Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
I just asked myself, what piece of that man's soul did he just chew off and swallow to get next week's assignment? You know, just to live, just to work as an artist, or to feed the family?
If you write interesting roles, you get interesting people to play them. If you write roles that are full of nuance and contradiction and have interesting dialog, actors are drawn to that.
It was not possible to film in California, because all the areas are heavily built up now. Coming to Cape Town is an invitation to step into the past and recreate Los Angeles of the 1930s.
I got tired of my taxes paying for exciting little wars around the world. Then I discovered that when I died, my wife would probably have to sell our house to pay for the taxes in America.
There are a lot of ideas I have that I think would be very marketable and commercial, but they're not as compelling to me as the ones that are unmarketable, uncommercial, and unprofitable.
I think the graphic novel form works, in practice, a lot differently from watching a movie. You can put it down and pick it back up whenever you want - something you can't do in a theater.
Well I'm still working on The Incredibles. So I'm going to take a little time off. I've got a couple of tricks up my sleeve. I'm not ready to talk about them yet, but expect the unexpected.
Looking back, it's funny how the lighter family-friendly version of these classic Universal movie monsters that were satirized in The Munsters seduced me like a gateway drug into the genre.
Directing is a more pragmatic experience, where you have to deal with the restrictions of time and money that force you to make certain decisions you don't have to make when you're writing.
I studied acting at Boston University. I was in the theater department there. Somewhere in there I decided that wasn't what I was going to do and I went to the B.F.A. film program at N.Y.U.
When I first came to Oregon, the annual amount spent on production was $1 million to $1.5 million. By the time 'Leverage' was done, there had been over $100 million in production that year.
The best thing in the world is to put two characters who hate each other side by side. Or put two people who love each other far away, so they have to reach for each other with their looks.
My mom was paralyzed from polio at the age of 2, abandoned by her husband, left with a 2-year-old, a 6-year-old and a 10-year-old, and so, we were raising her as much as she was raising us.
This story's gonna grab people. It's about this guy, he's crazy about this girl, but he likes to wear dresses. Should he tell her? Should he not tell her? He's torn, Georgie. This is drama.
In the television business, I don't think anyone will let you go in and pitch a show unless you use the words 'organizing principle' or 'this is the prism through which we see their lives'.
To the Japanese, Portugal and Russia are neutral enemies, England and America are belligerent enemies, and Germany and her satellites are friendly enemies. They draw very fine distinctions.
I wonder if it's ethical to watch a man with binoculars and a long-focus lens? D'ya suppose it's ethical even if you prove that he didn't commit a crime? I'm not much on rear window ethics.
If faux liberal white guys want to support and defend Obama, by all means please do so. But I would suggest they try to limit that support to matters of policy and not perspectives on race.
We just happened to come along at time where there hadn't been a new young adult drama that also could appeal to adults as well in quite some time. We sort of found a little bit of a niche.
One of our film lecturers, one of the guys teaching the course, said to the departing film class, 'No one in this room is going to make it, as a filmmaker.' I have no idea why he said that.
If the mother can't break the attachment, they say that the baby can't leave this world. For him to be happy in a good place you must send the child that you must send... and you must live.
I am a man who has made a great deal of money, and I haven't got a great deal. This is because I give it no value, and a certain Christian precept is something to be lived by, and so forth.
We are basically storytellers, descendants of the old men who sat around the fire and told us legends, fairytales, exploits, or maybe just how funny Og looked when he fell into the tar pit.
As an american, you're born aiming so high - boys want to play in the major leagues, girls want to be princesses. We're cultivating little champions. It's like the land of little champions.
You meet people and you hear the way they talk and the way they behave, and that subconsciously gets fed into the characters you create 'cause you have to make them flesh and blood somehow.
Ideally, I'd prefer never having to be in a test-screening environment. Some famous director said "The group is smart, the individuals are stupid," about the experience of a test screening.
Art has a smaller audience than, say, movies or other forms of mass consumption. But that doesn't mean the work doesn't have an impact in a way that transcends just a few cultural arbiters.
I mean, I don't want to sound - of course it's very nice, people come up and say appreciative things about my work. But the loss, in terms of privacy and anonymity, is no small thing to me.
I'll tell you one thing... no doubt about it, my favorite kind of comedy is talking head comedy. I mean, if it were up to me, I'd do a whole entire movie that was just around a dinner table.
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.
While that wasn't first and foremost in my mind, you can't get into this without being struck, on one side, by how far we've come, and then the other side, by how little things have changed.
I tend to not only read reviews, but also every little stupid thing online. It's a very bad idea, and there's a lot of angry people in the world. And it's weird to absorb all that weirdness.
I spend a lot of time in preproduction working with authors, and a lot of time in postproduction.: editing, music, all that sort of stuff. Casting. On the set there's not a lot for me to do.
If you're black living in the community and you want to change things, there are going to be things that happen. That's true of anybody. I mean you could use celebrity as a similar metaphor.
In the entire history of the human species, every tool we've invented has been to expand muscle power. All except one. The integrated circuit, the computer. That lets us use our brain power.
I actually have two children now, and sometimes I wonder if that's it. Because they do make writing and directing more complicated and more difficult, especially now that they're very young.
My religion is no garment to be put on and off with the weather. You had better know that, all of you. I shall worship as I please and hope for all men to worship as they please in Scotland.
It is the struggle itself that is most important. We must strive to be more than we are. It does not matter that we will not reach our ultimate goal. The effort itself yields its own reward.
I wish I were one of those terribly clever people who, when they write their autobiographies, always say, when I was fifteen months old I distinctly remember my Aunt Fanny saying to me, etc.
It's really weird because my house is very ornate, but my writing lair is very, very blank. It's white, the furniture is white. It gives me nothing to look at, so I just have to concentrate!
You need to be invested in what happens. The characters are your conduit to the story. Many modern horror films are fun but not frightening because one has not connected with the characters.
No man will ever be a big executive who feels that he must, either openly or under cover, follow up every order he gives and see that it is done-nor will he ever develop a capable assistant.
I don't want an underachiever working on my car's transmission. Why would I want someone regular sitting in the Oval Office? Sorry, give me somebody who has demonstrated a capacity to excel.
I find that when you read a script, or rewrite something, or look at something that's been gone over, you can tell, like rings on a tree, by how bad it is, how long it's been in development.
The Internet community started forming right when 'Buffy' started airing, and the notion of a show creator being anything other than a name people recognize on the screen was completely new.
I'm a guy desperately in need of buffers. I have big feelings, big reactions, big emotions. All the things that serve me as an artist, but challenge me as a socially-responsible human being.
Well you know, the big trick with 'Saw,' the sleight of hand that you have to pull off is that - spoiler alert - the bad guy, the antagonist, is right there in front of your face, literally.
I remember saying, very almost jokingly, I'm going to take over the world through television, that's my plan. And I said it to my agent, and I said it to my friends, and I said it to myself.
One thing that is true in TV is that you do hire the directors. As the writer, it's very different than in features, where you feel like, "If I want this to be this way, I better direct it."
Tallulah [Bankhead] was the foremost naughty girl of her era but, in those days, "naughty" meant piquant, whereas values have so changed that now, in the 1970s, it generally means nauseating.