Acting 101

This is a guest post by Steve Mathis, part of the 2026 LGM Fundraiser Auction.

Since we talk about movies a lot here at LGM I thought it might be fun to explain how a Gaffer with 50 years of experience lighting sets (but ZERO experience acting) came to play the part of “Tupelo” in the show Reservation Dogs. 

We were shooting in the old Tulsa jail. A sad abandoned building in west Tulsa. On the first scout I had to wait while the city of Tulsa cut a steel plate off the door so we could get in. No power. The air was terrible with both a faint whiff of mold and a depressing smell of failed lives and meanness. 

We had to design battery operated lights for the cell and waiting room where the scenes would take place. Big lights outside trying to simulate sun in thru narrow windows meant to limit views out. We only dressed and painted what we could see so around many corners the old jail was still intact and grim.

On Monday we were shooting a scene with Paulina (Willie Jack) being let in thru security. This scene is one of my favorite scenes ever. Watch her expression as the guard drones thru the questions. As I’m waiting to see a rehearsal the producer Kate Dean comes up and asks if I have a minute. We all have masks on (2022) and are getting tested every day or two. I’m wondering if this is like the movie Reagan (long story) when they came on set to tell me my whole crew (except me) had tested positive for Covid.

Off to the side in a room where stupid ugly shit must’ve happened in the past Kate turns: “One of our actors suddenly cannot make it. Sterlin wanted me to ask if you’d be interested in playing the part.”

That was unexpected. 

Me: “Uh, Kate you guys know I have never acted. Like ever.” (Actually, I am on screen once in Rock and Roll High School and in two episodes of The Movies That Made Us on Netflix – Back to The Future and Halloween but that wasn’t acting, really). 

She laughed. “Oh, we know. Sterlin says you’ll do fine”. 

Note Briefly (NB): A technical aspect of Acting for film or TV on a Union job (SAG) defines an actor as one who speaks a line. Otherwise you are an extra. I expected I was going to be the equivalent of a bartender saying “Here’s your beer”. I had to wait til I got back to my hotel room to check.

Kate sends a wardrobe person over and I get measured for a suit coat, shirt, boots, hat. Apparently, I am a cowboy bartender or something. It was funny ordering lights and telling my crew where to put them with one arm stretched out and a tape measure dangling over my hand. Then I watch as they thumb thru several loose-leaf notebooks full of pictures of ensembles for rent at costume houses in LA. The clothes will be sent Tuesday in time to make adjustments to the fit. We wrap and I go home to study my one line. There is no way I will choke. No way.

I get home and drag out my Ipad to reread the script and find my lines. Maybe it’ll even be two lines. Call and response. I open it up and do a search for Tupelo. I get one hit so it seems my character will only be in one scene and not multiple locations. 

Holy shit. I read my part and its 2.5 PAGES. That’s roughly two and a half minutes. It’s just me acting with Willie Jack in the prison waiting room and it shoots on Wednesday at this very jail. Most of the dialog is mine, too. I start to regret getting stoned after dinner when I was sure it was just one line. One toke over the line as it were. I panic and call my wife to run lines over face time. There are sure a lot of them.

NB: If you have never acted it’s not clear what’s involved. Besides getting fitted, learning your lines and going thru makeup and hair one is still faced with understanding the meaning of the scene. Is it breezy or sad? A throwaway scene or one that is important to the episode? I am pretty sure they cover this somewhat in acting school. Is there an accent? How does my outfit influence my role? Only some of this will come from Sterlin. The rest is between the lines.

Tuesday comes and we are back at the jail. Word has spread that I am filling in for an actor. Movie sets are rife with rumor and those rumors say that I am replacing Tom Waits. That makes me even more nervous. Everyone on the crew knows me and they all seem curious as to how I will do. We shall see.

That night I run my lines with Scott on my crew who’s four rooms down the hall. A pattern is developing in my delivery. I mentally rewrite some of the lines as they are awkward to speak in a rhythm that the rest of the lines flow into. (Some directors would forbid this – not Sterlin). I am beginning to feel the character come around. He is an old beat up cowboy sitting patiently waiting to see his daughter. He strikes up a conversation with Willie Jack who is there to see her estranged Aunt.

I’m ready.

Wednesday comes and I have to light the set until an AD (assistant director) comes to get me for hair and make-up. This is where I figure out how Sterlin is gonna fuck with me. He has asked them to shave my beard (of 50+ years), trim my mustache and pull all my hair back behind my ears. In too deep to turn back now. I head to wardrobe. They have fitted me into a slick embroidered suit, coat and shirt from Rockmount Western Wear, a cool cowboy hat and boots. I keep my belt and somehow they miss my earring and Apple watch. (No one noticed til we were done. They were sort of pissed they missed it. Wardrobe takes this stuff very seriously). My earring later became part of a meme.

The set sends for me. I leave the dressing room with “TUPELO” on the door. I walk down the steps into the Tulsa heat and the wardrobe girls swoon (they weren’t swooning over me but how they transformed me). The outfit is awesome and they did good: I usually wear T-shirts and jeans and tennis shoes. It was a long walk to the set thru a gauntlet of friends who had NEVER seen me like this. Lots of cat calls.

We rehearse and I am free to go back to my trailer but I stand in for myself to watch my crew run around trying to make their boss look good. Another thing I have never done in 50 years – watched my crew light the set without me or my input. It gave me a valuable perspective on what it’s like to stand in and to act in a physical space. 

NB: 50 years on sets and I know most of the jobs superficially. If I’d been asked I think I’d have been confident I could act in this scene but then we start rolling and I realize I have NO FUCKING CLUE what to do with my hands. They are these lumps on the ends of my arms. In addition to my lines I have to know what to do with my body, too. And should I smile? Take off my hat? Cross my legs? OMFG this is hard. Watch the scene with sound off and see why everyone who acts should take a few acting lessons. In the end it was my hands that freaked me out. I sat on them once and Sterlin had to tell me not to do that.

We run through the scene: I am giving Willie Jack advice while we wait to be called to visit. One thing I decided already was the voice; sort of an Okie drawl coupled with heavy drug use (playing to my strengths). But getting the scene started we ran into an issue. How the hell can a 71 year -old cowboy get a 17 year-old girls attention without descending into creepiness? The script was no help. My scripted line was given as “Hey” without regard to a reaction. Sterlin, the producers, Willie Jack all had ideas but not an agreement. When we roll it was up to me to figure it out. Watch the scene to see how it went. 

We finish the master. Now it’s on to closeups. I stumble thru these. Sterlin has me try different lines and combinations to get the meaning of the scene across. He likes (or at least doesn’t change my accent or past history of drug use which isn’t scripted either). When Willie Jack asks me “if I’m a guru or sumpin” and I chuckle and reply “no I’m just an old hippie who did way too much acid” it was not in script. Sterlin had me run thru many versions of that til we got the one he liked. It’s the one in the film. That’s how he builds the scenes in all his shows) by improvising around the original words trying to get to a deeper meaning or a better laugh. He has an amazing ability to get the best performance out of everyone and make it fun. And good.

Then we are done. Just like that the crew begins to prepare for a scene in another part of the jail. Before we can move, though, Willie Jack holds up one of her slides (sandals) and say “hey do these work”?  Sterlin thinks a bit – this is a reference to my saying she’ll be ok with a good pair of boots to run from the devil. Camera rolls and she blurts out “Do slides work?” I have had no direction nor help, Sterlin is wondering what I’ll come up with. I say the first thing that comes to mind, “Oh Fuck Yeah.”

NB: Scenes get cut all the time. For reasons of length. Performance. Sometimes the story has changed during the editing process and this scene no longer works. I know this. I did not tell anyone about my part. I watched Adrian Brody go to a screening of Thin Red Line without knowing he’d been cut out almost completely. When he got back to our set in Baltimore (Liberty Heights) he was devastated. Only the crew and my wife knew. In truth I’d sort of forgotten when September rolled around.

The first clue I had that I had not been cut out was the day it aired texts started coming in saying I’ll like this episode. Early the next morning I had a text from Germany (my son lives there). “You’re a meme, dad”. FX had put the scene on IG. It racked up a ton of comments. Some of them:

“Who is this guy?”

“He’s the gaffer on the show. Maybe they felt sorry for him and gave him a role”.

“He goes back to 1976 and he’s never acted before? Wild”

But the best one was a guy that noticed that the way we shot it and then cut it there is no interaction between us and anyone else. His take was I was her spirit. This is important later.

My crew bought me my costume. Some asshole stole it out of my car a week later. 

Third season comes around. While we are in prep I realize Tupelo (my character) was in four scripts. Four fucking shows. That is something I’d never expected. It seems weird that no one has asked me if I am interested but I figure they eventually will and it’ll be great and lucrative and exciting. Then a new batch of script revisions come in and no Tupelo. Never heard why officially but it was rumored that Paulina said “I wouldn’t have an old WHITE guy for a spirit.” She’s not wrong and such it is that careers come and go on the smallest of whims.

The final episode of S3 starts shaping up as a version of Endgame where everyone is brought back for closure. At this point the Writers Guild strike has started. Sterlin decides to put me in a scene with Lily Gladstone (Oscar nominee for Killers Of Flower Moon) and Paulina in the prison. My partner in the spirit world is with me. Her lines were written before the strike. I cannot have a scripted line b/c of the strike. We shoot the scene and I alert my buddy the sound mixer I am going to say “Oh Fuck Yeah” at the end. It is in the film even though it’s an ad-lib.

NB: The economics of acting. I was eating dinner with Harrison Ford (on Clear and Present Danger) when he let slip his first check from the Fugitive was the GDP of a small country. This is not that kind of acting. Scale for me was $1084 for 8 hours. If I had had to come in for a fitting that would’ve been a half day more (I was already on set). The part was filmed in three hours. Second time S3 was $1084 for 8 hours as well. Since then I have received another $3200 +/- in residuals. Sometimes these are checks are for $100’s but usually much less. I had a check come in for .08¢ that I debated about keeping uncashed but decided Fuck Disney and cashed it.

So that’s what it’s like to act. I haven’t acted again although I did the lighting Season 1 of the Lowdown and fill in this year. It’s been a great 50 years. My union got me a pension and health care for life. These show (Rez Dogs and Lowdown) are special for lots of reasons but as a crew member for the first time I am on a show that caps a day at 10 hours every single day and pays us for 12 to make up for not breaking for lunch. And we all like each other. After a career littered with Michael Mann’s madness and Michael Bay yelling at me I can say I do not miss $200 million dollar movies.

The actor I replaced wasn’t Tom Waits but John Doe of X. More obscure but somehow just as cool since I used to see X in the 70’s at Madame Wong’s in LA. Who could imagine we would both end up in Oklahoma 50 years later (He’s in S1 of the Lowdown).

I am very aware that this is something many thousands of people (literally) would kill just to get the opportunity to read for a part in a legendary show. I also know it was handed to me without an audition. But that’s how it went down.

The safety pin earring that we all missed got a lot of mentions as well.

The scenes are in Ep 9 S2 and Ep 10 S3. Reservation Dogs on Hulu. 

Thanks to Dr. Farley for allowing me to write this post.

Vaya Con Dios Y’all