Noirish Project Blog: “The Actor’s Nature & The Script”
I had originally thought that the script for Noirish Project was very simple and slight – although there are several moments of high drama, mostly the script is laid-back, often the characters are engaged in small talk. However, as I’ve done more and more work on the film, I’ve seen more possibilities in the text, more and more implications in the dialogue, and I now view the script as a whole as deeply complex. I have come to the conclusion that this complexity stems from, paradoxically, it’s simplicity. The simplicity really is a sort of ambiguity – there is a scene, for example, where the characters discuss whether a mutual friend was in the army or not, an issue completely unrelated to the central plot; but what is really going on there? The point is, this ambiguity means the script offers more scope for individual interpretation than is usual. The actor needs to take even greater responsibility, because he is being given less help by the script in terms of suggesting acting choices than he would normally expect. Consequently, in order to make his acting choices, the actor needs to bring more of himself to the text, more of his own experience and understanding of human behaviour. Ultimately, a seemingly simple script gradually becomes more complex because the actor is projecting himself onto it, and so the complexity of the script really is an expression of the complexity of the actor’s own nature.
