Interview with Ray Liotta

Now that's cool! I just spent an hour and a half in the second row in the beautiful new Vancouver International Film Centre theatre listening to Ray Liotta, star of Goodfellas, one of my favourite films, talk about acting and the movie business at The Film and Television Trade Forum.

Ray spoke very candidly about acting, his process and the business in general. As well as hearing stories about his Goodfellas experiences, Ray's brief talk sure helped me to put some things into perspective as one who has been the acting route and fled, tail between my legs once already. He spoke a lot about continuous study, committment and homework in preparing for a role. He belives that the script is "the Bible" and that "the key is story" and as an actor he must always come back to that. Acting is pretending – a child's game with child's rules in an adult setting. An actor must get rid of what keeps him or her from "playing".

Some things that Ray believes block actors are:

– Inability to accept "I am".
– Clinging to subjective input.
– Concern over presentation.
– Concern with "method".
– Too esoteric approach.

This was a rather revolutionary and inspiring day to say the least and what I've gained from this talk alone was more than enough to pay for the entire seminar. Looks like it's back to studying… Thanks Ray!

I guess it's time to add that little hack that allows me to post to two categories on my blog at once as this one belongs in the 'inspiration' one just as well as filmmaking.

Also up today was a film financing forum with folks from the banks and all of the government agencies involved. What a drag they were. The most interesting person on the panel was David Borg who's deal is private financing for film. His advice, "Get off your derrier and pick up the phone". Hooray for David Borg. I think I'll pick up the phone and call you!