Best Practices for Worst-Case Scenarios
by John Badham
You’ve called the actors on the set to rehearse. The crew eagerly awaits a camera set-up, and the writer is anxious to see how her brilliant scene plays. But then one of the actors (and just hope it’s only one) has a serious problem, and nothing can go forward until you solve it. She doesn’t know her lines, or she doesn’t like the dialogue, or she can’t play the dialogue… Or worst of all, she refuses to do the scene at all. Yikes! The entire set is at a standstill. The money meter keeps going up, up, up and morale goes down, down, down.
This is the nightmare that you as a director will face many times in your career. Like death and taxes, there is no avoiding it. Everyone else will look to you for a solution, and you have to know what to do.
“The Dog Ate My Dialogue.”
An actor not knowing his lines is unforgivable. I’m not talking about forgetting lines, everybody forgets lines. I’m talking about coming to work unprepared, not having learned them in the first place. It’s expensive, disrespectful and unprofessional.
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