Cameras, lights, no action

We’re having serious trouble finding an actor who can actually understand the character. I think the problem is largely one of culture. The character that we’ve created is philosophical, intellectual and fascinated by subjectivity and the human brain. Over here most people aren’t dealing with those kinds of issues, however. They are far more fascinated with the economy, politics, technology and the internet. I wouldn’t quite call the people around us a different breed of people, but they certainly work in a different way.

For example, the first passage in the audition text (shown below) is often not even understood. It is a thank you speech, but many people just think of it as a remembrance or idle chatter; in the second speech the people don’t understand the metaphysical nature of the main character’s defiance; while the actors frequently miss that the third speech is actually an attempt by the main character to trap and hurt the warden.

We had one guy who was intelligent (western?) enough to grasp exactly what each of the spiels meant, but then he had the problem that though he understood it only after a huge amount of input from us could he actually properly emote it. He got it in the end, but for just the three speeches we’ve got above we needed two hours. That would mean that for the whole piece we’d need days and days. We’ve got the time, but does he? After all, we’re probably not going to pay him.

And he is, till now, our best candidate.

So now we’re considering if maybe I should just do it. That will make life a great deal more difficult for me. I’d then be the writer, the director and the actor. The writing hat is, of course, already largely done; but I wonder if I can assess what I’ve done and what we’ve captured on the camera objectively (in other words, if I can actually direct my own acting). Still, we need to consider it because the clock is ticking and we’ve only got so much time left before we hit our deadline.

On a more positive note, we might have at least found a chunk of our financing. That will certainly help to make things a great deal easier. Once we’ve got at least part of the money in place, we’ll be able to focus largely on the creative side. We’re meeting this guy tonight, let’s hope for the best.