Confessions from the ADR Stage
by Norman
B. Schwartz
In 1993, after 40 years in the cutting room, I clicked off the Moviola, shut down the Steenbeck, took off my white glove and retired. I returned to my first love, the theater. I now direct plays and teach actors in Santa Barbara. Whatever I know about the art of acting, I learned by watching and working with the stars on ADR stages all over the world. Over the years I worked with some of the best and the worst, often in the form of the same person. Here are a few of my recollections:
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I watched him redo that elusive "no!" 20 or more times, each reading perfectly in sync with the original. Pacino kept insisting that something was wrong, that some quality in the original that only he could detect was missing. It soon become apparent that no matter how much time and concentration it would take to recapture that one word, Pacino was not leaving that New York City ADR studio until he found it.
It occurred to me then that perhaps the physicality of the original was missing, and so I suggested that the actor hold an unused microphone stand in his hand, and swing it at the screen as he would a pool cue. "That's it!" he said. The next take was perfect.
Some actors, Pacino being a prime example, have a built-in truth meter. They are incapable of lying to themselves - or the camera. Or the public, for that matter. The same could not be said of the once-great Shakespearean actor RICHARD BURTON.
The film was "Bluebeard", shot in Budapest and directed by the late Eddie Dmytryk, a charter member of the Editors Guild. I flew with Eddie to London to redo Burton's location dialogue. On the appointed day, at 10 o'clock in the morning, Burton made a grand entrance into the recording studio in Soho. But instead of speaking trippingly on the tongue, he tripped down the stairs. Picking himself up from the floor, he announced most gracefully in his celebrated Welsh baritone: "I might as well begin by saying that I have been out drinking with Peter O'Toole all this weekend, and I will probably be useless at this."
How right he was. Burton was absolutely incapable of reproducing his performance. He was at least six to eight frames out of sync on every line. I quietly took Eddie Dmytryk aside and asked him if he could possibly find some reason to cancel the session. Eddie said, "When Richard starts drinking like this, he's gone for weeks. He's not going to get any better. You're going to have to fix it in the cutting room." And so I did: weeks of patient schnipping and squeezing of the tracks finally brought his dialogue in sync with that famous handsome face.
Burton exemplified the actor who often did not care what he did or how he did it, as long as he was paid. Even more saddening, perhaps, was the greatest American actor of his generation, MARLON BRANDO.
The film was "Superman". At the time it was made, Brando received the most amount of money ever paid an actor for the least amount of work. The sinewy and sexy actor whose performances in "A Streetcar Named Desire" and "On the Waterfront" had revolutionized the art of acting had somehow transformed himself into a beached whale, and a rather sleepy one at that. There was an aura around him the day we met on the ADR stage at the Goldwyn Studios, and although it did not glow as brightly as it did when he was young, that particular morning the aura was easily read. It said, "If you dare ask me to do anything more than go through the motions, I will surely devour you."
Brando proceeded to redo his recording in the most perfunctory way possible, without much concern whether his acting was good or bad, as long as it was somewhat in sync. It was. On occasion he would stop to ask me, most cordially, if I would like to share some of his Perrier water. I felt he could somehow read my thoughts, which were, "What a great pity that a man of your talent has reduced himself to this." Marlon knew I knew, but didn't care. That day, he too took his money and swam away.
The great male stars of the 1950s through the '70s were very often an enormously vain and lazy bunch who did as little work as possible for the most amount of money. The looping or ADR stage was not their favorite place. The same could rarely be said of the many fine actresses with whom I worked. From Jessica Lange to Mia Farrow to Glenn Close, they almost invariably displayed great seriousness and dedication to the process of post-synchronization.
The film was "Thank God It's Friday". DEBRA WINGER, then unknown, had a tiny part - so small that she was listed 10th, at the bottom of the cast list, below Donna Summer and the Commodores. Nevertheless, much as Pacino had done, the day we first worked together on the ADR stage at Directors Sound in Burbank, she insisted on doing her few lines again and again until they were perfectly performed and synchronized.
Ten years later we met again on the ADR stage for "Black Widow". By then she was a major film star. I brought the cast list of "TGIF" with me and showed her the billing. "From number 10 to number one in 10 years," I said. She looked at her place on the list with both amusement and trepidation. "And if I don't watch myself, back to 10 again," she replied.
In 1984 I was working on Swing Shift, starring Goldie Hawn. The film focused on a group of women who worked together in a factory during World War II. One of the smallest roles in the film was played by a tiny girl with a heavy Texas accent. She was extremely good at what she had to do. Nevertheless, as I watched her diminutive figure standing in front of the microphone at Glenn-Glen, I could not help but wonder what place there was in the Hollywood firmament for someone whose accent and mannerisms would surely limit her to character roles. The actress was HOLLY HUNTER. Her next film, "Broadcast News", made her a star, and she has been one ever since.
I first worked with SHARON STONE on "Action Jackson", a movie in which she played the mistress of an industrialist. Her character was one in a long series of roles that Sharon has described with her usual self-deprecating humor as "a blonde bimbo, some of whom get the guy, most of whom get murdered halfway through the picture." The next time our paths crossed, Sharon was cast as the bad bimbo in the Arnold Schwarzenegger film "Total Recall". That performance lead to her being cast as an even "badder" bimbo in the notorious "Basic Instinct".
As I worked with her on the ADR stage, it was obvious to me that her startling and uninhibited performance would soon make her a major star. I asked her how she would feel about the jump. "Just think," she said with characteristic delight, "no more bimbos!"
I would like to say that in the 40 years or more I worked as an ADR editor and director on movies in Hollywood and Rome I instantly recognized the star quality in these actresses. But, alas, I certainly did not. What I did see in all of them was an enormous drive and a consummate professionalism. No matter what these gifted women were asked to do, however small their parts, they did their work with all their hearts.
Was it great talent that got them to the top? Yes, in part. But, most of all, I believe it was an unwavering determination to be something more than ordinary, to be a professional.
The great Bogart once said that there are only two kinds of people in the movie business: "the pros and the bums." Now, as an acting teacher and director, I try to show my students the satisfactions of the first category. I cannot teach someone how to be talented who is not. That is impossible. But I believe I can show a talented person how to acquire a technique that may help them succeed in the most competitive world of acting. There is a technique to acting just as there is a technique to sound and film editing. It can be learned. And, if in 10 year's time, one of my gifted students should acquire this technique and have the good fortune to make it to the top, and were I to be asked if I had recognized that star quality way back then, in all honesty I would have to answer: "Of course not."
Norman Schwartz is a retired Guild member and
was the first ADR editor/director admitted to
the Sound Branch of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.
He recently directed William Mastrosimone's "The Woolgatherer"
at the Center Stage Theatre in Santa Barbara.
Reprinted from
The Motion Picture Editors Guild Newsletter
Vol. 20, No. 6 - Sep/Oct 1999
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