Whenever George Clooney jumps on the couch for a late-night interview, I ask myself, is this guy cool?
Whenever Matthew McConaughey joins Armchair Expert, I ask the same thing. Would he be fun to hang out with?
Both seem cool, they seem like a good hang, but they are actors. Maybe they are just wearing a mask, playing the role of “awesome-relatable-funny-charming dude” and I’m totally falling for it.
Or maybe it goes the other direction.
Maybe they can play the roles they play, like Danny Ocean and David Wooderson, because they tap into their own inherent coolness.
What we are talking about is authenticity. And it’s something we can feel just as much as we can see.
Don’t believe me?
What happens when Zack Galifianakis plays Danny Ocean instead of Clooney?
Oh, okay, now you’re with me.
The truth is, if you’re a cool dude, playing a cool dude in movies becomes a hell of a lot easier. It’s less acting and more being.
Same with being a huge stoner and playing a deadbeat pot head. It’s a breeze. As long as you don’t get so high you forget your lines.
And while I’m writing about people who wear masks for a living, I think it’s important to see that we all wear masks, we all act. No matter what industry we are in.
But the path to a better performance, on stage or in the boardroom, is to act just a little bit less and be just a little bit more.
If I can avoid acting, I do avoid acting:
It’s a balancing act.
If you don’t need to put on a mask, I’d suggest that you don’t.
In the movie Amsterdam, Christian Bale plays Burt Berendsen, a World War I veteran with a bad back and a stone eye.
Berendsen sustained injuries while fighting in France.
Bale is a terrific actor and I have no doubt that he would do a wonderful rendition of “man with a bad back” if needed. But he took a different approach.
He got into the character by strapping on an old 1930’s back brace. He decided, instead of acting like his back hurt, he would live with that discomfort. The academy Award winning actor said, “If I can avoid acting, I do avoid acting. Like, if you can just really do it, and be uncomfortable, why bother pretending to be uncomfortable. Just be uncomfortable.”
While on set, playing a character, he is trying to do as little acting as possible.
And that’s good advice for the rest of us. Stay as close to authentic as you can.
But no closer.
Because you still have a job to do.
This is your captain speaking:
One of my oldest friends is a pilot. As you can imagine, we’ve talked about all manner of unruly topics that will not be mentioned on this blog.
What I will mention is what I witnessed the first time I flew with him.
It was 2006 (maybe) and we jumped in a pristine 1976 Cessna T310R with upgraded Ram IV motors that pumped out 335 horsepower per side.
Pretty dope, huh?
It even had a custom Powell interior. Excellent!
But I was nervous.
Really nervous.
It was just a short flight from Phoenix to Prescott, Arizona, but still required the takeoff and landing parts.
I hadn’t flown in a small airplane before. And we were departing from Sky Harbor. Like, the normal airport. With commercial airplanes all around us. We were in queue for takeoff, surrounded by giants.
Did I mention I was nervous?
But as soon as my friend slid that headset on, something changed. He was talking in Alpha’s and Bravo’s. He was chatting with air traffic control, getting ready to take off, and it was no longer my friend from back home.
I was with a pilot now. He was still there, partially, but he had his pilot mask on.
And guess what? That mask made me a little less nervous.
What does that all say about being authentic?
It says authenticity is a two-way street.
Who we are and the roles we choose are working together, and that combination is what the world sees of us. Those points of view create something unique, but not something altogether unrecognizable.
Being authentic doesn’t mean you don’t wear masks. It doesn’t mean you belch during church or tell that girl walking down the street exactly what you’re thinking in the name of “being yourself.”
The pilot’s job is not just to fly, it’s also to make everyone onboard feel comfortable.
People want you to be authentic, to a point. Call it authentic-lite.
Because they want you to fit the genre, too.
If you are writing murder mysteries, authentic murder mysteries, you can get wild with the plot line. But you know what you can’t do? You can’t exit Act I without a dead body.
A wacky teacher can be fun for a minute, but we need to pull in the reigns just a bit and get these kids to graduation day.
Play the role in a way that’s authentic. Act as little as needed.
Push the boundaries.
But make sure people can still recognize what you are doing.
The mask is there, but they can still see you shining through.
We don’t want people so confused, so uncomfortable, that they won’t get onboard and go for the ride.
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