Sundays with Sidney Lumet’s “Making Movies”

A series featuring reflections on filmmaking by one of the truly great movie directors.

Roger Ebert said this about Making Movies: “It has more common sense in it about how movies are actually made than any other I have read.” That alone is enough reason to read this book authored by Sidney Lumet.

Known as an actor’s director, Lumet directed 17 different actors in Oscar-nominated performances: Katharine Hepburn, Rod Steiger, Al Pacino, Ingrid Bergman, Albert Finney, Chris Sarandon, Faye Dunaway, Peter Finch, Beatrice Straight, William Holden, Ned Beatty, Peter Firth, Richard Burton, Paul Newman, James Mason, Jane Fonda and River Phoenix. Bergman, Dunaway, Finch and Straight won Oscars for their performances in a Lumet movie.

Among his filmmaking credits are such stellar movies as 12 Angry Men, The Pawnbroker, Serpico, Dog Day Afternoon, Network, Equus, Prince of the City, The Verdict, and Running on Empty. He also has five screenwriting credits including Q&A and Night Falls on Manhattan.

As I’ve done with Sundays with Ray Bradbury and Sunday’s with Stephen King’s “On Writing,” I will work my way through Lumet’s book focusing on insights applicable to the craft of screenwriting.

Today: From “Making Movies,” Chapter 4: Can an Actor Really Be Shy?, p. 62.

Generally, we’ll spend the first two or three days around the table, talking about the script. The first thing to be established is, of course the theme. Then we‘re into each character, each scene, each line. It's much the same as the time I’ve spent with the writer. I'll have all the leading actors in on rehearsal. Sometimes an actor will have a critical scene with a character who appears in only one scene in the movie. I'll bring that small-part actor in for a day or two in the second week of rehearsals. We read the script nonstop first, then spend the next two days breaking it down into its components, winding up on the third day with another nonstop reading.

One day when I was on the set of K-9, an actor told me: “If you (the writer) don’t understand the character, how do you expect me (the actor) to?”

I’ve always remembered that comment and often summon it when working with a character who lacks clarity. I not only owe it to the story I’m writing to understand each character, I also owe it to the actors playing those roles.

You can’t short change this type of character work. You can’t avoid parts of their personality which confuse you. You can’t steer away from aspects of their psyche that frighten you.

Just imagine if you. While it’s unlikely that script would get set up in the first place, let’s say it does. Time for rehearsals. You sit there in a room with the director and the cast. If during the first reading of the script, an actor stops and says, “I don’t understand why I’m saying this,” or “I’m confused why I’m doing this,” then heads pivot your way … what would you say?

You must do the hard character work both before you type Fade In and during the page-writing and rewriting process. You must understand your characters to the depth of their being.

This is not only about avoiding situations where actors peer at you for guidance and you sit there with a thumb up your bum.

This is about finding the story in the first place. For the better you understand your characters, in particular the Protagonist, the more likely you will discover the story you are meant to tell.

Come back next Sunday for more of Lumet’s thoughts on story and working with screenwriters.

For previous installments, go here.

For more background on Sidney Lumet’s filmmaking career, go here.

To purchase my book The Protagonist’s Journey: An Introduction to Character-Driven Screenwriting and Storytelling, go here.