A Matthew HarrisonEssay

Life is in oppo­si­tion to itself at all times.

This truth about exis­tence is obvi­ous if you look at it. There is no such thing as “day” with­out “night” there to give it mean­ing. There is no land with­out sea. No wealth with­out poverty. No gain with­out loss. In every sin­gle “hello” there is an implicit “good­bye”. In every win, the pos­si­bil­ity of loss. In love, there is lone­li­ness. In con­fi­dence, inse­cu­rity. With­out death…there is no mean­ing to life.

Noth­ing can exist with­out its oppo­site there to define it. And so it is with peo­ple. We, too, are in con­stant con­tra­dic­tion to ourselves:

The con­fi­dant look­ing pro­fes­sional is actu­ally ter­ri­fied inside because he feels that he doesn’t know what he is talk­ing about. The win­ner appears un-​caring for fear of look­ing like a gloater but inside is actu­ally cel­e­brat­ing. The painfully shy girl actu­ally knows what she wants and will get it at any cost.

If you stop right now and take a good look at your­self in this very moment as you read these words, it’s a pretty good bet that you are in some sort of exact oppo­si­tion to your­self. Maybe you’re forc­ing your­self to spend some qual­ity time read­ing, when actu­ally you’re not absorb­ing a sin­gle word because you can’t stop think­ing about being at the beach. Or per­haps you’re study­ing to be the best actor you can be, even though you really believe what your fam­ily thinks…that you’ll never make it in the business…

When work­ing with an actor to find the character’s underlying-​contradictory truth, I often use the words “despite the fact that…”. Despite the fact that I’m about to vomit from nerves, I will walk across the stage to the podium. Despite the fact that I really love this man, I will push him away with all my might. Despite the fact that I’m never going to make it as an actor just like every­one tells me, I’m going to study any­way and prove them wrong.

In Hegelian terms, this is a psy­cho­log­i­cal dialec­tic – an inter­nal con­flict that cre­ates ten­sion between the oppo­sites – and as a result, cre­ates a greater, more dynamic whole. With only the sur­face, we are noth­ing. But with the equal– oppo­site hap­pen­ing simul­ta­ne­ously, we are in self-​conflict. This syn­the­sis of self and self-​in-​opposition makes us pro­found, com­plex, and alive. To study act­ing know­ing that I will suc­ceed is fine…but sur­face. To give up study­ing because I know that I’ll fail is self-​victimizing. But to study act­ing despite the fact that I believe that I’ll fail…that’s com­plex. That’s full of ten­sion. And it’s heroic.

In other words: if an actor approaches a script by accept­ing only what is on the sur­face as the character’s truth, they will only be in tune with the one layer of the char­ac­ter, the sur­face, and risk the chance of being crit­i­cized as “one note”.

But if the actor searches in the script for the deep-​down oppo­site of what the char­ac­ter says and does, they will uncover the character’s under­ly­ing psy­cho­log­i­cal truth. Know­ing that the char­ac­ter is play­ing against that deep– down-​truth means the actor will be com­plex and real­is­tic is well-​fleshed out way.

I’ve been coach­ing a new pilot recently with a cast of strong, well-​experienced actors…and they intu­itively know this. They all get that there is “more than meets the eye with their characters” – but often have a hard time deci­pher­ing what the “more” is. They get mud­dled between con­scious objec­tive and sub­con­scious desire. When asked what is their character’s objec­tive in the script, they tend to get lost some­where between the character’s out­ward want and inner need. The actor knows instinc­tively that there is more depth to their char­ac­ter, but can’t seem to pin­point the source. What the actor needs is a sim­ple roadmap…

“Coun­ter­point” is that roadmap – the term I use for the actor to find the way into the character’s inher­ent psy­cho­log­i­cal contradiction…

I bor­row the term from music: in a fugue (or sym­phony or jazz impro­vi­sa­tion or reg­gae or any kind of music you can think of really), there is the melody (the point). With noth­ing else but the melody hang­ing out there all on its own, a piece of music would sound and feel sim­plis­tic, hol­low, and…well…one note.

But with a con­trast­ing, con­tra­dic­tory theme play­ing in oppo­si­tion to the melody (the coun­ter­point), you get con­text, depth, and full­ness. Note against note. Punc­tum con­tra punc­tum. Like “day” with­out “night”, with­out con­text, with­out its accom­pa­ny­ing coun­ter­point, there may be a melody…but it’s not music.

Applied to story, point is the actor’s outer objective…what the char­ac­ter wants and the actions the char­ac­ter takes to get it. “To demol­ish my adver­sary by pub­licly humil­i­at­ing him so that he will leave me alone!” That’s the point.

The coun­ter­point must be the exact oppo­site. So in this case, the char­ac­ter must actu­ally want the atten­tion she’s get­ting (that would be the opposite)…maybe because her under­ly­ing truth is that she loves him despite herself.

With just the point, the char­ac­ter is sim­ply mean…a nasty piece of work. With the counterpoint…she is Beat­rice from Much Ado About Nothing.

Now. I need to be very clear about terminology…

This is not subtext.

The word sub­text has been so over used (and improp­erly used) and gen­er­al­ized that really it has come to mean noth­ing. Per­haps what I call “coun­ter­point” was the spe­cific orig­i­nal def­i­n­i­tion of the word. But at this point, “sub­text” has come to describe what really is defined as “entendre”…or implication.

For exam­ple: the text, that is the dia­logue, might read: “Go to hell.” But in con­text of the cir­cum­stances the char­ac­ter say­ing these words might be hot-​to-​trot for the other char­ac­ter, and so the sub­text is in fact “I want you”. In other words, the character’s action is “to seduce through chal­lenge”. Any actor who under­stands story and scene analy­sis would have jumped right over the ideas of text/​subtext and under­stood imme­di­ately that the action (the partner-​related verb) is “to seduce” and not been caught up in the sur­face text anyway.

But this is not the coun­ter­point. That’s the point.

Depend­ing on the greater cir­cum­stances of the char­ac­ter, the back-​story, the rela­tion­ships, and the character’s psy­chol­ogy, the coun­ter­point might be some­thing like: “feels unwor­thy of love and atten­tion from the oppo­site sex”… maybe stem­ming from her rela­tion­ship with her father referred to explic­itly in the story or implied in the script…so that the character’s full analy­sis in this par­tic­u­lar moment is: “to seduce and invite sex­u­ally through a chal­lenge, despite the fact that she feels unwor­thy of love and atten­tion from the oppo­site sex.”

Now that is a fully-​realized, dynamic, and inter­est­ing char­ac­ter (Ingrid Bergman as Ali­cia in Hitchcock’s Noto­ri­ous).

Another term often used is cap­ping. To “cap” your emo­tions is to sti­fle them or push them down so that you can get your objec­tive achieved:

Stand­ing here on stage at the podium, I have to push down my ner­vous­ness so that I can deliver the speech the way I mem­o­rized it.

Cap­ping is closer to the idea of counterpoint…but still a gen­er­al­iza­tion that can mis­lead. If an actor is busy push­ing down emo­tions or try­ing to “not feel some­thing” they will have taken the focus away from the imper­a­tive and all con­sum­ing action that they need to be play­ing in order to achieve the objec­tive. It’s very con­fus­ing for an actor to worry about cap­ping while they are simul­ta­ne­ously work­ing on get­ting some­thing else done. And see­ing as it is impos­si­ble to do two things at once, “cap­ping” can lead to real confusion…

It also can lead the actor down the road of wor­ry­ing about emo­tions… and in real life, peo­ple almost never reg­is­ter their emo­tions or self-​analyze (the way we actors love to do…)

Stay away from the gen­er­al­i­ties and get into specifics. Your char­ac­ter implic­itly is push­ing down emo­tions by play­ing a sin­gle action that “plays against” their counterpoint:

Stand­ing here on stage at the podium, I deliver my speech the way I mem­o­rized it…despite the fact that I know I don’t have any idea what I’m talk­ing about.

You see how the gen­eral feel­ing of “ner­vous­ness” is now replaced by the spe­cific source of the ner­vous­ness? Instead of cap­ping an emo­tion, (a very actor-​centric approach to the work), you actu­ally get the job done in spite of your self (a real­is­tic approach to how real peo­ple func­tion psychologically).

One warn­ing. Be careful…I am not in any way imply­ing by my exam­ples that coun­ter­point is always neg­a­tive. Much of tragedy results from a neg­a­tive action over a pos­i­tive counterpoint:

- To sac­ri­fice her despite how much I love her (Oth­ello)
 – To give up despite the fact that I know that I’m the best (Broad­cast News)
 – To refuse to help even though I have the moral integrity (The Insider)

Whether pos­i­tive or neg­a­tive, the ten­sion cre­ated by the point/​counterpoint (what I have been refer­ring to for years in class as “top/​bottom”) is what makes story exciting…it’s what makes char­ac­ters real…

Some­times in scenes, the coun­ter­point is very obvi­ous (in fact, many sto­ries are actu­ally about coun­ter­point…Remains Of The Day).

Some­times the coun­ter­point is alluded to or revealed some­where else in the play or screen­play, even if only men­tioned in pass­ing about back-​story.

And some­times, there is no evi­dence of any coun­ter­point at all…if this last case is true, it may be that the under­ly­ing truth is there some­where and you just haven’t dug enough into the story to see it.

But, it’s not impos­si­ble that you are work­ing with lesser mate­r­ial (some quickly penned, deriv­a­tive, cliché-​infested movie of the week script let’s just say…). If this is the case…it is up to you to cre­ate the coun­ter­point. Ask your­self: “what is my char­ac­ter doing and why?” – and then inverse it – and there will be the coun­ter­point you need to play.

Now…sometimes, but rarely in a script, the ten­sion between the point and coun­ter­point finally get to be too much and smash together, reveal­ing the under­ly­ing truth in the form of a con­fes­sion or break­down or breakthrough.

If this hap­pens to your char­ac­ter (usu­ally the lead), it prob­a­bly hap­pens late in the sec­ond act and at the character’s low­est or high­est point. Usu­ally there will be tears or yelling or ecsta­tic laugh­ter or some huge emo­tional response…

Iron­i­cally, actors are usu­ally most afraid of and excited by scenes with these moments of emo­tional release. We train to be emo­tion­ally avail­able for these moments and rel­ish them in class and on stage or screen. But these moments, I repeat, are excep­tion­ally rare in real life and also rare in story. Though they may be cathar­tic and invig­o­rat­ing for the actor, the chal­lenge in act­ing is the sub­tlety and nuance of the con­tra­pun­tal moments through­out the major­ity of the story…

The actor needs to pre­pare the emo­tions and mas­sive truths (that the char­ac­ter holds deep down) from within them­selves (please see my essay: “The Superla­tive Actor”)…and then when they feel the full force of these emo­tions…sub­merge them into the counterpoint.

It’s what audi­ences want to see…in fact, audi­ences know instinc­tively when they are watch­ing a con­tra­pun­tal actor. They feel it. They say: “that actor is so good…so deep and realistic…people are just like that!”

All the actors you admire –Meryl Streep, Rus­sell Crowe, Kate Winslet, Ian McK­ellen, Helen Mir­ren, Gwyneth Pal­trow, Sean Penn – all these actors are con­stantly and con­sis­tently work­ing in a con­tra­pun­tal man­ner, in con­flict with them­selves, play­ing against some deeply-​lined oppos­ing truth. This is what makes them inter­est­ing, human, dynamic…and psy­cho­log­i­cally realistic.

Watch Meryl Streep in The Devil Wears Prada…imag­ine how hor­rid it would have been if a lesser actress had played that char­ac­ter straight, the way she is writ­ten on the page, with­out the “I’m lonely in my empty life” coun­ter­point (which we see smash through in her brief break­down after her hus­band leaves her.)

Watch Chris Cooper in Breach and see how every­thing this hard-​assed FBI agent does, stem­ming from his need to be respected and loved (from his sex tapes to his trea­son) is in spite the fact that he’s a “moral, Chris­t­ian, fam­ily man”.

In The Departed Mark Wal­berg was nom­i­nated for an Oscar not for his blus­ter­ing and yelling…but because this actor attacked and insulted in spite of the fact that he had the great­est respect for these under­cover guys.

Roger Moore’s James Bond will evap­o­rate into his­tory, but Sean Con­nery and now Daniel Craig as 007 will be immor­tal­ized. Why? Roger Moore always knows he’s going to win and never seems in any per­sonal con­flict what­so­ever. And so his char­ac­ter is unap­proach­able – I know no one like him in real life.

But Daniel Craig’s Bond is learn­ing the nasty ropes of being a secret agent “despite his gnaw­ing moral con­scious”. This makes him real­is­tic. Likable.

And Sean Connery’s 007 always throws him­self into the fray, despite his worry (as evi­denced by that fur­rowed brow and fear­ful look) that he actu­ally doesn’t know what he’s get­ting him­self into and might prob­a­bly just die. And so, with very lit­tle spe­cial effects and gad­getry to help get us excited, Sean Con­nery, all alone with his coun­ter­point, keeps us on edge.

And that’s good act­ing…
Matthew Har­ri­son