Discipline vs Perfectionism

Last night in class, a pair of young actors put up a scene from one of my all time favorite movies, "Broadcast News." The scene was the one in which Jane comes over to see how Aaron's shot at weekend anchor went, and ultimately Aaron confides that he is in love with her.

Now, maybe I was being particularly harsh because I love this movie.

Maybe it was because I've done this particular scene before.

Maybe it's because I write as well, and I'm a HUGE proponent of sticking with the script.

Maybe it's because I'm a perfectionist.

Maybe it's because I'm older than most of the others and my age is showing.

But I had a hard time giving the scene anything more than a C+ because they both were VERY far off the script that I remember reading. The actor playing Aaron was really just taking the idea and putting his own words to it, using what he could remember and filling in between with his own stuff. I guess another way to describe it is the explanation in Jurassic Park about where they got dinosaur DNA - they took what they had and filled in the rest with frog DNA - that's sort of what he was doing... except his dinosaur was more like a gila monster.

As I drove home, I reflected on why exactly I was grading the scene so low, and a large part of it was the actor's disregard for the script as it was written, which in turn may have tainted my evaluation of whether or not he was really emotionally involved in the scene. So then I started to wonder if my desire to stick with the script is getting in the way of my creative process.

I've always thought the actor's job was bringing the character that was written to life - unless the director tells me that the script is just a guide, I try to nail the lines exactly as written - I might be a halfway decent writer myself, but it seems to me that if the studio/network/producers liked the script, it's my job to bring that script to life, not make up my own.

I guess I'm gonna hafta think about this... maybe I'll write a monologue on the subject while I'm at it...