Enforced Method Acting is intended to be a trope about occasions where an actor ends up giving a lifelike performance, because they were not expecting whatever happens in the scene. Usually this is because the director or another actor decided to spring something on them to capture a more natural performance, or an accident that no-one planned occurs.
There are a couple of problems with the page as it has evolved:
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1 – Knowing participants
So many of the examples are ones where the actor themselves were a knowing and willing participant, really missing the point of it being “enforced”. Even the page quote from Rocky IV is at Stallone’s own suggestion:
"Punch me as hard as you can in the chest." Next thing I know, I was in intensive care at St. John’s Hospital for four days. It’s stupid!
— Sylvester Stallone says the wrong thing to Dolph Lundgren, Rocky IV
Now if the film ends up showing him collapsing from his real injuries, that’s the accidental version of the trope trope… If the director had told Dolph to punch Stallone for real without telling him, that would be the trope… but just volunteering to be punched for real, that’s not.
I’m not sure if that kind of thing would count as just Method Acting, as I thought that was more mentally getting into the role than just “make it look real by doing it for real”.
All the solutions are potentially drastic though, so I wanted some feedback before moving ahead with any of them.
Solutions: A - Delete bad examples and clarify description (Would probably just end up getting added again over time) B – Comment out bad examples, so they’re still there in the edit view if someone tries to add them again (For longer lists there is no guarantee that the editor would see it.) C – Move the bad examples to Method Acting (But its arguable if they truly fall under that) D - Move to a new trope Self Enforced Method Acting (Does it justify it’s own trope)
I prefer D. We could also split the main article into Enforced Method Acting for when a director or actor is enforcing it and Accidental Method Acting for when an accident enforces it.
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2 – Baseless claims
The other issue is that a lot of example make dubious claims of “actor was genuinely surprised because no-one told them”. For example, Pirates Of The Caribbean : Dead Man's Chest says “The actors were also not told until the moment that the bone cages would actually be swinging.” I’m pretty sure that’s not true, it’s not mentioned on the IM Db trivia page at all. (The fact that a lot of entries are exact copies of IM Db trivia might be another problem.) Other examples are well documented by interviews or behind the scenes features. And most examples are in-between, where it’s plausible, but not necessarily provable if it happened. So many of these examples seem to be based on “they must have not known, their surprise was too real” or “I heard once they didn’t know that would happen”.
Solutions: A – Leave it alone, you can’t prove that it WASN’T a surprise (but list stays bad and encourages more bad examples) B – Clean up obviously bad examples (probably still lots of bad examples, but better than nothing) C – Clean up all examples that aren’t documented (that would be MOST of the examples) D – Split the list into “Documented” and “Undocumented” so readers know which ones are true and which are just speculation (Are we just splitting the examples lists too much at this point?)
I’d favor either B or D. I think having a documented list could encourage fans of a particular example to add the proof of the authenticity to “promote” an example from one list to another.
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Any thoughts on other appropriate ways to deal with this? Do you think it’s not actually a problem? And are there any other steps I would need to go through before I go making such large scale changes?
Enforced Method Acting is intended to be a trope about occasions where an actor ends up giving a lifelike performance, because they were not expecting whatever happens in the scene. Usually this is because the director or another actor decided to spring something on them to capture a more natural performance, or an accident that no-one planned occurs.
There are a couple of problems with the page as it has evolved:
======================================
1 – Knowing participants So many of the examples are ones where the actor themselves were a knowing and willing participant, really missing the point of it being “enforced”. Even the page quote from Rocky IV is at Stallone’s own suggestion:
"Punch me as hard as you can in the chest." Next thing I know, I was in intensive care at St. John’s Hospital for four days. It’s stupid! — Sylvester Stallone says the wrong thing to Dolph Lundgren, Rocky IV
Now if the film ends up showing him collapsing from his real injuries, that’s the accidental version of the trope trope… If the director had told Dolph to punch Stallone for real without telling him, that would be the trope… but just volunteering to be punched for real, that’s not.
I’m not sure if that kind of thing would count as just Method Acting, as I thought that was more mentally getting into the role than just “make it look real by doing it for real”.
All the solutions are potentially drastic though, so I wanted some feedback before moving ahead with any of them.
Solutions:
A - Delete bad examples and clarify description (Would probably just end up getting added again over time)
B – Comment out bad examples, so they’re still there in the edit view if someone tries to add them again (For longer lists there is no guarantee that the editor would see it.)
C – Move the bad examples to Method Acting (But its arguable if they truly fall under that)
D - Move to a new trope Self Enforced Method Acting (Does it justify it’s own trope)
I prefer D. We could also split the main article into Enforced Method Acting for when a director or actor is enforcing it and Accidental Method Acting for when an accident enforces it.
==========================================
2 – Baseless claims The other issue is that a lot of example make dubious claims of “actor was genuinely surprised because no-one told them”. For example, Pirates Of The Caribbean : Dead Man's Chest says “The actors were also not told until the moment that the bone cages would actually be swinging.” I’m pretty sure that’s not true, it’s not mentioned on the IM Db trivia page at all. (The fact that a lot of entries are exact copies of IM Db trivia might be another problem.) Other examples are well documented by interviews or behind the scenes features. And most examples are in-between, where it’s plausible, but not necessarily provable if it happened. So many of these examples seem to be based on “they must have not known, their surprise was too real” or “I heard once they didn’t know that would happen”.
Solutions:
A – Leave it alone, you can’t prove that it WASN’T a surprise (but list stays bad and encourages more bad examples)
B – Clean up obviously bad examples (probably still lots of bad examples, but better than nothing)
C – Clean up all examples that aren’t documented (that would be MOST of the examples)
D – Split the list into “Documented” and “Undocumented” so readers know which ones are true and which are just speculation (Are we just splitting the examples lists too much at this point?)
I’d favor either B or D. I think having a documented list could encourage fans of a particular example to add the proof of the authenticity to “promote” an example from one list to another.
==========================
Any thoughts on other appropriate ways to deal with this? Do you think it’s not actually a problem? And are there any other steps I would need to go through before I go making such large scale changes?
edited 13th May '16 7:29:26 AM by JonnyD