I actually fell asleep during one take with Jeffrey Wright because I relaxed myself so much. I just stayed so still that I just nodded off, and kind of snapped back into it in the middle of the scene.

This summer, I'll be bringing out a mystery that involves a young lawyer and a court scene the likes of which I don't think you've ever seen. Hollywood said this is James Patterson meets John Grisham.

Well, I've learned something from Michael Robison just about maximizing your shots. For example, if I'm shooting a scene and someone's driving at the wheel, you could steal an insert in the same shot.

In an episodic treatment, such as a teleplay is, you have the ability to do what you can do in a novel, which is flash back and flash forward in the same instant, in the same scene, in the same voice.

Actors know, with me they aren't going to be allowed to rehearse a scene for a couple of hours and then get away with doing 25 takes before we get it right. So they come with their full bag of tricks.

Our fans are made up of different groups of people: people who enjoy this Japanese idol scene, versus metal fans. The crowd is disorganised because everyone is reacting to the band in a different way.

Every actor I think has got their own number of takes that they like, you know. Some actors like to go all day, you know on the one scene and some actors want to take two takes. I personally like four.

We taped all this and then got it transcribed and picked the best lines or ideas or ways to take a scene. I've done that many times, and it can improve the script but also wreck a perfectly good scene.

The weather was turning cold and I remember that Dante was using nothing but natural light as his electric department was away, prepping the scene in the cave. We stayed on that rock for the whole day.

I wouldn't call myself 'into the DJ scene.' I have friends who are DJs, like James Murphy. I was really into the DJ scene at his wedding. But generally, I'm not at the clubs. I've never been to a rave.

I am a writer who works from an outline. What I generally do when I build an outline is I find focal, important scenes, and I build them in my head and I don't write them yet, but I build towards them.

My next book is Scene by Scene: as Seen by Fay Wray. It'll be about different incidents. Just my feelings about quite a few people. Attitudes. My thoughts about the universe and simple things like that.

The producers who wanted me to do it liked me and trusted me, and more than one scene was only one take, because I'd plan ahead what I thought would be appropriate for that scene-so one take was enough.

I do like to work on a Marvel method, so if I've got the opportunity, and the writer is happy to do it, I like to have a writer detail what happens on a page, but not saying what happens in every scene.

The fact of the matter is that an actor, if I'm playing a performance capture role and you're playing a live action role and we're having a scene together, there's no difference in our acting processes.

There are some movies I can watch over and over, never get sick of. I'll put one of those on and be puttering around the house. Then a certain scene will come on and I'll just have to go over and watch.

The scene with Danny [McBride] and the cake and all of that [in the Pineapple Express], most of that is improvised, I would say. But you would never know, to me anyway, and that's what is always amazing.

I can't go into a mob scene and sense the mood and the attitude of the crowd. I can't conduct man-on-the-street interviews or even get reactions that I can be sure are honest, because they know who I am.

I can't write a scene unless I've visualized it. Unless I can actually see it, and that's why a lot of reviewers have said my books are very cinematic, because I actually do see them before I write them.

I heard that the same thing occurred in a scene in Alien, where the creature pops out of the chest of a crewman. The other actors didn't know what was to happen; the director wanted to get true surprise.

I had to work with Ben Mendelsohn who's one of the great actors of our time. I had a lot of scenes with him and I was thrilled to be on the set with him; I just wanted to see how we were going to play it.

Science is the greatest creative impulse of our time. It dominates the intellectual scene and forms our lives, not only in the material things which it has given us, but also in that it guides our spirit.

If you agree to do a sex scene, you have to be willing to not be awkward about it. C'mon! I don't think of it as anything other than a dance, really. I don't see that person. I don't think of me being me.

If I'm preparing for something and I've got a huge day the next day, I have to get into character the night before to assess the scene. I can't assess a scene unless I'm in character, if that makes sense.

I'm English and I am British. I don't know if I feel part of a music scene. Musically, I have as many feelings and affinity with Americans or Canadians, or all sorts of people as I do with English people.

I've had some painful experiences in my life, but I feel like I'm trivializing them by using them for a scene in a movie. I don't want to do that. It just makes me feel kind of dirty for having done that.

With today's fast films, you can light the way your eye sees the scene. You can abuse the film and create subtleties in contrast with light and exposure, diffusion and filters. That's what makes it an art.

I started to see this common theme with the songs that I was writing or co-writing, and it all had this really strong, independent point of view that I had subconsciously been craving from the music scene.

I did this scene in 'Lars and the Real Girl' where I was in a room full of old ladies who were knitting, and it was an all-day scene, so they showed me how. It was one of the most relaxing days of my life.

One day, we were doing a serious scene and fast talking like we do and we could not stop laughing and the director had to stop the production. We had to go to our trailer and calm down and do it all again.

I love 'Troy.' I love Brad Pitt's character - when he went to Troy, he just ran over it. Then this particular scene where they made this big old horse or something out of wood, and they hid inside the wood.

I'm sentimental about many things: the lumpy feel of a baby's unused feet, the metallic smell of the air before the first snow, the last scene in 'It's a Wonderful Life.' But Valentine's Day leaves me cold.

You know that scene in 'Runaway Bride' when Julia Roberts puts on the amazing wedding dress and looks at herself in the mirror and goes, 'Swish, swish'? I loved that moment so much when I was a little girl.

I'm definitely nostalgic about the music of my youth; The Clash and Fishbone and that whole music scene. I still have all that music to this day. There was some great music going on in the late 70s and 80s.

Look, I do not control alpinism. But maybe I was too successful. Many in the mountaineering scene - journalists, second-rate climbers, lecturers, so-called historians - had a problem with me for many years.

John Carpenter was very gentle. He was very tender. He really liked talking to actors. He really wanted you to be comfortable. He waited until you were ready to do the scene, and he has a lot of confidence.

In terms of animation, animators are actors as well. They are fantastic actors. They have to draw from how they feel emotionally about the beat of a scene that they're working on. They work collaboratively.

Heaven blazing into the head: Tragedy wrought to its uttermost. Though Hamlet rambles and Lear rages And all the drop-scenes drop at once Upon a hundred thousand stages It cannot grow by an inch or an ounce.

We were using a hand-held camera to film the scene when Morse collapses. The camera wouldn't start. Three times they said action and it still wouldn't work. To this day, they still don't know what was wrong.

I remember secretly going off and crying. All of a sudden I'm being blocked and have to be intimate in a scene, and I'm going, 'I can't even look people in the eye very well. How am I ever going to do this?'

I was very glad later when I was directing that I wasn't in the hands of a cinematographer and hoping that he would do it well. I would know what he was doing, and we could discuss how that scene would look.

The electro scene is all over the clubs now: groups like Duck Sauce, Empire of the Sun, even MGMT. But I get inspiration from everywhere. I'll go to the gym and put on old albums - Guns N' Roses or old Jay-Z.

I would argue that television and particularly the BBC were instrumental in puffing up the Royal Family to a level where they were inflated out of all, all proportion to their relevance on the national scene.

We did have a script, but it didn't consist of the routines and gags. It outlined the basic story idea and just a plan for us to follow. But when it came to each scene, we and the gagmen would work out ideas.

They did offer me a chance of being a V in the crowd, but it's not my scene. I think they just thought it would be fun for me to do that, but I don't know. I heard that Stan Lee appears in every movie of his.

If they're working in a workshop somewhere, where there is, let's say, uh... only twenty people, or something like that, that's still, when they work and do a scene, that's still working in front of somebody.

If the day should ever come when we must go, if some day we are compelled to leave the scene of history, we will slam the door so hard that the universe will shake and mankind will stand back in stupefaction.

You know the stories of a woman saying to Churchill, 'Sir, you're drunk,' and he said to her, 'And you're ugly, but in the morning I'll be sober.' I was really excited to do that scene, but I did get slapped.

I'll find myself having dinner with people and someone will mention something and I will say I was in that situation once. Then I'll say, forget it, it was a scene I was in. That can get to be quite confusing.

Sometimes fake laughing is hard once you've done a scene 18 times. I don't want to brag, but I have a reputation for being very, very good at that. It's funny finding what's challenging about acting as you go.

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