Every director meets a scene stealer or bad boy. Director John Badham explains how to handle difficult actors, whether the cause is drugs, drink or ego.
At some point, every director will have to deal with either a scene stealer, a bad boy or both. Whether the cause is drugs, alcohol or ego, these tough situations can lead to creative sabotage.
Scene Stealing
It’s an infamous tradition: an actor in the background pulls the focus of the scene onto himself.
When director Robert Altman shot McCabe & Mrs. Miller, Warren Beatty kept leaning against newcomer William DeVane in a bar scene, which shifted the focus towards Beatty’s drunken character. After a while, Altman secretly told DeVane not to hold Beatty up. In the next take, DeVane backed away and Beatty fell on the bar. According to Altman, Beatty ceased trusting him and has never said a kind word about the film.
How to deal with a scene-stealer is always a problem. If the behavior adds color to the scene and supports its arc, then it should be welcome. If it steals focus, then it has to be eliminated.
I have found that an unprecedented number of English actors love to steal scenes. Perhaps this is because many of them spent a lot of time performing in the theatre, where, after many performances, even the most dedicated actor can start to think of mischievous ways to amuse himself.
Scene-stealing can be funny, but can also easily ruin a scene. On the one hand, it’s good to encourage the cast to be inventive. On the other hand, when the inventiveness is distracting, then it must be curtailed. Stop it by treating it as a joke. Once the actor is caught red-handed, he’ll back off.
If your guilty actor is in a secondary role, it’s fairly easy to tell them to stop what they are doing as it distracts from the main focus of the scene. If it is the star who is stealing the scene, things are a bit trickier. Many stars are not used to being told “no.” Some may get defensive, and some may even get hostile. In any case, the first line of defense is to talk about how their behavior is hurting the scene. Tell them it may be a good idea, but, in context, it doesn’t work.
Years ago, a television series called Fame is the Name of the Game ran on NBC for several seasons. Tony Franciosa was one of the stars. At the time, cigarette advertising was just coming under fire. Actors could still smoke on camera, but the cigarettes would have to come from a fictitious looking pack (“Kofin Nayl” was a favorite).
Time and time again, Franciosa would pull out a real pack of Marlboros on camera. The executives at Universal politely asked Franciosa to use the dummy packs, yet the actor continued to misbehave. When, Ranald MacDougall, the executive producer, announced he would have a go at this problem, the other execs snorted at his naiveté. Indeed, Franciosa got angry when MacDougall approached him, stating he was sick of this cigarette baloney. MacDougall responded, “I agree, forget about it.” Franciosa was taken aback. “You can show the pack or not, it’s OK,” MacDougall affirmed as he started to leave. Then MacDougall turned at the door like Lt. Columbo and said, “Oh, just one thing, whenever you show a real pack, we’ll have to cut away from you.”
After that day, the Marlboro pack was never again seen on-camera.
Bad Boys and Bad Girls
A sensible person would think that people who get to act, one of the most fun jobs on the planet, would not want to destroy themselves in the process.
Well, it happens all the time. Many members of your creative team may be prone to self-destructive behavior: drinking on the job, doing drugs, partying all night, coming to work hung over and being miserable S.O.B.’s. We all know the names of “A-List” actors and directors who are always going back… again… to rehab and jail. Just consider how many lesser names are doing the same thing, but don’t get picked up by Perez Hilton.
What do you do when your intoxicated or hungover actor comes onto your set? It’s tough, really tough. Working with a drunk, druggie or party hound is worse than working with an actor with amnesia. At least your amnesiac wants to do his best; your druggie or drunkie doesn’t respect what she is doing. How else can you describe a person who isn’t present and can’t wait to make everyone else’s life as miserable as hers?
You can try the “Wedding Vow” technique (feeding dialogue line by line), but just know that you are committing yourself to having to do this every time the actor is in a scene. Shooting more takes only means she gets worse and worse as she gets more and more hammered. And don’t think that you can keep her from hammering herself. Your S.O.B. is so much cleverer than you at sneaking her favorite poison. You can assign babysitters to mind her, and it will only slow her down. Booze can be hidden in toilets, injected into oranges, mixed in soft drink bottles. Drugs are even easier to hide.
Having dealt with stoners and lushes several times over the years, I don’t find any of these coping techniques to be very effective. Keep trying to muddle through the shoot with an impaired actor, and your film will be doomed by a very compromised performance.
There is only one sensible solution: Tough Love. The minute you see there is a problem, bring out all the guns. Call your producer. Call the actor’s agent. Get them to the set right away and have an intervention with the actor.
The bottom line of the intervention is, “Get straight or get replaced – now.” Then send her home for the day to sober up. If she shows up soused again, then get rid of her. Harsh? You bet. That’s way better than the piece of filmed crap that results.
Pay or Play? Let her sue.
I started work on a TV pilot years ago and realized by 8:00 AM the first morning that we had a drunk for the lead, one who had been approved and vetted by at least 600 layers of show business bureaucracy. I called my producer, who showed up immediately, was horrified, and went to work right away convincing the Studio and the Network that we had to shut down and replace the bum.
Check out their response, “Well, don’t panic, let’s look at the dailies and see how he is.” The next day we hear, “Well, yes, it’s sort of bad… but let’s get somebody to watch him and keep him off the sauce.” The next week, it had changed to, “Well, maybe we can cut around the bad bits.” It was all bad bits.
The story of the pilot followed a blue-collar family’s tough life, so we had other “members of the family” who could carry some of the load. We didn’t have to keep the camera on this actor the whole time. This inspired one of the brain surgeons at the studio to rationalize, “Well, we don’t have to depend on him. The network will see how good the show is and we can replace him if the pilot sells.” And so it went for three weeks of shooting.
Why not replace him? They thought they would save money. They wouldn’t have to re-shoot and “the editor” could “fix it.”
The final piece was really good… except when our drunkie came on screen, which was in every scene. The editor had managed to get rid of most of the slurring, but there was nothing she could do about his half-asleep out-of-it-ness that was as subtle as ketchup spilled on a white sweater. Still everyone said, “Gee, he looks pretty good now, you can hardly see the weaving.” The weaving? You could smell the vodka fumes coming out of the TV set.
Then came the day of showing the show to the president of the Network.
Only then did reality set in. He took one look and said, “I just spent two million dollars of our money to watch a drunk for two hours?!” The show was shelved and never seen again.
What happens if nobody will respond to your demand to replace the actor? Quit the film. That’s right, quit. It’s an impossible environment, and it will only reflect badly on you. When people see your movie, they don’t care that the actor was drunk, drugged or out of it. All they know is that it’s crap. They won’t blame the actor, they will blame you. There is nothing you can say to change that unfair perception.
John Badham (Saturday Night Fever, Nick of Time, Heroes) is a noted film and television director and producer. Badham is Professor of Media Arts at The Dodge School of Film and Media, Chapman University in Orange, CA. His book, “I’ll Be In My Trailer: The Creative Wars Between Director & Actors” (written with Craig Modderno), was released by Michael Wiese Productions in July, 2006.
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