The Rehearsal

[Max von Mayerling]

There's a Vice article online in which they talk to Robbin Stone and he comments (mostly negatively) on his portrayal. If that interview was also a performance, then they are going impressively deep on this. I'm interested in how the show seems to be forcing the question of whether everyone in the show is "acting" by having so many of the participants expressly performing some role in a rehearsal.

[therewillbeblus]

Or maybe Fielder et al. selected their participants based on intense eccentricities in their audition tapes they sent in, like.. how every single 'reality' show has operated forever? Obviously in all of those 'reality' shows, people are putting on a 'performance' of sorts, but this doesn't feel different than any of those shows in terms of the odd personalities we're getting. It seems pretty clear that there's a blurred line between what's scripted and what's organic, the latter of which is partly manipulated by Fielder implementing scripted provocations that prompt spontaneous feedback. The surprised reactions that catch these people dead in their tracks feels about the same as the ones that happened on Nathan For You and Fielder's On Your Side though, which also had real people engaging in mostly unscripted interactions, but still responding within the confines of a show as at least a semi self-conscious performance simply due to unavoidable influences (such as the presence of cameras, which Fielder acknowledged as a crucial variable that obstructs any completely organic behavior in the last episode, etc.)

[Murdoch]

I have wondered if absolutely everybody on the show is an actor. Most of them have felt too odd to be real people, particularly Angela and that numbers guy.

The numbers guy felt real to me, I've met a few people exactly like him (one being a firm believer in the whole "angelic numbers" signs). They could be actors but I don't underestimate human weirdness.

[therewillbeblus]

Renewed for a second season

[denti alligator]

Only watched to ep 4, and I suspect everyone is acting, with the possible exception of the guy in ep 3 who breaks down in the chicken restaurant. I mean, wow.

[Black Hat]

Yeah, agreed and the fact that so many people took it straight is more than just an epic troll but, quite revealing about those who can't see the joke is on us, the audience. Art is about intent and what Nathan Fielder does, what separates it from being just another reality show, is that it's asking you to take it seriously. Much like a magician, he's fucking with us while looking to show us something about ourselves. I mean, he literally shows you his ass at the end. Personally, I preferred Nathan for You because what he's doing there is more hidden and less cynical thus, more clever but, I did enjoy those who became worked up about it to the point of debating Fielder's morality.

[swo17]

80% of this is explicitly fake real--what difference does it make to the show's themes how real the rest of it is? Are you suggesting that Fielder's main goal was to trick everyone into thinking this was cinéma vérité?

[Matt]

There were a lot of takes early on (before the season finale aired) calling it a new kind of documentary, but that idea got pushed back on by some documentary filmmakers (including Errol Morris), TV writers, and critics. It’s essentially a reality show about an improvisational comedy show that involves a lot of “audience” participation.

That doesn’t mean it doesn’t say important things and raise important questions, but I found this actually much less cynical, exploitative, and prankish than Nathan for You (though the “Smokers Allowed” episode is a key precursor to The Rehearsal.

Nathan is always, ultimately, the butt (pun intended) of the joke in this show, and the ending scene is Nathan riffing with his best scene partner (Liam performing as Remy), escalating the bit, and seeing where Liam-as-Remy takes it.

[senseabove]

I think they're both arguing that the entirety, or at least most, of the show is acted—i.e. Angela is not actually an evangelical wacko who thinks Halloween is Satanic but an actress given a character to improvise from; Robbin did not actually crash his Scion TC at 100mph but was told "you need mention numerology every fifteen minutes and crashing your Scion TC at 100mph at least once an hour," etc.

Apropos of nothing, I found an 8mm reel of Kubrick shooting the moon landing in my grandfather's attic that I'm willing to sell for the right price.

[therewillbeblus]

I’m with swo, entirely too much conversation has been preoccupied with whether or not such and such is fake or real, when the thematic depths are of far richer substance for personal exploration. I’ve been surprised (though probably shouldn’t be) how many of my clients are bringing this show up in therapy sessions in relation to how they obsessively try to plan out conversations with their partners, parents, etc. We’ve even concocted mindfulness and replacement thought/behavior interventions in direct response to Nathan’s failures, which -through layering the insights as he has in this show- have helped them highlight their own. None of those people have been asking if it’s all real in order to warrant its value, therapeutic or otherwise

[Black Hat]

80% of this is explicitly fake real--what difference does it make to the show's themes how real the rest of it is? Are you suggesting that Fielder's main goal was to trick everyone into thinking this was cinéma vérité?

I don't think that was the trick. The trick was to get the audience to feel a certain way by pretty deviously planting seeds within us. I don't think he's just looking for the audience to judge him but, to judge one another and ultimately all of us for watching. He's playing with how we consume, mocking, manipulating our responses as if he had a checklist based on what he's observed from "the discourse" and then flipping it. Frankly, I think it's bizarre, to the degree of willfully choosing to dismiss the show's central tenet — he titled it The Rehearsal, recreated The Alligator Lounge to the last detail, the repeated shots of him in the editing booth pondering away as a Director, bringing up the show's budget at least 4 or 5 times with HBO by name — how meticulous Fielder is, to then say it doesn't make any difference whether it's entirely fake or real. It absolutely does and to deny that, besides missing the point, the artist's intent, I think give's Fielder short shrift.

Matt - I disagree. For example, I think the way he, at various times, interjected the actor's reactions in place of the main people was a nifty trick, impressively devious but, an extremely cynical way of planting seeds with how he wanted the audience to respond. For instance, Angela left the house totally chill, honking her horn but, this was preceded by perhaps the show's most memorable scene, certainly its most intense, most "rehearsed" (maybe longest too?), where the fake Angela is being awful. So, you have to ask, why are we being shown this?

To tie it all up and back to Swo, my take away is Fielder doesn't hold people in high regard and was trying to show how easy it is to manipulate us. Pretty successful but, man, pretty dark too.

[swo17]

I enjoyed the show for taking a relatable strain of social anxiety to absurd lengths, including a focus on very precise details that can't possibly matter to the end goal because they nonetheless help you feel like you have control over a situation. Angela only matters to me as a contributor to Fielder's anxiety. It wouldn't surprise me to learn definitively that she was either authentic or an act. (There are certainly people like her in real life--an observation, not a judgment--and while she perhaps fits too conveniently into the overarching narrative, who's to say that it wasn't modified along the way to fit around her?) And it wouldn't change my opinion of the show either way

[Matt]

Matt - I disagree. For example, I think the way he, at various times, interjected the actor's reactions in place of the main people was a nifty trick, impressively devious but, an extremely cynical way of planting seeds with how he wanted the audience to respond. For instance, Angela left the house totally chill, honking her horn but, this was preceded by perhaps the show's most memorable scene, certainly its most intense, most "rehearsed" (maybe longest too?), where the fake Angela is being awful. So, you have to ask, why are we being shown this?

I pinned it as a reality show specifically because it does engage in this kind of dramatic manipulation. Much as reality show producers encourage certain behaviors, withhold information, edit according to dramatic revelations and reversals instead of chronology, and resort to other tricks no documentarian after Flaherty would conscience, Fielder is aiming to give us the most comedically or dramatically engaging version of the events, even if they were provided (scripted or unscripted) by actors. Not to get postmodern about it, but I think the Fake Angela outburst is simultaneously the most constructed and the truest moment in the whole series.

[Black Hat]

Swo - I think, if I'm understanding you right, we're seeing the show entirely differently. For me, this is about the audience, how he is exploiting them with his tricks, with the certain kind of viewer who believes them, while it seems for you, and others, it's about Fielder and his anxieties. I don't buy that and think that's part of his sleight of hand but, one of the nice things about the show is you can see it completely differently. Having said that, I am obviously correct.

Matt - Your last point is a great one, that I agree with, and precisely why I brought that scene up, asking why is he showing us this. Why is he merging the character with the replicant? Personally, I could have lived without this pulling back of the curtain and would have preferred to live with my own thoughts. Now, while on one level you are correct in your comparison to reality television, I think this opinion casts too wide a net. Where this argument loses the plot, why The Rehearsal isn't the same as reality tv, is that something like The Bachelor isn't asking you to take it seriously, this is why there's been so much hand wringing about Fielder's morality. By aiming to entertain, reveal something and mess with you, looking to upend the very idea of theater, he's shooting way higher than reality tv and giving us something very different than a twist ending on a dating show.

[Red Screamer]

I’m confused about both sides of the argument here. I would be shocked if Angela, Robin, et al were actors and I’m not sure why one would even start speculating that they were. A large part of the audacity and humor of The Rehearsal comes from its relative nakedness. Instead of pranking us, Fielder is always revealing his hand, to a degree I don’t recall ever seeing on a production of this size and budget. One stunning example is the moment where Fielder roleplays as one of the show’s participants to imagine what it would be like to sign a release waiver for the show, taking into account all of the implicit pressures that might convince you to sign even if you had serious reservations. It’s this show’s version of the opening credits of Tout va bien, pointedly revealing the absurd mechanics of film production and the power of the media industry. This is one example of how Brody's criticisms are willfully missing the point.

The Rehearsal is a reality show about its own making and its own inadequacy, which reverses the pretenses of the reality show genre; it’s a documentary on the creation of a fictional thing where the completely fictional reenactments, like the one I described above, provide as much nonfictional content as the unrehearsed, real interactions (which are almost always taking place in false settings); it’s a satire about manufacturing and packaging reality—that’s not a prank, that’s television. I realize this paragraph is annoying, but that shows how hard this show is to write about with any completeness.

Like Nathan For You, the central joke of the premise is that the Fielder character claims he’s doing the show in order to help people, but instead he uses it for his own ends, to create elaborate surreal puzzles or to exorcise his own demons or even to make friends—in Finding Frances his character goes as far as to spend Comedy Central’s money to repeatedly hire an escort to pretend to be his girlfriend, but the joke of his desperation for personal connection repeats throughout his work before becoming a major thread here. Like Matt says, the joke is on him. It’s nearly explicit in the world of the show that the Fielder character creates The Rehearsal in order to exert an extreme level of control on his life as he works through his own anxieties. The theme here is control vs chance (fiction vs documentary) and after the hilarious first episode the show gets less funny and more conceptual and tragic as Fielder gradually tightens the grip of his control and the show focuses on the consequences of him doing so and its ultimate futility. I’m not sure how I feel about the season as a whole since by the end Fielder has so much control (as a director and as a performer) that it feels somewhat less absorbing to me than his work where the mixture is more even. But that may be my own kneejerk reaction against him leaving behind the familiar territory he's so good at for the genuine intellectual and emotional challenges of the conceptual drama of the season's second half. Regardless, it was truly thrilling to see something so risky and inventive making a dent in the relative mainstream. It's hard to think of anything more resonant with our anxiety-soaked culture that interacts with everything IRL through layers and layers of mediation, he wrote under a pseudonym on an internet forum comprised entirely of people he's never met.

[therewillbeblus]

Well said, Red Screamer. I also don't understand what purpose it would serve to hire actors to play Angela et al. since that would undermine an intricately-drawn theme on behavioral influence, identity compromise, etc. that he's meditating on with the Nathan's school of acting episode most directly, but throughout the show in other ways. There's no reason to do this when you have so many eccentric people to send audition tapes in, and who are going to respond in malleable ways to variables you stress them with in a controlled environment. That forges the organic with the artificial, and it's what the whole show's about, including the basic idea to rehearse situations to achieve optimal outcomes that you only have finite control over. It sounds like the show's haters want the purpose to be little more than a simplified joke on audiences who take it seriously, but that itself seems to be defensively motivated by a desire to troll those who got something of substance out of this show.

[Black Hat]

RS - There's a number of tells throughout, some of which I mentioned, but, I'll throw in the little boy as another. No kid talks like that but, again, if you're not convinced these are actors, that's totally fine.

TWBB - I find you challenging to engage with because the way you consume art, as far as I can tell, is to identify with it so intensely that any pushback, inevitably, becomes about you or, if not that, the other person. This produces an uncomfortable atmosphere, one that makes me reluctant to post, because the last thing, believe it or not, I want to do is make a person feel any type of way but, sometimes, you say some pretty wild shit. Anyways, I don't think it would hurt if you occasionally allowed a thread to breathe.

[BigMack3000]

RS - There's a number of tells throughout, some of which I mentioned, but, I'll throw in the little boy as another. No kid talks like that but, again, if you're not convinced these are actors, that's totally fine.

Which kid are you referring to? All of the kids were known to be actors. That doesn't mean Angela was also an actor. Also, I didn't find any kids to talk all that differently from ones I've seen in real life at those ages.

[Black Hat]

Remy. That reminds me, another tell this was carefully scripted was the man-child actor smoking a cigarette. In a vacuum, like with everything else, sure, that's possible but, to have all these audience-satisfying, not to mention reality show producer dream, moments?

[Never Cursed]

TWBB - I find you challenging to engage with because the way you consume art, as far as I can tell, is to identify with it so intensely that any pushback, inevitably, becomes about you or, if not that, the other person. This produces an uncomfortable atmosphere, one that makes me reluctant to post, because the last thing, believe it or not, I want to do is make a person feel any type of way but, sometimes, you say some pretty wild shit. Anyways, I don't think it would hurt if you occasionally allowed a thread to breathe.

Now I'm not TWBB and I won't speculate on his inner thoughts, but I find this pretty gross as a response, and not only on the subject of TWBB's critical process, which obviously encompasses his relation of art to his interpretation of psychological frameworks but does not begin or end there (and you know this, given the amount of times you've argued things on other terms with him, including in this thread). "You say some nonspecifically crazy stuff, but I'm not gonna say what because I don't want to hurt your feelings, so you should stop talking" is such a lazy reply that I hardly think it deserves to be called one - it's a cop-out through which you can terminate a discussion that, to put it mildly, wasn't going your way, while shifting the onus onto someone else by weaponizing his earnest engagement. You can't say "sorry, conversation over" while bemoaning how difficult someone else is being in not engaging you on the terms you choose, unless of course your posts are epic manipulative performance art where the joke is on me for caring

[Black Hat]

#1, If you actually did a little bit of, what back in my day, they called reading comprehension, you'd have understood what I wrote was a direct and specific response.

#2, Instead, you took my post, reimagined it, slid the negative tab to the max, quoted yourself, and then went off about it. This exact habit of leading by emotion, when opinions don't fall in line with yours and are taken as a personal affront, is what I don't get down with. Sorry, but responding to what was a good exchange last night with it was "defensively motivated by a desire to troll" is wild. I'm not going to get on a soapbox and puff my chest out as you did, scolding him but, I will speak my peace. Am I allowed? Or do I need your permission? It's also not a bad thing dude so, perhaps, don't look so hard to see the worst in people and put a little effort into understanding.

#2, Yes, because after over a decade of posting I've shown myself to be unwilling to express unpopular opinions, and been entirely non-confrontational. I mean, really.

I now return to peaceful lurkerverse vibes.