Exploiting Hollywood 1980

Ronald waited at the door of the room for a long time, and was very remorseful for not insisting that Meg go to the Stella Adler acting studio recommended by Julia.

Julia is a professional in the industry, and Meg's sister is a young actress who has not yet entered the industry, and she should stick to it.

But who knew that Lee Strasbourg's acting training class could torture people like this?

Ronald slammed his head against the wall in anger.

"Hey, doesn't your head hurt? This wall can't take your pounding."

A man's voice sounded, "I've been watching you here for a long time, and I didn't want to care about your business, but you banged the wall. This wall is made of wood and can't withstand too strong impact."

Ronald looked back and saw a small man sitting in the opposite conference room, with his hair parted to the sides and wearing a pair of black-rimmed glasses.

"Sorry Sir, I just blame myself a little bit." Ronald was even more embarrassed when he thought of his embarrassment being seen.

"It doesn't matter, you don't need to be embarrassed. I often do stupid things, and I'm embarrassed afterwards. For this, the psychiatrist made a lot of dollars from me. To treat myself, I started to make movies, and every time I made a movie, it was once The process of self-healing."

The smaller man approached slowly, but his eyes were a little averted, as if he was watching Ronald rather than talking to Ronald.

Ronald felt even more embarrassed. He was determined to avoid this strange man, and he was worried about the situation on Meg's side. He couldn't leave too far, so he could only perfunctory this little man.

"I told you a lot of my troubles, why don't you try to tell me about your troubles? I usually don't talk much, but I can chat with the right person."

Ronald looked at him. Behind the thick spectacles, a pair of blisters flashed with concern, and he suddenly had the desire to talk.

"...The situation is roughly like this. I don't know what happened. I just feel that she is crying too much."

After listening to what Ronald said, the person who came here snorted:

"It's the method school again. Their methods have their benefits, but acting should be a natural thing, you're standing there banging your head against the wall, which is not something any emotional memory can perform. At that time, that The location, plus your mood, you just do it, that's the natural response."

"I'm sorry, sir, what is emotional memory?" Ronald looked at him talking and seemed to understand his acting skills, so he began to ask for advice.

"Emotional memory is to retrieve a memory that is impressive to you, and this memory is associated with a strong emotion.

You were afraid of spiders when you were a child, and emotional memory is to use the hypnotic method of psychologist Freud to return you to the memory of that time point, completely reproduce the emotion you were afraid of at that time, and lay an anchor in that memory. point.

In this way, you need to show fear when filming, and you extract the memory of this spider, and you immediately feel the fear of facing spiders when you were a child. "

"But the disadvantage of this method is that if some people's memories are too scary and embarrassing, the brain will automatically seal them up. And the emotional memory method will extract those memories again and again, which will cause psychological damage to the actor."

"Is there a solution?" Ronald asked eagerly.

Then the door opened, and Julia and Irene came out, helping Meg.

Ronald stepped forward to the door and took Meg, who looked much better.

"Ronnie, I'm a little weak, and Erin said I'll be fine after a while." Meg finally spoke, and Ronald breathed a sigh of relief.

Erin motioned Ronald to go to the room with him to talk, Ronald settled Meg on the sofa and followed Erin in.

Julia greeted the man "Hi Woody, are you talking to Ronald?"

"Oh,

Yes, we are exchanging some opinions on the method school, I think he is very talented, his acting is natural and smooth, what role would you let him play? "

"Hahaha, Woody, don't look at Ronnie the way you observe audition actors. Ronnie is our photographer, who shoots audition portraits."

"No, no, I'm serious. His acting is very natural. He hit the wall just now and hit the wall very well."

"Okay okay, are you busy with your 'Manhattan' premiere? Is it time to start casting for 'Stardust Memories' again?"

"Ah, yes, I need to discuss my new movie with you?"

Erin closed the door and explained to Ronald the reason why Meg couldn't stop crying.

As Woody said, the so-called method school's emotional memory method actually contains a lot of risks. A person's particularly painful memories, the brain is inclined to forget, this is the human self-protection mechanism.

Repeating the memories of crying over and over again is very harmful even to professional actors. In fact, except for Lee Strasbourg, few acting coaches recommend it.

There is also a koan from the Actors Studio involved here.

At that time, Lee Strasbourg and Stella Adler were both the main actors in the Actors Studio. The acting method of the Actors Studio was learned by Lee Strasburg from the Russian acting master Stanislavsky, and then taught to Stella and others.

Stella Adler became more and more skeptical of Lee Strasbourg's method of emotional memory through teaching practice.

So she went to see Stanislavsky, who told her that emotional memory had long been abandoned by him, and that he now used a more advanced combination of imagination and external details.

Shocked, Stella returned to the actor's studio and told several other go-getters in the studio what Stanley had said. In the end, several cadres defected from the actor's studio and established themselves. Lee Strasbourg was also forced to resign as superintendent and had to run classes in his own name from then on.

"I'm Stella's apprentice, so I won't comment on Lee Strasbourg's method. Just remind Meg to stop using emotional memory. Just don't retrieve the passage that made her cry in the future. memory, it will not cause much psychological problems.”

Erin finally explained to Ronald.

"However, today's memory has caused her a lot of damage. Is there a way to completely eradicate the hidden danger in the future?"

Erin looked at Ronald for a long time, and finally nodded:

"The problem with the emotional memory method is that the extracted memories are all very personal, probably the deepest privacy in a person's heart. To eradicate this hidden danger is actually very simple, as long as you tell others about this privacy, then the emotions it contains The power will be greatly dissipated."

"Do you mean to ask Meg to tell me what her painful memories are?"

Erin smiled, stared into Ronald's eyes and said, "Don't worry, Meg has told me the memory that caused her to cry, but because of my commitment to her, I can't tell you. All I can say is that the time bomb has been After being lifted, as long as you don’t recall this anchor point in the future, you won’t cause such a strong reaction again.”

"Thank God, then I'm relieved. I'll drop out of the class over there and take Ms. Meg to Stella to sign up here." Ronald let out a sigh of relief.

"Remember to mention the FTC's name if they won't refund the money."

After speaking, Erin signaled that Ronald could go to comfort Meg, and she went out to find Julia herself.

"Not him?" Julia asked.

"No." Irene replied, "Generally speaking, such a strong reaction is usually two possibilities, the first is domestic violence, and the second is the indecent assault by an adult male as a child."

"The memory Meg said was the latter. I tested Ronald again. After he heard Meg say the memory, his first reaction was to relax, not nervous, so it should not be him.

Ronald found Meg, took her back to the apartment, carried her into the room, put her on the bed, tucked the blanket, turned off the light, and sat back on the sofa looking at Meg.

When Meg fell asleep, Ronald, who looked at Meg, fell asleep after a while.