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Dave:
"What makes you think that?" ("Retirement" [5-21]) |
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[Shot
of Lisa carving letters into her desk with a shiv.] ("Lucky Burger" [5-3]) |
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Maura
Tierney, who plays Lisa Miller, is an actress in the Greta Garbo class.
She is so underrated and still so little known at the moment that this
statement is probably shocking to most people. What separates Tierney
from almost all other actors is that she is a mise en scène
actress. By this I mean that she imbues signification to not just herself
but also to other aspects of the mise en scène. Tierney
is absolutely the best ever at strengthening her character’s relationships
with other characters. She enhances what other actors do by responding
to them in subtle ways. Sometimes it is just the way she moves toward
or backs away from another actor. Sometimes it is a body gesture or facial
expression that foreshadows what the other actor will do. 
In
"Rose Bowl" [3-15], when Lisa is amused by the fact that Beth
is going to do her evaluation and Beth starts writing on her notepad,
Tierney rushes towards the desk but falters half-heartedly. Here, a simple
body gesture that probably evokes no conscious response in most people
subtly expresses a moment of comedic desperation and helplessness. With
this gesture alone, Tierney reverses the positions of the morally powerful
Lisa Miller character with the more morally impoverished Beth, setting
up the smooth, uninterrupted flow of comedy of the evaluation. (For a
full explanation of morally expressive art, see the chapter below.)
In essence, Tierney’s acting style is a physical acting style, and it is through her physical acting that she strengthens or heightens the relationships between characters. Tierney possesses the most unique set of acting tools I have ever seen. She is, without a doubt, the most physically graceful and inventive actor or actress I have ever seen. Astute film observers are well aware of the fact that the best actors are naturally facially expressive. The face is the most expressive part of the human body, and it is expressiveness here, and not in the voice, that usually has the greatest power to convey emotions. Maura Tierney is as facially expressive as the greatest actors are, but she has a unique talent — what other great actors can only do with their faces, Tierney can also do with her entire body.
The
quintessence of a Tierney performance is the invention of expressive body
and hand gestures that are often so surprising that I find myself making
heavy use of rewind and replay functions just to dissect how she does
it. Watching Maura Tierney act is a delight for me because she never ceases
to amaze me with her endless invention of totally original yet expressive
and natural body gestures. Moreover, this is not a sporadic talent. She
can consistently and repeatedly invent a gesture of the
hand, arm, body or face that totally surprises me. These gestures are
so inventive as to be beyond conception, and thus I am constantly and
delightfully surprised when I see them. Who else could have invented the
flick of the wrist that provides the comedic exclamation point for the
line "Why don’t you just tell him that you don’t need…some?"
in "Goofy Ball" [2-2]? In the same episode when the staff sets
up the date for Dave and he turns to Lisa for her opinion, Tierney invents
a graceful gesture involving a thumbs-up sign that still amazes me to
this day. In "Chock" [4-11], a big office argument over Matthew
switches off when it turns 6 o’clock, leaving Lisa, as boss, at a
loss for what to do. Tierney creates a series of subtly hurried, purposeless
body movements to both convey Lisa’s moment of apoplexy and generate
a visually comic moment. In short, Maura Tierney invents visual forms
that can be appreciated for their own beauty.
Virtually any NewsRadio episode could be used to demonstrate Tierney’s physical acting. In "Inappropriate" [1-2] look at the way she moves when Bill intrudes on Dave and Lisa’s conversation in Dave’s office. Tierney steps back in response to the threat of Bill’s intrusion with an amazingly efficient set of body movements. Earlier in the same episode, one can marvel at the way she embraces Dave Foley, kisses him, and in realizing that the affection is not returned, changes her facial expression and uses arm movements to subtly enhance her consternation. Through the physical grace of the entire sequence she allows us to experience Lisa’s embarrassment without letting Lisa ever lose her poise, thus keeping the comedic momentum going. Soon after this, as she walks out of the office she flashes a quick turn back towards Dave before walking out. This single gesture may not seem like much, but it is of vital importance to the Dave-Lisa relationship. To walk out of the room without this glance backwards would have implied that the relationship was severed. By instinctively using this gesture, Tierney maintains the attraction between Dave and Lisa, setting the tone for the arguments soon afterwards. Tierney’s gracefulness allows her acting to be both forceful and very subtle at the same time. It also allows her to be the only actor working today who is capable of being powerfully expressive in close-up, mid-shot, and long shot.
The secret to an actor or actress creating mise en scène is creating meaning beyond motivation. In general, actors are dependent on directors or screenwriters for the signification of their characters — the classic case of feelings being expressed through actors rather than by them. Thus, actors in general create the ‘objects’ of the mise en scène without creating the meanings that signify those ‘objects.’ In order to create mise en scène, an actor must spontaneously create visual (and/or auditory) forms that are capable of signifying not only themselves but also other physical aspects of the film. Greta Garbo and Maura Tierney are the only actors or actresses in history who have been capable of inventing visual forms that are still artistically natural and true. Like Garbo, Tierney is not dependent on the director to provide signification to her character or her relationships.
Besides
her physical acting style, the most vital difference about Maura is the
selflessly centrifugal nature of her acting — she projects desires
outwards into external relationships. Consequently, to truly appreciate
the greatness of a Maura Tierney performance we need to look not just
at the actress herself but especially the relationships she signifies.
By contrast, other actors possess a more traditional and centripetal acting
style, pulling in emotions from outside situations and relationships so
that these emotions can be read across their faces. Dave Foley is an example
of a great traditional-style actor. Foley draws feelings from relationships
and situations and then communicates them to the viewer; Tierney pours
desires externally into relationships in order to signify them. Foley
reacts to the mise en scène; Tierney transforms it. In fact,
Tierney and Foley form the most complementary comedy pairing to yet hit
the screen. In their scenes together, she ‘gives’ to him and
he ‘receives.’ She is ‘action,’ he is ‘reaction.’
Forget Tracy and Hepburn; the ultimate romantic comedy pairing to this
point in history is Dave Nelson and Lisa Miller. Moreover, with her expressive
power over relationships, Tierney functions in a similar capacity to John
Wayne in Hatari!, Donovan’s Reef and Rio Bravo
— as the central facilitator of a great ensemble cast. (Without a
doubt, if I wanted to start another great ensemble cast today I would
start firstly, and most essentially, with Maura Tierney.)
(continued)
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