A to Z with Meryl and Me: The hours it took for me to accept The Hours

As you can see, the H scene is in the can, on the net, out in the open.  So much of it came together nicely.  The location, the actor, Devon's schedule, a costume ... all of it, pretty darn smooth. However, and this is not a complaint but an observation, there were and are aspects of the performance that I know I could have done better. Something I did not share with you, Dev, or most people I speak with was the fact that the H scene had a great importance to me above and beyond some of my other scenes.  The reason for this was the content, the scene choice, the emotionality of the moment ... are you getting me?  It is not to say that I haven't been "acting" in each of these scenes because you know I have but in this instance I needed to cry.  I needed to appear to have a bit of an emotional upheaval.  I rehearsed it at home, in the mirror, as I tell all of my students to and I really put a lot of actor prep work into this character.

When Meryl played the role of Clarissa in The Hours, she took an entire day to shoot this scene, which was longer in the movie, of course I edited it down to the most difficult and powerful section of the scene. In the DVD extras, the Director commented on how Meryl spent literally hours crying  for take after take which of course provided the editors with a bunch of choices and created the opportunity for what was her end result, pure brilliance.  She really does come off as a woman who had it all together and she slowly loses it before your eyes.  The talent it takes to play the scene the way she played it, was one of the inspirations for me doing this project.  The truth behind her performance that has you hanging on her every gesture, word and facial expression is what blows my mind again and again.

Here's the funny part.  During our shoot, we actually wrapped 30 minutes early and  got 1 close up, 1 medium shot and maybe one master shot.  What does this mean?  Basically it means ONE chance to create a moment that took Meryl herself an entire day to do.  Who do I think I am?  When I consider the lack of takes and amount spent to create this scene, I am proud of Luke, Devon and even me.  We are always working at a disadvantage due to a complete lack of funding, crew and time but we somehow managed to produce another scene that I can proudly say has my name on it.  It may not be my best but it was the best I could do in that amount of time.  This is not an excuse.  It's just something I have to write about because hey, if I can't say it to my blog peeps, who can I tell?

By the way, this is my assessment after hours of having to accept the fact that The Hours installment does not live up to my own personal expectations of myself and only myself.  I have heard however, that other people are enjoying it.  Their advantage is they have no idea just how much better it could have been so I guess to that I say, whew.