Ep. 71: The Teacher As Actor Part Two with Milton Justice

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Transcript:

Melissa Milner 0:09

Welcome to The Teacher As... podcast. I'm your host Melissa Milner, a teacher who is painfully curious and very easily inspired. This podcast is ever changing. And I hope with each season, you find episodes that speak to you in your work as an educator. This is the fourth season of The Teacher As... and it's exciting to see the growth and how many educators are listening. Episodes are released every other week. If you enjoy The Teacher As... please rate it on Apple podcasts and leave a review. It helps the podcast reach more educators. Thanks for listening.

Milton Justice 0:41

My name is Milton Justice. I am a teacher of acting. I've also spent a life as a producer. So... and early on, I was an actor but once I found teaching, I started began to believe that there's a there's a thing I misstatement that those who can't do teach, I began to realize that those who can't teach do and so... I was very, very fortunate. I had one of the iconic acting teachers, Stella Adler. She taught, you know, Marlon Brando and Robert De Niro, and me.

Melissa Milner 1:27

That's awesome.

Milton Justice 1:27

So I won an Academy Award and I won an Emmy Award.

Melissa Milner 1:33

For what explain what you won them for.

Milton Justice 1:34

Okey. So the Emmy Award was for children's TV specials back in the day, 100 years ago, they used to have after school specials.

Melissa Milner 1:45

I loved those.

Milton Justice 1:47

I mean, they we shot in like 10 days. And this one was so and everybody would do them because it was only 10 days. And so the after school special starred the then totally and completely unknown 14 year old Ben Affleck.

Melissa Milner 2:07

Oh, my gosh.

Milton Justice 2:08

And playing his mother was Madeline.

Melissa Milner 2:11

Oh, taffeta darling.

Milton Justice 2:14

I know. I mean, it was it was just this magical experience. And so at any rate, so that won an Emmy Award from Madeline and I won an Emmy Award as well.

Melissa Milner 2:30

What was the story? Just a quick synopsis.

Milton Justice 2:32

The story was a kid that was trying to get a date for his mother.

Melissa Milner 2:36

Oh, wow.

Milton Justice 2:39

Anyway, so that was the Emmy. And then the Oscar was for a documentary called Down and Out in America. And it was very unique. It was an idea Lee Grant had about doing a documentary on the homeless. And we pitched it to HBO, where we had done two other documentaries. And brilliant Sheila, who was in charge of documentaries said, "Oh, Milton, you know, it takes almost a year to do a documentary. By the time you finish it, it will no longer be a problem."

Melissa Milner 3:22

Oh. How sweet.

Milton Justice 3:25

Yeah. And so how optimistic and she, so she called about a year later and she said, ask Lee if she still wants to do that documentary. And so, and that was a unique experience, mostly because the New York Times review of the documentary basically said, if the filmmakers of Down and Out in America are so unhappy with America, they should go someplace else. I mean, they basically were saying they should go to Russia. And and so it was, it was political. Yeah, it was political. And it was really a great experience to be involved in something like that.

Melissa Milner 4:14

Yeah. Okay, so who presented the Oscar to you?

Milton Justice 4:22

Oprah Winfrey.

Melissa Milner 4:25

Really.

Milton Justice 4:26

The then barely known Oprah Winfrey.

Melissa Milner 4:29

Yeah.

Milton Justice 4:31

And so...

Melissa Milner 4:32

Had she done The Color Purple yet?

Milton Justice 4:33

Yes. She had been nominated for The Color Purple. And so it was the next year.

Melissa Milner 4:40

Gotcha.

Milton Justice 4:41

And so at any rate, so...

Melissa Milner 4:41

Oh, my gosh.

Milton Justice 4:44

I know. So she and I, you go backstage afterwards. And they interview. And so I was standing with Oprah and Lee Grant had directed it and of course she was a movie star. So they wanted to interview her and I was standing with with Oprah. And I said, "Have you noticed nobody's really interested in us?" and we both just died laughing. About that time, my agent, Kevin Huvane, who was one of the young turks had started CAA he is now to this day, he suddenly years later is one of the most powerful agents in Hollywood. But at the time, he said, "Why don't you come out to Hollywood and I'll take care of you." And so he was instrumental on some projects. But the biggest thing he would eventually do for me is I emailed him and said, the reason I'm calling you is I've written a book. And so he always took my call. And he said, Do you have an agent? And I said, No. And he said, I'll set you up with a literary department in New York. And so, you know, so for an acting book, I had an agent, so that was really good. Anyway, Stella Adler had opened a school in Los Angeles. And she said to me, I would sit in on her classes, and she said, that she said, she wanted me to talk to her to come over to her house. And it was a house I rented for hers for six weeks when she was giving master classes and she said, What do you want? What are you going to do while you're waiting for your producing career to take off? And I said, I haven't actually thought that far. And she said, I want you to teach for me. And Stella Adler was a very commanding personality. So it wasn't like it was a discussion. I want you to teach for me was you are going to teach for me. I'm not sure I wanted to act, I think after five years in class with Stella and I always tell my students, I was in class for five years, because I'm slow.

Melissa Milner 7:10

But why did she want you to teach? Come on.

Milton Justice 7:12

Oh, obviously knew I had that knack. Yeah, she'd watched me work with a couple of actors. In fact, when she said, I want she said, What do you when she when part of her conversation with what do you plan to do? And she said, What do you enjoy doing? And I said, Well, I really enjoy working with actors. And she said, I know you do. And, and that was really, and I just loved it. I didn't even know I could teach. At the time. I had become roommates with Grant and he'd been cast in a production of the play of On the Waterfront.

Melissa Milner 7:57

He's younger than you though, right?

Milton Justice 7:59

Yes, much younger.

Melissa Milner 8:00

Ok. I'm like is this the same grant show?

Milton Justice 8:03

Yeah, he's much okay. But so but it? So he said, Will you help me? And then Kyra Sedgwick had been in an after school special that I was a producer on and I started helping her on auditions. And so suddenly, it was like, by accident, I realized that not only did I have a knack for it, and I think you have to have a knack. I, I was able to pull together this information that I had learned from Stella, learned from being in class, and and pass it on. And, man, I gotta tell you something, I am so relieved I can do this because not only did producing movies become not fun anymore, just the whole idea that I'm working with actors. It's it's like, and they tell me, of course, they're my students. So they would tell me they assure me I'm the youngest 75 year old they've ever met. But, but it's because of them.

Melissa Milner 8:23

Absolutely.

Milton Justice 8:39

I mean, it's like my students keep me young and engaged. And and I mean, that's the thing is, it's like when I first started teaching, I called my friend Jack Heifner who'd written Vanities, which, which I had produced, it became the longest running play and off Broadway history. And, and I called Jack and I said, So tell me about teaching. And he said, Well, it's a little bit like doing stand up comedy.

Melissa Milner 9:57

Yep.

Milton Justice 9:58

And I said, uh, What do you mean? And he said, well

Melissa Milner 10:02

Bingo.

Milton Justice 10:03

If it doesn't work, you have to change the topic. And it was so interesting. I never could figure out first of all, it took me 20 years to write the book. But, but I never could figure out how do I do this? How do I pass on what I've learned? Because I mean, she was an important teacher. And and what she said, She's the only teacher in the West that studied with Stanislavski.

Melissa Milner 10:36

Right.

Milton Justice 10:37

So I mean, it's like she learned from him. And it was massive what she learned when she came back, from her time was Stanislavski. She changed acting in America, because of what she learned from him. So it's like... and nobody is really her books are not that they're fine, but they're not that accessible. And I kept thinking, I need to do something, I need to do something.

Melissa Milner 11:00

Yeah. Because you can pass on that tradition.

Milton Justice 11:03

Exactly. And then all of a sudden, there was something called a podcast. And interestingly enough, another student of mine, Chris Carmack, who's on Grey's Anatomy now he was on Nashville, and he was on the OC. And Chris said to me a couple of years. But well good god I have 100 episodes, that must have been more than two years ago. And he said, there are no, there are no podcasts about acting. There are people talking about how to get a career, but not about acting. And I said, Oh, that's so interesting.

Melissa Milner 11:37

So your podcast, so I was already doing The Teacher As actor, because I, you know, had had the background in acting. So you know, and I'm like, I'm going to do some research and see what else is out there about The Teacher As Actor. And I just, I fell upon this woman, Jane Cox, who was in one of my episodes, and then I fell upon your podcast, I'm like, I'm just gonna put in acting into the podcast search. And yours was, it must be popular, because it was like, bam.

Melissa Milner 12:06

Yeah, that's new.

Melissa Milner 12:07

Yeah. Yeah. So. And I started listening. And I'm like, yep, that's teaching. Yep. That's teach, like every episode. I'm like, yep. Yep. Yep. Yep. So it, it I'm like, I have to reach out and see if he'll be. So I was so happy that you said yes.

Milton Justice 12:28

Walker, who is a genius. I can't do what you do. I can't edit me. And so but he was sitting at my house one day, and he was looking at a draft of my book. And he said, this needs to be a podcast. And I said, Walker, a what, and you are joking. I said, What the hell do I know about a podcast? And he said, No, no, no, trust me. You know, I know how to do this. And so he sat with me. And so he brought over this whole sort of thing and put it up in my living room. I have a microphone on that thing. And so then he sat there. And he said, just summarize the chapter. So and then he stopped me and said, No, it sounds like you're reading, stop reading, just talk.

Melissa Milner 13:21

Oh, it's so good. Everybody, everybody, you gotta listen to these episodes. They're great. And they, again, they will inform your teaching, they will, ya.

Milton Justice 13:31

Well, here's the thing that happened eventually. So about the third one. My roommate and one of my students were just sitting and listening to me, and the fact that I was talking to somebody made a difference. And then, time went on. And of course, the early on episode said, based on my soon to be published book, No I Don't Need An Acting Class, which was a total lie. Nobody had bought this. And so then all of a sudden Armageddon hit. And all of a sudden, I couldn't teach in a room. And it took me a while to discover Zoom. I had iPads, iPhones, my computer all in my living room. I mean, it was just a and then and then all of a sudden, I was giving classes over Zoom, and that's when we started to recording the classes. And so it the having students may, you know, air quotes lecturing about acting workable, because they were telling me how to teach the class.

Melissa Milner 14:44

Can you talk more about what is your process and is it similar to acting?

Milton Justice 14:50

It's been very, very unusual because I've never had the opportunity to have students for such a long period of time. I mean, normally, I would teach someplace and it would be 15 weeks, one semester at Yale, and then they were on to somebody else. And so I, I would develop relationships with the students. And because I'm, I'm seemingly accessible, so nobody has a problem getting in touch with me and said, Can you help me with this? And so And because I have no life, that's what I do.

Melissa Milner 15:36

This is your life.

Milton Justice 15:37

Yeah. Oh, it totally. So then suddenly, I had people for a long period of time. I mean, I've had some people, I finally added some more people in class I refuse to for about a year. And then the podcast is sort of caught on. Yeah. And so then I said, Alright, I will have a script analysis class, which is a text analysis class, which is one of the biggest issues is that actors don't know how to approach text.

Melissa Milner 16:10

That was one of my other questions. Yep.

Milton Justice 16:13

So that became the one class and then the people in that class said, Would you mind teaching a technique class? And I said, Alright, fine. So every other Saturday, we'll meet for three hours.

Melissa Milner 16:29

So okay, the preparation to teach a script analysis class has to be different from the preparation is totally different. So when you're when you're Are you pulling scripts for people to try during those other ones?

Milton Justice 16:46

No, I work on one, one script at a time.

Melissa Milner 16:51

Okay.

Milton Justice 16:52

I mean, we're at the moment, we're working on Death of a Salesman, and I changed the whole system about three or four months ago, because it was too frustrating for me to go through one script a month. And so I just said, look, here's the way it is to kids, we're having class, we'll have technique classes for two hours on Monday night, two hours on Thursday night, Wednesday night, a script analysis. And periodically, if we're in the mood, we'll get together on a Saturday. So first, they didn't have technique until they demanded that I teach a technique class. So they were doing script analysis. And so then what happened, it kind of came out of that, which was, well guess now that I understand this, how do they do it?

Melissa Milner 17:36

Yeah.

Milton Justice 17:36

And so then I had to talk about technique. So I really do find that the students tell me without saying what they need to be taught. And it it's based on their comments about what we're working on. And so when I suddenly realized that they have no relationship to, let's say, Death of a Salesman, and what life was like after World War Two in America, they have no relationship with it. And so as a result, they don't know how to build it. And so the joke in my class is, well, we've been working for two hours, and we got to the first line of dialogue.

Melissa Milner 18:32

Yeah

Milton Justice 18:33

Like Willy Loman's first line, in the plays, he comes in with his bags and sets them down. And he says, oh, boy, oh, boy. Well, the thing about it is, I then have to say to them, what is going on with him when he comes in? And now I have to have the technique to build what is going on with him so that I walk on with the past. So now I can talk about how do you build the past? Right? I have one student who is older, very, very successful in business. And about three years ago, he said, Alright, I've made a lot of money. Now I'm going to do but I'm going to go back and, you know, learn how to act, something I did years ago, and I want to go back. So, he's painstakingly going through it, but I always, it's very interesting, I have a couple of private classes a week with him. And we'll start to talk and he's also in the class and we'll start to talk about it and, and then I have these notes that I have a note call that I wrote down while I was working with him called "something you saw during the week", because I and this is because I think the actors have lost a sense first of what is exciting. They make dull choices they make if they're building a past, they build a boring past.

Melissa Milner 20:10

What they've seen on TV and film.

Milton Justice 20:12

Absolutely. I said that. Yeah. Okay, so this is perfect. So all of a sudden, I'm looking at these pictures of all these guys trying to leave Russia. And there's a line of cars. And I said, so here's what I want you to do. And I said, there's a lot of research, there's a lot of things you can... I said, so this is, you're a guy. And you're escaping Russia, your homeland, because you don't want to be drafted. And so then I said to them, I want you build this, let's look at what you build. And I said, and it's like a one minute monologue. Just talk out what's going on with him? Well, my God, you would have thought to ask them to do King Lear. Lost. And everybody is doing exactly what you said, everybody is coming up with a plot that sounds like a bad TV plot. And so...

Melissa Milner 21:13

Instead of like feeling instead of just feeling it, yeah.

Milton Justice 21:17

Yeah. Well, and also looking at, you know, the elements are there. What Stella learned from Stanislavski and brought back was the concept of the given circumstances of the play. One of her advice was with Lee Strasberg, Lee Strasberg said everything was emotional. And Stella said, forget that. That's not it. What Stanislavski told her was, there are given circumstances of the play, the given circumstances of the play include, among other things, the character, where the character is, where... what time frame they're in, in this particular case, what country they're in, what the social circumstance is. And all of these things begin to figure out. So now, how does my dude or how does my dudette live in these circumstances, but I have to know the circumstances. And I have to take these facts and turn them into an experience. And that's the big, that's the big thing that keeps acting from being reporting. It's the experience of everything.

Melissa Milner 22:30

What I'm finding, like, I'm watching a lot of YouTube videos, where some actors are saying, I prepare I write, I write everything out, you know, and then I read you're like, oh, writing it out, is making it too analytical. It's taking it...yeah.

Milton Justice 22:49

Yeah, it's all the work. And by the way, I made all these mistakes. I keep saying to my students, the reason I'm so good at this is because I failed so miserably. So many times. I said, my problem with writing it out, I said, I didn't even know that was the issue. My problem with writing it out, was for some reason, I thought, well, I think I'm so pretentious. I thought, someday, somebody's going to find my notebook. They're going to find my notebook on playing Michael in Boys in the Band in Easthampton. And they're going to publish the notebooks of Milton Justice and as he was doing summer stock in the summer of 1979. And so I mean, that was it. How could you write anything from an actor's point of view, when you were trying to sound very literary?

Melissa Milner 23:46

Yeah. And also, a lot of the actors that said, they don't do that. And they just, they just, they just talk it out what you've what you've talked, obviously talk about, is that once like, sometimes I don't know what it is in your brain, but when it's written, it's like boop. And then and then you're, you're stuck there. You know, and if you have a director say, try it a different way. And you're like, but this is the... Yeah.

Milton Justice 24:10

And I also find when you talk it out, which I love, you surprise yourself. You kind of go, Oh, where did that come? And the truth is, this is what I find to be true about teaching. The reason teaching to me is like acting is because I don't know where some of the things I say come from, periodically, shockingly, periodically, I say something brilliant. And and so when I say something brilliant, I Oh, I'm aware of it and I always look and I said it's Stella she's flying around and she felt sorry for me and she said he's trying so hard. I'm going to give him something intelligent to say, even my teaching is the acting process of talking it out. I mean, I will write notes. I mean, I've been doing it for so long, I'll write a note, things I want to say that I want to cover in class tomorrow. But as I was having an I have an actor who was having a terrible time being spontaneous. And so, and I was working, working, working, this was only last week. And I was working. And I said to him, think of your improvisational work as you have an outline. And he said, Oh, that's good. He said, You're not deciding everything in advance. But you have an outline. So you know where you're going.

Melissa Milner 25:39

Yeah. And that's teaching. I mean, that's teaching. Exactly. But it's plan tight, but hang loose.

Milton Justice 25:46

Oh, my God. Totally. These are notes, I was once asked to give a, I was once asked to give a symposium. They knew I was going to New Zealand to see my brother. And so they said, while you're here, would you give a class, a weekend symposium? And I said, a weekend Symposium of working with actors for film directors, and I thought, Do they really think anybody's going to come? It was jammed. My dear, dear departed friend, Marge Loggia, had a house in East Hampton. And so it's just like, we all moved to Marge's house for the summer, she had a 12 bedroom house and so every afternoon, I would sit with research and books, and I would do these notes, which eventually I typed out. And everybody kept saying, what? Why are you spending all this time? And so I thought, Well, no, I've never taught this class before. It is a group of professionals. So I really want to... I never looked at one.

Melissa Milner 26:54

It was just to build your confidence really. Right?

Milton Justice 26:56

Who knows? But what I do find is true. And I think this is the scary thing about teaching. You have to trust what you know, and that you can access it. And you don't know where it's coming from. I am... I am amazed. Letting go in just letting go into what I'm talking about. It takes care of itself, because I do know a lot. I mean, I hope so. So but it's like an if I try to organize it too much as in you're absolutely right. If I outline that, sometimes I I'll think about what happened in class. And I'll think about Errol's problem. And so Errol's problem is he's pushing an emotion that's not there. He has decided in advance how to play something. And so now he's going to push this, but he hasn't earned it. And so and so. So now I'm sitting there, and I'm thinking as I'm drifting off to sleep, unfortunately, you know, I need to give them something to work on. So they can build more slowly. And more honestly. And I really am. I was like, I don't know why. But I was a walking sort of knowledge base of things Stella said. Back when I first started teaching. And I went back over notebooks from her class, I realized, I took notes like somebody who would one day teach it, not like an actor. Actors take notes, like, Oh, good, that works for me. But I really took notes like somebody who was going to teach this. And so as a result, it's like I talked about Stella Adler bumper stickers. It's like, I've got so many of them that I just remembered. You know, and one of them was "I can believe this much today." And as far as I was concerned, when she said that it took me off the hook. I didn't have to do the whole performance. I didn't have to build everything. I could, I could build what I believe.

Melissa Milner 29:27

Oh, that's a nice, that's a nice metaphor to, you know, students trying to learn, right? Today, I'm not going to teach everything about equivalent fractions. Today, I'm gonna explain this little piece, and then I will see if they're getting it and then I'm gonna... Yeah,

Milton Justice 29:45

Yeah. And so that was it. I can believe this much today. And so then you incrementally when you're working on a part. You can build it. If you're working on Arthur Miller's All My Sons, and you're playing Chris, you say, all right, I today, I can believe that my father runs a company. I'm not going to I can't, I can't believe all the facts of this play. You know, he was arrested because 21 planes went down and he was blamed for it. And then his part... his partner went to jail. And my brother's been dead in the, for three years, and my mother won't accept it. If you look at the facts of this play, you would say, I can never move what I can really do. And then I developed the ability to know all right, my mother refuses to believe that my brother is dead, even though it's been three years since the war was over. And he hasn't come back. So I know in the back of my mind, okay, that's a biggie.

Melissa Milner 30:50

Are you against... And I think this is Strasburg. Are you against the well, I've had that kind of pain in my life, like jumping into memories?

Milton Justice 31:00

I think it's insane.

Melissa Milner 31:01

Yeah. I..I think that's what drives actors to go crazy.

Milton Justice 31:06

Absolute and it... And it's the reason they make these stupid comments, like the I mean, it's like the poor guy that's on Succession. He spends his days alone. I mean, who wants to put themselves through that? And he's not that good. I mean, it's just insane. It's totally, totally insane. And so, I mean, it is a lack of technique. And certainly, it's bad training, late 1800s actor called Coco, who always built a character as if that's another person over there. And he would build the character as another person. And then at some point, step into him. Holland Taylor, who also studied with Stella...

Melissa Milner 31:48

Oh, I love her.

Milton Justice 31:50

And so Holland and I were talking about it and she said, Yes, it's like, you go into a phone booth, which is probably a Superman reference. And you it's like the characters in the phone booth and you go into the phone booth. And then at the end of the day, you step out of the phone booth. And then I said, Yes. And then you don't go home and kick the dog. And we laugh.

Milton Justice 32:10

I think another thing that happened in the pandemic, is because no one was auditioning, and nothing was going on. I had actors who were not in class, thinking about the audition I have on Wednesday. And how can I use this, so they were actually learning acting for acting sake. And that really makes a huge difference. You could just feel that they were trying not to learn a concept but lot learned a concept in service. And it's different when I coach somebody, I mean, when I coach somebody, I am not teaching them acting, I am making up choices for them. I am giving them choices. I am focusing them in a direction that is a direction based on I've been doing this for 50 years.

Melissa Milner 33:03

Okay, teaching coaching, I love this because I just, I just published an episode with a youth runner. He's 11 years old, and he is killing it with Junior Olympics and stuff and, and he talked about his coach, and it's really, what you just said is fascinating. The coach actually says, This is what I think you should do in this moment of the race or in this moment of the scene. Totally different teaching versus coaching. Yep.

Milton Justice 33:33

I mean, the truth of the matter is we do honestly want if we're healthy teachers want our students not to need us.

Melissa Milner 33:46

What are you zooming in on right now in your work?

Milton Justice 33:50

So man, I still think I can understand acting. And you know, really, I know you can't but I still keep thinking I'm going to sort out what these what it is that so it's it's so I think I'm always constantly trying to figure out how do I deal with Errol's problem? How do I help Kara Hope? My students' problems kind of linger with me. Stella's second husband was a brilliant man called Harold Corman. Okay, so Harold Corman wrote this about directors, but I think it applies to teaching. He says it is a job, a craft, a profession. And at best an art. The director must be an organizer, a teacher, a politician, a psychic detective, a lay analyst, a technician a creative being. Ideally he You should know literature, acting the psychology the actor, the visual arts, music, history, and above all, he must understand people, he must inspire confidence all of which means he must be a great lover. I think it's all in that.

Melissa Milner 35:21

For my blog, transcripts of this episode, and links to any resources mentioned, visit my website at www.theteacheras.com. You can reach me on Twitter and Instagram @melissabmilner and I hope you check out The Teacher As... Facebook page for episode updates. Thanks for listening. And that's a wrap.