I’ve passed along this Lauren Bacall story previously, but it came from Howard Hawks. Hawks was interested in her for a film in the mid ’40s (probably To Have or Have Not) but told her she had to lower her voice, that she’d be more interesting if she sounded sultry and smoky. So Bacall went away and came back and her voice was just what Hawks was talking about. Then he told her to stop smiling all the time and to maybe insult a man every now and then. She later told him that she ran into Clark Gable at a party and said to him in that cool, low-down way of hers, “Where’d you get that tie?” Gable said “Oh, some haberdashery in Beverly Hills…what do you wanna know for?” And Bacall said, “So I can tell my friends not to go there.”

Yesterday HE reader and L.A. Daily News guy Bob Strauss wrote that “any critic who can’t distinguish between the performance and the character doesn’t just have lousy perception, they’re unfit for the job.”

That’s almost total bullshit — all actors blend themselves into the characters they play, and when the process is finished nobody really knows where the actor ends and the character begins, least of all the critics. It’s all an improvised mashed-potato process. With the exception of those rare world-class actors who can truly be called chameleons (Meryl Streep, the late Laurence Olivier, Daniel Day Lewis and maybe, what, 10 or 12 others?) very few actors are really playing “somebody else”. A performance is simply a process by which an actor tries on a coat or a pair of shoes or a mood or a history lived by some character on a page, and then they cross-blend themselves into this person and…tah-dah! How’s this sound? Should I do it differently? I love this job, man…I love making movies.

Those who can do this well or at least smoothly and who’ve been agile enough to scale the hurdles and who have sufficiently big heads…they’re all good to go. Almost no successful actors will admit this because revelations of this sort seem to devalue their craft. They want you to think it’s tricky magic or rocket science, but it’s not. I’m not saying it’s easy or that anyone can do it, but a lot of people can.

Every actor in Hollywood history has lied through their teeth about this process. They’ve all used the same line about simply and purely playing a made-up character, and that what they perform has nothing to do with who they really are and so on. That is undoubtedly true to some extent but it’s NEVER, EVER 100% true. Even though Cary Grant always claimed he would like to be “Cary Grant” as much as the next day, he was still always Cary Grant. Vince Vaughn has always been (and always will be ) Vince fucking Vaughn. Humphrey Bogart was always that guy with the dangling unfiltered cigarette and the tough Manhattan attitude. Owen Wilson has always been Owen Wilson in every performance he’s ever given.

Very few actors are serious chameleons. Most of them are just making it up as they go along. All good actors take their looks and personalities and attitudes and toss them around in a salad bowl, and then they tailor or modify a character to fit their own personality or psyche and swirl the salad around some more and then they GO THERE. They do that thing, they let it rip and that‘s what makes certain performance “pop” and others not so much. No film is entirely pretend. In a sense all performances are documentary-“real” if you allow the deep-down to come forward in your perceptions.

“Whatever the on-screen persona or character, whatever the makeup, it is nigh on impossible to obfuscate the person. Not only that, but it records them doing what inspired them the most — acting. A film is the plate on which a butterfly is preserved.” — Checking On My Sausages, 7.30.10.

A couple of hours ago director Barry Levinson, who directed Robin Williams in Good Morning, Vietnam and Toys, posted this on the Variety site: “What makes [Robin’s] death so difficult to understand is the question ‘How can someone so funny be so sad?’ We can reflect on it, try to understand it, analyze it, but nothing will truly answer the question. [But I suspect that] the fragility of the man, his sensitivity, his deep feelings for life…all that allowed for him to carve his comedic sensibilities were the same feelings that took his life. He felt too much perhaps?

“There was always a kindness to Robin. An inquisitive man trying to understand the madness of mankind. But when the comedy motors were off, you could sense the vulnerability of the man. There was always a sense that he could easily be hurt. And if he were hurt, how quickly could he heal? A bleeder in a world of sharp edges. There was an innocence to his thoughtful intelligence. If there were an endangered species list for mankind, he would have been first on that list. He was perhaps too delicate for this difficult world. We lost one of a kind. We all lost a friend.”

With Sony Pictures having decided to open David Ayer’s Fury four weeks earlier than previously announced — Friday, 10.17 instead of Friday, 11.14 — doesn’t it make sense to sneak it during the New York Film Festival, which will run from 9.26 through 10.12? Sony announced by way of a 7.30 N.Y. Times story that they want to be part of the Best Picture conversation, and a NYFF debut would certainly be the way to push that subject. The NYFF will announce its slate tomorrow so we’ll know soon enough. The WWII blood, guts and tanks drama costars Brad Pitt, Shia LaBeouf and Logan Lerman. The 10.17 date belonged to The Interview before it was bumped back to a 12.25 opening.

The best I can say about Phillip Noyce‘s The Giver (Weinstein Co., 8.15) is that it’s clean, efficient, well-ordered and tidy. I’m not just referring to the tight assembly but the vibe permeating the totalitarian Disneyworld village that the hero, Jonas (Brenton Thwaites), and his community reside in. I’m not sure if Noyce intended The Giver‘s style to be a reflection of this creepy Orwellian atmosphere and vice versa (in the same way Zodiac‘s obsessive attention to a serial murder case reflected Jake Gyllenhaal‘s tenacious attitude about same). Perhaps Noyce simply can’t tell a story without resorting to restraint, discipline, focus. Maybe he just can’t help himself.

I do know that fans of adaptations of dystopian YA novels (Hunger Games, Divergent, The Maze Runner) are used to more of a slambang presentation — more intensity, more VFX, a bigger scale, kick out the jams. Generally an emphasis on louder, heavier and splashier. The Giver is much more restrained. It’s chilly, antiseptic and fairly quiet for the most part. A bit of a neutered quality. That may well be the point, as noted, but one thing The Giver doesn’t do is rock your buzzsaw with howls and shrieks and big bassy woofers. I wasn’t expecting to be gutslammed, mind — I just wanted to get into it — but maybe fans of Lois Lowry‘s 1993 book will be a little more susceptible. I wouldn’t know. I’ll never fucking know. The more distance I can put between myself and the YA literary genre, the better.

I also know that Jonas is 12 years old in the book and is roughly 17 or 18 in the film. (Thwaites is actually 25.) And that there’s a big different between how a 12 year-old might react to being told that a pulsing, colorful and sometimes chaotic and painful world existed before everything changed and life became ultra-regulated and monochrome-y and totalitarian, and how an 18 year-old might react. The basic story is about how the extra-perceptive Jonas is chosen to be the Receiver of past history, and that the bearded, vaguely stoned, half-muttering Jeff Bridges is the Giver of this history, and that the scheme comes undone once Jonas starts to say to himself (and eventually his friends) “wow…life used to be a lot more vivid and rich and symphonic!”

According to a non-bylined Variety story posted this morning, “controversial” film director Roman Polanski “has cancelled a planned visit to the ongoing Locarno Film Festival” due to unspecified “tensions” and “controversies.” What the hell is that supposed to mean? Do these tensions and controversies have anything to do with the 21st Century, or is this yet another throwback to Polanski’s legal troubles from the late ’70s? What self-respecting European gives a damn about that? Aside from the small fraternity of loons in the U.S. who have never let it go, no one gives a shit. So it must be something else, but what?

The Variety headline of the story mentioned “pressure” but didn’t say what it was about or where the pressure might be coming from. The story explained nothing. It was almost as if someone wrote it with the deliberate intention of teasing or infuriating readers. The story by Indiewire‘s Paula Bernstein is just as frustrating. What happened exactly? Why did he bug out?

In addition to HE’s 26 hard picks for the 2014 Toronto Film Festival (or 30 if you want to be liberal about it) I’m adding three or four films from a just-announced TIFF slate. These are all soft choices. That means if I don’t get to them…well, c’est le festival. Cedric Jimenez‘s The Connection, a period policer (set in 1975) about the Marseilles drug trade. Andrea Di Stefano‘s Escobar: Paradise Lost, in which Benicio del Toro portrays the late notorious drug dealer Pablo Escobar. Maya Forbes‘ Infinitely Polar Bear, which I missed at Sundance last January. Lynn Shelton‘s Laggies, which I saw at Sundance but would really to see again if the opportunity presents. And Richard Loncraine‘s Ruth and Alex (formerly titled Life Itself, based on Jill Ciment‘s novel”Heroic Measures”), a Morgan Freeman-Diane Keaton comedy about a couple deciding whether or not to sell their Brooklyn walk-up. You know something? Scratch that one. But what about The Weinstein Co.’s St. Vincent, which was reportedly a real possibility if Bill Murray could be persuaded to attend? With or without St. Vincent the tally is now at 33 or 34, which of course is outside my operational scope. I never manage to see more than 25 to 27 films over the festival’s nine days.

“I was amused when Maps to the Stars screenwriter Bruce Wagner claimed during the Cannes Film Festival that Evan Bird‘s Benjie Weiss character, a poisonous 13 year-old superstar who immediately summons thoughts of Justin Beiber, wasn’t written or cast with Beiber in mind. A friend told me he ran into Beiber at the AMFAR during the festival. He said he didn’t ask about the Cronenberg film because such a question would have seemed rude given that Wagner had stuck to the party line, etc. ‘Oh, please!,’ I replied. Never trust the artist — trust the tale.” — from a 5.30.14 post called “Blather.”

Robin Williams, 63, has been found dead of asphyxiation. In other words by his own hand. I’m very, very, very sad about this. The poor guy had been wrestling with severe depression, probably in part because his heyday was clearly over and he was on a kind of career downswing. I hate to say this but he was. Life can feel so awful and cruel at times when the heat leaves the room and the candle starts to flicker. The weight can feel crushing and oppressive. And for a guy who seemed to burn a lot more brightly than most of us, certainly in the late ’70s, ’80s and ’90s. A genius improviser, gifted madman and comic superstar for…what, 25 years or so? Williams hadn’t been landing the greatest films or roles over the past decade or so but from the peak of Mork and Mindy fame until One-Hour Photo…what a run! But this…this hurts. It reminds us that we’re all hanging by a thread in a sense, some thinner or stronger or more resolute than others.

Williams’ best films and performances: The World According to Garp (’82), Moscow on the Hudson (’84), Good Morning, Vietnam (’87), Dead Poets Society (’89), Awakenings (’90), The Fisher King (’91), Aladdin (’92), Mrs. Doubtfire (’93), Jumanji (’95), The Birdcage (’96), Good Will Hunting (’97), Insomnia (’02) — 12 films in all. The stinkers included Hook (’91), Toys (’92), Jack (’96), Father’s Day, Patch Adams (’98) , What Dreams May Come (’98), Bicentennial Man (’99), RV (’06) and Old Dogs (’09). His last significant roles were as Dwight D. Eisenhower in The Butler and as a huge pissed-off guy who’s been told he was only a few hours to live in Phil Alden Robinson‘s The Angriest Man in Brooklyn.

Let’s put aside the fact that no one outside the target demo (i.e., none-too-bright women) would want to go anywhere near a screening of this icky romantic tale. Let’s just address the fact that both lovers are played by younger and older actors — the high-school-aged Dawson Cole (what kind of a horseshit Nicholas Sparks name is that?) is played by Luke Bracey and the 20-years-older version by James Marsden, and the teenaged Amanda Collier is played by Liana Liberato with Michelle Monaghan portraying her at age 38. Bracey and Marsden don’t even look like cousins much less the same person; ditto Liberato and Monaghan. You can’t invest in this kind of thing — it’s impossible. Why not forget the younger actors and simply de-age Marsden and Monaghan the way the 42-year-old Matt Damon was very convincingly de-aged in Steven Soderbergh‘s Behind the Candelabra? It’s well within the reach of today’s technology, and it’s not like Marsden or Monagahan are looking “old” or anything. They’re both relatively young and unwithered.