I have played lawyers several times, in TV and in the Theater. This, however, is the first time that I have played a lawyer who finds himself plunged into a dark night of the soul.
This play, very loosely based on real events, revolves around a Skin Head, a Neo Nazi, who kicks a South Asian man to death and is assigned a Jewish Public Defender. A powerful, provocative play forcing each man to confront his core beliefs. Each is deeply affected by the interaction, and yet the play does not have a “pat,” easy ending. There is ambiguity and unease by the end of the experience.
In preparing for this role, I had the distinct advantage of my work with trial lawyers over the past 36 years. And most particularly, my work with Public Defenders. My experience has been that many Public Defenders either have a crusading zeal, unfazed by the burden and weight of their work; or appear weighed down by the burden of the work. Danny Dunkelman, the character in CHERRY DOCS has the crusading zeal. In fact, he has what seems to me to be an arrogance in his ability to claim “some small piece of redemption” for Michael (the Skin Head). By the end of the play, Danny confesses that he needed to claim that redemption, “even if (he) had to beat it out of him with the broken back of…a chair.”
Raised as an observant Jew with a strong sense of Tikkun Olam (healing the world), Danny rises to the challenge of defending Michael with every fiber of his intellect and soul. The toll it takes on Danny is crushing.
I have relished the opportunity to explore both my Jewish roots and my knowledge of working lawyers in preparing this role. Performances begin September 6 and play for 6 weeks, one performance each week through October 13 at the Theatricum Botanicum in Topanga Canyon, California. We will be offering 2 Hours of LIVE CLE Ethics credit for attorneys who attend the play and stay for a discussion afterwards.
TIP: Be vigilant in choosing your clients. Danny twice says that he may not be the best lawyer to put forward Michael’s defense. The toll it takes on him proves that he might have been better off passing this case on to a colleague.
Love Bernie. You know I am a sucker for great movies based on legal cases. And this is a dilly of a real case that comes from Texas. You may remember it – local mortician whom all the folks in Carthage, Texas are fond of strikes up a May-December romance with a wealthy older widow…and…kills her. And the locals still love him. Filmmaker Richard Linklatter, who hails from Houston, has created quite a film from this juicy hometown story. Film buffs and attorneys alike can gain great insight from this one!
Linklatter is an amazing filmmaker. Most directors either work in a fictionalized storytelling mode, even when dealing with “real life” stories, OR they prefer working in strict documentary form – shooting and editing from life. But Linklatter can deliver a great biopick, like Me and Orson Welles and a documentary like Inning By Inning: A Portrait Of A Coach in a single year (2008). In Bernie he combines these two forms. The biopick cast includes the wonderful Jack Black, Shirley MacLaine and Matthew McConaughey, all playing the fictionalized versions of real life characters. Linklatter has also taken advantage of the wonderful pool of local professional actors that we’ve seen in lots of television shows and films that are shot in Texas. In our house, we call them by the industry term: “local hires.” In addition to this, Linklatter has, for a lack of a better term, a documentary cast consisting of interviews with real life citizens of the town of Carthage.
Attorneys take note – you can’t tell the actors from the non-actors. I am totally serious. Once you get past the three main leads, you aren’t going to be able to pick out the local hire actors from the real life interviewees. Here’s what I love about this lesson: you are the Richard Linklatter of every trial you are involved in. The idea is to make your entire cast of witnesses – and you – appear as though everyone is a featured actor in the same movie. Instead, I often see a real uneven cast in a trial. Different “actors” look like they come from different shows. For example, the attorney acts stiff and wooden, the experts all ignore the lawyer and just “go for it” with the jurors as if they are stars, and the lay witnesses clam up or over-answer or whatever. There is no cohesion. No appearance of a team effort or unifying style. You need to work with your witnesses and work on your own presentation so that you all appear to be a team in the same movie.
TIP: ARE YOU AND YOUR WITNESSES IN THE SAME MOVIE?
WARNING….There is language some might find offensive. Be advised.
From Alan
Occasionally, we post talks from the TED conferences. This remarkable resource of creative and interesting people and ideas offers a wealth of inspiration and information. Here, Andrew Stanton, tells us about his own life and what led him to being a storyteller.
As attorneys, mastering the skills of storyteliing is essential. Practice is important. Tell stories to your friends and family. To your children and grandchildren. Don’t worry about being
interesting or instructive. Focus instead on the contact between yourself and your listener. Focus on the specifics of your story. Be concise and yet expansive….trust your instincts and play. This will help your advocacy more than you might imagine.
You are right. Not normally my kind of catharsis. When Alan suggested going to see The Avengers I thought that I might get a glimpse of the British TV Series from the 60s. Okay, I seriously had a hankering to see Diana Rigg wearing one of those fabulous Emma Peel outfits. No offense to your 1998 attempt, Uma, but in my heart I am still a young teenage girl with chubby thighs who actually believes she might some day have Diana’s legs.
My husband, sons, and daughters-in-law all loved it. SO. Go ahead and see it – it is a blockbuster and making a ton of money and it is the summer and you won’t have to think too hard and you will laugh a lot. There. Now – onto what you can learn from it as a lawyer…
All of the action and fight sequences are shot in tiny disjointed frames. The cool part about this is that it is totally reminiscent of comic book action sequences from Marvel comics… “Kablam!” “Pow!”…but without the words superimposed over the action. It also allows the very economical use of green screen shooting. This means the producers avoided the more expensive shooting of a whole battle scene at once from different angles.
Here’s the part I want you to pay attention to when you see the movie, though – it is almost IMPOSSIBLE to follow the story during this chopped up sequences. I kept thinking, “Who won? Who is winning? What is going on here anyway?” So true of trial stories as well – if you just offer a bunch of tiny “picture facts” that are detailed in and of themselves but don’t help a judge or juror get a big picture of what is going on, you are in big trouble. I kept thinking, “This kind of storytelling is what makes causation so difficult to either prove or disprove in a lawsuit.”
So eat your popcorn and enjoy. But if you follow every single one of those sequences then more power to you.
TIP: Is your trial story a bunch of chopped up bits or does it fit together into an easily understandable big picture?
Don’t you love it when a movie you’ve been dying to see is even better than you thought it was going to be? I DO. If you haven’t seen the amazing, brilliant and heart warming The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel do so immediately! What is friendship? What is living for today? What is retirement? From what can you never escape, no matter how far you travel? To what can you escape – that you never knew you wanted or needed? Do these questions sound familiar? Want to experience the answers to them all in a fresh and delightful way? Get thee to a cinema where this feature is playing!
Why should lawyers specifically see this piece? Lawyers are always and forever telling stories about people. In the world of the law, they are called clients and the mistaken people on the other side of your clients. Think of them as “characters” (as we would call them in the world of show business). Characters about whom you shape and form stories from real life. Often lawyers fall into describing characters in terms that are “stereotypes”. My favorite definition is “oversimplified conception”. The evil banker, the shy teller, the stalwart security guard could all be characters in a sexual harassment case. Stereotypes don’t ring true for jurors. But hovering several levels above in our great human story is a complete other group of characters – “archetypes”. My favorite definition is “image from collective unconscious”. The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel is filled with characters – each an archetype. Familiar but unique, they allow you to be sucked into their stories individually and the overarching story of the film flawlessly. This is exactly what lawyers need to do with their trial stories and their witnesses!
Putting the story of your case together right now? Think you have no time to go to the movies? You have no time not to go to the movies! What are you waiting for?
TIP: Are you describing your witnesses as archetypes or stereotypes?
Sometimes it is important for our blog to discuss, or feature, the arts and theatre. Patsy Rodenberg’s comments here are wonderful. She talks about being authentic, telling the truth and being present. Invaluable for actors and lawyers alike. Enjoy this.
TIP: Have the courage to be your authentic self and to be present.
Remember when I said back in the Academy Award time of the year that I regretted not seeing Albert Nobbs? Especially not the Oscar Nominated performances of Glenn Close and Janet McTeer?
What a fascinating story. Women living their lives as men in order to work and survive in 19th Century Ireland. Lives of secrecy – lives of hiding. Building prisons of “other” identities in which they feel that they must lock up their true selves – or else they will never make it. Would they? It is hard to know. What is abundantly clear is that any human being trapped in the grand pretense of being another is leading a doomed life.
Glenn Close plays Albert Nobbs, who is “passing” as a manservant in a hotel. Janet McTeer is Hubert, passing as a house painter and living a life as a married man. The performances of the entire cast are wonderful – but – the performances of these two great women of stage and screen are outstanding.
Of course, you might say, an actress would have a lot to learn from two such icons in the world of acting. But what can an attorney learn from watching these performances?
One of the major issues that attorneys who try cases have is that they find themselves building these “other” characters that they play in court. Much like their own private “Albert Nobbs”, they live outside the courtroom as one person, and inside the courtroom as another.
Watch how brilliantly Close and McTeer imitate the opposite sex – but how you are always painfully aware that they are only pretending. That they are painfully inauthentic on some level to themselves and their lives. One of the most touching moments of the film is the image of Close and McTeer, dressed in the clothing of women for an afternoon walk on the beach. Women who live their lives as men dressed as women for a few hours.
That basic awkwardness in one’s own skin is somewhat akin to what I observe in attorneys who are not comfortable in their own skins in court. They have created other personas to inhabit their bodies when in court. Like master actors, they literally turn into someone else as they walk up the courtroom steps. Are you one of these people?
Do you see yourself when you see the transformations of these actresses? Look how subtly Glenn Close’s physical transformation was made by experts in make up and wigs: http://youtu.be/b9587IR8wqs
You are the one creating your own disguise in court – and you are a master of it. Do you really still need it to survive?
TIP: Are you one person in court and another in real life?
When we went to the movies on my birthday, I asked Alan which one on the marquee in front of the small theater in Claremont, California was the best. He said, “Salmon Fishing In The Yemen is going to be a real movie.” That is our code for…well…a real movie. Not only is this romantic comedy a “real movie” with a wonderful message – it is a fabulous movie for one and all to see – especially lawyers.
Why?
The brilliance of this amazing cast which is chock full of wonderful British actors offers attorneys who try cases great role models for courtroom demeanor. Pick an actor, any actor from the amazing Emily Blunt to the hilarious Kristin Scott Thomas to the extraordinary Ewan McGregor. Every performance is full, rich, nuanced…and all the emotion is on the inside rather than on the outside of the actor. I am not saying that you don’t know what they are feeling…but…what they are doing IS ALWAYS more important than what they are feeling. The result? The audience is free to relate, emote – and do the majority of feeling. This allows the audience to be moved. Much more important than the actors being moved.
When we teach attorneys, Alan and I often refer to the fact that we were taught by teachers who embraced the Stella Adler interpretation of The Stanislavski System. The question asked is always “what is the actor doing?” In other interpretations of Stanislavski’s work the question asked is “what is the actor feeling?” On stage and on screen this results in lots of hearts on the sleeve kind of indulgence that often does what a great teacher of ours once called “wallowing in the dilemma.”
What can lawyers learn from this? The “show” in the courtroom is not about you and your feelings. We like to think of your role as “the best friend” in a show rather than as “the lead.” The jurors (or whoever else is deciding the case you are trying, mediating or arbitrating) is “the lead.” THEY ARE THE ONES WHO NEED TO BE MOVED. NOT YOU. Lawyers who rant, rave, are the first to cry in the room, etc. put their own need to feel above that of anyone else. If the emotion in the room is all taken up…then whoever is trying your case will step back and turn off their emotions. In other words – NOT BE MOVED.
As you watch this film, imagine it not only with American actors – but with real self indulgent ones. Better yet, imagine it being played by the most outrageous over-the-top lawyers you have ever been in a room with.
TIP: Are you paying more attention to what you are doing than what you are feeling?
The Hunger Games is a phenomenon, there is no doubt about that! In our town, you can only imagine how excited everyone got over a record-breaking 155 million dollar opening weekend. Why am I so excited about it? Because of all the adaptations-to-the-screen that I have asked attorneys to go see, this is one I know you will feel compelled to attend. Maybe you loved the books, maybe you love amazing filmmaking, maybe you are a lawyer who is always smart enough to check out what is important in American pop culture, or maybe you are simply thrilled that anti-violent me is actually recommending something that comes from Lionsgate, who brought you Saw.
If I could encourage every lawyer who tries to go to see every adaptation – whether good or bad – I would. Why? Because this is what you do with your life’s work. You take a huge, gigantic, overflowing real life story filled with evidence and characters and plot points and time lines and you adapt it into your trial story. What do you leave out? What do you keep in? What do you build? What do you diminish? I have written about this aspect of how the worlds of the adaptive filmmaker and the trial lawyer meet more than a few times in this blog and elsewhere.
So…
I’d like you to be inspired by the words of one of my favorite young playwrights, Tiffany Antone. I first met Tiffany through Theatricum Botanicum’s Seedlings program. I have acted in her shows, directed her shows, and written shows that I’ve allowed her to produce. She’s literally decades younger than I am – and a theatre artist of the first caliber. What I call “the real deal.” I was so swept up with how her response to The Hunger Games in her blog awdsandends applied to the work of attorneys that I wanted to share some of her words with you. If you want to read the rest of her piece, please do so at her wonderful blog.
HUNGRY by Tiffany Antone
Adaptations are tricky things… depending on the source material, you’ve either got too much to grapple with, or (if it’s a short story) too much room to go hog wild in. And while it can be reassuring to have the story skeleton already there for you to drape your words upon, there also stands the possibility that you’ll find yourself screaming: “Oh GOD! This is a best selling book with a global fan base… how am I going to live up to that?!”
And so you dive in…
And if it’s done really, really well – when you’re finished – you get The Hunger Games.
Now, obviously when you start out with 400 pages of text, not everything is going to make it onto the Big Screen – you’ve got interior monologues that have to be translated into action (if it merits inclusion) and you’ve got to show character traits/transitions/emotional progression through visual elements rather than some handy expositional thought. Sometimes you’ve got to cut characters, because although extraneous body-jumping is manageable in a book, it’s a bit schizophrenic for a mere 2 hour movie – you’ve got a lot of material to cover, and you’ve got to make the character choices that will best serve the story, not necessarily the audience’s expectations.
So, you boil it down – What happened/is happening/is about to happen? Who are the key people in this story? What are the main points of action that help our protagonist get from beginning to end?
TIP: What trial story are you carving out in your adaptation today?
Katherine’s Introduction to Guest Blogger, Courtney A. Morgan:
When Attorney Courtney A. Morgan sent me the copy of her wonderful article on The Loving Story that the Los Angeles Times didn’t see fit to print, I knew in a moment that you were going to read it here on our blog.
I had the pleasure of meeting Courtney when she was a roommate of our older son at UC Berkeley. They were both undergrads and Courtney was and is the combination of stunning beauty and breathtaking brilliance that first turns your head and then fills it with wisdom. I know that when you read her moving words about this wonderful legal film that you will agree with me that the present and future of justice is in very good hands.
My Loving Valentine by Courtney A. Morgan
On January 10th my fiancée and I went to a screening of The Loving Story at the Museum of Tolerance here in Los Angeles. She suggested it as something I might like. It wasn’t high on my list, but, why not.
If my law school memory serves, Loving v. Virginia is the case of a white man and a black woman who get married in Washington D.C., where it is legal, and drive home to the Virginia, where interracial marriage is illegal. They were then arrested, jailed and banished from the Commonwealth of Virginia for violating Virginia law. The couple takes their case to the Supreme Court, which declares the law unconstitutional, ruling that while states have the authority to define marriage as they see fit, they cannot define marriage in a way that violates the Constitution.
The night of the screening, I found myself getting a little anxious. I told myself I was nervous because as a lawyer, watching the story of two brave, young lawyers, barely out of law school, taking the case of a poor Virginia couple all the way to the Supreme Court, is like watching the Super Bowl.
I was also curious about the Lovings as people. The only description I had ever heard about them is that they were trashy, backwoods hicks that you wouldn’t want at your kitchen table. Of course, that account came from the Loving’s arresting Sherriff. I was interested to see what these civil rights crusaders were really like.
The director of the film, Nancy Buirski, spoke before the screening, announcing that the film would premier on HBO on February 14, 2012, symbolic because it is black history month and because it is Valentine’s Day.
When the screening started, I held my breath. The unseen footage of this poor, yes, but appropriately named couple, was riveting. One thing is clear, they were oh-so lovely and oh-so in love. They were not civil rights crusaders at all, but ordinary people who wanted to live on their property surrounded by their family and friends.
I breathed a sigh of relief.
I realized that my relief was more than just for this couple. It was for my parents, a white man and a black woman who married in 1969, two years after the Supreme Court’s decision in Loving v. Virginia. I sighed for myself and my fiancée because, no matter what is said about the differences between the Civil Rights Movement and the Gay Rights Movement, we are fighting the same fight today. My fiancée and I could marry in Washington D.C. and drive to Virginia and no longer be married. I was amazed at how similar the arguments for and against marriage equality are in 1967 and 2012.
I sighed in relief because as a member of several groups designated as “other” or “minority,” I fear what they say about us will somehow be stereotypically portrayed on the screen and we will be pushed back that much further. I cringe at every glimpse of a black or gay person in film or television – it’s similar to the feeling I get at large family holiday gatherings, hoping everyone will get through the pressure cooker unscathed.
So I want to thank the filmmakers for their loving handling of this deeply personal film. I want to thank the teachers who will show it to their students. I want to thank the Loving’s, their children and my parents for lighting the way. And I want to thank my fiancée for walking this path with me, for the early Valentine and for knowing me better than I know myself.
My fiancée and I are getting married on September 2, 2012 in Malibu, California. When people imply that it will not be a real wedding because it is not legal, I typically reply with one or more of my canned responses. “Marriage is between us, our families and any deity we choose to believe in.” “A government is silly if it thinks it has the authority to say who is, and who isn’t married – that is playing God, and as much as our government likes to make the rules, it is not God.” And depending on the audience, “We plan to follow the tradition of our ancestors who jumped the broom to indicate that they were married, when the laws of this nation said that they could not. Those folks were married whether the government said so or not.” And finally, “If no birth certificate had been issued to me, I would still exist.”
Friends have asked about Civil Unions and I reply with my canned response again: “‘Civil Union’ cake is bland and a ‘Civil Union’ dress just sounds tacky and anyway, if there really is no difference, then why are people fighting us so hard. They are obviously fighting for something.”
After the screening of The Loving Story, my fiancée and I introduced ourselves to the celebrities in attendance, Paul Katami and Jeffrey Zarrillo, plaintiffs in the Perry v. Schwarzenegger case, who just this week won their case in the Ninth Circuit. How very lovely they were as well. “Facebook me,” Paul cried as we said our goodbyes, and I did. My Facebook status currently reads, “we just might be able to get married at our wedding after all.” I have never received so many “likes” and boy does it feel good.
I have to say, I may talk a big game about not caring whether our marriage is legal, but to be recognized by my state and my country sure would be nice. It would also be nice for the children we plan to have. I don’t know what it would have done to me if my parent’s marriage was not recognized by our society. Perhaps we see a touch of that in The Loving Story.
Mrs. Loving, less than a year before her death, said it better than I ever could:
I am still not a political person, but I am proud that Richard’s and my name is on a court case that can help reinforce the love, the commitment, the fairness, and the family that so many people, black or white, young or old, gay or straight seek in life. I support the freedom to marry for all. That’s what Loving, and loving, are all about.
– Mildred Loving, June 12, 2007
The Loving Story, premiered on HBO on Valentine’s Day.
Courtney A. Morgan an Immigration Attorney in Los Angeles specializing in entertainment, business and family immigration. A Los Angeles native, she completed her undergraduate degree at the University of California at Berkeley and legal studies at Loyola Law School, Los Angeles.
TIP (from Katherine): What are you doing to move justice into the future today?
Alan Blumenfeld and Katherine James have brought state-of-the-art trial communication skills to over 30,000 attorneys and their witnesses. On the pages of this blog, they will share with you why we should all ask "What can lawyers learn from actors?" Learn More
