So I went into town to meet up with Anja before our appointment with this actor. She was just as nervous as I was, possibly even more so. But the meeting went swimmingly. The guy turned out to be, not only great, interesting and sensible, but a truly genuine person as well (which is the most important quality in my book, since I seem to be surrounded largely by people who are anything but...) Mine and Anja's intuition about this actor is looking more and more spot on, just sitting there talking to the guy, just drinking in his energy and general way, I'd almost say I had the actual character from my script in front of me. And knowing that he's a really talented and charismatic yet subtle actor as well, from seeing his performance in the wonderful mini-series "De halvt dolda", it's just perfect casting and I am so happy right now!
Oh, and he seemed really pleased with the information he recieved from us as well and had some really interesting thoughts and ideas about the script, which he really liked on top of everything, and when we got to discussing work method I found out that we're completely on the same page when it comes to acting and process work, being more interested in exploring the character and the scene and the character's relationship with other characters and just be present in the now and open to impulses (and basically everything I learned from the amazing Stephen Park and keep learning again and again through my own experiences since VFS) rather than focusing on Stanislavskis earlier methods (that he later revised because he himself realised that it wasn't the best method) which is what most acting schools and courses seem to teach, where you basically reach back in your memory and use experiences from your own life to re-create a certain emotion, instead of just being present in the moment, with your co-actor, reacting to the given circumstances and exploring the scene. And this actor, Henrik, was all on board with that, and the way he talked about it, when I asked him how he preferred to work usually, he basically voiced all of my own opinions and preferences, both as an actor and as a director. So I'm really looking forward to working with him now! Hopefully he and the girl who'll probably play the main characters (his little sister in the film) will connect and have some real, interesting chemistry between them... if they do, then I have half my work done already, and the result will most likely be amazing too...
Anja and I walked around for a bit after we'd said goodbye to Henrik, all giddy from how well the meeting went, and ended up (as we always seem to) having some firey discussions about everything, but mostly about film, especially the films we want to make, how women are portrayed in film that get made and the kind of scripts we write and our (quite similar) writing style that not many people seem to get. It's really funny, because I just mentioned one example of a detail from my screenplay, a thing that my main character does, and I didn't even have time to explain why I thought it was important -- she got it instantly! -- and that's why I love her. And that's why I'm re-writing my screenplay again, I'm still getting rid of the pretentious choice of phrases that I sometimes use, but I'm keeping my details. And that's that.
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