My life in Christopher Guest movies.
We shot waiting for guffman in Austin, and after the first day of shooting, we all piled into a van to go back to the hotel. I lay down in the backseat and pulled my knees to my chest, telling everyone my back hurt. “That’s from holding in laughter,” Eugene Levy said, sounding “old hat,” like a vaudevillian actor. I took a bath that night and cried from the shock of the day. It was strange improvising—like, Really, this is going to work? I couldn’t remember what I even said that day.
Most films have a script, with the character’s dialogue written for them. Actors learn the lines and figure out the subtext, what’s “under” the line. Nowadays, though, most screenwriters don’t write like that; the style has become more literal and the dialogue constructed to serve the plot. When a movie is unscripted, the character lives without the lines of the material and this allows for real things to happen in the moment and be caught on film.
Chris says, when directing, “Don’t feel like you have to say anything.” And, “You can take your time and have space between your thoughts.” He exudes this in real life, too. He’s Zen. I mean, Jesus, he’s a lord. His full name, to be properly Anglo-Saxon about it, is Lord Christopher Haden-Guest.
For his movies, the actors are given an approximately 30-page outline, describing what happens in each of the scenes—different “beats” to hit. I was young, like 25, when we shot Guffman, and excited to work. This Is Spinal Tap didn’t impress me since I didn’t like heavy-metal music, so I wasn’t intimidated by Chris or the process. We were all pretty nervous about our audition scenes, though, for the musical within the film, called Red, White & Blaine.
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