Acting Coach Larry Moss

Good evening and welcome to another edition of FilmNut. I am your host Jeff Schubert. Glad you can join us. Well, if you're an actor watching the show, then perhaps you're aware of the continuing labor issues between the Screen Actors Guild and the Alliance of Motion Picture Television Producers. As with all politics, I would encourage you to look past the name calling and the soap opera aspects of the debate and focus on the issues. Go to the SAG website, go to the AMPP website, and evaluate each point of view. And if and when it comes time for a strike authorization vote or ratification of an agreement, vote your conscience. In the coming weeks, we may do an episode devoted to these issues, but we're not going to do that tonight. This the show about film making. What would filmm be without great acting? So, I'm very excited to have a legendary acting coach in studio with us tonight to talk about the craft. My guest this evening has been an actor and an acting coach for over 30 years and is one of the most sought-after coaches of our time. Having worked with Leonardo DiCaprio, Helen Hunt, Hillary Swank, just to name a few, he has authored the book The Intent to Live, which has received many positive endorsements. One from Jason Alexander reads, "Larry continues to inspire me to search fearlessly for the truth in the character I'm playing and in myself as a human being. I am in awe of this profoundly gifted, articulate teacher. He is a godsend, as is evident in his book, The Intent to Live." I'm looking very forward to this conversation with Mr. Larry Moss. Larry, thank you for joining us tonight. Hi, Jeff. Very much looking forward to this. So, let's Me, too. Well, good. I mean, I don't know what's going to happen, but that's true. Looking forward to whatever it is. As well, you shouldn't, right? So, let's talk about an actor coming to LA. Well, it doesn't have to be LA. It can be anywhere. They want to pursue the dream of acting. There's three different major maybe major categories of acting. Maybe there's more, but let's talk about focus on cold reading, scene study, and improvisation. uh what should this novice, this beginning actor start start with first on their journey? When I first came to New York when I was barely 19, my first teacher was Sanford Meisner. And Sandy Meisner taught being aware of the other person, putting your attention on the other person, watching their behavior. Like right now, Jeff, you're nodding at me. You're encouraging me. Now you're smiling at me. Now your eyebrows moved up. I'm just I'm just uh I'm I'm observing your behavior. And because I'm doing that, I'm not really interested in what's going on with me. I'm not self-conscious. And I think Sandy Meisner brought that wonderfully uh to actors to get rid of a lot of inhibition automatically simply because their attention was on something else. So when you say to me, what should a young actor do? It worked very well for me in that I worked in a in a in a you know wonderful school that Sandy taught and the great Bill Esper uh wonderful teacher in New York taught. Um and um uh it w it was the beginning of me not being so aware of myself that I couldn't function because I came into the acting with a lot of tension, a lot of self-doubt, a lot of uh um inhibition and terror. And my body had so uh pushed it down. my body had had had consumed so much fear that I was really a defense mechanism against expressing the fear which of course came out as terror and uh these exercises about being also breathing that was something that was so huge for me because what I found out is if I breathed I' I'd start to get emotional so those two things I had to learn early on that I think all young actors need to be aware of how do I get unself-conscious and that is by putting my attention on someone else and letting myself have free complete deep breathing. Uh you you notice when people get very emotional, what you're aware of a lot is they suddenly they start breathing because they they they can't defend it muscularly and the breath starts to get free and more emotion comes up. Uh so I hope that answers the question. Would you say then? Okay. So, a program that focuses on getting your attention off yourself onto someone else, you would want to look for that. And you'd want to look for that. You'd want to uh go to an excellent vocal coach, meaning a vocal production coach. Uh there's a great teacher named Paty Rodenberg from uh England who does an enormous amount of workshops all over the world. And she works primarily on Shakespeare, but she also works on how to breathe. You know, when you talk to Judy Danch or or Daniel D. Lewis or any of the great British actors, they talk about how at the beginning of their training, they were taught how to breathe and support the tone of their voice right away. And unfortunately in America, we don't do that enough. And that's why so many of the young actors sound like they're, you know, teenagers. Would you say then uh improvisation is a good first thing to look at because there's no script. You're not cold reading. You're not worried about, you know, getting your lines. You're not worried about memorizing your lines. Part of the Meisner work is all improvisation. uh in this um uh and Sandy Meiser's written a book that that people can read, but he talks about uh repeat exercise. If you say to me, uh you're wearing a hat and I say I'm wearing a hat. You're wearing a hat. I'm wearing a hat. Uh now you're smiling at me. I'm smiling. You're smiling. I'm smiling. And it becomes an improvisation working off of behavior. Therefore, you are not uh worried about lines. The lines are being fed by the behavior. Does that make sense? Yeah. Um, often times an actor's work will kind of have this kind of movement, this growth, this growth. When an actor reaches maybe a plateau spot where their work is leveling off, um, is that a matter of technique? Is it psychology? Is it both? when the acting goes dry, when when it plateaus, when when they're not progressing, advancing as an when they haven't fallen in love with writing, the key to having a long career and an exciting career is falling in love with writers. And uh one of the things that Stella Adler, one of my great teachers, taught me was uh to study the playwright. So we would do six weeks on Tennessee Williams and then six weeks on George Bernard Shaw and then six weeks on uh William and uh uh you know uh you began to uh understand uh all the great early writers uh from the 1800s Henrik Gibson and and August Stinberg. This this dedication to the writer gives you everything. And that is why whether people who are young uh want to work hard or not, the great actors, the one we'll line up to see, and they're very few, are a Daniel D. Lewis because he's constantly surprising us or a Merryill Street because they come from the theater. They honor writers. And when I teach acting, I say this is not an acting class. This is a class about honoring the writer. Young actors must work on great material. So, it's fine to take a cold reading class and it's fine to be on television, but what happens is you start to uh see life as three pages, but when you're working on great plays, you see a street car named Desire or A Death of a Salesman um or uh you know really study Shakespeare and really uh you know, when you first start reading Romeo and Juliet and you begin to hear the poetry and how how uh adolescent uh uh passion is expressed through language. It's so remarkable. And Uda Hagen who I used to audit her class, she said about Romeo and Juliet um is about innocence. Innocence is the inability to understand consequence. Innocence is the inability to understand consequence. That's Romeo and Juliet. When you study plays and you're activated by the ideas of the writer, that's when you get a Daniel D. Lewis. Meryill Street did 40 plays at Yale before she ever hit New York. Uh so um my my teaching and my studying was about being honorable to the writer. So that kind of honoring the writer, working hard, that kind of leads me to a section in your book where you were talking about Stella Ad Adler and the importance of script analysis, right? Because is that kind of where we're going? That's where we're heading. Yeah. I mean I I uh I was very confused as a young actor about how to find behavior for I was very attracted to playing crazy people because I felt crazy you know so I I I I loved playing you know idiosyncratic and you know bizarre behavior was how I felt inside um and I I fell in love as many young people do with uh you know Tennessee Williams uh and street car Named Desire but I didn't understand how to play Stanley Kowalsski or how to play Blanch Dubois and the great Harold Clerman who's written a wonderful book uh several wonderful books but one called on directing um and uh Stell Adler wrote a book on Ipsson Stinberg um and Czechov uh and they they break these scripts down into character objectives. So when you take a look at a character who is mentally disturbed as Blanch Dubois is what it all boils down to is she's trying to find a safe place. What you then begin to see is that every single scene that character is in some way trying to find a safe place. Whether she's flirting, demanding, uh uh uh begging, um uh uh toying, whatever active verb she's doing, it's in order to find a place that's safe because she has no money and no place to go. It starts to get broken down in a simple and actable way. That's human behavior. And when you work on great plays, you see how much human beings are alike. And then the fascinating differences, which is the behavior and the background of the character. The thing that Stella Adler taught was you've got to understand the Civil War to understand the south of the Tennessee Williams characters. that Elma and uh Laura in the glass managerie and Elma in Summer in Smoke and and Blanch in in Street Car um were the women who fell because in the South prior to the Civil War they were called virgin goddesses and they gave parties and the men had sex with the women slaves and the the women were hostesses and they didn't know about the real world and so when the South ended when it fell they were left to go crazy because they only knew about a presentation. They didn't know what it was to be human because that's not what they were supported to be, to understand poetry, to understand the finest of music, to understand how to wear a dress, to understand how to serve a bowl of punch and what fork to use. But that doesn't help you get a job in the world. So, all those characters are uh dysfunctional based on what they were brought up to be, but there was no place to be that anymore. Well, I didn't understand any of that. Stella Adler taught me why. I mean, Vanessa Redgrave says, "If you don't understand the social economic realities of the character, their education, how they were raised financially and what they did to get an education or not, you cannot play the character." Yeah. I mean, that makes perfect sense. And that So, in other words, the better you understand the character, the more break down the script that can help an actor who's blocked. Are there examples though when um there something in a character touches something psychologically within the actor and that's the cause of the block and it's a psychological blockage? You know, in a funny way, it's very simple. People get shamed when they're young in many different ways. And if you're shamed because you throw a tantrum and you're not allowed to be angry, what do you repress? If you're called uh a [ __ ] because you're crying um or for a boy and if a girl is aorious and and and and and uh assertive or aggressive and they go that's not feminine. The kids begin to shut down aspects of their psychology. Then they decide to be actors. They can't get angry. They can't cry. They can't be expressive because they feel they're going to be humiliated. And what you do is certain kind of physical exercises and sensory exercises, meaning things that somebody smells, tastes, touch, hears, or sees. And they begin to relax enough to be able to say, "Oh, I'm seeing my my sister who used to hit me." And you suddenly feel the punch or the or or the pinch. And you see the eyes and suddenly and you and if the teacher says now tell her off and suddenly this 20 years of repressed rage comes out and you begin to really really talk from your real anger and then maybe in the underneath that is sobbing and suddenly you go oh my god I am releasing and experiencing because audiences want to see experience they don't want to see an intellectual idea of life they want to see life and most good plays or films have to do with heightened reality, meaning it's a time in the life of the character where they are feeling intense emotion. Now, whether you reveal it or not, the the what's interesting about acting is if you're a very angry person or a very hurt person, how do you hide that? And that becomes the behavior until the third act of the movie or the play where you suddenly uh the avalanche happens. Right. Well, we got some IM's piling up, so I definitely want to work some of those in. Okay. Velvet would like to ask you, "My friend wants nothing more in life than to be a working actor. Are there roles out there for people that are maybe a little shorter than most or not plasticl looking?" You know, I don't know if you know uh an actress named Linda Hunt, but Linda Hunt is a very small, petite lady and uh not Hollywood beautiful. She has an incredible intellect. She has an incredible emotional depth. And she's had a wonderful career. Anyone who is serious and desirous of an acting career and is willing to work for it and I mean work hard in acting class, in reading uh in uh uh listening to music, in observing the great performances on film that that are there to be seen to find out what you like, what kind of an actor or actress do you want to be and most importantly what do you have to say? You know, Stella Adler used to say, "Don't be an actor unless you have something to say." Well, maybe you have something to say about being short, you know, or or or or tall or fat or or or pretty or handsome. I mean, you know, people have a lot of deep feelings about a lot of things and acting can use that. So, of course, your friend can do it, but get to a good teacher. Start reading, start studying, start crying, start punching, not people, but punching out and feeling your body. Acting is a physical experience. My long answer is yes, they can if they want to badly enough. Wonderful. Torhorn Bourne would like to ask, "It's not acting per se, but could you offer any tips to the video vlogger using new mediums such as YouTube?" Help me. Meaning, uh, let's see. You know, people have you, you know, on YouTube, people like make little um episodes. All right. Okay. That sort of thing. Uh, any tips for acting for that particular new medium? You know what? We act every day. We act every single day. You say to someone, you go, "How are you?" You go, "I'm fine." And you feel like crap, but you don't want to get into it. So, you go, "I'm fine." You got to make them believe that you're fine. If you go, they go, "How are you?" You go, "I'm fine." They're immediately going to say, "What's wrong?" So, acting is behaving based on the circumstances you're in and most importantly, what do you want? The most the four letters that acting is about the most is want. What do you want and how you going to get it? And before that is who are you? Meaning what nationality are you? What kind of an educational background? How do you use language? But when you get down to the bottom of any script, and I'm talking any script, the character walks into the script with a want and they try to get it. Just like life, just take a notebook with you and mark down all the ways you try to get what you want during the day. From getting your coffee, going to a restaurant, going on a date, hanging out with friends. Watch how you operate and that'll teach you what acting is really about. I want something. How do I get it? What's my obstacle in the way of getting it? And how do I overcome that obstacle with behavior and active verbs? Tease. Uh criticize. Um uh um Larry, you have a quote in your book. Yeah. Obstacle, object, and intention are the triad of all. Exactly. Exactly. You have a want in any good player film. You have a want. There's something in the way of getting that want, and you try to get over the obstacle by doing specific things. And that's acting because that's life. I mean, that's the thing that people have to really understand is that there isn't life in acting. Acting is life and life is acting. It's just different people who come from different walks of life. You know, uh, do you have an accent? Do you have an impediment? I mean, Laura in the glass managerie has a limp. That's an important part of the character. Daniel D. Lewis in my left foot had the use of his left foot and that created the entire character. The great person to watch for this uh I mean the two people that I would watch is is uh and and particularly as I talked in my classes without sound are Mel Street and Daniel D. Lewis if you watch without sound without sound because you can watch their physical behavior right and you won't see the physical behavior as much when you're having an audio experience. Then after you've watched it without sound, then start to see what they're doing with their accent work, their rhythms, and their tempos. It's a craft, and they're the best of it because they're so committed to bringing the person that the a that the writer wrote to real life. So if you watch Meyer Street in Sophie's Choice and then you watch her in Bridges of Madison County, one is Polish, one is Italian, right? Her body language is extraordinary. Daniel D Lewis in Last of the Moheakans and uh Room with the View and um uh you know there Will Be Blood. The man is just remarkably creative in finding the center of that man he's playing physically, vocally, and emotionally. But they are always trying to get what they want. And if anybody watching this, if they say, "Did I get anything from this interview with Larry Moss?" I want I've got to get what I want. There's something in my way. How do I try to get it? And what am I trying to make the other person do or feel? In every scene, you're always trying to get something from the person, trying to persuade them to do something. So, what are you trying to get them to feel or do? If you know what you're trying to get them to feel or do, you'll do something to get that to happen. Right now, before we came on, we showed a little uh three-minute clip of Larry working with a with a female actress, and you were going through a battery of questions with her, right? where you were asking her what she wanted or or why she wanted it and she was talking about how it means everything in the world to her, how she wants it desperately. And then when you said, "Why do you want it more than anything in the world? Why do you want it desperately?" She said, "I don't know." Um, you have because the answer is finally, well, you you do have to want it more than anything in the world because cabaret is about the deaths of six million Jews, right? And that character doesn't want to know about it and they really don't want to know about it. Um, uh, I'm gonna drink, I'm gonna drug, I'm gonna play, I'm gonna party, I'm gonna have sex, I'm gonna have a cabaret of my life because I don't want to look at the fact that I just had an abortion, that World War II is about to happen, and six million bodies are going to be piled up. So, come to the cabaret. And what that's what I had to get the actors to understand that there's a subtext underneath that song, right? Which is heavy duty and you can't play it like some kind of, you know, uh, musical comedy uh, right? That's not that ain't what it's about, right? Because there's a difference between uh, saying you don't want to know and really not wanting to know. There's there's a whole different world of Sally BS does not want to know. And Bob FY did a brilliant thing in that movie on the last vowel of cabaret. The la the last um uh I always forget this word. Uh uh syllable syllable. Thank you so much Jeff. Uh the last syllable of cabaret is ray. Well, Bob FSY does about 20 different uh editing moments in the life is a cabar and as she's holding Ry the camera is moving in so she's actually moving in kind of a diagonal in complete limbo completely lost in the frame that was FSY understanding the subtext of that character being completely out of touch with reality right and so it's an art. It's a craft. It's it's it's it's it's uh it's education. And uh at this time in history, now that we have a new president, hopefully the people out there will want to be great at something, right? Not just be famous and make money because I I know a lot of famous people and I know a lot of rich people and it doesn't mean they're happy. The people that I know who are happy fall in love with something in their life that they work on every day for eight or 10 hours. You know, you and I were talking about it, Jeff. You know, uh, somebody who wants to be in the Olympics or somebody who wants to be a violinist or a gymnast or a writer, you have to do it eight or 10 hours a day. Actors say, "Oh, well, I'll, you know, I'll get a television series and I'll have a big house and I'll have, you know, lots of girls or lots of guys and it'll be wonderful, you know, and everybody will know my name." And basically, what I want to say to them is, "You're a tragedy." If you don't get good at something in your life, then you won't have a life. Yeah. Very generally speaking, artists don't seem to have the work ethic that let's say athletes do. Actors don't, right? Artists, real artists do. Dancers would be an example. Dancers because they have no choice. They have no choice. And actors don't have a choice, but they think they have a choice. Well, they don't. You know what I mean? Because it's nice to sit around and and have coffee with people and say, "Well, you know, I I have an audition for uh you know, this sitcom and I and I and I did a three-page episode on CSI, whatever. Uh, it was very well put by a casting director in a workshop I attended one time who was saying if you had a 2-hour a day part-time job, 10 hours a week, would that be a lot? And the class said, "No." His next question was, "Okay, how many actors in here put two hours a day towards their career?" And no one raised their hand every day. It's a tragedy, right? It's a tragedy. But one of the great experiences I've had as a teacher and then as a director is when I did the first play that I directed which was about South Africa called the Seringatree which came out of class an exercise. We worked for over three years four workshops premiered it at ACT in Seattle and then opened in New York. Ultimately it took it took four years thousands of hours of work. Pamela Gene, who wrote it and starred in it, and I were in a room together for thousands of hours. We didn't know we were going to have a hit. We didn't know that it was I just loved the story. I thought she was a great actress, and I wanted to tell this tale. And I didn't make a dime for over three years. I didn't do it for the money, and I've never done it for the money. I do it because I love it. I do it because writers and directors and actors saved my life. They showed me what it was to be human. I didn't learn that at home. I learned that at the movies and in the theater. And uh so I take it very seriously, not overly seriously, not over seriously, but with great passion and gratitude for people who have worked very, very diligently to be good at something. Because to be cool and say, "Oh, everything's easy and you know, I don't have to, you know, and you know, it's the Paris Hilton way of thinking. You know, I never I don't sweat about anything." Right. Now, the Grace didn't get to be the Grace by that way of thinking. No. Let's see. I think we have an audition question coming in here from the Cuban Cannon. Should an actor have all his decisions made before he comes to see you? That sounds like Do you coach actors before auditions? I I do. Uh most of my work is in preparing people for movies. Um so they've gotten the part and you're now working with them. They've gotten the part. And is this uh you're hired individually by the actor or the studio or the film? Both. I'm I'm hired individually by actors and by the studios uh for different projects. When hired by the studio or even the actor, what is your relationship with the director and working with the actor and so forth? Well, gratefully and humbly I say I have a enough of a reputation that now directors are not threatened by me. So I work uh you know uh sometimes very closely with the director. Sometimes the director just says go and work with Larry and prepare for the movie because we don't have any rehearsal period. I mean do you make do you meet ahead of time to make sure you and director are on the same page as far as the given circumstances or the script analysis? Sometimes sometimes I mean when I did the green mile which I and I coached Michael Clark Duncan for the green mile Frank Daraban was just said you know take him coach him come on the set prepare him and uh we worked very closely together uh and and you know I only want the movie to be good if I sign on to do a movie it's cuz I like the movie and therefore I'm never going to be at odds with the director because it's his or her vision. I don't it's not my egos on the line. I don't do a movie that I don't really like uh because I pay too high a price to know I'm putting crap out into the world, you know, and I don't want to do it. Sure. Uh so, but when I do coach for auditions, it goes back to what I said before, Jeff, which is who are you? You know, social economic level, education, how do you speak, uh what nationality are you? now. And that's part of the actor's homework before they see me. That is right. They've got to do some of that homework before they see me. Then they can have an idea about what the scene's about. And what I do is, for instance, we'll work um on an emotional moment. And I'll say, "Well," and they're blocked on it, and we'll say, "Well, let's find an asif." what could happen to you that maybe has not happened but could happen that would cause you to be uh to weep and the the you know it's very irrational what co causes different people to laugh or cry or get pissed off. Um you have to know yourself very well. My and I wrote about it in my book when I was 10. I saw a little uh baby Irish sweater uh um Irish setter uh run over by a car and I watched uh him die. And when I was watching the quivering flesh of the puppy and the blood uh and the innocence of the eyes looking at me saying, "What's happening to me? I I don't know what's happening." And what was happening is he was dying. Well, I I don't have to think of that very much to get emotional. And that happened when I was 10. I have to see the quivering flesh. I have to see the blood. I have to see the puppy's eyes. And I start to go. That's a real memory. On the other hand, I did a part when I was a young actor of a of a guy who was in a sweat shop uh in early 1900s and stood up for all the women in the in the sweat shop and would literally risk his life and his job to uh to protect women. So I asked myself as an actor, what could make me that protective of women when I had no money and I could be hurt physically? And then I had a fantasy of a a drunk man pushing a woman into a radiator and having her head crack open and holding her in my arms while she moaned and died. And that was my mother. And I imagined it. It never happened to me, thank God. But I saw the room. I smelled the liquor on his breath. I I felt the crack of her skull. I felt her hand, you know, grab mine. And man, every time the that that that bully in that sweat shop tried to hurt a woman, I mean, I was up like a shot. So those are two instances of something that does happen that makes me emotional and something that I imagined. And this is part of the work you would do with an actor. Yes. Prior. Yes. And honest would like to ask, do you believe that actors should start in sporadic types of roles or work on one type of role, comedy, drama or action? Does that question make sense to you? Yeah. I mean, I think first of all, you have a certain emotionality about you, a certain energy about you, and you're attracted to certain stories. You've got to understand what kind of stories you're attracted to. And then you've got to start reading. And if you go to an acting class, I would say find a part you love that you're right for that you could be cast for, and start working on the play every single scene. And when you get through with every single scene in that play, then do the opposite of that. If that was a drama where there was a lot of drang, a lot of crying, a lot of anger, work on a comedy, then start working on something that has a different accent. I'll give you a very important clue. Your ancestors come from from a certain place in the world. My my blood memory, which Stella Adler used to talk about, is Russian, English, and my mother's from the deep south. So I have all that blood in me. Well, I have a real affinity for playing English people, Russian people, and southern people. I always have. You need to find out what blood you come from and work on parts with that blood because you understanded something in your unconscious mind that other people who don't have that blood inside of them uh would. So, I that that that's a good way to go about studying. And you don't may not even know what you're good at. You may think you're bad at comedy and you might be great at comedy. You have to try a lot of stuff out. Absolutely. Don't limit yourself. That was uh something I did early on that I'm very thankful I had a coach who encouraged me to expand. Well, yeah. It's like when people say, "Oh, you know, you're a character actor, you'll play the funny guy." Well, that's not always true. Sometimes the character actor can have a leading man quality. And sometimes, um, a leading man is a real character actor, you know, like Paul Newman, bless him, was a character actor. He was a really handsome guy. But if you take a look at his first movie, he had a breakthrough and it was playing Rocky Gratziano, a price fighter with a broken nose, uh, you know, from Brooklyn. And then he then he played a Mexican bandit and, you know, then he played Sil Hud and some of those sexy guys, but he always went back to characters, which is why he had such longevity as an actor. He was a real actor. So don't be typed. Well, we've got a great IM that is very synchronistic with the area I was about to go into. Okay. So, I'm going to go ahead and let the I ammer lead off this part of the conversation. Torren Hornborn would like to ask, "What would be the number one tip you could give a director on working with actors in getting their best performance?" Um, or we can talk about the communication between actor and director and what's the best and most effective ways for directors to communicate with actors, you know? There's an old saying that 90% of directing is casting, right? So, if you cast someone that you believe can do the role, get out of their way. Basically, don't overdirect. Trust your actor. And if you've done your homework as the director, you can tell whether they're going off into a direction that's not helpful to the story. But basically, you know, I know this is true with Sydney Lamett. I know it's true with Clint Eastwood. I know it's true with Woody Allen. They don't say very much. Only when only what's needed, you know. Uh I remember when I was doing a musical on Broadway called the Robert Bridegroom. I had a scene in it where the audience used to like me very much and I fell in love with their liking me and the director came back and I'd been running in it for about six months and he said, "Larry, you know, you're the dark color in the show." And that's all he said. And I immediately stopped being seductive with the audience and stopped trying to get them to like me because I fell in love with that attention. But he just said one sentence, Gerald Freedman, and he said, "Don't forget you're the dark color in the show." That a good actress, they don't need a lot. Well, there's also a lot of actors out there who aren't necessarily good. But but let's talk. I know in your book you talk about uh you know specifically when it comes to direction a director saying be angry is maybe not as strong of a direction as saying you're annoyed. Well, good actors you know and bad actors will only get worse if you say just be angry. If you say to the actor, get him or her angry, provoke them. In that provoking them, you're going to have to be aggressive. So, you say to the actor who's not operating well, what are you trying to get the other person to feel or do, which I talked about before, what are you trying to get them to feel or do? Put your shoulder behind that. And suddenly that bad actor or actress may suddenly find something amazing. You know, it's the it's the a it's the director's job to inspire the actor to a better performance if the actor or actress doesn't know how to get there. And if you have a bad director actors and you're not good, you're in big goddamn trouble, right? You're in big big big trouble. That's why studying is so important. If people read my book, The Intent to Live, there's exercises in that book which they can do on a daily basis to crack through these problems. The other thing that's interesting and I'll tell you that I feel passionately about is how people try to get things make them very interesting. So people say, "Well, I'm going to I'm going to I'm going to u um I'm going to make fun of you or I'm going to I'm going to accuse you. Uh I'm going to indict you. I'm going to uh to um uh um toy with you. But you go and you look in the thesaurus and you look at for all the synonyms for those verbs and you start to go, "My god, a accuse has 20 synonyms." And for every slight nuance and every different word, another behavior comes up. Now, for some people, this may seem very odd, but just go to a thesaurus and look up verbs and synonyms and then do a physical action, a different physical action for every verb. You'll be amazed. Yeah. And I guess what you're also getting to is the more specific you can be. Yeah. Yeah, I mean there's a great story about Brando when he did sayanara and he had to find his best friend and his best friend's wife who was Asian then because they couldn't be together commit harikari he finds them dead and his line in the movie was oh my oh my and I had a friend of mine who was in that movie and he went to the set the day that Brando was going to do the oh my oh I Okay, so the camera's in a close-up of Marlon Brando. There's a a rice curtain that he, you know, slides. The camera comes in. Now, I mean, you can imagine Marlon Brown is going to say, "Oh my, oh my, after finding his best friend dead from suicide with his Asian wife. What's he going to do? What's he going to do?" Well, hopefully you'll all go and see. Well, you know what his choice was? Oh my. Oh my. Like two little babies, two little lost babies. Oh my. And when Brando was operating at his best, he would make choices like that. There's 90 ways to say, "Oh my, oh my." And then there's the most human way. And the more human and the more specific, as you were saying, Jeff, the more amazing the performance starts to be. There's a great movie uh starring a great actress now deceased named Chem Stanley called The Goddess. And in one scene, she tells her mother off because she can't get her mother to love her. And her mother's like a born again Christian. And she goes after her mother and she says, "Mama, mama, I hate you and I hate God and I hate everything." I mean, you know, I'm paraphrasing, but she she she went after her with the most vicious attack, but in the middle of it, she started sobbing. So, her her instinct was to obliterate her mother, but the need for the mother brought out after all the rage came out was all this grief. It's a great performance. And you all, everyone should watch the these two films with Chem Stanley. The Goddess written by Patty Chaki, which is actually a a movie about Marilyn Monroe and another great film called Seance on a Wet Afternoon, where she does a seance that will blow you away. But I'm talking about choice and uh the physicality of a Daniel D. Lewis who I've been told by people who work with him that he prepares physical choices and repeats them every take. Now he may have changed that he may do it not that may not be true but when you watch his physicality there is a absolute psychological emotional power to his physical behavior and uh it's not oh it could be this or it could be that it's absolutely that it's a complete dedication to the choice he makes let's get to that's wonderful I just want to get some more IM's here the dark side of the force would like to ask you would you ever go back to teaching weekly classes. So, you used to teach weekly and you don't currently, you know, it's so it's so interesting. I I'm so grateful to teaching. Teaching gave me everything. And I did for 30 years, five nights a week. And I used to work all day on coaching films and then work all night. And I realized that I had to direct and I had to teach another way. And which is why I do these 4-day seminars where we do 16 to 18 plays, scenes from 16 to 18 plays. And the actors are given two weeks of rehearsal. They have to come in with full costumes, full props, full accents. And it's so thrilling because the young actors see plays they never knew existed. They see period pieces. They see uh the great writers. And I'm happy to say that actors say to me, "It changed my life." Uh, so I found a way to teach that is fulfilling for me, but I have a lot of living to do personally. And I also have another book I want to write and I also have a movie I'm going to direct and some plays. You know, I'm going to do this new uh play here in LA. not new. It's a play that John Patrick Shanley wrote uh called Beggars in the House of Plenty, which opens at Theater Theater on February 20th. Which theater? Uh Theater Theater on Pico. Um I I will eventually go back to to to uh classes, but it won't be probably for three or four years. Okay. But I I but I teach all over the world now, so they're just But they're four-day seminars, right? Yeah. Uh let's see. I um The Cuban can like to ask another question. Uh oh. Is David Mamemoth nuts? And I we David is poor David Mamemoth nuts. Little David Mamemoth. A little a little background for the viewer. Um David Mamemoth is a famous playwright who's got a a book about the craft. And he made a what some consider a controversial remark about actors basically just having to show up and you don't really have to study. Yeah, David is is a very he's a David Mame is a provocator. He likes to say a lot of silly things to piss people off. Um, is he nuts? I don't know the man. Is he misinformed? And is he based on those uh sentiment? Yeah. uh it he's misinformed and in that way destructive because when you take a look at an actor like Mel Street or Daniel D Lewis uh or Dustin Hoffman uh or Juliet or or any other actor or Brando or or or Dean or Clif or you know they came from the theater Paul Newman they they uh Paul Mun all came Betty Davis they all came from the theater they all studied you know all the great actors study they just have to study with good teachers the actors out there have to read Bobby Lewis's book advice to the actors uh method or madness uh a great book called sense of direction by William Ball is David Mamemoth incorrect David Mammoth is completely incorrect about the study of acting has nothing to do with his talent as a writer that is obvious But is he nuts about acting? Without question. Is he right about active intentions, about not being overly indulgent and acty? Of course he is. But to say there's no moment before there's no character. Tell that to Athell. Tell that to to you know to Blanch Dubois. Tell tell that to uh to Tartou. You know, tell that to uh uh you know, the think of Sally Field in Norma Ray of What do you mean there's no character? What are you insane? What do you mean in your book when you say uh I'm taking a little snippet out of a quote about actors also getting out of their own way? Oh, well, wow. What I mean is actors who fail, who have talent, usually have a psychological problem. And whether it is control issues or a narcissistic uh everything has to revolve around me, being too thin skinned, being argumentative, being uh uh dismissive. Uh I believe deeply in the therapeutic process and it was therapy and good therapists who helped me to find a way to live when my instinct as a young person based on things I suffered as a child made me want to die. And I had a lot of terror as an actor and so I walked into the room both angry because I was scared. And it was only after working in therapy and working in acting class did I begin to really have a career as an actor. And I, you know, I had many dreams come true working on Broadway and working in film and and now the career I have now that came from self-nowledge from facing the fact that I needed to change. The world wasn't going to change. I needed to be less angry. I needed to be less thin skinned and hurt easily. I needed to pull myself up by my bootstraps and say I can get through this and I don't have to be, you know, an idiot about it or argumentative. We're here to I think it's this time in history which is so true. We're here to work together and actors who are narcissistic and everything's about me will eventually self-destruct. Uh you have to know yourself. And I would just add to that if you've had a rough background, meaning difficult parents or trauma or abuse, if you don't get help and you think that fame and fortune and and notoriety in show business is going to make you better, just take a look at Marilyn Monroe and take a look at Heath Ledger and take a look at Montgomery Clif and take a look at you name it. Yeah, sure. You're you get to be a good artist and you get to have a good life and you work hard and you understand that you're not the center of the universe. You're here to do service. Very hard for young people to see that. But service must come first to yourself. Charity begins at home healing and helping yourself first. Then you can start to deal with the world. It's one great life lesson, you know. And another way I saw it and I kind of view the quote that I was talking about of you and a little bit of mammoth in a very strange way even though I disagree with Mamemoth. What I extract from it though is sometimes in sports the best athletes aren't the best performers at the most crucial time. You know, they call that choking. Yeah, that's right. Even though they have all the talent in the world. And I think you see that sometimes with with good actors and and acting class because their their ego is in their way. Not maybe Yeah, it's ego fear. you know, whatever the case may be is but to to me that's another example of an actor getting in their own way. Well, I was working once the scene start the preparation is before the scene starts but once it once action is called you have to trust yourself right you have to trust yourself and fly and listen that's the other thing about acting that everybody knows about and some people forget is I've got to make the audience believe I've never heard this before. Well, how do I do that? Not only do I listen to the language, but I listen to what the other actor the meaning of what they're saying. I mean high can mean go to hell. It's like what did you mean by that? Right? You know you do that in fact you go home for Christmas and your your you know your father says to you how you doing and you go are you starting with me dad? I'm not starting. I just said how you doing? Yeah but the way you said it I know that you're being provocative. So it's not just listening to the language but what the language means that keeps the acting alive. Wonderful. If acting is reacting. We're starting to run short on time, so I'm going to try to get as many questions as I can. If acting is reacting, how do you work with actors and prepare them to work in film when often times they're staring opposite a camera, a standin, um, anything but the actual actor. They're they're not being given what we think they're being given when we see the finished cut in the movie. You know what I'm saying? Imagination. And you tell them, "And oh, by the way, if you move a half an inch, you're out of frame." Right? So that is the the sensory work of visualizing or hearing. So you know I remember talking to Helen Hunt about the movie she did about the hurricane. Now the cyclone the Yeah. Twister I think. Twister. Yeah. Now there was nothing. I mean they were in a studio. It was you know blue screen. Uh um is it green screen or blue screen? It's it could be either. Blue screen or green screen. One of those. and she was imagining mythological horrors. She fed herself certain imagery in her mind's eye that was equivalent to what she was seeing for the movie. So this idea of well there's nothing in front of me but what if there was what could make me horrified? What vision could I see? I mean there's all these you know chop movies where you have to see somebody beheaded or I mean hopefully nobody will do those very much anymore once a year. Um, your imagine has to say I'm watching some someone being hurt. What makes me terrified? What could I see in my mind's eye that could make me quake with terror? Nobody can tell you, Jeff, or me what that is. The actor has to know themselves well enough to say, "Oh, don't ever put me in a room with a rattlesnake. Oh god. Oh my god. There's Oh my god. Oh my god. Oh my Oh my god. Oh my god. Oh my god. Oh my f. Oh god. Oh I mean I mean that's imagination, right? But if you know the great word is but if what if you know a black widow spider. Yeah. Home Alone. Very funny scene. Uh Tornhorn Borne would like to ask another question. Good question tonight from you to Torren. Thank you. Uh would shyness be a common obstacle for most actors to get over? If so, what tips would you offer? Yes, I'm shy. I was always shy. Uh, demand your right to express yourself the way that you want to and dance. Go to places and dance and dance at home and make yourself tell people jokes and force yourself to ask people walking down the street. My therapist made me do this. Uh if you're walking and you're taking a walk or a run and somebody runs by, hi. Just hi. Just make contact. In other words, do things that are not ordinary ordinary for you and make you feel uptight. Uh you suddenly go, "Oh my god, my shyness is a little egocentric." Now, let me say something else about that. Part of my shyness was that I had a social phobia which was treated through anti-depressants. I was uh pathologically shy. But it wasn't because I was neurotic. It's because I didn't have enough serotonin in my brain. When I went on a very very low dosage, it's like doing a show like this. If I if I wasn't if I wasn't slightly medicated, this experience would be terrifying for me. I would think there was a rattlesnake in the room. Not that bad, right? But I used to go to functions and even when I got up to teach and I would feel irrational fear. Except after about an hour of teaching, I immediately began to relax. And the psychopharmarmacologist said, "Oh, that's because your hyperfocus changed the chemical reaction in your brain." I'm not proilitizing or saying anybody should do anything that I did. I'm simply saying shyness can be your nature. It can be a chemical problem. It can be a trauma problem. You have to go to work and find out. And if it's simply because you're shy by nature, you have got to do exercises that make you go out to people more. Well, another interesting thing, and then I'll wrap it up with my I'm sorry. And play parts of people that aren't shy. In other words, go into acting class and play a frigin bold, assertive, outgoing person and you'll go, "This is going to kill me." You go, "No, it's not you. It's the character." That's the other thing I want to say to actors. The great thing about acting is it's not you. It's the writer creating a story. Get into the story. It's not about you. It's not about you. It's about the story. Yeah. I was going to follow up with something like that where a lot of our best actors and actresses are shy people that can come out in all these other other wonderful characters that aren't them. Well, some some some really good actors say it's it's acting that is my therapy. It's that's the place where I in life I'm shy but in in on the stage or in front of film I could do anything. Wonderful. Before we go any uh you mentioned that play where is it playing and listening at theater uh on Pico near Labraa uh theater theater. It's John Patrick Shanley, a writer I love very much. John Patrick Shanley's Beggars in the House of Plenty, written in 1991. Uh, wonderful play. Wonderful play. And your website is larry moss.org. Is that correct? I have no idea. How about that? How about that? I'm fairly confident. It's larry moss.org. You can find out more information on Larry, who he's worked with, his book. The name of the book again for the audience, The Intent to Live. Intent to live. And that's this would be a great book for actors and directors to read. And we thank you so much for coming on. I loved it. I can't believe how much I talked. Wonderful. Break a leg with the play and enjoy the rest of your stay in LA. Pleasure. Have a good night, everyone. We will see you next week. Huh?