Spine, objective, intention, and verb are all expressions of what a character (person) needs. All creatures — not just human creatures, but all living creatures, all living things
— move toward what they need. Plants grow toward the sun. This is the principle behind these actors’ tools.
The objective is what the character wants the other character to do, and the action verb is what he is doing to get what he wants. “Intention” is virtually interchangeable with either term, and is sometimes called “the emotional intention.”
The character’s spine, or super-objective, is what he wants during the whole script;
you could call it what he wants out of life. It is the one speci c thing that a character needs more than any other, will sacri ce the most to have. Sometimes people call it the character’s life-need; you may also hear it called his core, his through line, his, want, the red thread, the thing that drives him, what he is fighting for, what is important to him.
Each character has one overall spine throughout the whole movie. In each scene, although the action verb may change frequently, each character has one objective. In life our needs don’t turn on and o haphazardly. We don’t necessarily stop needing something even when we do get it. And we certainly don’t stop needing something just because we realize we can’t have it.
In his “Inside the Actors Studio” interview Paul Newman referred to “active verbs”
which are the same as the “action verbs” I talk about. Michael Shurtle ’s book Audition, widely read by actors, exhorts them always to connect to “what the character is ghting for” — this is, by another name, the objective. I have heard actors refer to a “driving energy” or nding the character’s “agenda” or “motor” — also objectives. You can use any vernacular for it. It isn’t necessary to use the terms of art in order to take advantage of these tools.
SPINE
There is often confusion between “spine” and “transformation,” also sometimes called
“arc.” Many directors, when I o er them the liberating and invaluable tool of one spine per character per script, persist in the notion that the character wants one thing until
“X” happens, and then he wants something else. This is not a spine; it is an attempt to describe the character’s transformation.
You might hear someone describe a character by saying that when his best friend dies, he “learns the value of friendship,” that is, he transforms from a person who only cares about himself into a person who is capable of love, or unsel sh action, or whatever. It is helpful for an actor to know the character’s transformation; it is de nitely imperative
for the director to know all the characters’ transformations. But it is a big mistake for an actor, after guring out the character’s transformation, to set out to play “a person who learns the value of friendship.” This leads him to playing the end of the script at the beginning.
Let’s take as an example, the character Michael Corleone, played by Al Pacino in “The Godfather.” What do you think might be Michael’s spine? When I ask students this question, they often suggest that he wants “power” or “control” or “family loyalty” or
“to get revenge for the shooting of his father.” None of these will work for the whole script. When I say that I think Michael’s spine is “to please his father,” or perhaps, “to make his father proud of him,” students sometimes protest that in the beginning of the movie Michael wants to separate himself from his father and be his own man, and that it is only after Don Vito is shot that Michael wants to make his father proud of him.
But look at the facts. In the beginning of the movie Michael is pleasing his father and making him proud by becoming a lawyer. Don Vito has three sons: the eldest (Sonny/Santino) is to succeed him as godfather, the second (Fredo) is to be active in the business, although his activities must be scaled to his rather severe personal limitations.
The youngest (and favorite), Michael, is to become a real “American” (he even has the only “American” name) and make his life and his living outside the family business.
Michael’s independence pleases his father. By the end of the movie Michael is not only in the family business but has taken his father’s place as don; this is his transformation.
The transforming event, I think, is Sonny’s death. After Sonny’s death there is no one else (certainly not Fredo) who can succeed Don Vito. So Don Vito makes his peace with the notion of Michael heading the family business, and that becomes the way Michael can please him.
Michael’s spine “to please his father” doesn’t change even after his father’s death. We know from real life that this can happen, that a person might still be driven by a need for a parent’s love and respect even after the parent is dead. Perhaps the theme of
“Godfather II” is exactly this: that continuing to live driven by the need to make someone happy when that person is no longer alive to respond to one’s e orts, robs life of its zest and creates a hollow in Michael’s heart.
The spine is who a person is. It may even be partly genetic. This is the reason why many actors seem to play every role the same. Being able to believably play a spine di erent from one’s own is quite a feat. Some actors who play the same character in every movie are operating out of a “secret identity” spine, di erent from their own, but for some reason easily and deeply accessible to their imagination. For example, Charlie Chaplin was in real life quite di erent from the “little tramp” character he most successfully played, whose spine might perhaps be described as “to stay out of trouble.”
There are several ways an actor uses spine as a tool. One is while reading a script and deciding whether to take the role. A good actor when reading a script looks (among other things) for a playable spine — a hanger or hook from which all the character’s actions depend. When he nds a believable spine he knows that a real character has
been written, not a patched-up plot manipulation.
Once it is found, the actor uses that spine to design the role. This is the way an actor can play a major, complex role when it is shot out of sequence. Every decision, every choice made about the character relates to the spine, including the objectives of each individual scene. But the relationship may be indirect. For instance in “Last Tango in Paris,” even though the Brando character in each scene with Maria Schneider has the objective to push her away, or to hurt or humiliate her, it seems to me that his spine (super-objective) is to nd love. The pushing away is a series of tests to see if he can trust her. Her scene-by-scene objectives, on the other hand, are nearly all to get a ection from him, to get closer. And yet I think her super-objective is not love, but to grow up, to become an adult. She must draw him closer in order to overthrow him, the father gure. The moment when he gives up testing and surrenders to her (at the tango parlor) is the same moment that she gathers strength to reject him (these are their moments of transformation).
Must the actor and director agree on the spine of the character? Yes and no. The choice of a spine must be supported by the script, but it is a secret choice. Sydney Pollack compares the spine of the movie to the armature of a sculpture; it keeps the thing together, but no one sees it. If what an actor is doing works, what does it matter if the spine she has chosen is di erent from your idea? But if you are not happy with a performance, bringing up the subject (via a question, such as “What are you thinking of as the spine of this character?”) can be a useful way to begin a discussion about shaping or changing a performance.
On the other hand, some directors prefer to make all the decisions about spine.
Independent British lmmaker Ken Loach, in an L.A. Times interview, said he doesn’t give actors a full script ahead of time, and instead feeds them a couple of pages at a time, because he wants them to give a simple, unrehearsed response to each circumstance of the script as it arises. I should think that the success of this approach must depend on the director casting people who have the same life-spine as the characters.
OBJECTIVE
A character’s objective for a particular scene can be very speci c and very simple. For example: I want him to leave the room; I want him to kiss me; I want him to laugh; I want him to cry. The simpler it is the more playable it is. The most playable objectives have both a physical and an emotional component.
The physical component means that, if you achieve your objective, you will know it because of a physical event — the other actor would cry or laugh or kiss you or leave the room, whatever. So you have a point of concentration that is physical and real, a simple imaginative task.
Part of the emotional component means that getting this objective, or not getting it,
will constitute an emotional event in the relationship, a win or a loss. To be very simple-minded about it, if my objective is to get someone to leave the room, when he leaves the room, I win; if he doesn’t, I lose. In either case our relationship has undergone a small (or a big) change.
The rest of the emotional component is that the objective arises out of the character’s needs and feelings. Needs and feelings are subjective. Actors who feel deeply but fail to connect their feelings to intention can become general or self-indulgent. The simple intention — an inclination toward having some e ect on the other person — leads to engagement. Although simple listening has already engaged the actors, endowing the characters with a need to interact raises the stakes of the relationship. It also makes it possible for the actors to listen and play o each other even if the characters are not listening to each other. Objectives make possible con ict and a sense of event in the relationship, because the actors are doing something to each other rather than doing something to the lines.