Actor-writers often hire directors to showcase their talent. Director Charles Haine shares advice for directing actors who also wrote the film.
On the job boards I constantly see postings for these actor/writers looking for directors to work with in crafting these films to be showpieces for their talent. It’s one of the most common postings you see. In fact, the first significant feature film I directed came out through this situation: “Angels Perch,” starring J.T. Arbogast, who wrote it and whose wife produced it. As a director looking for projects, it is very exciting to have a performer who is dedicated to the role, who has a deep knowledge of the project, and who often is going to be as actively engaged as you are in financing the project (or even take the lead in finance and bring you on as work for hire).
However, there are a few pitfalls that are possible to fall into, or avoid, as you go on this journey.
The first is a matter of ownership of the script, not legally, but emotionally. As a director on set, it’s fundamentally your job to deliver the best possible movie, and to do that you need a clear vision for what that movie is going to be and the skills to deliver it. If you can’t agree on the overall vision for the film with your writer/star, you shouldn’t take on the project. But just as no two people are identical, no two visions are either, and even if you are closely aligned on what the movie can and should be, there will be minute differences of opinion, and you need to clarify in pre-production some sense of how they will be resolve.
On “AP”, JT and I did a final “script review” together, where we sat down for days on end going through every scene and talking it out, what the beats were, what the relevance was to the overall movie, what worked and what didn’t, to be sure we were on the same page in the relatively low-stress period of pre-production. No matter how stressed prep is, there are fewer people waiting on your decisions, so it’s definitely more relaxed than production. By giving ourselves the time to do that, we were able to avoid major conflict on set, when the clock is ticking and the crew is waiting, and since we had built a bond of trust with one another we were able to have relaxed, enjoyable conversations on issues of staging and performance as they came up.
Apparently Damon and Affleck held a little ceremony a few weeks before the shoot of “Good Will Hunting” where they handed over the script to Gus Van Sant “officially,” knowing that the film would be better if the director was empowered to execute fully on it, and JT and I did something similar.
The second big issue is developing a sense of trust with your actor about your ability to sculpt a performance with them: after all, they not only want to make a good film, and they are hoping that their work in the film will propel them to more work. They are invested in doing good work, and they often are producing the project so they really, really care.
That’s not always the best place for an actor to be to give a good performance, as it can lead to self-consciousness and self-awareness such that they aren’t able to relax and be “in the scene” with the other performers, since they are actively attempting to evaluate their performance while they are giving it. The best scenario is one where the actor trusts the director to pay attention to the performance, and evaluate it properly and give good feedback, so that the actor can turn off their self-evaluation.
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