{"id":320,"date":"2023-07-18T07:58:07","date_gmt":"2023-07-18T07:58:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/onemiguel.es\/?p=320"},"modified":"2023-07-18T07:58:09","modified_gmt":"2023-07-18T07:58:09","slug":"a-life-in-parts","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/onemiguel.es\/en\/reads\/a-life-in-parts\/","title":{"rendered":"A Life In Parts"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Excerpts from the book of Bryan Cranston<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

If my dad was featured in a show or movie on TV, neighbors would drop by the next day to report how they felt about his work. \u201cI liked the production value, but all the actors were turkeys.\u201d \u201cThe beginning was great\u00a0.\u00a0.\u00a0. but the end was a fiasco.\u201d That was my first brush with celebrity. And critics. There was always a but. Everyone felt entitled to voice his or her opinion. As an actor, you were fair game.<\/mark><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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And then I remembered the conversation with my manager. I was going to leave anyhow. Two more weeks and I was giving notice. So why did I feel this way? It was sort of like I was going to break up with a girl and she beat me to the punch. I didn\u2019t want to be the one on the receiving end. I wanted to be the one in control. I wanted to be the one who knocked.<\/mark> It was my ego. My ego had been hurt.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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When I started getting a lot of guest-star roles, I\u2019d make postcards and send them to casting directors to alert them. Watch Bryan Cranston in Matlock this week! Don\u2019t miss Bryan Cranston\u2019s guest turn as Tom Logan in Baywatch! Tune in to Amazon Women on the Moon for a special treat: Bryan Cranston stars as Paramedic #3. I knew 99 percent wouldn\u2019t watch, but they would see my name. They would see my face. And they would get the message, even if only on a subliminal level. This guy works a lot.<\/mark><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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I was averaging a six-minute mile at mile-marker five. That was too fast. I needed to slow down. Mile ten. I was feeling good! Mile fifteen. Just okay. The course takes you from Staten Island through Brooklyn and Queens, and then back into Manhattan around mile sixteen. Manhattan gave me a boost. Finish line ahead! But \u201cahead\u201d was actually pretty far away.<\/mark><\/p>\n\n\n\n

By mile eighteen, I was tanking. I was running in mud. I grabbed Dixie Cups of Gatorade from the side of the road, and I tried to give myself pep talks. Come on, Bryan! I said aloud. I tried to absorb the energy of the crowd. They had inspired me at the outset, but nothing could help me now. I obsessively did the arithmetic\u2014how far I had come and how far I had to go\u2014thinking math might somehow ease the pain.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In a training run just a few months prior, I had hit \u201cthe wall,\u201d that dreaded wave of fatigue and bodily revolt.<\/mark> I\u2019d ended up splayed on a sidewalk in Santa Monica and had to crawl to a hose bib, lying on the sidewalk with my mouth open to take in a few drops from the spigot. Somehow I revived myself enough to lurch home. I did not want to repeat that experience during the race, so I\u2019d taken every liquid I\u2019d been offered along the course. I didn\u2019t quite hit the wall, but I was dragging. The race was becoming an ordeal. I wondered if I could finish.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The great acting guru Constantin Stanislavski said, \u201cLove art in yourself, not yourself in art.\u201d I think of that often. I try to live by that. Work, hone your craft, enjoy your successes in whatever doses they may come. But do not fall in love with the poster, the image of you in a movie, winning an Oscar, the perks, the limo, being rich and famous.<\/mark> If that is what you\u2019re falling in love with, you\u2019re doomed to fail. Be wary of the rest.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Early in my career, I was always hustling. Doing commercials, guest-starring, auditioning like crazy. I was making a decent living, but I confided to Robin that I felt I was stuck in junior varsity. I wondered if I had plateaued. Ever thoughtful, my wife gave me the gift of private sessions with a self-help guy named Breck Costin, who was really wonderful with actors and other creative people. Breck suggested that I focus on process rather than outcome.<\/mark><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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You were rooting for him to succeed. And then all of a sudden rooting for him to succeed meant you were rooting for him to make and sell crystal meth and get away with it. And then\u2014oh God\u2014he killed that guy. But that other guy was going to kill him. Of course he defended himself. You\u2019d do the same.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

By the time he let Jesse\u2019s girlfriend, Jane, die, you were fighting to spit that hook, but it was too late, it was set too deep. You were making excuses for him. You were equivocating, saying: \u201cWhat else could he do? Kill or be killed.\u201d You were headed toward the abyss.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s easy to take the high road when it\u2019s hypothetical, but Walt was dealing with excruciating questions in real time, and you the viewer were privy to his predicaments. You were inside. So you felt for him. You forgave him\u2014even as he crossed the line, even as he was overtaken by a lust for money and power. Even as it became clear that he was being driven not by concern for his family\u2019s future but by ego.<\/mark><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The day I had to reshoot that scene was challenging. I felt myself reenacting, rather than acting. I remembered what I did the last time and tried to extinguish that from my mind, but it was hard. I needed to find a new path back to those depths, and I couldn\u2019t. But it had to be done. So we did it again. And again and again. As an actor, you have to be able to endure repetition without losing emotion or energy.<\/mark><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Excerpts from the book of Bryan Cranston If my dad was featured in a show or movie on TV, neighbors would drop by the next day to report how they felt about his work. \u201cI liked the production value, but all the actors were turkeys.\u201d \u201cThe beginning was great\u00a0.\u00a0.\u00a0. but the end was a fiasco.\u201d …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_coblocks_attr":"","_coblocks_dimensions":"","_coblocks_responsive_height":"","_coblocks_accordion_ie_support":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-320","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reads"],"translation":{"provider":"WPGlobus","version":"3.0.2","language":"en","enabled_languages":["tl","en","nl"],"languages":{"tl":{"title":true,"content":true,"excerpt":false},"en":{"title":false,"content":false,"excerpt":false},"nl":{"title":false,"content":false,"excerpt":false}}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/onemiguel.es\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/320","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/onemiguel.es\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/onemiguel.es\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/onemiguel.es\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/onemiguel.es\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=320"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/onemiguel.es\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/320\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":325,"href":"https:\/\/onemiguel.es\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/320\/revisions\/325"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/onemiguel.es\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=320"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/onemiguel.es\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=320"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/onemiguel.es\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=320"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}