TV Acting Question
December 13, 2019 9:50 AM Subscribe
In this week's Mr. Robot, [spoiler moved inside]
Dom checks herself out of the hospital right after major surgery, in horrible shape. But 48 hours of relentless physical activity seems to fix everything. Show biz insider question: who's to blame? Actress, director, or editor?
I get that the insta-cure is a perennial Hollywood trope, but Mr. Robot's supposed to be Peak TV, so I'd expect better.
I can't believe a smart actress like Grace Gummer forgot to act injured. And I doubt she'd be happy to be directed to let that factor go (it makes her look bad as an actress). So whose fault is it? A director needing to hustle the plot forward regardless of realism? An editor choosing takes (for other reasons) where Gummer was less attentive to the issue? Or Gummer herself?
I understand they needed her looking radiant toward the end due to rom-com necessities. But why couldn't she be radiant while finding it slightly uncomfortable to, say, dash up a long flight of steps?
Dom checks herself out of the hospital right after major surgery, in horrible shape. But 48 hours of relentless physical activity seems to fix everything. Show biz insider question: who's to blame? Actress, director, or editor?
I get that the insta-cure is a perennial Hollywood trope, but Mr. Robot's supposed to be Peak TV, so I'd expect better.
I can't believe a smart actress like Grace Gummer forgot to act injured. And I doubt she'd be happy to be directed to let that factor go (it makes her look bad as an actress). So whose fault is it? A director needing to hustle the plot forward regardless of realism? An editor choosing takes (for other reasons) where Gummer was less attentive to the issue? Or Gummer herself?
I understand they needed her looking radiant toward the end due to rom-com necessities. But why couldn't she be radiant while finding it slightly uncomfortable to, say, dash up a long flight of steps?
Response by poster: An actor friend just emailed me:
"TV is a writer's medium. The flaw you noticed sounds like it was in the writing, and directors are for-hire mercenaries obliged to work dutifully with whatever they've got, and actors are similarly obliged to simply do as they're told."
Of course, in this case the director IS the writer (creator Sam Esmail), but that doesn't contradict anything he said.
posted by Quisp Lover at 10:15 AM on December 13, 2019 [3 favorites]
"TV is a writer's medium. The flaw you noticed sounds like it was in the writing, and directors are for-hire mercenaries obliged to work dutifully with whatever they've got, and actors are similarly obliged to simply do as they're told."
Of course, in this case the director IS the writer (creator Sam Esmail), but that doesn't contradict anything he said.
posted by Quisp Lover at 10:15 AM on December 13, 2019 [3 favorites]
Actors do what the directors tell them (and don't do what directors tell them not to do), and what the writers wrote. Editors generally use the takes the director asks them to use.
But 48 hours of relentless physical activity seems to fix everything.
A writer may or may not have written it like that, but "cruft" gets cut for time. The director chose how to shoot it, and would have decided in the end what the editor left in. The reason is that this is fiction, and convalescence is not interesting to watch unless a plot point hinges on it, much like we don't spend several minutes of every hourlong show watching people duck into bathrooms to pee, make and eat food, play Candy Crush on their phones, or feed their pets. We just have to make the leap that the family dog isn't being starved to death or all the characters are wearing diapers.
There's some other reasons to not emphasize injury damage in these fictionalized scenarios, particularly where women or marginalized people are involved, one of which is that people get off on it and the other is people get really upset by it (including the criticisms that a production is using violence against women as a storytelling device) including the standards and practices departments of valuable non-US markets. This can also drive how much visible blood or injury a production will choose to show across the board. There are also a lot of people in the world who don't really think that women (and people of color) feel pain really, so that's also a possible factor either in the choices made in the creative process or a mandate from somewhere above or externally.
Pretty much never blame an actor for something if they don't have any other power in the production. But overall a show has a ton of moving parts and it is a general convention of television that people do not have normal human bodies that take damage in the way real ones do.
posted by Lyn Never at 10:25 AM on December 13, 2019 [2 favorites]
But 48 hours of relentless physical activity seems to fix everything.
A writer may or may not have written it like that, but "cruft" gets cut for time. The director chose how to shoot it, and would have decided in the end what the editor left in. The reason is that this is fiction, and convalescence is not interesting to watch unless a plot point hinges on it, much like we don't spend several minutes of every hourlong show watching people duck into bathrooms to pee, make and eat food, play Candy Crush on their phones, or feed their pets. We just have to make the leap that the family dog isn't being starved to death or all the characters are wearing diapers.
There's some other reasons to not emphasize injury damage in these fictionalized scenarios, particularly where women or marginalized people are involved, one of which is that people get off on it and the other is people get really upset by it (including the criticisms that a production is using violence against women as a storytelling device) including the standards and practices departments of valuable non-US markets. This can also drive how much visible blood or injury a production will choose to show across the board. There are also a lot of people in the world who don't really think that women (and people of color) feel pain really, so that's also a possible factor either in the choices made in the creative process or a mandate from somewhere above or externally.
Pretty much never blame an actor for something if they don't have any other power in the production. But overall a show has a ton of moving parts and it is a general convention of television that people do not have normal human bodies that take damage in the way real ones do.
posted by Lyn Never at 10:25 AM on December 13, 2019 [2 favorites]
I feel like in general tv writers care much less about realism than viewers. It's priority 86 out of 100. It's just not something they think about. We expect it because the production values are higher than they used to be so we think it's some other realm of storytelling too. But it's not.
posted by bleep at 10:49 AM on December 13, 2019 [2 favorites]
posted by bleep at 10:49 AM on December 13, 2019 [2 favorites]
"TV is a writer's medium. The flaw you noticed sounds like it was in the writing, and directors are for-hire mercenaries obliged to work dutifully with whatever they've got, and actors are similarly obliged to simply do as they're told."
your friend has it, more or less. The most an actor could do is protest, pull a "Dustin Hoffman" and say, my character wouldn't do that, or this is inconsistent with my character's reality (etc). And in all likelihood, this would get said actor reprimanded or even fired, certainly declared "difficult" and tagged accordingly. Likewise a director if they lodged the same sort of protest.
reading between the lines, I'd be worried that the show in question Mr. Robot is in the process of jumping its particular shark. If the writers room is letting stuff like this go, it's telling me that key people are either focused elsewhere ... or perhaps gone altogether. There's a reason why most shows, even the very good ones, tend to not end well. And a quick wiki-search reveals that this is Mr. Robot's final season, so maybe they're just trying to jam too much story into too few episodes. Logic/verisimilitude is too often the first thing to go when this happens.
posted by philip-random at 10:59 AM on December 13, 2019 [1 favorite]
your friend has it, more or less. The most an actor could do is protest, pull a "Dustin Hoffman" and say, my character wouldn't do that, or this is inconsistent with my character's reality (etc). And in all likelihood, this would get said actor reprimanded or even fired, certainly declared "difficult" and tagged accordingly. Likewise a director if they lodged the same sort of protest.
reading between the lines, I'd be worried that the show in question Mr. Robot is in the process of jumping its particular shark. If the writers room is letting stuff like this go, it's telling me that key people are either focused elsewhere ... or perhaps gone altogether. There's a reason why most shows, even the very good ones, tend to not end well. And a quick wiki-search reveals that this is Mr. Robot's final season, so maybe they're just trying to jam too much story into too few episodes. Logic/verisimilitude is too often the first thing to go when this happens.
posted by philip-random at 10:59 AM on December 13, 2019 [1 favorite]
I get that the insta-cure is a perennial Hollywood trope, but Mr. Robot's supposed to be Peak TV, so I'd expect better.
I don't think it's wrong to say that even the really good tv shows rely heavily on silly nonsensical tropes.
posted by The_Vegetables at 11:58 AM on December 13, 2019 [1 favorite]
I don't think it's wrong to say that even the really good tv shows rely heavily on silly nonsensical tropes.
posted by The_Vegetables at 11:58 AM on December 13, 2019 [1 favorite]
I haven't watched the episode but stuff like this happens all the time in even "high quality" TV shows. Sometimes it is deliberate - the hero is supposed to be the hero after all. Sometimes it is just because the episode is about something else and doesn't want to spend time lingering on the minor details of how long it generally takes to recover from an injury. See any show where a character is knocked unconscious and then instantly comes around, for instance.
For higher quality films and shows there is somebody on set in charge of continuity - basically making sure that the characters are wearing the same clothes and have the same makeup effects (blood, etc) between shots, all the little details that the director might not notice. If it was important that Dom still be somewhat incapacitated then they should have said something.
Another thing to mention is that the scenes may well have been shot weeks apart in a reverse order (this is more common with film than episodic TV). The post injury scene might have even been written and shot before the exact nature of the injury was decided on by the writer.
posted by AndrewStephens at 12:38 PM on December 13, 2019 [2 favorites]
For higher quality films and shows there is somebody on set in charge of continuity - basically making sure that the characters are wearing the same clothes and have the same makeup effects (blood, etc) between shots, all the little details that the director might not notice. If it was important that Dom still be somewhat incapacitated then they should have said something.
Another thing to mention is that the scenes may well have been shot weeks apart in a reverse order (this is more common with film than episodic TV). The post injury scene might have even been written and shot before the exact nature of the injury was decided on by the writer.
posted by AndrewStephens at 12:38 PM on December 13, 2019 [2 favorites]
I haven't seen this episode yet either, but earlier in the series a) some scenes/arcs are ultimately not as they initially appear and b) Dom's a recreational drug user. Her action scenes post-poke (if the character truly received the injury, I mean, honestly, this show) could wind up being wholly imaginary, not as sleekly executed as portrayed, drug-fueled, or [spin-the-wheel].
posted by Iris Gambol at 2:02 PM on December 13, 2019 [1 favorite]
posted by Iris Gambol at 2:02 PM on December 13, 2019 [1 favorite]
I think philip-random has it in what he wrote in the smaller font. I am still on board until the end because I've gotten this far, and I have a soft spot for the wish fulfillment of the e-coin Robin Hood redistribution of the billionaires of the world.
But I have to admit that getting to the final climax of the series has required a lot of plodding, ponderous moments, and the too-clean psychological explanation of the origins of the mr. robot figure was a letdown. The hacker-noire waterskier is in the air over the hammerhead as we speak.
posted by umbú at 3:07 PM on December 13, 2019
But I have to admit that getting to the final climax of the series has required a lot of plodding, ponderous moments, and the too-clean psychological explanation of the origins of the mr. robot figure was a letdown. The hacker-noire waterskier is in the air over the hammerhead as we speak.
posted by umbú at 3:07 PM on December 13, 2019
Response by poster: The mythology has certainly been a kludge (mythology's ALWAYS a kludge; human affairs are never AWESOME, and trying to make them seem so is always unrealistic and headache-inducing in the same way - and for the same reason - that conspiracy theories are).
But the series has always aimed for truth in the micro; in personal beats. It's sacrificed this realism when necessary to propel particularly indigestible chunks of plot, but Dom did not need to dash up those steps to propel plot (nor the other unnecessarily physical actions post-hospital).
The show's been so truthful in personal/micro beats, and Gummer's acting (like the rest) has been so convincing that I winced in pain each time she exited a car or hoisted a handbag. I'd been put in that mindset by the apartment scene immediately after the hospital scene, showing her grave condition. But then the show made a fool out of me by turning into, like, Mannix.
"Oh, you were still worried about the excruciating pain we deliberately made you feel for this character? **SUCKER!!!** C'mon, it's only a damned TV show!
posted by Quisp Lover at 3:52 PM on December 13, 2019
But the series has always aimed for truth in the micro; in personal beats. It's sacrificed this realism when necessary to propel particularly indigestible chunks of plot, but Dom did not need to dash up those steps to propel plot (nor the other unnecessarily physical actions post-hospital).
The show's been so truthful in personal/micro beats, and Gummer's acting (like the rest) has been so convincing that I winced in pain each time she exited a car or hoisted a handbag. I'd been put in that mindset by the apartment scene immediately after the hospital scene, showing her grave condition. But then the show made a fool out of me by turning into, like, Mannix.
"Oh, you were still worried about the excruciating pain we deliberately made you feel for this character? **SUCKER!!!** C'mon, it's only a damned TV show!
posted by Quisp Lover at 3:52 PM on December 13, 2019
Mod note: moved a spoiler inside
posted by Eyebrows McGee (staff) at 7:38 PM on December 13, 2019 [1 favorite]
posted by Eyebrows McGee (staff) at 7:38 PM on December 13, 2019 [1 favorite]
Quisp lover, thanks for your comment about the micro-moments. It has changed how I watched the show, and I appreciate it more now. I just reread my earlier comment and it feels flippant now.
posted by umbú at 9:43 AM on December 18, 2019 [1 favorite]
posted by umbú at 9:43 AM on December 18, 2019 [1 favorite]
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posted by spacewrench at 10:03 AM on December 13, 2019