I just hope DRIVE follows the ROBOT CHICKEN homage to TCR and Headless Ponch wins the race.

I can't tell you how much it's like "Cannonball Run" as I've never actually seen "Cannonball Run." Nor had I seen an episode of "The Amazng Race" until we'd finished developing "Drive." (I've seen the seasons that are on DVD now and love it.) Never saw "Gumball Rally" either. Car-centric things bore me.

But have you seen Death Race 2000

Can those of you who have worked on-set explain something to me?

Whenever somebody's trying to say the minimally polite thing about another act-being, it's "He/she always hits his/her mark." I understand that the mark is the place you have to be so that the camera is focused properly and everything that's supposed to be in the shot is there. Two questions:

• Are there many working film/video actors who *can't* hit a mark?
• How do you do it without looking at the floor? Excellent peripheral vision?

Are there many working film/video actors who *can't* hit a mark?

I bet the inexperienced ones have problems, and there will always be those who "improvise".

How do you do it without looking at the floor? Excellent peripheral vision?

Practise the scene in question until you don't need to look at the floor?

I have come to the realization that come the revolution, *I* will be first up against the wall. The bourgeois intellectuals go first.

Well, see, this is where procrastination comes in handy. I might end up in the group that's going up against the wall first, but odds are, I'll be late.

How do you do it without looking at the floor? Excellent peripheral vision?

Not that I know from film, but I do know from stage work and street improv that after enough years you just get a sense of the geography of the playing space -- you don't need to scrutinize everything and map it out anymore, your body just remembers where the sightlines are, knows who in the audience and who in the scene can see you and hear you and who can't, instantly recognizes the different feel of light or shadow on your face. Same way a major league batter can make the decision to swing or not in the 1/3 of a second when the ball is actually in hitting range. After enough years doing it, it's just muscle memory.

But before the muscle memory kicks in, lots of floor-looking and rote memorization.

instantly recognizes the different feel of light or shadow on your face.

This can be a huge problem for the lighting folks. When we put on The Dollhouse at the UW, the lead actress disliked direct light in the face. She had a nasty habit, after focus was done, of not hitting her mark during performance. They would refocus and it would happen again. They practically had to chase her around the stage to get her lit.

When we put on The Dollhouse at the UW, the lead actress disliked direct light in the face.

Oh, that must have driven you batshit! Possibly she should have reconsidered her choice of major, or at least gone into voice work so she could spend all her time in a dark little booth.

"Always hits his/her mark" may be faint praise, but it's still praise -- consistently being where you need to be, when they need you, without making a fuss about it, makes everything so infinitely easier for all those other people who are also doing this for a living, and usually sweating to meet deadlines and budgets and working under approximately a billion other urgent constraints.

"Always hits his/her mark" may be faint praise

I've always assumed it was shorthand for a certain level of professionalism, and not a literal "Wow, s/he's really good at counting steps!" which would be kind of backhanded.