Cherif Gacis Chassis Musings

"Fear makes the wolf bigger than he is"~German Proverb The past few weeks have been challenging due to the fact that our assignment was to willingly ask people for their opinions on what type of character they could see us portraying. The challenging part is having to be completely open and receptive to whatever may come our way, which I must admit caused some discomfort. From years before, going back to high school and college acting projects, I've always been cast as a bad guy and more specifically one that is written off in a double cross type of situation. Twice I've portrayed a drug kingpin or mastermind who is killed by being in too deep. Most roles from people that knew me were somewhere along those serious roles: a mobster, a politician, a soldier, a Chuck Norris type of hero, an FBI agent. The part that was even harder was asking complete strangers out of the blue. Maybe it was because of the change in appearance (clean shaven, fresh haircut) or the mo...

"Once a word leaves your mouth, you cannot chase it back even with the swiftest horse"~Chinese Proverb The old Axiom of sticks and stones may carry a good message about inner worth and self esteem, but it's a fantastic fallacy. Truth is that words have meaning, and they are powerful. That's why the Bible talks about edifying speech and building up one another. It is true that if you are someone who is secure enough to not worry about petty gossip or malicious slander, you more than likely have a less stressful and more fulfilling life. That's why words are an integral part of an actor's message, an actor's performance and their delivery. Seeing how the person who had asked me to work on a Middle Easter accent for an audition coming up was someone I respect and trust, I immediately dove headlong into it. Surprisingly, perhaps in part because I grew up speaking Spanish and French, an Arabic accent came easily. Within 40 minutes of practicing, I had a goo...

"Price is what you pay, value is what you get" ~ Warren Buffett Everything is life has a price attached to it, everything. That price isn't always a monetary tag you can attach to what you're "buying", although many times you can. The most expensive commodity everyone in the world is handed is time, and whether you spend it wisely or not usually shows up far too late down the road, way past the point of no return in terms of cost spent. I haven't been able to venture out to my favorite past time of going to the movies because I've been diligently working on being healthier. Two weeks ago, my work did a free medical screening on site, and I was excited to find out what things looked like. I knew I was a bit heftier than usual because my suits were fitting a **little** too tightly. I was DEFINITELY not prepared to be handed a bio-metric card that showed how unwisely I'd been spending my time: not only was I overweight, I was actually OBESE for...

"Being honest may not get you a lot of friends, but it will get you the right ones." ~John Lennon One of the biggest points we discussed during group before we broke off to do an on-camera testimonial on a specific shaping event in our lives, was the need for authenticity. More to the point, being comfortable with being vulnerable and open. From my perspective, that struck me as the need to be genuine with people and with the characters you are tasked with portraying. Many times, whether it be theater, contemporary art, or film/television, an audience can always tell when you are "trying too hard" or "just don't have IT". Both are easy to spot, and from an acting perspective it becomes distracting in trying to follow to story line or plot. On one particular occasion, I remember discussing background work with a movie goer and his main take was "the background actor was overdoing their role so much, that it became distracting to the scene and ...

"Stay true in the dark and humble in the spotlight"~Harold B. Lee This week I did not go to the theater for my usual movie night because, quite simply, there were no movies I was overly interested in watching. I thought of watching another one that I'd seen already, but found none that I thought I'd want to spend more money to watch again. Which made me step back and think 'what does make a person want to spend hard earned money to go lose themselves to the cinemas a second or third time'?" Part of that was answered when we started doing a deeper dive into Stanislavski's teachings, and it deals with authenticity. The group spent some time on the notion that an actor is "the priest of beauty and truth." Although some useful insights were provided into the meaning of what that may have meant, I had to read the quote in the context that Stanislavski wrote it to draw my own inference into what he wanted us to glean. Before that phrase an...

"Every mountain top is within reach if you just keep climbing"~Barry Finlay I once read that there was a particular study on basketball free throw efficiency where one person sat on the sideline and watched a player attempt 100 free throws, while another player with similar skills/percentage actually went through shooting 100 free throws in a row. What the study found was that the person who watched and learned had a greater percentage improvement than the person who would shoot countless free throws in a row. The key takeaway is that, although actually going through the motion and practice is important, it was almost just as important or sometimes even more important to be able to observe your craft from a different vantage point for incremental improvements. Which leads me to the movie I watched last week. That movie had some good A-listers, and it was a night and day difference in talent from the movie I'd seen the week before where the acting was rather bland. ...

"The Journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step" ~Lao Tzu Gacis Chassis [Gah'-seas Shas-ee] - The framework behind the drive Not having been in an acting class or theater production since my sophomore year in college over a decade ago, I have to admit there was some trepidation over how this new adventure would fit into my daily schedule. To prepare, I started making it a habit to watch a new film every Sunday after church to start incorporating different acting styles and perspectives that I could bring to the group. When I received the syllabus and saw we would need a book, flashbacks of expensive encyclopedia thick books from graduate school came to mind. Would I have to read the first five chapters before the first session!? When I found the Sonia Moore book on Amazon on Stanislavski's system at a very reasonable price AND size, I was at ease. While sitting there during jury duty, I tried reading as much as I could before the first meeting (again,...