Never liked drills. Drills remind me of the dentist. Hate the dentist. Drills remind me of oil drilling. That leads to Chileans being trapped for a long time. Drills remind me of shop class. The class from 7th grade I had my first crush on a girl that I was paralyzed so much that I couldn't form a sentence around her. Drills remind me of basketball practice when I was growing up. We did something wrong and we were punished by doing suicide drills. These are drills that sucked so bad you literally wanted to commit suicide instead of living one more minute in your 13 year old physically awkward life. If I could have gotten out of suicide drills by talking to my 7th grade crush, I would have been married to her by now.
But drilling an exercise over and over again is what makes you better. No one can argue with me on this. Doing the same thing over and over again until you want to pull your hair out and it becomes so ingrained in your body that it's hard to fail. I know basketball players who shoot 500 free throws a day. I know golfers who hit 3 buckets of balls a day. I know baseball players who spend 2 hours in the batting cage. Shot after shot. Until it's as easy as going to the bathroom. Why do we not practice in the same way when it comes to acting?
We're learning in theory class that there are some countries and old acting techniques that require the student to work on their eye movements and facial movements 4 hours a day. 4 hours a day?? I think I have spent four hours in my whole life working on my eye movements. But guess what? When that person is asked to do an eye movement. They will make me look like I have no control over my eyes at all. Why is this not the standard? Why do we look at acting as something you can show up for 4 hours a week and be as good as the people who are practicing 7 hours a day? This is true. I have 4 hours of acting class a week. I have other classes that help my acting but a true acting class only 4 hours a week. Now in those 4 hours I listen a lot and take notes but I'm really only up and working about 40 minutes a week. As I say to my students, you can't learn how to swim by reading about swimming. I'm at the age where I've realized no one in life will ever give you everything you need. In college we expect everything to be handed to us because we've signed up for the classes, they give us a professor, they give us a time line, they give us projects, we have vacations, we have weekends, we have an end stop to all of this. But not in the real world. You get your degree and that piece of paper should really say "Congratulations Jason Nettle, you've made it to the real world, and it fucking sucks. You're on your own. Goodbye."
The repetition of something is what we need to succeed. People come back from basic training in great shape because they are forced to do something over and over again. Of course they want a break, but they keep pushing. As actors, we take those breaks. We plan those breaks. We arrange our schedules so we have many many breaks. That's why I was an unbelievable bartender and waiter. Because I did it over and over again and did it so many different ways that I never doubted I could and nothing that was thrown at me was too much. I bartended 40 hours a week for almost 10 years. I was damn good at it. When could I ever say that about acting and acting is 100 times harder!! I should be doing it 80 hours a week in hopes to figure out how good I could actually be.
I imagined school being a 14 hour a day job because even if you don't like what you're doing, the act of repeating a movement or muscle or thought again and again and again, you will no doubt get better. Our job as actors is to perform tactics to our partner, to get what we want, to overcome the obstacles in the given circumstances, and make it look fresh and entertaining every time we do it. We need to be storytellers and entertainers and to even be remotely successful in this business, we have to be damn good. BUT, for some reason, as actors, we have convinced ourselves that knowing a little bit about a whole bunch of things and showing up and half assing it and just trying to get by is enough to call ourselves artists. Sadly, our society and education system allows it. Imagine what kind of actor I would be if I did tactic exercises and vulnerability exercises 8 hours a day? Everyday for 2 years? I could probably walk back into NYC and have my choice on what role I wanted anywhere on Broadway. But as an actor I have more important things to do during my day. I need to watch tv, get on facebook, gossip, judge others, etc.
I guess what I'm saying is I know what it takes to get where I need to be and if I'm in school, it should be thought like that. Wake up and act, act, write, read, share, challenge yourself, explore, expand, fail, succeed, act, memorize, research, and act. But I don't. And I know I'm going to punch myself in a year or two from now because I know I won't have the time like I do now.
Why are actors who perform in porn considered porn stars? Really? Stars? You get in one film and you're considered a porn star. I wish it was that easy for actors getting into Hollywood. We like to believe so. "I'm amazing! I have worked at being an actor AT LEAST 5 hours this week. Give me your production contracts!!"
Porn stars. That's funny.
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