Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
A big part of the fun of working on Superman has been coming up with new characters and concepts to toss in, helping to design their costumes, things like that. And I spent ages coming up with the name 'Fortress of Solidarity,' so I want to get as much use out of it as I can!
I was really a spoiled brat when I was a kid skating. Meals are cooked for you, you are driven to the rink, they make costumes for you. Your parents sit around and watch admiringly while you skate. You don't have to think about anything but skating. You're just plain spoiled.
You're following your track, the story, your only plan, your map for the audience, and all the other stuff is, like, the fun stuff: the costumes, the locations, the set-dressing and the actors. They can all be variable as you like if you stick - however roughly - to the path.
The costumes, the light rigs and the effects are seamlessly joined. I'm kind of bummed that I don't get the experience that you get with just watching it cold. By the time we'd seen all the visuals put together, I'd sort of become used to that world. It's still pretty impressive.
I've always worked closely with the designers and whoever's making the costumes. Comfort is the last thing you want on your mind when you're competing. In an ideal situation, you'll have something where you'll put it on and you're fine and you don't have to worry about it at all.
The thing I regret most about my life are those inane photos of me with icons. They used to come down here and dress me up, and I just tolerated it. It's my fault. But I shouldn't have done it. They literally brought down costumes, candles, and icons! It was unbelievable stupidity.
When you wear the costumes in a period drama, you already feel like a different person - the clothes make you stand differently, change your posture, the way you walk. You really have to have stamina - you have two hours in hair and makeup, and then another hour to remove all that.
I'll tell you what, I had complete control on 'Unleashed.' I directed, produced, chose the musician, picked the costumes, and everything. I never had anyone saying, 'I don't like this and I don't like that.' The studio, Universal, were easy. It was this weird movie no one cared about.
When you're directing, you look around and you think, everything I see is my responsibility. From the catering being on time to whether the clouds are moving the way I need them to move to whether this actor is giving the performance I want to whether the costumes are what they should be.
I used to make everything myself. I used to do my own hair, make my own costumes, write my own jokes, and write my own songs. There were definitely some days where I had to choose between having tights that didn't have holes in them or having to buy makeup or something I needed for a show.
Here's the thing with the costumes for 'Mommy': Given the background and social strata that the characters come from, you can't really imagine that they've gone shopping lately, so we went for that very normcore, fashionless era in history, the early 2000s, which was completely transitional.
Let's say you go to a friend's wedding, or Thanksgiving, or Halloween. It'd be great the next day to see what went on with your friends' Thanksgiving weekend, or all the costumes they wore on Halloween, and be able to look back and see what they wore the year before, and the year before that.
I had some interesting costumes... the one that I remember right offhand is Zorro when I was a lot younger. I was a big time Zorro fan. My mom helped me make it, and I remember having a big issue with the fact that she wouldn't let me carry around a real metal sword; it just had to be plastic.
When you're making a TV drama, the showrunner is God, and so however onerous and difficult and consuming that responsibility is, you're being treated with respect, so it changes your whole outlook to the production. You're being asked about costumes, set design, music, every aspect of the show.
I'm a really artistic person, and so, with the live stuff, there's a lot that I think is really cool. Beyonce and Rihanna have all these dancers. So with the live costumes and video costumes, I'd really like to have my vision. The way that I want people to dress is very specific. I love fashion.
A screenplay is really an instruction manual, and it can be interpreted in any number of ways. The casting, the choice of location, the costumes and make-up, the actors' reading of a line or emphasis of a word, the choice of lens and the pace of the cutting - these are all part of the translation.
It took me a while to warm to the '20s costumes on 'Downton.' I love it when women accentuate their curves, and that era was all about hiding them. The shapes they wore then were in tune with female empowerment. Cutting off their hair and hiding their busts was a way of saying, 'We're equal to men!'
I guess drag queens, by nature, have to do everything. When you start being a drag queen, you're grabbing the microphone, hosting the shows. Then, you're setting the microphone down and doing the number. You're spending the day before doing your wigs and sewing your costumes. You're doing everything.
I'm certainly not 10 pounds away from being an ingenue! Of course I would love to lose 10 pounds. I would never lie and say I don't think about it, but I don't think about it on a daily basis. I love my body. I don't like wearing clothes that hide or cover it. I love wearing costumes that show it off.
We did a student-initiated project of 'A Little Night Music', which was the first time that all of the divisions - music, dance, drama, opera - came together and put on a piece. It was a black box kind of feel. We had to get costumes that were pieced together. We had our own lighting that we finagled.
Every day, my mom and I would watch a different Judy Garland VHS. I love how she tells a story when she sings. It was just about her voice and the words she was singing - no strings attached or silly hair or costumes, just a woman singing her heart out. I feel like that doesn't happen that much anymore.
The first play I did was a funny one called 'The School for Wives', by Moliere. We were wearing the ugliest wigs and the worst costumes you can ever imagine to try to recreate 17th-century France in Singapore. But I got my first real pay cheque from that. I was very happy taking that cheque to the bank.
Wreckin' Cru was a DJ crew. They used to call it that because it was the guys that came in after the party was over and broke down the equipment. We eventually made a record, and we had the costumes on and what have you. Back then, everybody had their little getups, you know, like SoulSonic Force, UTFO.
Come election time, black and white politicians put on their costumes of compassion and care, shake black hands, kiss black babies, sing 'We Shall Overcome' in black , and pray that we will ignore the reality of everyday suffering and the damage that is being done to our future in exchange for our votes.
Every show is a mess at its first preview. No one's had enough time to rehearse in costumes, traffic patterns backstage haven't been worked out, machinery weighing thousands of pounds is being operated for the first time. And, also, it's the first time all the material you've written is before the public.
In Britain, the major public holiday used to be Guy Fawkes Day... that was celebrated on November 5th with things like bonfires and fireworks... I think that made Halloween seem preferable. The idea of having pumpkins and costumes and parties seemed much more appealing than burning down your neighborhood.
I was Obi-Wan multiple years in a row. Alec Guinness' Obi-Wan. I was a Dalmatian once because I loved '101 Dalmatians,' and I think I was a Care Bear once and maybe a Spartan cheerleader from the 'SNL' skit. I'm terrible with Halloween, because I come up with these elaborate costumes and never follow through.
As I had visualized, 'Heroine' is shaping up to be a very contemporary film with a different premise and strata. This film, like most of my other films, is a blend of facts and fiction. The film has a larger span, more characters, and costumes... a journey that revolves around an actress's life and the showbiz.
In my last year of drama school, I was Abigail in 'The Crucible' and Nina in 'The Seagull,' and I did some Shakespeare with the RSC. That's what casting directors saw me in, and I got put up for a lot of period drama auditions. I always get told I suit the costumes. I don't think I have a very modern-looking face.
When I started producing, it was George Abbott directing and he would let me do the scenery. He just wanted to know where the doors were - the entrances, the exits; the tables, the props - and then I would hire the designer. I took charge of the visuals - scenery and costumes and so on. And, the shows looked wonderful.
I'm glad I was born when I was. My time was the golden age of variety. If I were starting out again now, maybe things would happen for me, but it certainly would not be on a variety show with 28 musicians, 12 dancers, two major guest stars, 50 costumes a week by Bob Mackie. The networks just wouldn't spend the money today.
Auditioning and actually acting on a set are two different things. When you audition, you're in a room and you don't have anything to play with and you don't have anything physically in the room. Whereas on set, you have direction, you have costumes, and you have other actors to work with. It's a completely different thing.
My mom teaches sixth grade and also taught first grade at one point. She's into dressing up and costumes and designing her own curriculum that way. She stayed home for about eight years with me and my sister when we were young before going back to teaching, so we had a lot of time with her. She taught us to read really early.
I guess, for me, I've always thought that there was humor everywhere. And as a kid, I just, you know, I grew up an only child, and I - sort of nothing made me happier than to make my parents laugh. I remember I had costumes and things laying around the house that I was, you know, anything that I could do to make my parents laugh.
I'm always going to be making costumes. It's one of the ways I relax my brain. In addition to the pleasure of having the piece, there is a deep and abiding pleasure for me assembling something in my head - learning to know something in its totality in my head, and then putting together all the constituent parts into a cohesive whole.
Coming from the theatre, I have played some fabulous characters where I get to wear gowns, and I get to be a princess or someone from the 1920s, or I get to wear showgirl costumes. I'm used to wearing a wardrobe that changes how I feel. It's a bit of an outside-in approach - so often, the clothing can reveal so much about a character.
I'm a lifelong movie addict, and one of my favorite projects is making replica props and costumes. Nearly every one of these - from R2D2 to Hellboy's revolver - ends with the paint job. And it's not just cosmetic. The paint literally tells a story: what this thing is made of, where it's been, what it's been used for, and for how long.
Everything else - music, cinematography, costumes, design, acting - can be judged at face value. But when you're looking at editing, you don't know what the totality of the material was, and you don't know the working dynamic between a director and an editor - whether the editor was micromanaged or given free rein. It's very difficult.
The other thing is that when people mention computers - and I'm pretty much the same - they find it hard to comprehend that there's a performance there. They look at it as something that's just been made by a computer but in a way the difference is that when you make a normal film - and I'm simplifying it here - you put on the make-up and you put the scenery in before you start shooting, but with this you still perform in the same way but then you put the make-up on after, along with the costumes and scenery.
