Kevin Spacey
speaker
258 appearances
1 recordings
1 series
first heard Jun 2024
last heard Jun 2024
Kevin Spacey’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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Appearances
One of the things that I feel that I try to do in my work is when I read something for the first time, when I read a script or play, and I am absolutely devastated by it. It is the most extraordinary, the most beautiful, the most life affirming or terrifying. It's then a process, weirdly, of working backwards.
Because I want to work in such a way that that's the experience I give to the audience when they first see it. That they have the experience I had when I read it. I remember that there's been times in the creative process when something was pointed out to me or something was... I remember I was doing a play and I was having this really tough time with a...
one of the last scenes in the play, and I just couldn't figure it out. I was in rehearsal, and although we had a director in that play, I called another, a friend of mine who was also director, and I had him come over, and I said, look, this scene, I'm just having the toughest, I cannot seem to crack this scene.
And so we read it through a couple of times, and then this wonderful director named John Swanbeck, who would eventually direct me in a film called The Big Kahuna, but this was before that, He said to me the most incredible thing. He just said, all right, what's the last line you have in this scene before you fall over and fall asleep? And I said, the last line is that last drink, the old KO.
And he went, okay, I want you to think about what that line actually means and then work backwards. And so he left, and I sort of was left with this, what? Like, what does that mean? How am I supposed to? And then like a couple of days went by, a couple of days went by, and I thought, okay, so what does that line actually mean? Well, that last drink, the old KO.
KO is knockout, which is a boxing term. It's the only boxing term the writer uses in the play. And then I went back and I realized my friend was so smart and so incredible to have said, ask a question you haven't thought of asking yet. I realized that the playwright wrote the last round, the eighth round between these two brothers, and it was a fight. physical as well as emotional.
And when I brought that into the rehearsal room to the directors doing that play, he liked that idea. And we staged that scene as if it was the eighth round, although the audience wouldn't have known that. But just what I loved about that was that somebody said to me, ask yourself a question you haven't asked yourself yet. What does that line mean? And then we're back.
Yeah, but also because it's this incredible... Why didn't I think to ask that question myself? That's what you have directors for. That's what you have, you know, so many places where ideas can come from. But that just illustrates that even though in my brain I go, I always like to work backwards, I missed it in that one.
And I'm very grateful to my friend for having pushed me into being able to realize what that meant and
Well, there's two slightly different contexts, I think. One is in the rehearsal room. Improvisation could be a wonderful device. I mean, Sam Mendes, for example, he'll start a scene and he does this wonderful thing. He brings rugs and he brings chairs and sofas in and he says, well, let's put two chairs here and here. You guys, let's start in these chairs far apart from each other.
Let's see what happens with the scene if you're that far apart. And so we'll do the scene that way. And then he goes, okay, let's bring a rug in and let's bring these chairs much closer and let's see what happens if the space, if the space between you is. And so then you try it that way. And then, you know, it's a little harder in Shakespeare to improv, but in any situation where you,
You want to try and see where could a scene go? Where would the scene go if I didn't make that choice? Where would the scene go if I made this choice? Where would the scene go if I didn't say that or I said something else? So that's how improv can be a valuable process to learn about limits and boundaries.
and what's going on with a character that somehow you discover in, in, in trying something that isn't on the page. Then there's the different thing, which is the trying to make it fresh and trying to make it new. And that is really a reference to theater.
Anybody loves sports, right? So you go and you watch on a pitch, you watch on a tennis game, you watch basketball, you watch football. Yeah, the rules are the same, but it's a different game every time you're out on that court or on that field. It's no different in theater. Yes, it's the same lines. Maybe even blocking is similar.
But what's different is attack, intention, how you are growing in a role and watching your fellow actors grow in theirs and how every night it's a new audience and they're reacting differently. And you literally, where you can go from week one of performances in a play to week 12 is extraordinary.
And the difference between theater and film is that no matter how good someone might think you are in a movie, you'll never be any better. It's frozen. Whereas I can be better tomorrow night than I was tonight. I can be better in a week than I was tonight. It is a living, breathing, shifting, changing, growing thing every single day.
And if you start giggling on stage, everyone gets to see you do that too, which I am very guilty of.
It's unlike a movie where I might have a scene with so-and-so on this day and then another scene with them in a week and a half, and then that's the only scenes we have in the whole movie together. Every single day, when you show up in the rehearsal room, it's the whole company. You're all up for it every day. You're learning, you're growing, you're trying.
And there is an incredible trust that happens. And I was, of course, fortunate that some of the things I learned and observed about being a part of that family, being included in that family, and being a part of creating that family, I was able to observe from people like Jack Lemmon, who who led many companies that I was fortunate to work in and be a part of.
Yeah, and also there are some times when, like six months later, I'll wake up in the middle of the night and I'll go, that's how to play that scene.
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