Free An Improvised Life by Alan Arkin

producer’s callousness and cruelty I had flown into a bullying rage, adding my own brand of inhumanity to the mess we were concocting.
    It felt like layer upon layer of confusion, and the incident resounded in me for a long time.
    I sought clarity by visiting a trusted teacher. He knew me well—my easy ability to find outrage in the injustices of the world as well as in the shortcomings of others. He knew my sense of self-righteousness and my temper. At the moment of this visit I was also complaining about the lousy notes I was getting from a particular director, who I didn’t respect at all, and how I wasn’t following them. He heard my grievance and said, “It might be interesting to try to follow his directions. See what happens.”
    His response shocked me. Why should I listen to the ideas of a director who was completely incompetent? His credits were nowhere as impressive as mine. I had major awards, what had he done? I didn’t understand why I was being instructed to follow the directions of someone who
was clearly not up to my exacting standards. But at that time I found it wise to abide by this trusted teacher’s instructions, whether I understood them or not. So for the rest of that film, in fact for several films after, I vowed to put my own ego aside and try every idea that a director would throw at me.
    And interesting things started to happen. Often the idea was indeed terrible, and when I attempted to perform it to the best of my ability, it just didn’t work. But sometimes it did work. And my performance was better for it, and the film was improved. And the distinction between the good ideas and the bad ones was always clear.
    Then other things started to happen that were even more important. First, as a result of my resolve to cooperate, my relationships with directors improved. I realized that a few of them had been afraid of me; this was no longer the case. We were now allies, and though I still might have reservations about their talent, they were colleagues with whom I could have a civilized and productive dialogue, and together we could steer the film in a direction that could excite us both. This was a lesson that stood me in good stead, both in my profession and in my personal life.
    The lesson of the pigeon stayed with me as well.
    I was about five years into therapy, and while my work with my doctor was tearing down walls in my emotional life, it was also opening a window into the wall that had separated my professional and personal lives. I had never thought of myself as a violent person, but now I was confronted
with the daunting task of recognizing that the inhumanity I was so eager to denounce in the Popi script was alive and well in me.
    The realization ate at me, and I finally saw that I could no longer allow myself to feel this great self-congratulatory surge that I see in so many artists who have participated in a work that has some social value. I have seen the irony played out too often—the thinking is that since they have done something deeply significant and even courageous in “bringing this important message to the screen,” they are allowed some special license in their own behaviors, and I wonder how many acts of selfishness and mindlessness have been perpetrated on co-workers, family members, and employees to get the humanitarian message across, and how much money has been made in the process.
    We live with the illusion that the ends are worth the means. That in art, the message in the final product will justify the lack of humanity that took place during the making of the work. In this period, for reasons I still don’t understand, I started to see the discrepancies not only in others but in myself as well, and I could no longer allow myself to get away with that kind of behavior. When I caught myself acting that way, and it was more often than I wanted to admit, it stayed with me and I suffered for it. My memory could no longer rub out the moments of cruelty and