Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
I had to work harder. I couldn't do the social thing, and play the game the others were playing. I had to work that much harder and handle the 'evils' by doing good work.
Everything I'm teaching you about acting has one aim only: to fire you up emotionally and behaviorally so that you can give a vivid, involving, and memorable performance.
For behaviorist films, that's been much more useful - the change of technology - but for my kind of films, doing them on film is much better, because it's more beautiful.
We make movies to endorse our own personal feelings. I am not, in fact, a documentary filmmaker. I've got my personal beliefs, and I'm ready to put them out on the table.
I can't help but view the world mystically. It's how I see it. I'm not a strict materialist. I think there's much more to the world than what we see with our five senses.
Timing and pace are important in any film, whether it be comedy or drama. And how better to learn the fundamentals of these show show business ingredients than by dancing?
Don't try to sneak in through the window. Just come boldly onto stage, like come right through the door with your choice. Kill the judge in your head and just take action.
As creatives, it's a hard thing to push, to make something you're truly excited about, especially if you've written 100 different concepts and they keep getting shot down.
I definitely liked the Muppets. I definitely liked Yoda in 'Empire Strikes Back' and Chewbacca. I don't know if I was a fan of puppets or those, like, specific characters.
I was trying to foster a great working relationship between those two departments [design and the writing teams], because classically in animation the two don't get along.
The biggest misconception usually is to assume that I am a scientist and that I work for scientists. I work for the public to access the surreal and fantastical in science.
Trauma and pain and suffering can be the very thing that dislodges a person from themselves both in awful ways and larger ways that force one to reckon with one's own life.
I believe that, by taking an extreme approach, you really get the public to actively engage with a cause or a research ,and that is what motivates me with space exploration.
What actor doesn't want to walk around a set and be called 'Mr. President?' Playing POTUS is a kind of rite of passage among American actors - our version of playing Hamlet.
Somebody - and I'm going to guess it was Hitchcock - once said that everyone has their reasons. If you remember that, as a writer, you'll write better than average villains.
I'm a theatre person, that's who I am. I'm happy to make sojourns into the world of movies but I'm basically a theatre director that potters off and does a couple of movies.
I love Crowley for being an audacious man at certain point in time. I think he's greatly misunderstood. He was a good guy, but he was portrayed as an evil man, and he wasn't.
It's very hard to adapt something. You end up changing it too much to make a good movie out of it. I prefer to work with things that are custom made for my kind of animation.
You wake up one day and you realize that all these years have gone by and I have this mortgage and I have this couch and I have this life and... is this going to be my prison?
When we first sold the Wallace and Gromit shorts to America, people suggested we get rid of the strange British accents and put clear American voices on them, and we held out.
I'm sure when 'Midnight Cowboy' came out, it took a couple of minutes to get used to the voice and the look of Dustin Hoffman, or to even recognize that it was Dustin Hoffman.
In my personal life, dark material is kind of an emptying out - it leaves more room for light. If I'm writing a particularly awful scene, something is released in the process.
You learn quite a bit about your film from test screening audiences. With both comedies and movies that are intense, you need to calibrate the film and see how audiences react.
There were times in 'Adaptation' during the editing where I really thought, 'Okay, well, this was a noble failure. I tried to do something good, but this is not going to work.'
It is much simpler and easier to collect and caress the trophies of our democratic inheritance than it is to fashion up-to-date tools with which to work on our current problems.
I guess, is we are not saying, "Look, William Shakespeare's written a critique of modern Africa." What we're saying is that we've shifted the metaphor to make it more immediate.
I've always loved that film ['The Three Caballeros'], and we were looking for a way to apply it to our own work, and 'Trolls' was it - psychedelic, musical and kinetic insanity.
With my years of promos & commercials, I actually have a massive amount of experience with regards to production. There pretty much isn't one thing I haven't tried at least once.
Like my father, I would never as a child throw anything away, keeping old toys, electric motors and bits of broken machines under my bed in what I called my Box of Useful Things.
I think the Harry Potter movies are proof that audiences love that stuff. They love the idea of magical objects and they like learning the rules of those objects and what they do.
One of the things I find in writing about people who are dead is that, after a short or long time, no matter how close the relationship was, they become like characters in fiction.
I didn't have the equipment for the regular world of being a lawyer. I didn't have the imagination for that. I did have a funny kind of ambition, but I didn't know where to put it.
I think a lot of my appreciation for the Doors' music, which I love, originates with my discovery of them through seeing 'Apocalypse Now.' It's my second favorite film of all time.
Your true nature doesn't come out. So the gods let you do what you want because free will would be compromised if they showed up at the White House saying, 'Take us to your leader.
I'm actually all in favor of freeing the entrepreneurial spirit - but it turns out, interestingly, that you actually need very strict regulations to free the entrepreneurial spirit.
I've fallen for straight men, I've fallen for gay men, I've fallen for straight women and gay women. I really have. I had crushes on really every single kind of person in the world.
On Staten Island, there's a ship graveyard. I'm using that a lot, even for 'Under the Dome.' When I'm dissatisfied with a location scout, I go on Google Earth. It's an amazing tool.
The way that one feels about the story line of 'Deterrence' can tell us, I believe, about each person's conservatism or liberalism and precisely how tolerant he or she is of racism.
It's fun when you start a movie, because it's kind of like you get to go Christmas shopping... you get to make your wish list and you start thinking about what each character needs.
England is strictly class-based. What's surprising is how many films are still made with a load of people in silly frocks running around gardens and talking in middle-class accents.
Your true nature doesn't come out. So the gods let you do what you want because free will would be compromised if they showed up at the White House saying, 'Take us to your leader.'
I guess I found the life as a musician too counterproductive, as so much time was spent in tour buses & remote hotel rooms. As I am moderately hyperactive, this didn't suit my temper.
There was scarcely a month during 1988 when Thomas Harris' novel, 'The Silence Of The Lambs,' was not on or around the top of the 'New York Times' list of America's bestselling books.
There was definitely a point in my thirties when I thought, 'Oh, wow, I'm not the youngest person on the set anymore.' But I like it. Working with younger artists is totally exciting.
You can muscle your way to the top as long as you're part of the production, which I am. I'm knitted into the money, so it's very hard to extricate me from the decision-making dynamic.
My relationship with my wife is fraught with all of the problems that any couples face, but there is a sense of humor that we have about it and a real desire to want to make it better.
It's just not enough time on set. That's my favorite time. I live for that time on set. I feel like that's when I'm stretching and flexing my muscles and learning how to direct better.
Obviously, movies and music videos are different because they're different lengths, and in a movie, you have more time to explore an idea. But I feel like they're all the same, really.
Gromit was the name of a cat. When I started modeling the cat I just didn't feel it was quite right, so I made it into a dog because he could have a bigger nose and bigger, longer legs.
'Monsters of God' isn't just a series close to my heart; it is my heart, and I am very much looking forward to working with my fantastic team in New Mexico to create a top-notch series.