Why The Bad Acting? |
| One of the more infuriating features in some low- budget
independent films is the rare appearance of good acting. Why would a director;
after laboriously writing the script; after days upon days of shooting
and editing; after begging, borrowing, and stealing money to finance a
film; this true labor of love - settle for lousy acting. A good case in
point are two films, Clerks and Slacker. Clerks,
while a funny and inventive film, is at times almost unwatchable because
of the acting. One gets the impression they are watching a high school
skit rather than artistic cinema. Many of the jokes fall flat in this movie
due to the poor delivery of lines. I can fully understand that director
Kevin Smith was working under adverse conditions and schedules. This, however,
does not excuse him from spending some time with his performers to rehearse
their lines. After a while, the audience gets used to the shoddy performances;
and, with enough concentration on what is being said, can follow the movie.
Slacker also suffers from great inconsistencies in acting throughout the picture. In one scene you have Jerry Deloney lighting up the screen with his delightful performance as a UFO fanatic. In the next scene you have another performer mumbling lines written on the back of a postcard. There is the great scene with Teresa Taylor as a street hustler, followed by an embarrassingly bad scene where a guy picks up some women to take to a club. He is so unconvincing in his delivery one wonders why the women would follow him anywhere. The good performances in the film illustrate how this film could have been better with good acting. Some of the lines are delivered so poorly in some scenes, as to render those scenes forgettable as soon as they are over. Maybe I am being too rough on fledgling directors who are working under tremendous constraints. After all, these are not high-paid professional actors in these films. Many of the actors are friends and family of the director. Can these people be expected to act? Yes. Yes, because Robert Rodriguez, working with almost no money, produced and directed El Mariachi with good acting performances. His actors were not professionals. His actors were his film crew, friends, family, and complete strangers. Yet, the audience gets wrapped up in the film instead of being reminded, time after time, that this is a low-budget independent film. A good director just doesn't yell "cut!" A good director does more than give actors lines to read and a place to stand. A really good director gets a good performance from an actor every time. There is no reason for a new director to handicap a film by settling for bad acting. Many independent films are made in cities where there are amateur actors who are willing to do an independent film for the experience or exposure. The Blair Witch Project illustrates how far some actors are willing to go to appear in a movie. Not only did they have to endure cold and rainy conditions, they also had to do all of their own directing and filming. Slacker was filmed in Austin, Texas, home of the University of Texas. Certainly Richard Linklater, if he had trouble directing amateurs, could have scratched up a few more good actors for his picture. Francis Ford Coppola had Jack Nicholson in his low-budget vampire film, The Terror. In the long run, the poor acting in their early films did not hinder the careers of Linklater or Smith. However, film is art, and the films Slacker and Clerks may be merely pop art because of the low standards that accompanied their low budgets. |
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