In the moment
I take inspiration wherever I can find it. I was listening to Matt Damon in an interview on NPR this morning, talking about his role in the movie The Informant. He was talking about how it is the hundreds of small details that go into preparing for a role that make the role believable. It is the small things, like how a person stands, walks, speaks, facial expressions, and the list goes on and on.
In preparing for a role, you have to get into your head, learning the details and practicing for the performance, brainstorming about what will make this role believable and getting feedback from other actors or the director. But – he says, once you are there, once you’ve prepared, you can’t be in your head. When you are on the set and you are getting ready to give a performance, you must be “in the moment.”
What a wonderful analogy for trial preparation – you have to stay “in your head” while preparing a case for trial, and there are hundreds of details that go into preparing our case. We have to research the legal issues, finding a way to exclude some evidence and to include other evidence. There are the details of presenting opening and closing, cross and direct examinations. The process of fine-tuning our case never ends, and although we may be ready for trial, we’re never fully prepared.
But when the trial begins, when we are standing inside the well, arguing motions to the judge or talking to the jury, we have to be in the moment. All of the preparation that goes into the details is what makes it possible to be in the moment during trial, to act and react to the unexpected and the unpredictable nature of trial, without getting into our head and trying to figure things out while they are happening.
