Aaron Marcus shares how John Waters politely asked an extra dressed as Divine to change his look during Cecil B. DeMented, then explains why a director's kindness or cruelty sets the tone for everyone on set. A respectful approach ripples through the whole crew.
I've been an actor working on film and TV sets for decades, and I've seen how some directors handle distractions in really unpleasant ways. But what the famous director-writer on the film Cecil B. DeMented did shocked me. So here's what happened. Hey, I'm Aaron Marcus, and You probably have heard of the writer-director John Waters. If you're not 100% sure who he is, he was the writer-director for movies like Hairspray, Cry-Baby. Actually, here's a scene that I had with Johnny Depp throwing him out of the courtroom. It was a really, really enjoyable day for me. And what was happening was there was a scene that was shot in a theater And one of the extras got— decided to get dressed up as Divine. Divine was a childhood friend of John Waters, and he had him in all of his movies. His name was Harris Glenn Milstead. And I noticed that before they started shooting the scene, one of the PAs, the production assistant, comes running over to John Waters, who's standing at the front by the stage in this theater, and he's talking very adamantly, and I don't know what's going on. And then all of a sudden, I see John Waters walking towards the extra. So I'm thinking, I wonder what he's going to say. I have no idea what's going on. And, and I could tell you, sometimes I've seen when there are distractions, things that aren't going the way that a director wants— depending on the director, sometimes they just blow up, they do crazy things. John Waters walks over to this guy, and he's kind of bending over and talking to him quietly. And he said to him, look, I really appreciate everything that you've done to look like Divine. And I guess he, he wanted to recognize his— how much he enjoyed the character and stuff like that. And he said, but I, I've got to tell you, you're going to have to change wardrobe, hairstyle, get rid of the makeup stuff because It's going to be too distracting if you're seen in the shot. And honestly, I was blown away by just how kind he was, how empathetic he was, and just so sweet to a guy. In some situations, the director would have had a PA just take the guy and thrown him off the set. start screaming at him, what are you doing? This isn't appropriate for this particular scene or this movie, whatever it was. Because he— Devine had passed away like a decade before Cecil B. DeMentor was, was made. And he just handled it with such class. And, and something that I have learned on sets is that the atmosphere of the set Always starts at the top. And, and if you have a director, at least if it's a feature film, if you have a director who is just mean-spirited and nasty, it filters its way down. And the first assistant director will have an attitude, the production assistants. And just so you know who they are, they do all the grunt work and get paid the least. They work incredibly hard, but they can do everything from blocking the extras, telling them when to move, where go to getting coffee for people, checking the extras in and out and things like that. And when it's really good at the top, that changes the entire feel of the set. And that's exactly what John Waters did. And I'm curious if you ever experienced an act of kindness on a set, something that a director did that you found really nice and helpful, please share it here. We'd love to learn from you. That would be incredible. I also just wanted to let you know, in just like a minute or so, you're going to see a video, and it's a bonus video, Will Doing Extra Work Kill an Actor's Career? And just click on it. I think you'll find that really helpful. And by the way, if you haven't done this yet, don't forget, subscribe, click the notification bell, give it a thumbs up if you found this helpful, and share the link with fellow actors. I'm Aaron Marcus, and I'm really excited about sharing another quick tip video with you next week. See ya. See ya.
