The actor Martin Scorsese forced to take a vow of chastity: “You ruined the whole fucking movie!”
Film directors have been known to try a number of varyingly successful tactics to immerse their actors in the mindset of their character. Whether it be Stanley Kubrick’s method of isolating Shelley Duvall to intensify her desperate madness in The Shining or David Lynch’s mysterious feedback of simply informing an actor to “be a doll, like a doll in a dream”, filmmakers have used a myriad of techniques to draw out the best performance from their actors, sometimes demanding too much out of them and placing a strain on their personal lives.
From extreme physical transformations, diets and vows of silence, countless actors have found themselves caught in the throes of an all-consuming performance, with one perhaps going too far through his collaboration with Martin Scorsese.
Scorsese’s films have produced some of the greatest performances of all time, with his lifelong creative partnership with Leonardo DiCaprio and Robert De Niro leading to controversial and uncompromising characters such as Travis Bickle and Jordan Belfort. His clear sense of vision and masterful understanding of the medium has led to the creation of modern masterpieces such as Raging Bull, Taxi Driver and Killers of the Flower Moon, often critiquing our complicity with violence and ability to sensationalise tragedy through his carefully crafted narratives.
However, the director has also been known to push actors to delve deeper for their performances, going beyond the realm of performance and encouraging them to embody their characters in a closer way to create more lived-in performances.
This is something that was prevalent during the production of After Hours, his controversial 1985 film starring Griffin Dunne and Rosanna Arquette. The story follows an uptown Manhattan office worker who ventures downtown for a hookup with a mystery woman in an attempt to escape his boring everyday routine.
But the director asked Dunne to take on more extreme methods to embody his character, instructing him to take a vow of chastity to add to the frustrated mood of the film. Dunne described the circumstances of his bizarre sex ban, saying, “He did catch me being a little too relaxed with massaging the sexiest woman on earth, Linda Fiorentino. We’d shot the day before, and I was appropriately breathless with desire. But then the weekend happened. And I slipped and had a… fucking accident… and suddenly [we’re shooting again], I’m massaging her like Pepe LePew. Marty goes, ‘Cut, cut, cut! You got laid!’ And I’m like, ‘I know, I’m sorry…’ And Marty’s like, ‘You ruined the whole fucking movie! We should just go home.’ The fear kicked in so high and it turns out that fear and loss look just the same”.
There aren’t many actors who would go this far for a role, but if Scorsese asks you to do something, then you probably have to say yes, regardless of what it is. After Hours has regained popularity in recent years, with the film being one of many from his filmography to be sorely misinterpreted at the time of its release. Dunne’s performance is nothing short of gripping, and perhaps we now know the hidden reason for his angst.
