Method(42)

I wrack my brain and can’t remember what the fuck maniacal means. I’m instantly furious. Blake reads my confusion.

“You go from fear to laughing like you’re a little bit crazy, and the hits don’t hurt. Like you asked for it, like you wanted it to happen.”

I nod. “Got it.”

“Now, think back to a time where you just didn’t give a shit what happened. Dig and think of something that hit you hard, something painful and use it.” As he speaks, he continually slams me against the wall, before rattling off the lines. “Fucking pussy.”

I shove at his hands. “Give me a second, man.”

He shoves me again. “Camera’s rolling, and you’re wasting film.”

My back jars when he pushes me again and anger spikes as he taunts me.

“Go back, trailer trash,” he says, shoving me harder. Eyes blazing, he smirks and slams me into the wall again. “Momma was embarrassing, wasn’t she? Did she have a mullet, Joe Dirt?”

In a blink, I’m back in front of middle school swearing to my mother that I didn’t take her cigarette money while she repeatedly swats me on the back of my head. Kids in every grade line the sidewalk and stare either gawking or laughing. It’s the first time I admit to myself that I hate her and detect the shift in the withdrawal of my heart.

Once she’s berated me, she screeches off in our rust-colored minivan leaving me to walk the four miles back to the trailer. Everyone is staring, jaws slack. And with every step I take toward home I get more and more pissed off. Blake shoves me again, and I let that kid take over as I spout off my lines.

“Scene,” Blake says, breaking me out of my stupor. “Not bad, even with the improv.” There’s a glint of respect in his eyes. “Where did you go?”

“Somewhere I didn’t want to be,” I mutter before I realize my lip is bleeding.

“Draw, identify, and live it. Get it?”

I did, and I was fascinated. “What’s that called again?”

“Drawing from experience, that’s part of the Lee Strasberg Method. But there are others, and there’s this whole debate about what it is and isn’t.”

I follow him to the kitchen, and he cracks our last two beers handing one to me.

“Strasberg, who’s that?”

Blake takes a sip of his beer the bottle still pressed to his mouth while he shakes his head. “Stop worrying about your training. There are plenty of untrained actors out there, and from what I can tell, you’re a natural. Morton Weary doesn’t just work with anyone.”

Morton Weary is the type of director that makes stars out of unknowns and has cast Blake and I both in Misfits, our first movie.

“He sees something in you, and I’ve seen what you can do.”

“Just tell me,” I prod. During our scene I felt some sort of universal click inside me. Maybe it’s because somehow, I can use the filth I grew up in to fuel me, but I want to know.

“Look we’re broke now, and neither of us can afford a coach, so go to the library, get on the web and look up Method acting.” Grabbing a pen from our counter, he pulls a bill from our unpaid stack, flips the envelope, scribbling on it while he speaks. “You’ve got the godfather Stanislavski, Lee Strasberg’s Method, Meisner, Chekhov, and then there’s those that go to the extreme; like Brando, DeNiro, Bale, the list is endless.”

“What do they do?”

He hands me the envelope. “They go way beyond classroom technique and spend months prepping, making sacrifices some think idiotic. That’s why there’s a debate. They live, breathe, eat, and shit their characters while they prep and during filming.”

“Really?”

“Yep,” he drains his beer. “They rarely ever break character. DeNiro is a beast. For Taxi Driver, he worked shifts as a cabbie.”

“To play a sociopath?”

“I’m guessing he did it so he looked comfortable behind the wheel, and grasped the mannerisms involved while driving a fare so they became first nature. You know, it’s a senses thing. It’s about relaxation, but not in the way you think of it. It’s allowing your body and mind to relax enough to become a sort of vessel. How can it look natural on film if you’ve never done it? And how can you relate to a bloodthirsty psycho if you’ve never been one?”

“I get it. Maddie had mentioned something about that, about the senses. She used to do an object exercise with me so I could memorize sensations of holding things, and then do the scene without it in hand.”

“Right. Method has a lot of exercises you can use to figure out who you are, get into the mind-set, help concentration, build your character, and bring truth to them by using some truths of your own and a little imagination. It’s a process, but it works for a lot of A-listers.”

“A lot of them do this?”

“Look it up. There are a ton of articles. A good percentage of Oscar winners use it.”

“How many?”

“More than half. But I’m telling you right now it takes dedication.”

“That, I’ve got,” I say, handing over my beer and sliding my wallet into my jeans.

He raises a brow as I grab my keys. “Where are you going?”

I swipe my script off the floor. “Library.”