Directors

I'm going to step outside the format for a second to talk about directors. Since I feel like I often talk about things as though I'm an expert I feel the need to put a disclaimer out there first. I do not make films. I write screenplays that I hope someday might get made into films if I'm very lucky, but I have no real experience or expertise. [note: this applies to most subjects I write about, I'm not really an expert on anything. Really, all I am is observant]

As someone who has attempted writing and acting (at various points in my history), I notice those things most when I watch movies but I have at times developed an attachment to directors. I think it's an extension of my love of writers and actors. When there's a director that seems to be able to take the words on the page and the actors saying them and present them in the best way imaginable that's meaningful to me.

From ages sixteen to nineteen I fancied myself an actress. During those years Clerks, Mall Rats, and Chasing Amy came out and I became a devout Kevin Smith fan. Chasing Amy in particular is one of my all time favorite movies. There was a period of time my freshman and sophomore years in college where I watched Chasing Amy every other week. Kevin Smith is definitely a gift from God for any actors lucky enough to work with him. First of all, his scripts are all about dialogue and emotion, and second his directorial style is way less visual than some (it's very actor focused). So, yeah, I'm a huge fan of Kevin Smith. I love everything he does. I may be more a fan of his writing but I am definitely a fan of his directing style as well.

JJ Abrams is, as they say, the whole package. His directorial style is the opposite of Smith's, his stuff is very visual (and auditory for that matter), but he is also an actor's director. I used to be of the opinion that actors are 100% responsible for their performances. I then came around on the point that a really good director can sometimes get a good performance out of a not so good actor, but I still felt that really, in the end, actors are either good or bad and there isn't a lot that a director can do to change that. Directors though are responsible for how the performances of the actors come across on screen.

Acting is an interesting combination of emotional and physical work and the director is responsible for capturing it in the right way. Abrams cast a lot of really great actors in his reboot of Star Trek, including who I think is the best actor working today (Zachary Quinto), and he filmed their spectacular performances in exactly the right way. I'll talk about Spock because he's my favorite character, and Quinto my favorite actor, in the film. Zachary's Quinto's performance in Star Trek is fantastic on both the emotional and physical levels. The character often has a lot of emotion bubbling, sort of barely contained, under the surface and you can see all of that in Quinto's eyes in many scenes. He also embodies the character in a very physical way, his posture, his gait, his mannerisms are all perfect. And JJ Abrams captures it all in just the right way.

Going back, briefly, to Kevin Smith, there was a segment on one of his SModcasts where he talks about F*** You money. There was a PA on one of his projects that owned a hotel and she just worked as a PA for fun. So, F*** You money is the amount of money that it takes for you to be able to pretty much do anything you want. You can do a job purely for the love and enjoyment of it and if someone asks you to do something you don't like you can just walk away because you don't need the job. If I had F*** You money...well, if I had F*** You money, I'd probably go to med school (without having to worry about student loans), but it would be a very close call between that and getting a job as an intern or PA or gopher or anything on a JJ Abrams project because I imagine, if you could watch him you could learn everything you could ever want or need to know about the film making process.