Imagine this: it's a sunny day in New York's Central Park and a camera crew shoots two actors performing a screen test. Another set of cameramen follows the cameramen filming the actors. Still more cameramen proceed to film the mottled assortment of curious bystanders before cutting back to the director hovering near his cast as they repeat the same scene in various environments.
This scenario is no ordinary "making-of" featurette, but rather a full-length experimental plunge into the depths of human spontaneity and improvisation. And you won't believe the title: Symbiopsychotaxiplasm Take 2 1/2.
So who's the mad scientist behind this intricately innovative approach to cinema?
His name is William Greaves, an Emmy Award-winning virtuoso who has been praised as one of the premier black independent filmmakers in America. Symbiopsychotaxiplasm Take 2 1/2, which will be released on DVD this month, is the sequel to Greave's original multilayered project that premiered at the Sundance Film Festival: Symbiopsychotaxiplasm Take 1. Call it a reunion of sorts, since Take 1 was shot 35 years ago with the same two lead actors.
Greaves describes his directorial position in Take 1 as a Machiavellian effort to experiment with a host of concepts, from the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle to the Second Law of Thermodynamics.
"I became interested in various scientific theories: the camera and its role as an intruder in the psychic space of the actor-the emotional psychological space," Greaves said. "I like the concept of the role of the electron microscope being an analog to a camera on a movie set."
Not quite sure how the theory works? Here's a quick physics lesson: the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle describes how the electron microscope, in the process of examining the atom, emits a stream of electrons that proceed to batter the atom and knock the electrons out of their orbits. We, as observers, are thus prevented from an unbiased examination of the very entity the microscope is made to observe-whatever that means.
The inability to survey the "essence of reality" is one of the issues at stake in the Symbio project, Greaves said. Because the actors are under constant scrutiny, they experience a sense of tension and anxiety-feelings Greaves complicates with his myriad of cameramen.
"Symbio is a mystery story because it sends these talented actors into a fit of anger because they don't understand what it is I brought them on a location in Central Park for-what they considered to be nothing," Greaves said.
In fact, Take 1 featured the self-described mutiny by the crew, who filmed their private meeting without knowledge of this experiment in fiction and reality, and later submitted the footage to Greaves for inclusion in the film.
The second time around, Greaves said he sat back and let his intuition guide him through the filmmaking process, instead of actively pursuing a specific agenda. He also gave the actors free reign to explore their characters to an immense depth.
The two actors resumed their roles after the nearly four-decade-long hiatus. In the original, Freddie (Shannon Baker) is a wiry man attempting to appease his resentful wife Alice (Audrey Heningham). Alice accuses him of having a homosexual affair and reproaches him for pushing her to get an abortion, what Greaves calls a "metaphor for the killing of life" and which he equates with the Vietnam War, which persisted at the time the film was shot in 1968.
The emotional heat generated by their argument harkens another of Greave's interests, the Second Law of Thermodynamics. In one scene in Take 2 1/2, the male actor's improvisation pushes him to such entropic anger that Greaves quickly steps in to break the aggressive confrontation.
Greaves also attributes this level of emotional investment to a concept called "knowledge by identity," where a human being becomes deeply involved with another human being.
"The actor rummages through his or her psyche and emotional life, and finds out in his or her repertoire of experiences what, in fact, is like what the character is confronting in the play or in the movie," Greaves said. "It took them into a place in their psyches that they hadn't visited before. the utterly incredible rage was so much there that the two actors practically wanted to kill each other."
The sequel was co-funded by director and producer Steven Soderbergh (Erin Brockovich, Oceans 11), who had been advised by friends to check out Greaves' distinctive independent project. Also on-screen in Take 2 1/2 was actor Steve Buscemi (Fargo, The Island).
"Buscemi is a very fine human being and he was very taken with the project," Greaves said. "He saw Take 1 at Sundance and became very enamored with it and asked that the next time I do something like that he might be part of it."
Enamored, intrigued, perplexed-all are suitable feelings in reaction to Greaves' meditative experimentation with cinema vérité, scripted drama and documentary. With director and cast caught in the divide between human spontaneity and active performance, the Symbio projects explore reality without obscuring the mode of exploration.
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