collaborate

Yesterday, I watched a great interview with Sir Ben Kingsley. He stars in a new film called Fifty Dead Men Walking, about the Troubles in Northern Ireland, an IRA mole (a tout), a police agent (which he plays), and the fifty or more men who should be dead but rather walk today because of the mole’s courage.

Ben talked about the acting profession as it relates to film. While he was trained on the stage and has acted there frequently, his present love is film because as he noted: “In the theater you project…on film, you behave”.

He also spoke about the immense power and value of collaboration. The theater taught him that acting is not about you, it’s about all those around you. Great acting, he suggested is the ability to pay close attention to the other person with whom you act…

Today, a local blogger destroyed a journalist's reputation. The blogger is a bit of a revolutionary, who frequently criticizes the local newspaper and has been recently reveling in the decline of printed journalism. The disparaged journalist is rather conservative.

It occurred to me that the blogger really missed a great business opportunity…to collaborate with a crusty old right wing dude and give great journalistic theatre in the process…kind of a left and right routine…a this side that side repartee. Instead the blogger put a blog bullet through the old journalists reputation.

Collaborate. Pay attention. Behave.