 1977 television series Roots, Marlon Brando plays Norman Rockwell, the former head of a Neo-Nazi party. He is a cruel, hate-ridden racist, and Brando, doing his usual brilliant job of acting, makes us believe him. In real life, Brando is a fighter against injustice and has vigorously opposed the discrimination and mistreatment of American Indians and African Americans. But for the demands of his role, unlike Kim in her scene, he disregards his own personal ideas and allows racial hate and prejudice to fuel his role. He plays counter to his own professed belief. Then forgets it.

Put aside all your personal ideas unless a specific emotion or result is demanded from you. This is a business. Show Business. On demand, you have to give what directors ask of you. To trigger an emotion, use anything and everything— a physical action, your imagination, even a past experience. But if you do use a past experience, let go of it the instant you start relating to the other actor, because in recalling an experience, you may become so involved with yourself that you stop relating. I’m sure someone somewhere can use emotional memory effectively. But in film scenes, I ask my actors for intimate, personal, and unplanned experiences. Don’t let opinions and beliefs affect you to the point where you are closed and unreceptive to anything that may happen in a scene.

Opinions and Beliefs Will Destroy You

Opinions are conclusions you hold with confidence, but not necessarily substantiated by positive knowledge or proof. Opinions are changeable. Kim’s opinion of Adam was that he acted like a degenerate when he made that obscene gesture. Her opinion might have changed had she realized that he was angered by the nasty tone of her voice and her ignoring him, and he impulsively reacted with an obscene gesture.

Beliefs are convictions you hold as true. Your mind is made up with no room for variation. Beliefs are usually based in religious, political, racial, or cultural ideas that have become part of your personal identity. Beliefs leave you without options and are death to your creativity. Let’s say that Kim is strongly religious and believes that anyone who uses an obscene gesture has no moral character. By refusing to work with Adam because she believes he is immoral, she limits her potential. The Japanese Kamikaze pilot of World War II believed he would go to heaven if he intentionally crashed his airplane into an American warship. His belief left him no option. When you are locked into a belief, you eliminate all other creative alternatives. Whatever you do, don’t let opinions and beliefs affect you to the extent that you are closed and unreceptive to anything that may happen in a scene.

Play the Character, Not the Stereotype

Stereotypes and generalizations are oversimplifications: all American businessmen are ugly Americans; all Italians are great lovers; all Japanese males are Kamikazes; white men can’t jump; black men can jump and have good rhythm; all Arabs are terrorists; all Irishmen are drunks; everybody from Sweden has blue eyes and blond hair; all lawyers are lying scumbags. These are stereotypes and generalizations, and they are wrong. Prejudices are based on stereotyping and lead to categorizing people as a whole, rather than individually. When you stereotype a person and don’t see him as a unique individual, you see him as an unchangeable block of characteristics. Each person in this world is an individual with his or her own unique character. Play the character, not the stereotype.

Go Beyond the Stereotype

Two actors are doing a scene from Raging Bull. Harry plays Jake La Motta (played by Robert De Niro in the movie) and Michael plays his brother. Harry decides to do a New York accent along with his imitation of Robert De Niro.

HARRY

What is this kiss on the mouth shit?

MICHAEL

What? I just said hello. Since when I can’t kiss my sisterin-law?

HARRY

Ain’t a cheek ever good enough for you? I never even kissed Mama on the mouth.

JEREMIAH: Harry, that is very interesting—are you from New York?

HARRY

No, I’m from Illinois. But I spent two week there about three years ago.

JEREMIAH: A whole two weeks—Wow! You must be an expert on a New York
accent.

HARRY

Well, the character is from New York.

JEREMIAH: That’s true. If you can do a New York accent or any accent off the top of you head with no preparation, do it; but it shouldn’t interfere with your acting. The accent must be believable, and not clash with your ability to relate to another actor. And another thing—stop trying to imitate De Niro.

HARRY

Well maybe De Niro was trying to imitate me.
(class laughs)
I can’t get De Niro out of my head doing this role. I keep seeing his performance.

JEREMIAH: De Niro did an excellent job in this role, but I’m trying to get you to be emotionally expressive. You’re doing a stereotypical New York character. You have an image of how Jake should act. Let’s see if you can forget that and relate to the imaginary character and the situation with your brother. What is he feeling?

HARRY

He is angry.

JEREMIAH: Then forget about the accent and De Niro and deal with you brother’s anger.

When Harry did the scene again he expressed genuine anger at his brother Joey, and the scene worked.

JEREMIAH: (to the class) What Harry was doing was a stereotypical characterization of a New York tough guy. If we want a New York tough guy, we will hire De Niro. But if you give me a guy from Illinois who emotionally relates to his brother, I might think of changing the character from New York to Chicago.

Actors tend to stereotype when they play priests, nuns, police officers, professors, psychiatrists, and ethnic characters. And why not? It’s easy to let the broad Irish brogue or the uniform or the beard carry your performance. The audience may sometimes think you’re clever even though you lose the emotional essence of the real person and give a mediocre performance. Stereotypes and generalizations simplify the massive amount of information you are faced with in life. To avoid stereotypes, intently observe all kinds of individual people as they work, as they go about their working and playing. Stereotypes save you time and energy, but they cause you to overlook the essence of everything.

READ MORE: Stage Acting Versus Film Acting (Part Second)

Judgment Is a Trap

Judgment is your ability to use your logic and common sense to make decisions based on past experiences. It is your mental capacity to discriminate, and it protects you from repeatedly making mistakes. For you, the actor, judgment restricts your ability to see all the choices open to you. In both life and acting, your judgment may not always be correct. In acting, judgment limits your ability to use your beginner’s mind.
Let’s say you are doing a serious scene and the other actor has the giggles. He giggles when he starts a line and sometimes giggles in the middle of one. He delivers his lines as if reading them. He doesn’t look at you. You make the judgment that he is ruining the scene. But don’t look at the director and say, “Can
we start this scene over?” Deal with the actor as he is. If he makes you angry, don’t ignore it. Let the anger come out in your lines. If you think he is funny, laugh. React to him the same way you would react to the same behavior in life, but use the lines of the script.

Become Aware of What Is

Put aside all your personal judgments and interpretations and become aware of what is. See the reality of the experience. When you judge the other actor, or when you are closed to his emotional experience, your performance will be mediocre, or worse. Kim’s performance in the earlier scene was bad because she did just that—she judged Adam and was closed to his experience.
Disbelieving what your fellow actor is doing in a scene is a judgment. If he gives you line readings, or you do not believe his acting, accept the response as if it were really happening. It is happening, so use whatever you are getting. Would you laugh, be sarcastic, get angry? Do what comes instinctively. Respond
immediately, and do not judge your response. Deal with what he is giving you, because disbelieving him is trying to make him responsible for your inability to accept his feelings.

Leave Your Feelings on the Set

When you fall in love in a scene, you have experienced genuine feelings for the other actor. Everything you do while you are acting then becomes personal. The pain, happiness, sadness, anger, fear, and love are real. But because acting is your art form, with your imagination and creative talent at work, give up your feelings when the scene is over. You cannot take it home or take it personally. Keep your ego out of it and leave all personal experiences on the set when you walk off.

Self-Criticism

Self-criticism inhibits your creative thinking. When you think to yourself or hear yourself say to someone about your performance, “That’s no good. That will never work,” you inhibit both the other actor’s creativity and your own. You are not allowing yourself the possibility of that experience. Selfcriticism is a form of judgment—self-judgment—that stifles your imaginative flow.

Two students finish a scene.

JEREMIAH: That was excellent.

(Zahn, a talented actor, turns toward me and makes a face.)

JEREMIAH: Zahn, what is that face for? Why are you acting so disappointed?

ZAHN

My work sucks. Don’t tell me it was any good. I didn’t feel any emotion. I missed the whole thing.

JEREMIAH: Zahn, when do you know that you have been burned, when you
pick up the frying pan or when you have dropped it?

ZAHN

After you let go of it.

JEREMIAH: That’s right. You have already been burned by the time you let go. You don’t register the experience until after the fact. That’s the same thing with acting. If you are truly experiencing the moment, you won’t know until after the experience. Oftentimes we think what we did didn’t work, but our own personal judgments aren’t always accurate. Go and look at the video and you will see that although it was not a dramatic scene, you and your partner Patricia were emotionally connected and worked moment to moment. The work was interesting and professional.

Professional actors don’t make negative comments about their work, so stop judging and accept your experience. It is what it is, nothing more or less. You did it and you did your best. Nothing is perfect. Strive for perfection in a positive way by accepting your experience. So, when a director says, “Cut! That was great!” accept it. The director and the producers have enough to worry about. They don’t need an insecure actor. Always smile and say thank you.

Use Your Beginner’s Mind to Not Know

The Art of Not Knowing means experiencing the beginner’s mind. Your every experience in a scene should be as if for the first time. By clearing your mind of all personal ideas, you begin in the state of tabula rasa, the unwritten slate. Not Knowing is the ultimate approach for achieving spontaneous acting. It allows your subconscious to surprise you. Not knowing ahead of time how you are going to play the scene lets you discover moments in acting you could never conceive of logically. It is these moments that carry you through to a great performance.

Art of Not Knowing-Summary

1. Eliminate all outside personal ideas: opinions, beliefs, stereotypes, generalizations, and judgments.
2. Look at the other actor—really look—and ask yourself, “What is she experiencing?” Then deal with that.
3. Be open to all creative possibilities by using your beginner’s mind.
4. Do not know ahead of time. Stop planning.
5. Observe people.