The other night I was watching television and caught sight of a friend playing a substantial role in a fairly major movie. I called him the next morning to congratulate him and, thanking me, he said that he'd been thrilled to work with the stars in the film and had loved the process but absolutely hated how it had been edited. He thought the film had the potential to be so much better than it ended up being. This got me thinking about the lack of control an actor has when appearing in a film over anything but the performance he puts in on set on the day of filming. The reason I've always aspired to work as a performer in the theatre rather than on screen is because, for me, it's an actor's medium. Once the work on the script, direction etc. is complete and opening night rocks up it's the actor's world. Obviously you're playing by certain guidelines but the show is in your hands, you're in control of what the audience sees and what might be created in the moment. With a film the actor's performance can potentially be dramatically altered by the editing process or even last minute changes to the script - think Thandi Newton's complaint when the director of Crash significantly rewrote a scene in the movie after they'd already filmed what would be her reaction to the events of that scene. In her opinion the acting choices she had made based on the original script were no longer as relevant or effective and reflected badly on her as an actress.
So what rights - bar the initial contract signing and script approval - do actors have? Once we commit ourselves to a project are we agreeing to lend ourselves, our faces, our skills, to become instruments for the filmmaker's vision? It's all very well saying we only choose to get involved with projects we believe in but that's not always an option when looking for work and it's also not always possible to be entirely sure of where a director or producer is ultimately going to go with a project. Keeping in mind that we are all now much more aware - thanks to reality TV- quite how spectacularly editing can change our perceptions of people and events, should we not all be a tiny bit more concerned how our performances can be twisted and turned into something entirely different? Most of us are far too focused on the desperate struggle to actually get cast in a film to spend time thinking about what might happen afterwards. This might be okay with harmless comedies, over the top action films or sentimentally sweet films where, if anything goes off piste the worst that's likely to happen is that we get a bit of flack from reviewers or are underwhelmed with the showreel material we get from it. But what about when a role holds us up as poster people for a political stance or religious belief that we don't represent? Then it becomes a bit more serious than mere questionable acting choices.
I pick these out as possibilities because they're particularly relevant at the moment after last month when actress Cindy Lee Garcia went to court to sue the filmmaker Nakoula Basseley Nakoula claiming she was 'duped' into appearing in her infamous movie Innocence of Muslims, which led to worldwide riots and deaths, and had not been 'aware of its anti-Muslim content'. Her request for a 14 minute trailer of the film to be removed from YouTube as it had 'violated her privacy and endangered her life' was rejected by the Los Angeles superior court judge Louis Lanvin who agreed with Google lawyer Timothy Alger's statement that 'the rights of an actor do not protect that person from how a film is perceived'.
Now, not having seen the film, her contractual agreement or truly knowing for certain what the endangerment to her life is, it is impossible to comment on this legal decision. However, taking Judge Lanvin's assertion as a stand-alone comment, I ask my own. 'Is this right?' After author Salman Rushdie was issued with a fatwa for writing a book he was offered protection based on how it was perceived. Why wouldn't actors be offered the same rights based on how work they are involved with is perceived? After all they're the ones who will be instantly recognisable to those offended. This is obviously a unique case and it would be silly to blow it out of all proportion since most of the time an actor's concern is that their scene has been unfairly cut or weirdly edited. Unfortunate but the way of the world. However this did all make me stop and think about when it might get a bit more serious. If an actor does choose to get involved with a ground-breaking - whether that be politically, religiously or other - movie or television project and, in doing so, takes an even greater risk than the directors and producers of said project will be doing, shouldn't they then be entitled to protection in the case of a public reaction to it which may result in endangerment to life, death threats and the like? If not then perhaps we should all be committing ourselves only to sweetly flippant projects or all be making our own work.
No comments:
Post a Comment