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What's up, everybody?
Hellen here to talk about the prettiest,
strangest people on Earth, actors.
And I don't know if you know this
but sometimes actors do super wild things for their craft.
Sometimes it's learning to ice skate,
sometimes it's sewing 1,000-year-old Egyptian artifacts
into their costumes,
but sometimes, if they're a student of method acting,
it's dropping a dead pig in a mailbox.
Well, that's what it includes if you're Jared Leto.
Leto was once a critical and commercial darling,
earning acclaim from his performances
in "Requiem for a Dream" and "Dallas Buyers Club."
But in recent years,
his public persona has felt less wedded to his acting
and more to the antics surrounding
his increasingly abysmal performances.
- Nobody has ever said that to me, nobody.
- Most recently, in the two-time box office flop "Morbius."
So, how did Leto lose his way,
and is his use, or misuse, of method acting techniques
bringing Hollywood down with him?
Let's find out in this "Wisecrack Edition: Method Acting,
"What Went Wrong?"
But before we get into it
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Now back to the show.
If you're a movie buff,
you've probably heard about Leto's preferred style of acting
known as the method,
and it's worth examining what method acting actually is.
Today the term is basically synonymous
with an actor immersing themselves
so deeply in their character
that all distinction functionally disappears,
like Daniel Day-Lewis refusing to shower
while filming "The Crucible,"
or Christian Bale basically starving himself
for "The Machinist,"
or Adrien Brody nuking his entire personal life
for "The Pianist."
But while this style of acting gets a lot of publicity,
it has very little to do with method acting
as it was initially conceived.
The term the method was created by Russian acting teacher
and scholar Konstantin Stanislavski
who believed in perezhivanie,
or living a part.
He thought actors should depict life in all its real truth.
To that end he argued that they should incorporate
their own lived experiences into their performances
via emotional memory.
That is all the sensations, emotions,
and physical experiences
you had acquired over the course of your life,
which you could turn on to bring greater truth
to a scene.
He required his students to use the full extent
of their physicality and psychology
and encouraged them to think deeply
about their character's motivation
in any given scene.
Every movement you make should serve that motivation
and, if channeled correctly,
he believed this could create
a truly transcendent performance,
one in which the audience might very well forget
they're watching a performance at all.
Method acting would later be adopted
by American acting instructors
like Lee Strasberg and Stella Adler,
though they disagreed on its meaning.
Strasberg emphasized psychology
and tapping into effective memory
via techniques like improvisation.
Adler, in contrast,
evolved the craft from primarily relying
on personal lived experiences
to prioritizing extensive research and using imagination
to immerse the actor in the given circumstances of a role.
This was in contrast to what was going on in Hollywood
where silent film stars had learned
to compensate for their silence
through exaggerated motions and facial expressions.
Dramatic actors behaved more like dancers,
while comedians like Charlie Chaplin or Buster Keaton
pulled from traditions like Vaudeville
to create visual comedy that didn't need sound to be funny.
By the time talkies rolled around in the late 1920s,
film performance had been solidified in its abstractness
and realism wasn't even desirable.
What's more, Hollywood had consolidated its dominance
over national cinema
and its burgeoning studio system had established
tight control over every creative choice
that went into filmmaking,
including acting techniques.
If naturalism and silent film was functionally impossible,
once they turned the mics on
it was considered downright unprofessional.
Acting natural for the camera didn't strike anybody
as particularly impressive,
so actors turned it on,
the most successful ones patenting a particular character
to establish their star power.
Think Humphrey Bogart's world weariness
or Katharine Hepburn's airy quips and icy stares.
Through typecasting, actors were differentiated as products.
For example, when Jimmy Steward repeated
the same sweet-natured optimist performance,
he was reliably delivering a product as only he could.
Hollywood rumbled along like this for a couple decades
and Americans seemed cool with it.
That is, until "A Streetcar Named Desire" hit theaters.
You can't overstate the impact of Marlon Brando
whose performance style ushered in many of the greats,
from James Dean to Sidney Poitier and Meryl Streep.
The reason for Brando's sudden acclaim is simple.
He was one of the first Americans to use the method.
While Cary Grant was preoccupied
with acting like, well, Cary Grant,
Brando was preoccupied with capturing the unique essence
of each character,
both internally and eternally.
- You don't understand I could have had class.
I could have been a contender.
I could have been somebody.
- [Hellen] Brando's acting was certainly
in a league of its own,
but of course in this league there was crying in baseball.
- Hey, Stella!
- But he was also the right man at the right time.
Just as he was emerging,
Hollywood was undergoing a mid-century shift
in the kinds of male characters it put on screen.
This meant moving away from suave actors
trading on their star power
and towards characters who were rugged,
angry, miserable, cruel,
and anti-social to the bone.
It's no surprise that some scholars attribute this trend
to a need to express the collective pain and trauma
American men had experienced
over the course of two world wars.
Brando was the perfect avatar
for the very real collective suffering
Americans had endured.
But method acting wasn't just about capturing the zeitgeist.
In addition to facilitating more naturalistic performances,
it also gave actors a greater degree of authorship
over the work.
When creating his own backstories,
internal monologues and emotional experiences,
an actor like Brando was significantly adding to
and sometimes even changing the script.
Brando would even rewrite now iconic lines
to make them feel more natural.
- You come into my house
on the day my daughter is to be married
and you ask me to do murder, for money.
- Note the way he gently cradles the cat
as he plans a brutal hit,
and that cat wasn't even in the script.
This mother (beep).
But some actors inspired by Brando's method acting
struggled with turning their character on and off at whim.
And in the 1980s, Robert De Niro found a solution
with his breakthrough Oscar-winning performance
in "Raging Bull"
in which he played a troubled former boxer.
- I want you to hit me in the face.
- For the role he gained 60 pounds and did in-depth research
about the Italian immigrant experience.
Most notably, though,
he also stayed in character for the duration of production.
Did this make him miserable to work with?
Well, his costar Katherine Moriarty says
that it was scary to see him that way
but that she had complete trust in him
and never felt unsafe.
So, had De Niro taken the method to the next level?
Not according to instructor Strasberg
who railed against his approach.
He said, "Our technique is designed to be engaged
"and then stopped.
"You don't continue the reality."
He added, "There is a fascination with staying in character.
"It is an anxious act"
used by actors who "don't have the confidence
"to go in and out of character."
He contends that "if you are committed,
"you can pick it back up."
- If you were to draw a graph of my process, of my method,
it would be something like this.
Sir Ian, Sir Ian, Sir Ian, action.
Wizard, you shall not pass!
Cut, Sir Ian, Sir Ian, Sir Ian.
- Say what you will about Marlon Brando,
but by all accounts
he was able to turn off his role at night
and enjoy a bowl of pasta,
and De Niro's extreme interpretation
or bastardization of method acting
would define the term going forward.
Today when you think of going method,
you might think of Daniel Day-Lewis
refusing to move his body while shooting "My Left Foot,"
forcing the crew to push him around in a wheelchair
in search of greater authenticity.
While in production on "Gangs of New York,"
Day-Lewis wore only period-appropriate attire
on and off set,
and subsequently caught pneumonia.
This made for great publicity
but it also contributed to the actor's status as a legend,
someone who would sacrifice anything
in his quest to give an authentic performance.
It's also rumored that he had a huge dispute
with Paul Thomas Anderson
while filming "There Will Be Blood"
because Day-Lewis wanted to, quote,
"kill Paul Dano for realsies."
All of which brings us back to Leto.
Now Leto has been going method since his early days
playing a heroin addict in "Requiem."
For that he lost 26 pounds, lived on the street,
and stopped having sex so he would share
the constant cravings of his character,
which I think implies he was as addicted to sex
as a heroin user is addicted to heroin?
Which is, dark?
The resulting performance was wildly acclaimed.
For "Dallas Buyers Club,"
he dropped 30 pounds and stayed in character
for the duration of the shoot,
resulting in a performance that landed him an Oscar.
But popular opinion on the actor started to turn
and we'd be remiss if we didn't point out
that at least some of the Leto backlash
stems from credible allegations of sexual assault
made against the actor,
which in and of itself is reason to really not like the guy.
But opinions about his acting abilities
have also been on the decline lately,
probably due to his widely publicized antics
on the set of "Suicide Squad."
During production, Leto allegedly
treated his costars abominably,
sending them bizarre gifts such as an used condom,
a live rat, bullets, and anal beads.
After saying so himself in a red carpet interview,
Leto has since denied these gifts.
But this isn't the first time a movie star
has been guilty of disruptive on-set behavior,
though sometimes such behavior is rather delightful.
George Clooney is known for pulling
deliciously devious pranks
and everybody on set has fun.
However, what made Leto's antics so unique
was his justification for them.
He was trying to go full method.
And guess what?
It totally worked.
- I am not someone who is loved.
I'm an idea.
- Uh, yeah, so in this case,
Leto's commitment to the method
doesn't seem to have helped him craft
a deeper or more nuanced character.
You don't get the sense that he's carefully drawing
on emotional memories,
whether his own or those he's imagined for his character.
His antics mostly just seemed
to have pissed off his coworkers.
- He had a henchman who would come into the rehearsal room
and the henchman came in with a dead pig
and plopped it on the table,
and then he walked out.
And that was our introduction into Jared Leto.
- In response to criticism of his behavior,
he said, "I'm an artist at the end of the day.
"If I do something risky and you don't like it,
"basically you can kiss my ass."
Ah, the old "I'm an artist so there aren't consequences
to my behavior" excuse.
Fantastic and very original.
And we think this response reveals a lot
about what method acting has become.
In its early days it was about introspection,
connecting more deeply to yourself,
and thus to your character.
But these days it's been popularized
in the form of loud outlandish stunts,
none more important than doing crazy (beep) to your body.
By these standards,
it seems like Steve-O and Johnny Knoxville
are the method actors of our time.
Indeed, in recent years the term method has become
a catchall to articulate the courageous ends
actors will go to,
because these days it's not enough
to just stay in character for the whole production.
See, we are a rather superficial species,
so we often focus more on actors' external transformations
rather than any internal emotional work they're doing.
This has been exemplified in recent years
by Oscar-baiting performances
like Natalie Portman in "Black Swan"
or Joaquin Phoenix in "Joker"
or Heath Ledger in "The Dark Knight."
What is it with dudes who play Joker?
This process is what scholar Kevin Esch
calls actorly transformation,
which entails two things.
One, transforming your body for a role,
and two, doing so exclusively
for "greater fidelity of performance"
rather than to look a certain way.
Indeed, these bodily transformations
are often in service of constructing a character
that is ugly or revolting.
These performances garner the most acclaim,
presumably because we see these actors as brave
for sacrificing their most priced possession,
their super-human hotness.
Esch argues that this perception leads us
to overvalue such performances
simply for their physical fidelity.
Did we mention that people can be
a little superficial sometimes?
But it's not just about looks.
Modern method is also rife with outrageous antics,
exemplified by folks like Leto or, say, Leo,
who at least to his credit typically goes method
for movies that are actually good.
Take DiCaprio slicing his hand open
during "Django Unchained."
That's right, he bled real blood,
supposedly cementing his complete immersion in the role.
But Leo hit the peak of actual self-flagellation
in "The Revenant."
This man deliberately chose
to submerge himself in freezing waters
and eat raw bison liver
in order to win his first Oscar,
and his win sent a simple message.
A real actor destroys themselves for their art.
Which is why I drink a tiny teaspoon of poison
before shooting every Wisecrack video.
Arguably, "The Revenant" is far
from DiCaprio's best performance,
but it certainly was the most publicity-generating.
This furthers our suspicion that publicity,
rather than elevation of acting as a craft,
has become the point of this distorted version
of method acting,
and hardcore method actors don't only risk
harming their only bodies.
Even Brando infamously took method acting too far
while filming "Last Tango in Paris."
Though it was made before
the job intimacy coordinator existed,
surprising your costar with unplanned sexual contact
is tantamount to assault,
and Brando's not the only actor who's harmed a costar
in the name of method acting.
Take Dustin Hoffman slapping Meryl Streep
in "Kramer vs. Kramer"
or Jamie Dornan preparing to play a serial killer
by actually stalking random women
who definitely were not thanked in the credits.
Sheesh, dude.
As a result of the emphasis on physical transformation
and outrageous stunts,
critics and audiences have become more prime
to appreciate the torment and extremes
the actor went through
as opposed to the quality of the performance itself.
This type of appreciation demands
a dual perspective from viewers,
one that requires them to be simultaneously invested
in the fantasy of the film
while also being hyperaware
that they're watching an actor at work.
And the most outrageous thing about this,
beside the hassles or bison liver,
is that it goes against everything
that method acting was meant to be in the first place.
Method was about transcendence,
about losing sight of the difference
between the actor and the character.
When it becomes fuel for media frenzy,
all we do is hyper-focus on the actor doing the role.
Leo didn't disappear into his character in "The Revenant."
If anything, the character disappeared
into his awesome star power.
The only role playing going on
was that of Leo as a strong man who suffers for art.
So, what makes Leo's work revelatory
and Leto's work a punchline?
Well, perhaps because Leto's forcing
that type of intensity upon others
and doing so for low-stakes blockbusters
rather than prestige films.
While Daniel Day-Lewis probably smelled awful
on the set of "The Crucible,"
he still had to bear the brunt of his acting choices.
And when Leo cut his hand,
he dealt with the scar, not his coworkers.
However, in an era where we're learning
to interrogate the filmmaking practices of those in power,
Jared Leto variously inconveniencing
or straight up terrorizing others in the name of acting
seems pretty unappealing.
- Margot opened the box
and there was a live rat in the box.
- For example, on the set of "Morbius,"
they had to ask Leto to stop using crutches
to use the bathroom
and use a wheelchair instead,
as his commitment to method urination
was putting them behind schedule.
Despite its glamorization,
acting is still at the end of the day a job,
and like any job,
there should be a baseline of acceptable behavior
and acceptable sacrifice.
If being a dick to her administrative assistant
was part of your accountant's process,
you'd probably switch to TurboTax.
But when an actor behaves a dick to get into character,
it's often seen as proof
of their dedication to their craft.
What's more, we don't expect most professionals
to endure ongoing physical pain or emotional torment
just to be good at their jobs.
But because this suffering artist trope is so prominent,
we valorize great art being created out of pain
as a type of spiritual mystical endeavor,
and method has become the easiest way to measure that pain.
So, is method acting dead
and did Jared Leto kill it by being an asshole,
or has method just become a blanket excuse to be an asshole?
Fellow method dabbler Robert Pattinson suspects as such,
explaining that "you only ever see people do the method
"when they're playing an asshole.
"You never see someone being lovely to everyone
"while they're really deep in character."
And while that may be functionally true,
we'd argue that the method as originally conceived
is alive and well,
if perhaps not given the bulk of critical attention.
For example, Rosamund Pike who famously portrayed
Amy in "Gone Girl"
subscribes to method acting but not the full immersion
of some of its more extreme adherence.
She says, "During the making of a film,
"there are two people living side by side.
"There is you and there is the character.
"As you become more and more familiar
"in that character's head space and shoes,
"you become more deft at being able to switch in and out,
"but at the beginning you always need a way in."
To get into Amy's head, she made a special music playlist.
For another role, she would shadowbox in between takes.
While playing Amy,
she tried to channel the character's narcism,
constantly asking herself,
what effect am I having on this person?
Are they liking me, are they impressed by me?
Watching her in "Gone Girl,"
you can sense her doing what Stanislavski
instructed actors to do,
turning remembered feelings into poetry.
Interestingly enough, the ongoing conflict
between youthful dedication to method's more extreme antics
compared to the quiet focus of experienced acting
is best embodied today in the discourse
about "Succession" actors Brian Cox and Jeremy Strong.
Strong's approach to acting was profiled
in a viral New Yorker piece,
and though he identifies as immersive rather than method,
he seems to employ a lot of the same techniques.
For example, he distances himself from his costars
to mimic his character's strained relations
and requested to get actually tear-gassed in a scene
just for the authenticity.
Cox, a classically-trained Scottish actor,
finds this approach concerning.
Calling method acting an "American disease,"
he personally ascribes to a turn it on,
turn it off style of acting
that frankly sounds a lot less miserable.
So, is it time to abandon method acting?
Maybe for the Jared Letos of the world.
On a small scale, Leto was no different
than anyone who thinks their job is important enough
to justify making their coworkers' lives miserable.
His problem is less that he's taking method too far
and more that he's just being a jerk.
And all the attention he gets for doing so
undermines the actors who can use method
to carefully craft psychologically rich performances.
Overall, it seems to us that a technique invented
to facilitate more authentic performances
is now overwhelmingly drawing attention
to the actor as a performer rather than as a character.
Of course, method acting can still be used
to add quiet truths to a skilled actor's work.
- Our spirits live on in the whole of time,
exist in many vessels through time.
- That just doesn't make
for the spiciest "Entertainment Weekly" headline.
But we'd like to give the last word to Sir Laurence Olivier
who, after learning that his costar
in "Marathon Man" Dustin Hoffman
had gone three days without sleeping
to get into character,
allegedly asked, "My dear boy,
"why don't you just try acting?"
But what do you guys think?
Does modern method acting need to smoke
and or touch some grass?
Is Jared Leto spoiling method acting for everyone else?
Or is fully submerging yourself in your character
still the best way to achieve
an authentic onscreen performance?
Let us know in the comments.
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