Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
I've always looked at directing as the next step for me in my creative career, and after spending the better part of the last decade on a television set absorbing as much as I could from in front of the camera, I'm now eager to learn as much as I can from behind it.
I'll drive down the street, and I'll practice improv. I will sit there at a red light and see two guys talking to each other, and I will just start playing both characters. I can't hear them, but I can see their mouths moving, so I'll just put words in their mouths.
When I got out of college I moved to Seattle because it was the nearest big city and still didn't know if I wanted to be a composer, conductor, singer, actor. I just got day jobs and auditioned and took what came and the theater doors were the ones opening the most.
There are many directors in the middle range who've made mostly successful pictures, and then there are a few great directors who've had some successes and some failures. I suppose my life would be smoother if I wasn't almost totally enamored of the latter category.
I thought my dad was a scientist when I was young. Seriously. Because people would come up to me, and they would be like, 'Your dad is the smartest person that I've ever met.' And I was so young, so I'd be like, 'Well he just put me on a time out, so I don't agree.'
Speaking of childhood fantasy, we were doing a Western, but we were also just hanging out. You work, and you ride and ride and ride, and then, for the next two hours, you look for a place to kick out, in this amazing canyon with so much heritage and so much history.
Doing a sitcom is like doing a play - you rehearse for three or four days, and then you shoot what you rehearsed on Friday night in front of an audience. An hour-long drama is like shooting a movie. You're shooting 13-14 hour days. The endurance itself is different.
My childhood was surrounded by trouble, illness, and my dad's alcoholism, but as I said, we just didn't have the time to be impressed by all those misfortunes. I have an idea that the Irish possess a built-in don't-give-a-damn that helps them through all the stress.
When I was at drama school in the U.K., I was there for two and a half years, and we did one week of television and film. It's right before you leave. It's like, 'We've taught you Chekhov and Shakespeare; you are likely to be in a washing-up soap-liquid commercial.'
When I was starting out, doing guest spots on TV, and even commercials, I would go in with a whole crazy wardrobe and some terrible accent. Obviously, I was doing too much. If you bring too much flavor to it, it's absurd. There's something to just being spontaneous.
Everybody wants blockbusters. I like to see a few pictures now and then that have to do with people and have relationships, and that's what I want to do films about. I don't want to see these sci-fi movies, and I don't want to do one of those. I don't understand it.
I was friends with all different people and all different groups. And that led me to being friends with a few people who didnt even go to my school. Now I have the most amazing collection of friends of all ethnic backgrounds and upbringing and financial backgrounds.
Acting is primarily is where I want to go. But seeing how the visual effects guys work, and the special effects guys and the art department guys, how they work and seeing their visions is really interesting. I don't think those guys get the recognition they deserve.
I was fortunate enough to do an HBO show, 'Rome,' in which my arc was built in by historical fact, and over the course of 22 episodes, we were able to tell the stories of these people. We had a beginning and middle and end, and as we went on, you changed every week.
Look at every show on television; it's derivative of another show that came before it. It was only a matter of time. So all you 'Mentalist' fans, it's okay to like the show, but don't be in denial of where it came from. Friday nights, U.S.A., basic cable-style baby.
So many people have tried to get happiness and serenity from outside things; it's pretty much common knowledge that is a road to nowhere. I've never heard anybody say, 'Fame made me the complete person I am.' Well, I'm sure people have said it, but nobody I respect.
If you know what you want and you hire people that can do it, there's no reason it should be arduous and torturous. I wanted everyone to enjoy themselves on my set and want to be there, to take ownership of it and pitch ideas to me and know that this is their flick.
The film you know as 'Super Troopers' is a film that almost didn't happen. The script was originally commissioned and developed by Miramax, but when it failed to get a green light, Harvey Weinstein was kind enough to give it back to us so we could make it elsewhere.
I'm into a casual-dressing girl: blue jeans and a tank top is super sexy. But the sexiest thing on a girl - when I see it I'm like, oh my God - is these little tight boxers. Don't get me wrong, g-strings are fine, but those cover a little, to where it's just enough.
It would drive me crazy if I picked roles with the goal of being a leading man. You never know what you're getting into when you sign onto a project, and more times than not, the characters that are close to the leading man are more interesting and more fun to play.
I think for many of us - speaking for just a pocket of the country - we trusted Obama. So when you leave your baby with your mom to watch, you don't run home and check the nanny cam. But now we've left the baby with Gary Busey, so we're going to be a lot more on it.
I couldn't function if I weren't allowed to stretch and do really different characters where I can change the whole "beingness" of that person. That's my pleasure in acting and has been since I was a kid. That's always been my pleasure to create complete characters.
There's a big difference to me between the people who are famous and just accept the fact that it comes with the territory of what they do, and the people who actively seek it out, who intentionally put themselves in the position of being on camera and being famous.
Stagecoach is really my first Western-Western, the whole horses and gunplay. It was really fun. We shot it fast, too. We got lucky with the weather. If it rained, I don't know if we would have been able to finish it. We had like 12 shooting days for the whole thing.
I was pretty young when my father was prime minister, so it wasn't really a big part of my life. My folks were away a lot, meeting foreign dignitaries and that sort of thing, but it never struck me as odd. If anything it allowed me to get into all sorts of mischief.
I devoured TV - everything from Super Friends in the morning to Dukes of Hazzard and The Love Boat and Fantasy Island at night. I watched it all. There were only four channels, so you could actually consume all of television if you were good at changing the channel.
I think these movies are as much for people of that time as for people who weren't born. For people who weren't born, they see how leaders must act under a crisis situation, not trying to be re-elected or not trying to check polls, that they go from their gut check.
I want to bring theatre to a new generation, using the tools available to us, including taking it out to them on film and with new technology, but that is just so they can discover theatre. I want them to come in and sit in a theatre. This is the way to plant seeds.
You just suddenly think that there's something quite childish about acting. Basically, it's pretending, isn't it? It's good fun and I enjoy it, but it's a funny way of making a living, particularly when you make a very good wage, as I've been fortunate enough to do.
We are fascinated with our own history, and we are fascinated with the Romans because they were millennia ago, and yet they still capture our imagination because they were actually so similar to us. They were very civilized. They had a very similar political system.
I'm one of those people who doesn't understand how it was that I went to bed at 3 o'clock in the morning or what I was doing. Like, I looked at 'Bon Appetit' magazine for three hours for things I'm never going to cook. Or I'm just on Pinterest for no logical reason.
My first date was with a girl named Cessi. We'd had a beautiful relationship over the phone all summer long. Then she came home and we met to go out for the first time to the movies. When I saw her I was petrified. I couldn't even look her in the eye to talk to her.
Theater is consistent. You ride your bike to work. You get most of the day off so you can see your kids. My problem is that after three months, I go mad. One of the reasons I never thought I could do a TV show is that I hate doing the same thing over and over again.
You can't print everything and that's not good for filmmaking, because you wanna have as many options as possible and print as much as you can, but if you're going to shoot a film - an independent movie on film, the only way to really do it is to print your selects.
Where typically the cops are generally the good guys, 'The Red Road' blurs the lines intelligently and shows corruption from all sides of the law. It provides unpredictable drama where the audience is kept guessing about how these characters will each choose to act.
Comedy is so subjective. If you trip and fall down, some people will laugh, and some people will say, 'Oh, physical comedy is so pedestrian.' Some people look at Three Stooges as lowbrow; some people consider them artists. No one is wrong. It's just a personal take.
I’m a nudist by trade and hobby. I grew up in LA and I’ve been fortunate enough to be doing this for a great deal of years; if someone is thinking of me as they’re writing something I take it as a huge compliment and hope that it’s an interesting character at least.
It is gorgeously shot, and Andrew believes that the old school way of making films in the best way. Meaning: you have a story, and you stick to the story. You don't change and alter the story because of people who've invested in it and what to put product in a shot.
Humility in this business [acting] isn't just a matter of being polite, it's kind of a matter of survival. You can't ever afford to think that you're the bee's knees, because you could always afford to be better. You have to always be searching for something better.
I started running around my 30th birthday. I wanted to lose weight; I didn't anticipate the serenity. Being in motion, suddenly my body was busy and so my head could work out some issues I had swept under a carpet of wine and cheese. Good therapy, that's a good run.
I've been in movies where the movie doesn't come together but the role comes together, or the movie comes together but the role doesn't come together or something like that. Something misses. It's very difficult to make it hit on all cylinders - it's just very rare.
I really loved Michelangelo. I've always been a little partial to Donatello to be honest, especially with the animated series. There's just something about Donnie that I really like. But, you know, Mikey's also Mikey. It's kind of just a given he's the most fun one.
It's rare for artists to really stare deeply at themselves in the mirror, literally, because there's constantly a mirror on you. But figuratively speaking, I'm really into growth, so when I look in the mirror, I see somebody who's just trying to get better everyday.
If you remain open to great directors who look like you, who know what they're doing and are making impactful films that are destroying these 'blockbuster films,' you can do okay, and everybody can get more of a piece of the pie. But you've got to be open and brave.
I grew up in Le Mars, Iowa, and even though it's a great place to grow up and be raised as a kid, there wasn't a lot to do. It was fairly boring, and I think the way I either escaped the boredom or found a way to keep myself occupied was through movies and TV shows.
In terms of what's going to actually happen to me in the story, down towards the end of the season, I'm dying to know, but I just don't ask. If it's something that I think will really affect how I play it and it's information I need to know, than I'll ask, for sure.
I usually say I might have a talent or I'm lacking a talent, because everyday, I must tell you, I thank whatever is up there or out there that I'm alive and that I get to do what I'm doing, and I think that sends off a lot of good vibrations in different directions.
Robert Vavra is one of these artists, part magician, part alchemist, who is able to create a series of photographs in unforgettable compositions. Only visible are the dunes, the blinding fields of flowers and the vast sky, the epic intimacy of Robert Vavra's vision.
There were so few examples of Asian or Asian-American lead characters on American TV or even in the movies. And the ones that have existed for so long were either stereotypical or offensive in some way, or just not reflective of the lives of people in the community.
My first job was being a page at 'The Tonight Show.' I saw Jack Paar come out one night and sit on the edge of his desk and talk about what he'd done the night before. I thought, 'I can do that!' I used to do that on a street corner in the Bronx with all my buddies.