THE POWER OF SWEARING

Using bad language to create a quick adjustment

It was late one night on set and the director needed to re-block the scene for greater impact. This meant that the roles suddenly grew for two of the actors I was working with. Young drama school grads, they had been hired as extras — or non-speaking background action performers. Now they had to step up to perform a much more robust action scene than they had originally expected. Initially their task had been to simply stand by the door as security guards. Now they had to undertake some choreography, move through the scene and handle one of the lead characters. Of course, this happens often on set. Things change. But it was a big step-up for these young actors, and they were nervous about it.

I could see on the monitor that their nervousness plus the change in the blocking meant that two young men did not have the GISS the shot needed. They needed to instantly transmit the qualities of burliness, uncompromisingness, dark-spiritedness, relentlessness. Whereas actually I was seeing ge…