Aaron Marcus had two scripted lines given to other actors on a film set. A producer's assistant got one as a favor, while another actor received the second so the director could build more interaction between that actor and the film's stars. Marcus says these reassignments are practical, not personal.
Hey everybody, hi, I'm Aaron Marcus. I am working on a project right now in Richmond, Virginia, and so I'm in my hotel. I do get a chance to shave, looks like tomorrow, so finally I can kind of get rid of the scruffy stuff. Hey, but I want to tell you about something that I thought about earlier today. I don't know why it hit me, but all of a sudden it just kind of hit me today, and I thought, you know, this is something you You're going to want to know about. So I was working on a film, and on one of the days I was just hanging around the set. My scene was not coming up until a little bit later, but I just, I got tired of hanging out in the trailer. I like to be out and about, and there were some other actors I wanted to watch, so I thought this would be a great opportunity. And I was just sitting in my chair, and I'm— What? Watching a rehearsal take place. And so during the rehearsal, all of a sudden I noticed there is a woman who said one of my lines. I thought, well, that's unusual. And then there was another guy who was one of the major players in this project. He says another one of my lines that's coming up in a later scene. And I'm thinking, what? Like, what, what, what's going on? I, I had no idea. And so, um, you know, it's— look, it's easy for actors, you know, we can start feeling really paranoid. You know, you, you know, sometimes, you know, depending on where you're at, you might have these thoughts of, well, I guess the director hated what I did, uh, on the entire project, and now he's just like passing off my lines to other people. Is, is, is that A possibility. Are they just testing out lines to see what they sound like? Maybe the writers are going to make changes. I was like, I have no idea. It didn't make any sense to me. It's never happened to me before. So I'm just sitting there, I'm trying to stay calm, and I'm just listening and watching and observing. And what I decided to do was when they took a break, I walked over to the script supervisor. The script supervisor is the person who listens to every word that is said by the actor to make sure it's accurate. If it's not accurate, the script supervisor will talk to the director to see, is this something that needs to be corrected, or is it fine the way it was done? And they do so many different things. These are the most organized people in the world, at least on the set. I don't know how they do it. They know every, every take, angles. It's, it's crazy, the notebooks that these people carry around. So I figured this would be the perfect person to talk to. So I walked over to the script supervisor, and I'm just really calm, and I'm just acting kind of curious and not being crazy or paranoid. And I just said, hey, I was just kind of wondering. I noticed that this woman said one of my lines, and then this guy said one of my lines. And I said, do you know what's going on? So this was interesting. So the, the woman who had one of my lines, she is an assistant to one of the producers of this project, or she was. And he, the producer, decided that he wanted to give her a line. So I get it. Hey, look, I've been on sets Where the director brings in secretaries and flies in friends onto the set just to give them a couple words to say, maybe a sentence. And it was interesting. I remember— I don't want to mention the name of the film, but on this one particular film, a lot of the extras were getting really angry because the director was flying in. Matter of fact, one was a secretary from LA to the East Coast and some friends, and they were just tossing out like little lines here and there. And the extras are going, I can do that. I mean, that's not right. Look, I'm an actor. I can do these things. He's giving it away to friends and people he works with. And my— and once again, I'm not going to get into a battle or discussion with these people, but my thought was Hey, if I were a director, I'd want to hang out with my friends, and what better way? I can fly them in, give them a couple words to say, they'll get a great payday. You know, they'll be making like $980-some plus depending on how long of a day, and they'll get residuals, and I get a chance to hang out with friends. I mean, that sounds good to me. So my thought was, hey, maybe you ought to learn how to become friends with a director, and then maybe you'll get some lines thrown your way. So... So I understand why a producer might want to give out a line or a couple of words to an assistant. Got it. So then for the other actor who had a bigger role than I did, I asked, so I'm curious, why did this guy get my line? And actually this was interesting and I never would have thought of this. My line was interacting with the 2 stars. And they had decided, I guess the director had decided that it was important for this other actor to have more involvement with these people. So that's why he decided to take the line away from me, give it to this other actor, because he was going to be doing more things with them later and he felt like it was a better transition. So essentially that's what happened. You know, it was nothing personal. It wasn't anything like, hey, I didn't like the way you did your lines or anything like that. That it was, it was a smart decision, um, and, and I get it. So if anything like that happens to you on a set, don't immediately start thinking that, you know, everybody hates you and you're horrible and, you know, they, they just want to take all your lines away because you can't act. You know, typically there's a good reason why those things happen. And once again, I got it. Wasn't thrilled about it. Hey, you know, I got my lines. I worked on them. I studied, uh, prepared. I want to do them, but I get it. So anyhow, I just wanted to share that with you really quickly. If you have not subscribed to my channel yet, just click the subscription button. You can also click the little bell, the notification button, and that way every time I upload a new video, you'll be sent information about it. And the very last thing I was just going to mention If you get an opportunity, I would love to have you be a part of my channel here, and I'd love to have you support it as well. And if you can make a donation, there is a PayPal link. You can just scroll down a little bit and you'll see the link. And whatever donation you can make, I greatly appreciate it. As you can imagine, it's a lot of time and effort and editing and hiring people to help me with this, to make it organized, make it look good. So if you could help support it and make a donation, whatever you're comfortable with, I greatly appreciate it. I am Aaron Marcus, and I can't wait to talk with you again soon. See ya.
