There’s often a moment on set (maybe you’ve felt it in a boardroom, marketing meeting, or on a stressful project) when your inner voice gets very loud and brutally critical. Mine hit hard the day I was directing Tom Selleck.
Yeah. THAT Tom Selleck. Magnum PI. The man who defined “Mustachioed Heartthrob.”
Only we weren’t on set. He was in a recording studio in Burbank. I was sitting in a borrowed office on Zoom while the team and I were in the middle of set construction and prelighting for a new series.
Tom was an absolute gentleman. Kind. Thoughtful. Invested in the narration. He had spent the weekend prior to our recording sessions studying the script (He read through it three times over the weekend). He was a consummate professional. It made immediate sense why he has become a legend – He cares deeply about the craft. And somehow, his professionalism and dedication to excellence made me feel even more unqualified.
Look, over the years, I’ve gotten pretty good at being direct with talent, giving notes, and working with them to get the performance we need. I don’t often get super nervous with famous individuals. But man, this time hit different. And listening back that first night of recording, I cringed almost the whole way through listening to playback.
Imagine a pre-pubescent boy who is trying to nervously give notes to one of the acting legends and trying desperately not to offend said legend with notes that come across demeaning or critical in any way. That’s a pretty good mental picture of how I sounded during that first three hour long recording session.
And that first night at 11:42pm, I made a decision: “Be the professional everyone expects you to be. Give the direction you were hired to give. Tom is bringing himself fully to the recording session. You owe it to him and the client and the investors in the project to be the director they hired you to be.”
The next two days I still struggled with whether my notes were “right” or not, but darn it, I gave the notes! Push the emotion here. Be more reserved there. The characters are thinking “this at that moment.” etc. The role of the director is to be part psychiatrist, part philosopher, part storyteller with the actor, so that the actor can access the sort of weight, emotion and pacing needed by the film. It was a great reminder for me that day. It doesn’t matter what the inner voice is telling you (positive or negative), you still have to show up and do the job you were hired to (and hopefully do it excellently).
What I didn’t know at the time was that Selleck was working through his own version of that same voice. In his book You Never Know (you grab a copy of here), he writes about how everyone (in front of and behind the camera) wrestles with whether they’re good enough for the moment. The doubt is a part of the job. It doesn’t mean you’re doing it wrong.
Since those three days of working with Tom and the recording team, I’ve had the privilege of reading his book. It’s a great autobiography by one of the greats. And I think it will be encouraging to you as well if you pick it up and give it a read.
AND, the powerful narration that Tom delivered earlier this year? You can check it out for three days only in theaters starting this Sunday (May 31). It’s not guaranteed to hit streaming before July 4 and this is the only three days it will be in theaters! So if you want to inspire your family with the tumultuous and inspiring history of America’s revolution on the eve of the 250th, we’d love to see you at the theaters this weekend!
Check out Tickets and showtimes here!
Here’s to Human Flourishing!
-Ian