🤹 #266 - What if you want to do more than write?
How many hyphens do you want in your title? We look at when actors write and writers act.
Whether it's acting in something to try and get more attention for your writing, or writing something to help get more attention to your acting, some artists decide to balance several hats to give themselves a better shot at breaking through.
Ben Affleck and Matt Damon’s writing process for Good Will Hunting was all about creating their own acting reel to send to casting directors, so they focused on a story that was “just all interiors and people talking in rooms because it was inexpensive.” The goal to support their acting careers using the means at their disposal became the compass point guiding the whole process.
Part of what can keep people from trying this strategy is believing there's a hard definition of what kind of artist they are. The channel Related collects interviews with Donald Glover on how he gets around this mental block by seeing himself as just someone who likes to make things.
Tad Friend's profile of Glover goes deeper, where the multi-hyphenate credits his ability to break down something he doesn't know how to do into something that can be practiced and refined:
When he was ten, he said, “I realized, if I want to be good at P.E., I have to be good at basketball. So I went home and shot baskets in our driveway for six hours, until my mother called me in. The next day, I was good enough that you wouldn’t notice I was bad. And I realized my superpower.”
Andrew Karpan points to an early short film Glover made, Clapping for the Wrong Reasons, as a kind of Rosetta stone for understanding the themes and styles that interest him and carry over between projects.
Jordan Riefe profiles Zoe Lister-Jones, writer-director-actor of the series Slip, and charts how numerous projects she worked on in one of those capacities gave her the willingness to try doing all three at once. Rich Roll interviews Lister-Jones in depth, covering a range of topics including how creative work always means doing things you don’t know how to do.
Alexa Alemanni provides some cautionary counterpoint to the idea of writing yourself a role, suggesting that it’s important to remember that a memorable fictional character has flaws and a degree of vulnerability, and that seeing yourself as a character from page 1 can lead to glossing over imperfections in favor of what you think are your/your character’s best qualities.
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Find more examples of writer/actors in Weekend Read
Every week we release a new list of screenplays to add to your library in the Weekend Read app. Last week's collection was all about creator-driven comedies like 30 Rock, Atlanta, Fleabag, and PEN15.
Weekend Read 2 is the iPhone and iPad app that turns screenplays and text files into smooth, scrollable reading experiences. It automatically reformats PDFs, Highland, Final Draft, and Markdown files into a clean, mobile-friendly layout—no pinching or zooming required. You can browse curated screenplay libraries, import your own files from iCloud, Dropbox, and Google Drive, and organize everything with pins, filters, and custom lists.
Previously on Inneresting…
In case you missed it, our last issue's most clicked link showcased Monthly Method's One-Way To-Do List: A tool for building momentum in times of burnout, depression, or lack of motivation.
What else is inneresting?
- It's not too difficult to believe that playing certain music makes cows produce more milk, but this study doesn't explain why cows prefer the Celtic Woman cover of Orinoco Flow over the original.
- Robin Sloan suggests that learning to code doesn't need to feel like job training, but can be a smaller scale experience to make apps for yourself and the people in your inner circle – “Let’s substitute a different phrase: “learn to cook”. People don’t only learn to cook so they can become chefs. Some do! But many more people learn to cook so they can eat better, or more affordably. Because they want to carry on a tradition. Sometimes they learn because they’re bored! Or even because they enjoy spending time with the person who’s teaching them.”
- Did you know that the Library of Congress has a site with an annotated U.S. Constitution? For example, here's the outline for their detailed breakdown of The First Amendment.
And that’s what’s inneresting this week!
Inneresting is edited by Chris Csont, with contributions from readers like you and the entire Quote-Unquote team.
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