The Kung Fu Monkey on working with Tim Hutton

John Rogers, the Kung Fu Monkey, on work­ing with Tim Hutton in the pilot for the show Leverage:

On the next take, in the middle of five pages of dia­logue, he delivered a line as he stepped for­ward – then stopped without warn­ing. He took two steps back to reset just that line among dozens, and said it again on the move. But this time, he shif­ted about eight inches to the right and on the step-in landed not just per­fectly into a glor­i­ous fore­ground light, but with slightly bet­ter fram­ing of the intric­ate back­ground for the com­plete shot composition.

He’d been watch­ing his stand-in to mem­or­ize the light lay­out and com­pos­i­tion from cam­era view, and then used it to map out his moves with­in inches to give us the best shots. All while slam­ming the per­form­ance home.

That is, to be blunt, pretty god­dam sick. That’s how the grown-ups do it, kids. Next time you rush off the set as soon as the dir­ect­or calls “cut” so you can text your agent on your Razor, keep that in mind.