Alan Poul on directing Jennifer Lopez

(Alan Poul) One of the great joys for me of working with actors, which I love working with actors, probably more than any other single aspect of directing is that every actor speaks a slightly different language.  So your job is to find that actor's language and learn to speak it to them.  In terms of some actors like to be told very specifically what to do.  Some actors absolutely do not want to be told what to do but want to be fed a nugget of information that might be slightly tangential, but will inspire them to give the result that you want.  Some actors will be 'I need...give me two takes to just sort of fool around and do whatever I'm feeling and then if you need to steer it or guide it, do it then,' and you respect each actor's process.  I think Jennifer and Alex got along great and had great communication, but their processes are different.

(AP): Jennifer's process is that she owns her body, her voice, her persona so completely.  Although she works as an organic actress, I mean, she works from a classic American sense of motivation and conjuring genuine emotions, she also has, at the same time, such an amazing objective eye that while she's giving a very emotionally centered, grounded performance, there's a piece of her that's out here watching it, like the camera.  And so she always knows exactly what she's done.  It's a very rare trait to have.  And so that meant that I could talk to her about specifics of physicality, or minute degrees of expression or emotion, and to her it didn't seem technical in a bad way, because she's a dancer.  She understands very well the degree to which technical control is part of what makes the art good.

(AP): Alex is a more classically trained actor, and so he becomes immersed inside of what he's doing and doesn't watch it objectively.  And so for him, he'd be much more...you know, at the end of a take 'How was it? How was it? How was it?,' like 'What did I do?' and so he was much more relying on the input of what my perception would be about why that process didn't work for this take and then maybe he should alter the process a little bit to give a more appropriate result.  And he was very trusting that way.  But between the two of them they were extremely gracious and empowering towards each other.