Film Courage: Why do you say that desire cannot be taught?
Michael Laskin, Actor, Acting Coach, Author: Desire for success is different than
desire to be great, to be an artist, to be outstanding at what you do is very
different than the desire for success. I think it's look there are people who are
just inordinately ambitious right out of the shoot. They just are
but I don't think it can be taught I think what I've always said this and I think it's true
I can't teach talent we talked about I can't teach desire but what I really teach well I think is
a strategy for the scene you are working on right now for the project that's a part of for your career and
for your life if I don't want to get two life coach-y about this but it's kind of all the
same it's understanding that your innate talent and desire is just there or it's not I have run
across people who are very talented and don't have the fire in the belly to be successful they don't
care about it they're not it's they're perfectly willing to be just in the mix I taught the first
time I ever taught anything this was at the Hawaii International Film Festival a long time ago and
it was fantastic gig because you got to spent two weeks in Hawaii and I taught a week-long workshop
for actors and there were a number of actors there who live there and and all that
and there was an older gentleman who was auditing he wasn't part of the actual workshop and he was
we had people who were auditing and all that just to sort of hang out and be and see it and
observe it and all that at the end of the week he came up to me with some questions
and he said I was an actor I said oh yeah and I said you were very familiar looking so I probably
have seen you and and yeah he said I was I was an actor in in did some TV and a little bit of movies
and he was older and I guess had retired and he said I said I just thought if I can just make a
living at this he said and that's all I ever did was just just make a living at it and I took that
to mean and he and he this is what he meant that he never sets his sights high enough he was just
satisfied being in the mix just satisfied being on set just satisfied getting that call that he got
a call back he wasn't he didn't aim high enough and if you aim up here you might get here but if
you aim here you're gonna get there you're going to get so that desire I don't know I don't know
where it comes from a lot of it's cultural depends on what culture you're from and and whether it's
a minority culture or like in my case I'm Jewish and it was just always imbued in us that you've
got to be you've got to be better than everybody because you're going to be judged harsher in a
more harsh way and all that so I don't know that was you learn at your on your daddy's knee I guess
what if we take the flip side and that is someone who is maybe not that talented but is incredibly
ambitious whether it's cultural or they want to show those folks back in high school or whatever
it is how do you reconcile that someone who keeps trying and banging their head against a
wall but it's just not there well how do they reconcile that I don't know I do think that
talent is a commodity tell everybody at the professional level is talented enough to be in
The Rookie or 9-1-1 or some of these kind of b-minus network shows they don't mean to
insult anybody but they're not the same as the streaming shows there's much higher quality so
they're talented enough and there are people who are what I call like mono talents they
have like they do one thing but they do it really well and it's it's commoditized
and they become a go-to person for that one thing and you've seen people we've all seen people go
oh it's that same guy he's doing the same he's he's the security guard I was talking into this
and whatever A lot of it is just is I don't really know there are people who are who are
there's an actor I won't mention him because I won't mention it but wildly
ambitious I have never in my life been around anybody where every breath of every day was
in the furtherance of their ambitions it was breathtaking and this person succeeded greatly
talented absolutely talented but I think that it leads to kind of not kind of it leads to kind of
an unbalanced life when you are that way and I don't think people who are that way can't
really control that that's just how they're wired I think a lot of this comes down to
how you're wired I interview people frequently to be in our studio and I don't
take everybody because I don't want to and I don't need to so I really I don't know any other
way to do it I just say hey let's meet or not now it's kind of on Zoom like we meet on Zoom
and tell me what you're after and let's see if we're rowing the boat in the same direction and if
we're not you won't hurt my feelings so the people I have pardon me in my circle of of students
and colleagues and clients are all people I've curated let's say and so I get consistently I'll
say people will say it's an incredible group of people just a remarkable group I said yeah it is
because I take the time to get to know them a little bit and not everybody gets who wants in
gets in exactly so I forget the original question what was your original question about desire being
taught but I love what you're saying here and that not everybody that comes in to audit the
class or be part of your class is the fit how can you tell somebody really wants it
I don't know how I can describe that but you the first thing I will do is I have I have two
exercises I do with new new students and sometimes I do it when I'm meeting people to to be involved
in the studio one is something that's standard and one is something I made up and the one that's
standard is I'll say show me something whether you want to do it live or on Zoom or you've taped it
show me something you're really good at I want to say something that you're really good at that you
think this shows everything that I really want to show and most actors have something like that in
their back pocket a piece they did in a play or a speech in a movie or something they did in the
class that they think this kills so that's what you can do that's what you can I want to see what
you can do now on the other hand I want to see who you are so I said I want you to write something
and a lot of actors kind of roll their eyes they don't like to write but
I said I want to know what I want to know what what do I want to know what about how you get
up in the morning and how you like your coffee and and traffic and your dog and and start every
sentence but this is what I know I know that and I said and don't edit it just write it stream of
consciousness I don't need to know anything you don't want anyone else to know I don't need to
know anybody's deepest darkest secrets this is not therapy this is your world view I want to see your
world view and I want to see what you can do and who you are who you are always trumps the world
view in film and television personal identity art form that's it's it's maybe always been that way
but it's more that way now it's how else do you explain
certain actors I've used I use it in my in my TED Talk use Seth Rogen as an example right I
think he's great but he does that he does he's the best Seth Rogen he could possibly be and
no one else does that and his because he has a world view because immediately when he comes into
some sort of transaction in the scene immediately I was going to respond because his worldview is so
clear most actors don't have that because we're trained to be somebody else we're trained to be
your effect you're applauded to be oh I didn't even see you there I didn't recognize you
that's not what film and TV is about and that was kind of the the Genesis of my
deciding eventually that I was going to try to teach was to sort of
try to teach to that perspective because I didn't see anybody else doing that
and so when someone comes in and they do the writing exercise of of this is what I know
I know I like my coffee with cinnamon I know that I like to wake up and check Twitter if if they
seem reluctant to do that exercise do you see that maybe there's not a willingness yeah sometimes or
when we were we're still we're back in person though we were on Zoom for a couple years as
I'm sure and when we were in person before it was like first of all you're coming in
you don't know anybody in this class you're speaking about how you see the world around
you in front of a room full of strangers out loud that's risky it's a little risky
that's why I say don't I don't want to know anything you don't want anyone else to know I
don't need to know no one needs to know that I just need to know how you see the things
how you how you interact with the world around you and so yes people will get they're either like
they pull back from it or they or they're trying to be clever and it's not really clever or they're
they find themselves getting caught up in it and getting emotional because and I'll often say no
did you learn anything about yourself that you didn't know before you did that and some of them
say yeah that was really interesting because we know these things but to actually write them out
and speak them is different and that's that's the only time I do that and it's It's Tricky
it is tricky and this there's a whole in all of the training of artists whether it's acting music
there is a teacher student relationship that's tricky the the whole guru thing which is very
prominent which I really abhor so you have to be super careful even more so today with
our world today you just have to be super careful that you're not
leading them into territory they don't want to go into and I make that's I make that very clear and
and knock on wood I've never really had anything that was like a train wreck with that exercise
and what about when one thinks they know themselves but then they are in a room of
strangers with something quite innocent revealing about themselves nothing no deep dark secret
and the room shows them they're not who they thought they were does that happen that's not
I don't think it's ever happened like that I used to also do an exercise though that might
play into that idea I would say I've done this one for a long time
somebody would walk up on stage say their name and I don't know I've given a sentence like Hi my name
is Michael Laskin I'm whatever give them something to say and everybody would have to instantly write
down three words like what did you get from that from that blink of an eye thing it's that blink
of an eye thing that is so we have that in in in life somebody comes to my door to deliver
something or or a friend or a relative we have an immediate human reaction to that person it's the
same thing on screen it's exactly the same thing on screen so when I started acting I didn't under
when I started acting on film and television I didn't understand that at all and I was not good
I was not good initially I really wasn't I had to learn that it's a different thing entirely
and that began my education toward what I'm trying to teach now.