Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
There's no downside to having too much experience.
At the end of the day, you can't do a copy of somebody.
I always think that there is the good and the bad of it all.
You have a movie and it proves itself and then certain things happen.
It's always hard to explain why an audience ultimately responds to a movie.
As soon as digital editing came about, I immediately made the switch to digital.
I think test screening works at its best when the audience knows what it's getting.
You don't always have to have the ending, but you want to have a satisfactory conclusion.
I thought a great line in the What Just Happened movie said, "We're just the mayonnaise."
We are a divided nation in the worst sense of the word, and we don't hear the other side.
I got a chance to work with Mel Brooks on two of his films: Silent Movie and High Anxiety.
Some actors are supposed to be very difficult, but I've not found that to be the situation.
Writing by committee becomes much less about a vision. It is really about a piece of merchandise.
I think it's a promising time which will show a lot of diversification that we've seen in the past.
First of all, just to get Diner made would have been an achievement in that I got a chance to direct.
A lot of time mistakes are very interesting - you look for the behaviour that's not the one you expect.
I do know when you look at some ballplayer and all of a sudden he is the size of a truck something is wrong.
I think certain movies work and that is part of the magic of it all. We can't truly define why something succeeds.
No one really has the power, and everybody's trying to get through the day, and everybody's nervous and desperate.
I think when Sarah Palin opened her mouth and started talking, the more she talked, the less appealing she became.
They're intimidating the networks and levying these fines, so the networks are not sure of what they can or can't do.
I play around with human things, human relationships and that, and allow that kind of talk to work in that way, on that level.
Even back in the '90s, I shot certain things on something that wasn't digital then, but it was on VHS with a smaller camera and we would up it to film.
I got involved with an acting school and studied for a couple years. They used to have improv exercises that you would work on and you would do improvs.
I never really wanted to be an actor. And that was the beginning of it, I began to write things down and eventually became a writer on a television show.
Craig Nelson who is an actor and is in a show called Coach in the United States. We began to do some improvisational stuff and we used to get laughs and things.
Paterno had that almost legendary reputation, and then all of a sudden, the scandal broke. Why would I be interested? You can't quite figure it out at face value.
The more pressure that an actor puts on himself, the harder it is to deliver behavior that's interesting, and so I just try to find a way without talking too much.
I've had a lot of movies that didn't get great numbers on test screening, but a lot of times the film was able to survive, or the studio still stayed and supported it.
You can never squash something and assume it's not going to come back in some fashion. It's going to bubble up until it explodes. Society evolves to find a better way.
We're never going to be the ultimate-insider look. You can do 50 insider looks at this Hollywood business, and the satire didn't intrigue me. I think others can do that.
We excuse movies like 'Independence Day' that really lack logic and say, 'It doesn't make any sense, but it's a ride.' I thought a movie was a movie and a ride was a ride.
Studios just sometimes make decisions on their own that you're always flabbergasted by. It just happens that way for whatever reason - not even pointing fingers, it just is.
I worked at a local television station and I got a chance to direct and do all those things - worked kiddie shows, Ranger House show with the hand puppets and things like that.
I'm fascinated by documentaries, to begin with. Because of the nature of television, as opposed to theatrical, documentaries can be in this long form and take you on a journey.
I don't know that you can do an absurdist film and just have everybody embrace it in terms of filling out cards. I just don't think it happens. So you have to prepare an audience.
I'm thinking, this is Robert Redford. You know, he's won an Academy Award, he's talking to me about directing a movie he's in. So you just think that it's Hollywood stuff or whatever.
I would give the cameras to the kids in the swimming pools and they would play with them, and then I would collect them and we would upload it. If you're in the process, you're there.
It gets harder and harder to make movies about human beings. These movies are like an endangered species. Everything is 'simplify, simplify' now. How many movies have sub-plots anymore?
You used to need a big camera to direct, but now, anyone with an iPhone can tell a story visually. You can film something. You can start off with a five-minute story, then a 10-minute story.
My advice is that it's easier to write than direct. If you have an interest in writing, write. You might as well start with yourself or some event you know well, and you need a point of view.
When I began to think about the head of the family, the storyteller, the rise of television which became the new storyteller, the break-up of the American family as an idea and then Avalon came.
You have to do a version of somebody that's the essence of Paterno. I think that's what Al is so great at. You have to create a man, a life, and the emotions that go with it. He's truly brilliant.
There was a time when I said, "I'm going to go do a television thing," after doing all these theatrical films, and heard, "Television? Why are you going to go back to television?" It's an interesting place.
It's those moments, those odd moments that you look for and sometimes by creating this kind of loose atmosphere you find those little moments that somehow mean a lot to an audience when they really register right.
The public doesn't know what to believe anymore. We don't know what stories are supposedly true, this idea of 'fake news.' We watch it on what I guess you would call a split-focus. It's half entertainment and half mystery.
It's finding those nonsensical pieces of conversation that we all do all the time. We do all the time. When we're talking on the telephone, there are arguments with people who agree when they both think that they disagree.
Some stories seem to lend themselves to telling right away. 'All The President's Men' was done, what, four or five years after the event? It certainly seemed to work there, as opposed to something that happened 40 years ago.
The interesting thing about movies, it's not always - y'know, you have to have structure etc and all those things, but an audience responds, in many ways, we walk away and certain things stay in our heads that are memorable.
There is always a hesitancy with actors, and inhibitions can get into the work, so you have to figure out how to make it feel so loose that you can do anything, and if it is not right, that is okay because we'll do it again.