Article: Sydney Morning Herald - December 18th, 2006
Kiss and Tell
William McInnes
December 18, 2006
Making love to a semi-stranger can be a tricky business, but it's a sacrifice actors are willing to make.
Occasionally in the course of a working day I stand or lie down in various states of undress in front of a collection of work acquaintances and, sometimes, total strangers.
I can find myself dressed in breathtakingly ridiculous costumes and sometimes I can feel breathtakingly ridiculous being naked in the arms of someone I don't know that well, pretending to be in the throes of overwhelming passion. As on any working day, your mind can wander and at such times my mind trots off to my childhood, back to those lazy Kissy on the Yips days.
Let me explain. As a child I took a great deal of pleasure watching movies and drama on the television with my brother and sisters. It could be a rowdily interactive exercise and we would usually give the television back as good it gave.
We would yell back at the characters on the screen and hide behind chairs and couches and shoot at the baddies and cheer the goodies and then shoot the goodies and cheer the baddies. It soon became an exercise in anarchy. But there was always a moment in any movie or television show that would shut us up. Always a scene that would put the hand brake on the noise - for a moment. Then we would explode in an even louder clamour of noise and protest.
The love scene. Or, as it became known in technical terms in our family, "The Kissy on the Yips."
Why it was given this name I have no idea, but what I do know is that as soon as the scene came, all the action and fun would stop and we would lie on our backs, kick our legs out and scream "Kissy on the Yips! Kissy on the Yips!"
So there is some irony that, due to a career choice, I now find myself upon on the odd occasion partaking in a "Kissy on the Yips" scene. But I take comfort in knowing that in almost every form of screen entertainment there is a love scene: The Kiss, and, many times, a little bit more. In fact, the history of film is littered with people embracing, kissing and holding each other in an approximation of emotional longing.
Lots of images spring to mind. Burt Lancaster and Deborah Kerr embracing and kissing in the surf in From Here to Eternity. Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman in Casablanca, Clark Gable and Vivien Leigh in Gone With the Wind. Leonardo and Kate on the Titanic. Plenty of Kissy on the Yips.
These sorts of scenes have a particular character because they are usually so very similar. They seldom push things along; sometimes the scenes are there because people simply think they must be, they are a part of the formula. So it is not surprising that the Kissy on the Yips nearly always follows a template.
As a sometime participant in such a scene, for me this template comes in very handy. Acting is basically just pretending and it can be a lot of fun, but the love scene is an area where the pretending can sometimes be a little vexing.
Let's face it, there is close human contact and there is close human contact. I quite like the latter. There is sex. I quite enjoy sex. There is rugby. I have played rugby and quite enjoyed it. That's all about close human contact or the avoidance of it.
But staring into a relative stranger's eyes and then snogging away in front of a film or television crew is a part of an actor's life that requires a clear perspective.
It's a part of the job. And the job has to be completed. So having a set way of shooting a love scene can be good.
The basic formula is that you stare into each other's eyes, the woman usually opens her eyes quite wide and opens her mouth slightly and, by convention, the man will stare with a sure gaze, clench his jaw in the age-old sign of deep passion. Then you will press your lips into the other actor's lips and, almost invariably, close your eyes and do your best to melt into each other. Well, that's the theory.
Screen kisses used to be like nanna Kisses, all lips and no tongue. But that seemed to change in the 1980s with the likes of Tom Cruise and Kelly McGillis in Top Gun where the Kissy on the Yips action could have been called Over the Top Tongue or Tongue Gun. The two actors' appendages carried on like some snake charmer's hyperactive cobras.
"Kissy on the Yips! Kissy on the Yips!"
The actor's nightmare is to turn up to work, get introduced to somebody and then be told to fall into each other's eyes. And it's not just an acting urban myth. I turned up to a job early on in my career, squeezed into a sky-blue suit with frilled collar and flared pants and found myself on top of some piece of rock in Sydney pretending to get married to a ranger from Wandin Valley.
She was very pleasant but had an incredible amount of gypsophila in her hair. In fact, she was festooned in this odd mixture of what looked like snowflakes and giant dandruff. I repeated some vows that were asked of me by a pretend celebrant who, before the take, was having a cup of coffee and chatting happily about her Socialist Party meeting in Redfern the night before.
Then, invited by our left-leaning marriage vower, it was time to kiss my new gyp bride. I leant down, then leant even further and, well, I kissy-ed on the yips. In fact, it was more a case of Kissy on the Gyps. Basically, I head-butted her and we smacked our enamel together. She was a nice person and we went our separate ways.
Love scenes require a few considerations from actors, among them basic cleanliness and passable personal hygiene.
One of moviedom's legendary Kissy on the Yips teams achieved this status despite a distinct lack of mutual physical attraction.
In Gone With the Wind, Gable and Leigh got along quite pleasantly by all accounts but the fact that dear old Clark had a complete set of dentures and an accompanying case of halitosis must have stretched the working friendship. Frankly he didn't give a damn.
There is nothing like kissing someone who has either eaten something which is rotting away merrily in the digestive tract or, through a lack of breath freshener and a toothbrush, seems to have a dead ferret down the throat. You can be told the message or send one yourself and hopefully that will do the trick. But sometimes an actor just has to kiss and bear it.
There's another matter - baring things. Occasionally an actor is called upon to lose various articles of clothing in the course of getting through a working day. Closed sets are usually offered, the crew is kept to a minimum and nobody is allowed to wander in or out. Apart from the privacy, it adds a sense of care.
That seems odd when the actors are engaged in a form of mass communication but acting can be quite an insecure occupation and in reality very few of us have bodies we are entirely comfortable with, so locked doors and fewer faces can make the job a bit easier.
The director is the person who usually has the most to do with making a Kissy on the Yips scene bearable. Or not. Some directors have been known to give such helpful advice as, "Oil 'em up and we'll just roll camera and they can get on with it".
Then you and your screen partner find yourselves being slathered in baby oil and are required to bounce and slither around each other like two vegies in a stir-fry.
Unfortunately, during such moments actors usually try to give a little bit more and the sounds emitted are like those from someone enjoying a good meal. Lots of humming and half-moans and the slapping of lips.
But when directors have a definite idea of what they want, the actors are on a surer footing. In Look Both Ways, Justine Clarke and my good self had to engage in a Kissy on the Yips scene. Sarah Watt, the director and also the writer, knew what she wanted from the scene and she knew what she wanted from the actors.
The fact that she knew one of the actors, me, quite well made the exercise a little more complex. The writer and director was and is my wife. So in this case the Kissy on the Yips scene involved not only a work colleague but also the person who knows what I am and what I am not capable of.
Fortunately or unfortunately there was a great deal of laughter from the director as well as the odd exclamation of "Oh, as if". It also helped that the scene itself was funny and layered, which always helps the actors feel a cut above the aforementioned stir-fried vegies.
That scene from Look Both Ways is an example of what can happen when a filmmaker approaches a scene with a sense of sureness and originality. The love scene then has a freshness and a power which, if it works, can raise the Kissy on the Yips scene to a more powerful or entertaining level.
Toni Colette and Matt Day on those bean bags in Muriel's Wedding are hysterically funny yet also disarmingly moving and even a little sad. It's a great example of a love scene working on quite a few levels.
Some critics say the style of love scenes changes according to audience demand. This means filmmaking must follow fashion and social trends, which may explain the increasing insistence on actual sex instead of simulated. It also may be an example of reality television influencing other forms of popular culture. But while the sex may be real, on another level it isn't real because of the fictional nature of the film. Confusing? Well, think about trying that with gyp and false teeth.
And yet some of the most romantically powerful and moving scenes in film have little or almost no physical contact and are performed by some quite unlikely actors.
In John Ford's 1956 film The Searchers, there is such a scene. John Wayne's character, Ethan, returns from years of blood-filled soldiering and savagery to his brother's farm. His worn and battered army tunic is taken by his brother's wife. And as Ethan's brother calls together the children to reintroduce them to their uncle, Ethan and his sister-in-law exchange glances.
Ethan bends his giant figure down and barely touches her forehead with thin dry lips and then swaggers from the frame leaving his sister-in-law alone in the shot to slowly and delicately stroke the battered uniform so tenderly that the deep emotional contact between the two is left in no doubt. It is an intensely poetical and moving moment.
Who would have thought? John Wayne in a top-shelf Kissy on the Yips scene.
William McInnes
December 18, 2006
Making love to a semi-stranger can be a tricky business, but it's a sacrifice actors are willing to make.
Occasionally in the course of a working day I stand or lie down in various states of undress in front of a collection of work acquaintances and, sometimes, total strangers.
I can find myself dressed in breathtakingly ridiculous costumes and sometimes I can feel breathtakingly ridiculous being naked in the arms of someone I don't know that well, pretending to be in the throes of overwhelming passion. As on any working day, your mind can wander and at such times my mind trots off to my childhood, back to those lazy Kissy on the Yips days.
Let me explain. As a child I took a great deal of pleasure watching movies and drama on the television with my brother and sisters. It could be a rowdily interactive exercise and we would usually give the television back as good it gave.
We would yell back at the characters on the screen and hide behind chairs and couches and shoot at the baddies and cheer the goodies and then shoot the goodies and cheer the baddies. It soon became an exercise in anarchy. But there was always a moment in any movie or television show that would shut us up. Always a scene that would put the hand brake on the noise - for a moment. Then we would explode in an even louder clamour of noise and protest.
The love scene. Or, as it became known in technical terms in our family, "The Kissy on the Yips."
Why it was given this name I have no idea, but what I do know is that as soon as the scene came, all the action and fun would stop and we would lie on our backs, kick our legs out and scream "Kissy on the Yips! Kissy on the Yips!"
So there is some irony that, due to a career choice, I now find myself upon on the odd occasion partaking in a "Kissy on the Yips" scene. But I take comfort in knowing that in almost every form of screen entertainment there is a love scene: The Kiss, and, many times, a little bit more. In fact, the history of film is littered with people embracing, kissing and holding each other in an approximation of emotional longing.
Lots of images spring to mind. Burt Lancaster and Deborah Kerr embracing and kissing in the surf in From Here to Eternity. Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman in Casablanca, Clark Gable and Vivien Leigh in Gone With the Wind. Leonardo and Kate on the Titanic. Plenty of Kissy on the Yips.
These sorts of scenes have a particular character because they are usually so very similar. They seldom push things along; sometimes the scenes are there because people simply think they must be, they are a part of the formula. So it is not surprising that the Kissy on the Yips nearly always follows a template.
As a sometime participant in such a scene, for me this template comes in very handy. Acting is basically just pretending and it can be a lot of fun, but the love scene is an area where the pretending can sometimes be a little vexing.
Let's face it, there is close human contact and there is close human contact. I quite like the latter. There is sex. I quite enjoy sex. There is rugby. I have played rugby and quite enjoyed it. That's all about close human contact or the avoidance of it.
But staring into a relative stranger's eyes and then snogging away in front of a film or television crew is a part of an actor's life that requires a clear perspective.
It's a part of the job. And the job has to be completed. So having a set way of shooting a love scene can be good.
The basic formula is that you stare into each other's eyes, the woman usually opens her eyes quite wide and opens her mouth slightly and, by convention, the man will stare with a sure gaze, clench his jaw in the age-old sign of deep passion. Then you will press your lips into the other actor's lips and, almost invariably, close your eyes and do your best to melt into each other. Well, that's the theory.
Screen kisses used to be like nanna Kisses, all lips and no tongue. But that seemed to change in the 1980s with the likes of Tom Cruise and Kelly McGillis in Top Gun where the Kissy on the Yips action could have been called Over the Top Tongue or Tongue Gun. The two actors' appendages carried on like some snake charmer's hyperactive cobras.
"Kissy on the Yips! Kissy on the Yips!"
The actor's nightmare is to turn up to work, get introduced to somebody and then be told to fall into each other's eyes. And it's not just an acting urban myth. I turned up to a job early on in my career, squeezed into a sky-blue suit with frilled collar and flared pants and found myself on top of some piece of rock in Sydney pretending to get married to a ranger from Wandin Valley.
She was very pleasant but had an incredible amount of gypsophila in her hair. In fact, she was festooned in this odd mixture of what looked like snowflakes and giant dandruff. I repeated some vows that were asked of me by a pretend celebrant who, before the take, was having a cup of coffee and chatting happily about her Socialist Party meeting in Redfern the night before.
Then, invited by our left-leaning marriage vower, it was time to kiss my new gyp bride. I leant down, then leant even further and, well, I kissy-ed on the yips. In fact, it was more a case of Kissy on the Gyps. Basically, I head-butted her and we smacked our enamel together. She was a nice person and we went our separate ways.
Love scenes require a few considerations from actors, among them basic cleanliness and passable personal hygiene.
One of moviedom's legendary Kissy on the Yips teams achieved this status despite a distinct lack of mutual physical attraction.
In Gone With the Wind, Gable and Leigh got along quite pleasantly by all accounts but the fact that dear old Clark had a complete set of dentures and an accompanying case of halitosis must have stretched the working friendship. Frankly he didn't give a damn.
There is nothing like kissing someone who has either eaten something which is rotting away merrily in the digestive tract or, through a lack of breath freshener and a toothbrush, seems to have a dead ferret down the throat. You can be told the message or send one yourself and hopefully that will do the trick. But sometimes an actor just has to kiss and bear it.
There's another matter - baring things. Occasionally an actor is called upon to lose various articles of clothing in the course of getting through a working day. Closed sets are usually offered, the crew is kept to a minimum and nobody is allowed to wander in or out. Apart from the privacy, it adds a sense of care.
That seems odd when the actors are engaged in a form of mass communication but acting can be quite an insecure occupation and in reality very few of us have bodies we are entirely comfortable with, so locked doors and fewer faces can make the job a bit easier.
The director is the person who usually has the most to do with making a Kissy on the Yips scene bearable. Or not. Some directors have been known to give such helpful advice as, "Oil 'em up and we'll just roll camera and they can get on with it".
Then you and your screen partner find yourselves being slathered in baby oil and are required to bounce and slither around each other like two vegies in a stir-fry.
Unfortunately, during such moments actors usually try to give a little bit more and the sounds emitted are like those from someone enjoying a good meal. Lots of humming and half-moans and the slapping of lips.
But when directors have a definite idea of what they want, the actors are on a surer footing. In Look Both Ways, Justine Clarke and my good self had to engage in a Kissy on the Yips scene. Sarah Watt, the director and also the writer, knew what she wanted from the scene and she knew what she wanted from the actors.
The fact that she knew one of the actors, me, quite well made the exercise a little more complex. The writer and director was and is my wife. So in this case the Kissy on the Yips scene involved not only a work colleague but also the person who knows what I am and what I am not capable of.
Fortunately or unfortunately there was a great deal of laughter from the director as well as the odd exclamation of "Oh, as if". It also helped that the scene itself was funny and layered, which always helps the actors feel a cut above the aforementioned stir-fried vegies.
That scene from Look Both Ways is an example of what can happen when a filmmaker approaches a scene with a sense of sureness and originality. The love scene then has a freshness and a power which, if it works, can raise the Kissy on the Yips scene to a more powerful or entertaining level.
Toni Colette and Matt Day on those bean bags in Muriel's Wedding are hysterically funny yet also disarmingly moving and even a little sad. It's a great example of a love scene working on quite a few levels.
Some critics say the style of love scenes changes according to audience demand. This means filmmaking must follow fashion and social trends, which may explain the increasing insistence on actual sex instead of simulated. It also may be an example of reality television influencing other forms of popular culture. But while the sex may be real, on another level it isn't real because of the fictional nature of the film. Confusing? Well, think about trying that with gyp and false teeth.
And yet some of the most romantically powerful and moving scenes in film have little or almost no physical contact and are performed by some quite unlikely actors.
In John Ford's 1956 film The Searchers, there is such a scene. John Wayne's character, Ethan, returns from years of blood-filled soldiering and savagery to his brother's farm. His worn and battered army tunic is taken by his brother's wife. And as Ethan's brother calls together the children to reintroduce them to their uncle, Ethan and his sister-in-law exchange glances.
Ethan bends his giant figure down and barely touches her forehead with thin dry lips and then swaggers from the frame leaving his sister-in-law alone in the shot to slowly and delicately stroke the battered uniform so tenderly that the deep emotional contact between the two is left in no doubt. It is an intensely poetical and moving moment.
Who would have thought? John Wayne in a top-shelf Kissy on the Yips scene.
posted by WilliamWatch at 8:17 PM
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