Quest for Failure

But actors want more than autonomy; they want immortality. And by immortality, I mean three names: Chaplin, Welles, Olivier. Without exception, every would-be actor/director wants to be one of these three guys. Not to make their kind of movie, necessarily, but to attain their level of class and grandeur--their glowing totality. And the irony (not to mention the tragedy and the hilarity) of the situation is that the desire for this transformation, this lunatic ambition to grab it all and be your own godhead, is to a great extent the very energy out of which the best movie history is made. Even Chaplin, Welles, and Olivier wanted to be those three guys.

But the most compelling reason for stars wanting to become directors is also the simplest: the exercise of clout. Moneymen may be terrified of genius, but they understand power. In his first days at Keystone, Charlie Chaplin pleaded with Mack Sennett to be allowed to direct, but Sennett turned a deaf ear. Who was Chaplin? A nobody. He had an international name as a vaudeville star, but he was an unknown quantity at the movies. Sennett let Mabel Normand direct instead--she was a star, her pictures made money. She was also 20 years old and, in Chaplin's opinion, incompetent. His account of her is prophetic of the average star's paralysis before the sheer mechanics of film: He would suggest simple gag ideas but she'd be too overwhelmed to listen. "There's no time," she'd snap. "No time!! Do what you're told!!"

The situation blew up into a screaming fight. Sennett nearly fired Chaplin, and the crew (who all loved Mabel) came close to beating him up. But in one of those dramatic twists one rarely believes in fiction, telegrams suddenly flooded in from New York pleading, "Hurry up with more Chaplin pictures--the demand is enormous!" And the rest is history. Chaplin suddenly had clout to become a director himself, though (true to the eternal nature or this struggle for the most clout) Sennett kept the telegrams hidden for months and thereby forced Chaplin to guarantee the budget for his first film ($1,500) out of his own pocket.

Of course, some of the stars who push hard enough to actually get to direct are powered by the force of imagination. Chaplin had a clear idea of the kind of films he wanted to make--so did Orson Welles, so did Laurence Olivier. It's significant that each of these men entered show business in his early adolescence. In a very positive sense, they each remained adolescents, throughout their careers--they shaped their films to suit their daydreams and simply placed themselves at the center because, well, that's how it looked in their heads. (It should also be noted that each of these men came to film directing only after they'd accumulated more than a decade of theatrical experience apiece.) They were not simply narcissists--they cast themselves in leading roles with unselfconscious simplicity.

Still, you could feel the high cost of their influence when such eternal teenagers as Marlon Brando and Eddie Murphy, citing Chaplin as their hero, tried to live the same daydream: Brando had a few years of theater, and Murphy a few years of "Saturday Night" before a live audience, but on the whole, they were much less protected by conscious craft than the Big Three were. What's more, the average movie production is such a juggernaut anymore that Chaplin himself might be boggled by it.

But, no matter how or why any actor becomes an actor/director, the fact of being an actor is always partly a liability to the activity of being a director. The imperatives of an actor are clear-cut: To be a medium. To be the light, baggage-free vessel of another's intent. To be emotional, to be (in the trance of a creative moment) entirely free of all judgment, good or bad. To be absolutely impressive in turn. To be the adored child. As Kenneth Tynan put it: "On the whole, actors are not the compulsive neurotics we take them for. Many of them... were idolized by their parents. They seek (and will go to any lengths to obtain) the same central position, the same applause, the same devout attention in adult life... No, actors are not crazy, nor are they compensating for emotional neglect. They are simply re-enacting golden childhoods."

Directing is an art form temperamentally opposed to this pursuit. The imperatives aren't childlike but parental: in effect, one's job is to create a golden childhood for somebody else. To be in control at all times, to plan, to be foresightful, to be mindful of time and the psychology of the crew. To field loud phone calls from Dino De Laurentiis at four in the morning. To spend countless days at a stretch making calls to places like Thailand to raise money, arrange locations, order costumes, or simply to track down elusive but highly bankable stars whose agents are getting in the way. To make countless firm decisions in the course of those long calls, each of which will decide forever at least one important facet of the final film. (As Roman Polanski put it, "A movie is a result of all the compromises that are not made.")

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