The year was 1988. I had long been fond of comedy. Peter Sellers in The Pink Panther series was the genre’s gold standard in my mind. But then a friend introduced me to the film, This Is Spinal Tap. A group of us, then in high school, watched it repeatedly on weekends, memorizing vast portions of dialogue along the way. It never stopped being funny. Christopher Guest, along with Rob Reiner, created the idea for the film. What is so remarkable about this film, apart from comic genius, is that the actors did not have any script.

Guest’s method brought out the authenticity in each actor. Because they couldn’t control and didn’t know what another actor would say in a given moment, the actors had to be fully engaged in the acting process. Only then could they respond in a way that matched perfectly what the other actors were doing. This approach may sound like a free-for-all. Far from it. Guest and his co-writer and actor Eugene Levi spent months in advance conceptualizing the story and organizing it into 141 note cards. Each card delineated starting and ending points, A to B. The actors in the film knew they must begin and end at a certain point. But Guest didn’t dictate how they should travel between points A and B. He left the creative control in the hands of his actors. The inspiration each actor drew from to move him or her through each scene was the character that Guest and Levi developed, complete with a personal history, personality and character description.

A movie with a script follows an entirely different approach. Actors know what they are to say, when they are to say it, and how to present their lines in response to their fellow actors. When they’re not speaking in a scene, they’re waiting for their cue. Less is required of actors–which is not to say this approach isn’t demanding in other respects. But with a script actors are not required to be as present, responsive, and authentic. The whole thing is mapped out.

Most “how to books” for relationships amount to a script. They will tell you what, when, and how you ought to say what you ought to say. Again, many of these books offer valuable concepts and principles. But in the realm of meaningful, grounded relationships I think we should require more of ourselves and each other. Scripts serve to arm us for a conversation. We need to develop our ability to enter conversations without armor.

To borrow from Guest’s method, we can determine where a scene or conversation begins, but what follows ought to be spontaneous, drawn from wells deep within us. Remember talking with your friend, child, or spouse into the midnight hour? You had no idea the conversation would last so long. We’ve all had these kinds of conversations. If you reflect back on the conversation it probably began with one topic, morphed into other related topics, swirled and ebbed throughout the evening, spilling into all kinds of divergent explorations. There was no script, no prompts. You were in the moment, thinking, speaking, and feeling what the moment required of you.

We seek the support of scripts out of fear and laziness. They help us feel in control. And what happens if the person to whom we’re talking forgets his or her lines? We storm off the set like Jack Nicholson. How dare you derail my narrative.

Tags: authenticity, unscripted relationships, vulnerability