Perfectionism

I have spent years lost in a maze of perfectionism, never travelling far from the start due to an overwhelming urge to go back to the middle and try all the other routes before even remotely venturing towards the edge. It is a chronic disability.

When I studied film at Exeter College back in 1997/98 – an A Level at evening school, taught by the brilliant Jo Johnson (the best lecturer I have ever had the pleasure of being taught by) – as usual I became caught up in this ridiculous idea that in order to understand film you had to know it from every conceivable angle. Screenwriting, producing, directing, etc. In fact, I had to become a professional screenwriter before I had any chance of becoming a film critic. And that’s ignoring semiotics which, of course, is a whole discipline in itself.

They are all key elements to film if taken as a giant discipline in its own right but it is an approach which is, nonetheless, a ridiculous, impossible perfectionism.

It’s like trying to ferment a vegetable that will never have any alcoholic properties. No matter how hard you try, you will never produce a real drink and will never have any chance of becoming drunk; the best you can hope for is a teetotal, sterile and bland carrot juice drink.

Take John Hurt. He is surely one of the greatest English actors of the last forty years. His performances are incredibly perspicuous - Dr Stephen Ward, Timothy Evans and Winston Smith, to name just three. There is no-one better than him at offering an acute, inner world of his chosen character and then projecting via his exquisite voice and facial nuances. And yet he says he is just pretending; he never got too bothered about mastering everything. He isn't interested in Stanislavski or anything like that. He just goes out and does the job. When he finished at the Royal Academy, he just went out and got his first job within a few days, on The Wild and the Willing (1962).

Just go out and do it. That is the key.

John Hurt interviewed by Geoff Andrew, The Guardian, Thursday, April 27, 2000:
http://film.guardian.co.uk/Guardian_NFT/interview/0,4479,214857,00.html