This document is designed to discuss the actors of the film, and also to discuss what exactly is acting, really? It's gonna have spoilers. Get out while the getting's good. Go see the film, then come back here.

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No really I mean it! Go! This isn't The Crying Game alright?

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They gone? Good. End of spoiler warning.

What is acting? Or more specifically, what is not acting? As a man who spent high school and college in the theater department with aspirations of someday making it to Hollywood, and then consequently failing at ever achieving said goal, I would like to believe I am an authority on the former question. However, I'm more of an
authority of the latter: what is not acting?

Harry Knowles of Aint-It-Cool-Cews.com almost compares this movie to a snuff film, and admittedly one can find a correlation between Blair Witch and the Faces of Death. We're sitting there like voyeurs, watching the final days of three people's lives. We're looking to be entertained, but we're also looking for answers.

Perhaps more than any film in history, The Blair Witch Project brings to surface in a very disturbing way, why we watch movies in the first place. We watch movies for the same reasons our ancestors used to sit around the campfire and listen to the wise man of the village tell stories of the past. We seek to find a better understanding of ourselves and the world around us by examining what has gone on before. Would I have done that? What can I learn from that? Whatever that happens to be.

In an actual snuff film (and I'm going from what I've been told cuz I've yet to actually see one that claims to be one) you witness the death of a fellow human being. With Blair, we're witnessing the presumed final days of three people who are allegedly missing. Now, (hopefully after you've seen the film) you learn that this was just an experimental film and the three young people are very safe. In fact they probably have bodyguards by now protecting them from their adoring fans. However, they actually spent an entire week together, not having known each other more than a few months. They also knew that somewhere in the forest were the directors, who were also strangers to them. They were only given information about what would happen to them on a need to know basis. In fact, in one interview I've read, Heather Donahue actually came right out and asked one of the directors: "Is this a snuff film?" She then went on to say she had thoughts that maybe she'd go out into the woods and get killed while filming this,
with the final realization that if this did happen to her, she was "going to look pretty stupid."

So it does bring up the question, one which the students and directors have been asked, was this acting? Just how far can a director take the actors in a film, before we question whether or not these three kids should be nominated for an Oscar or something.

I'm exagerrating. Okay. Personally I believe Heather Donahue deserves to at least be nominated. However, before I can get to that, I need to establish for you why this is indeed acting.

Several years ago there was this movie called Silkwood starring Meryl Streep, Kurt Russell, and Cher. It was filmed near where I live. IN Las Colinas of Irving to be exact. I live in Dallas. Las Colinas is the closest thing to Hollywood that Dallas is ever gonna get. A lot of movies and television shows are made in this area, including the first Robocop
movie, and the PBS series Wishbone.

My mom and dad were extras in Silkwood. In fact, there's a scene where Meryl Streep's character is checking in to go to work and my mom's face takes up the whole screen during that crowd scene for all of three seconds. Yeah. I thought that was pretty neat too.

Mom said she would often see Meryl Streep kneeling down in what looked like a very uncomfortable fashion moments before they were going to start a scene. She asked one of her assistants why. Turns out, based on Streep's research into her character, that at this point in her life Karen Silkwood complained of pains in her legs, and Meryl Streep was
trying to make the pain in her legs real so she could be more in character. This was obviously something that you cannot see in the film. However, it helped Meryl Streep get into the role. This is what is known as "method acting," where you use external stimuli and internal psyching up of yourself to be more in character when it matters.

The Blair Witch Project is like Streep kneeling down before a scene. The only difference is, these three are experiencing the pain of hunger, the sense of being lost, and the uncertainty of the near future before, during AND after the cameras are off, because they were still there.

Then they have to set aside certain parts of this experience. It's not the Blair Witch that's stalking them, it's the directors. They're not really lost in the woods. They had technological devices which connected them to the directors via radio and satelite transmissions, and they even had emergency backup plans that could get them to civilization if something went horribly awry.

It's still acting. However, what is different here as opposed to any other film is the intelligence of the directors. In Hollywood, most directors don't pay attention to the mindset of their actors in such a massive way. They allow their creature comforts to be cared for in a way that their character counterparts probably didn't have access to. Bruce
Willis performs a mildly dangerous scene which is designed to set up a jump his character is about to make, then the cameras shut off, he's replaced by a stunt double for the actual jump, and Willis goes off to nurse a sprained ankle in the trailer. Tough life.

Here, there was no air conditioned trailer. There were no stunt doubles or any creature comforts. The directors warned them ahead of time that their safety WAS very important to them, but their comfort was NOT. They gave the actors everything needed to allow them to give the directors what they needed. It was the perfect collaboration.

Could this same film have been created if all the sets were faked, and a trailer was waiting for them with coffee and donuts? Not even if you got actors who critics and peers claimed were better than these three young talents. Kubrick spent years trying to get realism out of Cruise and Kidman for Eyes Wide Shut, but the film itself is not easily believable. It's too fake. Too set up. You actually have to suspend your disbelief MORE for Eyes Wide Shut than for this cheaply-produced ghost story.

Heather Donahue deserves far more credit than she ever will recieve for this film. On top of all the other crap that was going on around her, she was able to convey to the camera in subtle ways a "Captain Ahab" sort of neuroses that isn't plainly evident. She pulls out of herself that dark uncertainty which lay dormant in all of us, and leaves it out there
naked for the world to see. She's driven. Her character doesn't know from what, and we can only surmise. She finds the motivation for keeping the camera running, and this motivation is what drives the last half of the film. When the other two are saying, "why are you still filming? Stop it!" She can't. She's driven. Something inside makes her keep going when everything seems bleak.

And with her final tearful message to her mother we understand why. The camera has become a security blanket. It has become her umbilical to the outside world. It's all she has left. She admits that, but she's not just talking about her project. Hell with the project. The camera is her last form of communication to the outside world, and she hopes
against hope that someone somewhere will see it, so her life wasn't without value. So someone understands.

There is so much meat in Donahue's role, and she was going completely on improvisation. It brewed forth from the deepest recesses of her soul, in a way that Meryl Streep, kneeling before the cameras go on, could never hope to achieve.

Will Donahue be nominated for an Oscar for this film? Never in a million years.

Does she deserve it? You betcha.

Now I'm a bit less certain about the other two guys. Perhaps a supporting nomination, but actually that's more of a stretch to me. Heather's performance is more remarkable than the guys were, becuse she pulled something out of her being's core that I didn't see with the other two.

They were Heather's foils in this film. They were her support. They were what she was pushing against to get that out of her, but the story is largely Heather's. I didn't feel the same desperation from Michael and Joshua, which is strange to me. Why was Heather able to find it but they weren't? Or maybe they did find it and I am not a qualified enough "critic" to have seen it.

Instead, we get remarkably different responses to this experience from each of them. I'm going to go see the film again tonight. Perhaps if I pay more attention to Josh and Mike, I can see more of their acting talent. Perhaps I just missed it because admittedly I'm a guy and Heather's just easier to look at. :-)