Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
I think he [King Edward] was a modernizer who was a new thinker. The things he intended to do - unify the country, expand it all from coast to coast - were very modern and radical in those days. Also, the fact that he married who he did and that he managed to deal with the consequences and ramifications of that marriage and stay on the throne until the day he died, that shows skill.
I am fond of reminding my yoga students of the saying "It takes one to know one" when they become lost I condemnation and judgment of others. The world that we perceive is a reflection of our own states of mind and reveals our own level of consciousness. The world is little more than a Rorschach blot in which we see our own desire systems projected. We see what we want to see. (116)
In a novella, a whole lot of crap can happen, and you can build momentum and suspense and leave room for a surprise or three. Stories are cut down to the most essential elements, and novels (this might be an unfair generalization on my part) are big fat clumsy efforts where the reader can snooze for a couple chapters and miss nothing of consequence. Hence my love for the middle way.
You can put the camera in places where you may not necessarily be able to put it there if I don't do the stunt. If it's character and it's storytelling, then we do it. We design the things around me. I don't do it just to do a stunt. It's storytelling for me and how I can best bring the audience into the action, bring the audience into the story. And that's how we always look at at.
I think there seems to be a need for escapism at the moment. Maybe that's the type of world we're living in. It's a sanctuary, in a way, where you can immerse yourself in something that doesn't exist, whether that's TV shows or comic books or novels. it's not solely down to magic and vampires - that's in at the moment. but escapism, being a part of other worlds, is very good for you.
We have been led to believe that we have come a long way toward world nuclear disarmament. But that is not the case. Our government is not doing all that it could. We must urge our leaders to fulfill the obligations of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. The United States must assume world leadership to end once and for all the threat of nuclear war. It is our moral responsibility.
Ralph Fiennes was a big hero of mine acting-wise growing up and while I was training. I just find him so watchable. He was playing this very intimidating character when we worked together and it certainly felt like he was in character off set as well! He was very cool. Before a scene, he'd be like, "Come on. Let's improvise. Let's just do stuff." But Jesus Christ. He's Ralph Fiennes!
I think screenwriter Steve Kloves does such a difficult job. And he does a bloody brilliant job, too. Transferring these Harry Potter books into films and making them coherent is one thing. But making them entertaining, as well, is quite another... He does a tremendous job, and he gets a lot of stick. And it's really unfair sometimes, and I challenge anyone else to do the job he does.
Along with reading as much as I could about Andy, several of the real folks came in besides Andy [Hertzfeld] - Joanna Hoffman and John Sculley and Steve Wozniak all came in and spoke with us - so we had the advent of being around the real people and feeling their spirit, in talking to them about what Steve was like, what their relationship was like, and how they felt about each other.
I think it's easy to forget just how massive the muscles in the legs are, and how much testosterone is released in your body when you make sure you work your legs hard. Some people's bodies just take a long time to grow, and if you're naturally thin there's no cheating. It takes time. Your body will only grow muscle at a certain rate for your genetics, so take your time and keep at it.
Fortunately, I have an amazing partner that allows us to do these different things, who will be directing an episode himself soon, I'm sure. But, it's amazing. I love directing and I think that it allowed me to get closer to the actors and actually work with them on a level that I haven't before, and really get down there with them. I would jump at the chance to do it, anytime I could.
It happens a little bit more in the West, where there's more fluid - where everybody's originally from somewhere else. So they have a little bit more permission to do it. It happens the least, at the individual level at least, in the South, because the South has very strong, you know, set up black churches and white churches and a long history of that, and so it's a bigger social cost.
I play Edward G. Robinson [in Trumbo], who was a close friend and a co-worker of Dalton's [Trumbo]. They worked together on at least one or two screenplays. A lot of these stories take famous people and show you who they are behind the scenes, which is kind of fun. One of the things about getting to play Edward G. Robinson was learning who the man was away from his movie-star exterior.
Probably my first memory of theatre, the first one I guess that had an impact on me was when I saw my very first panto with my Primary School. I think just going there and experience that for the first time, being so young, it's something that's actually stuck with me right up until now. And to think back and to sort of remember that magic and that first little hint of it was brilliant.
When I'm not wearing makeup, when I'm not in front of the camera, I can be just Hrithik. I can sit with my watchman or with the spot boy and chat with him. I do that. Which is why I am able to differentiate between the person I am and the persona that is projected. It's not the person people are crazy about, it's the persona, it's the magic of the movies and you have to understand that.
I've been very reluctant on the Twitter front. But I do Instagram now, so I'm slowly coming around. I'm quite a private person, so much of what I do for my job means that I have to be quite public so I'm just nervous about everything being public. I might turn around. Three years ago, I was against all social media but I actually really enjoy Instagram now. Who knows? I never say never!
I loved making The Imitation Game and it's really gratifying to hear the audience's response to the character that I play. It was just a little thing that I did because I really liked the film and I liked Benedict [Cumberbatch] and I loved Morten's [director Morten Tyldum] previous film, Headhunters. For me, it was something I did thinking, "Wow, this is a lovely quality piece of work."
You find the most in not any particular denomination specifically. It's the style of worship. So if we have what we call a charismatic worship style, that means upbeat music and a more lively style of preaching usually, people are allowed to clap, say "Amen," whether they're mainline Protestant, conservative Protestant, and Catholics, whatever, they're much more likely to be integrated.
The best way for parents to go about acquiring a mind-set of self-reflective parenting will be different for different individuals. Some people will find that they are already very close to being the parent they are striving to be. Other people will find reading books or blog articles to be very helpful and some other people might benefit most by engaging in discussions on the internet.
Advertising is the best insurance that you can take out on your business. You can buy fire insurance on your stock of goods, but no company will issue a policy covering your business, the good will as they sometimes call it. You must insure yourself, and the best way to do it is by advertising. Good advertising kept up for a number of years gives you something that no fire can take away.
The woman is skin covered prozac I like to call her. Half the trick to a film like this is keeping a sort of emotional level going and keeping an attitude that induces creativity on the set. You have to be in a good mood for that. You have to be happy to make a comedy I think and Anne sort of ensured that every time by expressing most of her feelings through the exciting medium of dance.
It's frustrating when people get upset with me about not going out to DVD - the reason is that I plan to tour with the films for many, many years, not just a month or a week. Literally years. And as soon as I would put it out on DVD, it would ruin the financial possibilities of me making it a theatrical event. Whereas the book, the publishing of a screenplay, would not cause that problem.
The day my father died seemed longer than my entire childhood. The day I felt my first success seemed fleeting, hour-long, not long enough perhaps. I wondered where it went. Even the cycle of time confounds me. I work till dark, until sunrise on most days and fall asleep as the world awakens to light. My friends call me an owl. I like to think of myself as Batman – the prince of darkness.
A film like Genevieve to my contemporaries is not a film made years ago, but last week or last year. They see me as I was then, not as I am now. I am the reassurance that they have not changed. In an upside down world, with all the rules being rewritten as the game goes on and spectators invading the pitch, it is good to feel that some things and some people seem to stay just as they were.
When I was about 16, I did a Neil LaBute play called 'A Gaggle of Saints' from a collection of plays called 'Bash' - very violent story about a young Mormon who goes to Central Park with his friend and beats up a gay guy. But it was the first thing I had ever done, and I thought, "God, this is fun! This is far more fun than anything else I've been doing at school. I want to stick with it."
I also listened to hours and hours and hours and hours and hours of [J.F.] Kennedy, and I sort of built [ accent]. And then I got on set [of 'J.F.Kennedy' movie ] and forgot it.But that's what you want to do. You want it to just be real. And I think authenticity was better than - people always talk about when an accent doesn't work, and the phrase you always hear is, "It was inconsistent."
I did not always agree, personally, on the positions that Bartlet, character from the West Wing, took and I argued against them on many occasions. But Aaron Sorkin said, "Martin, that's you, that's not Barlet. It's a very political decision he has to make." I found from the very beginning that when I infused my own personal feelings about an issue it went against the grain of the character.
Quite often on a movie like Total Recall you have this training period of two or three months where, like on the first 'Underworld' I was doing gymnastics and trampolining and all this stuff which I don't do in the movie necessarily, but mentally it helps. You come home and you go: 'Well, I've done all that. I must be an action star now!' So it helps you focus a little bit and gets you fit.
I like to keep at my craft. I like to keep reading scripts, whether I'm in it or not because of the fact that what would I do in a certain case? How would this happen or how would that go? I like to keep working with my mind, so when I do perform I have something to perform with, and it's not just like trying on new clothes. You're trying on a suit, but you know where the heck the pants go.
Your purpose is about discovering and nurturing who you truly are, to know and love yourself at the deepest level and to guide yourself back home when you lose your way. That's it. Everything else is your burning passion, your inspired mission, your job, your love-fueled hobby, etc. Those things are powerful and essential, but they're not your purpose. Your purpose is much bigger than that.
Every country in the world loved the folklore of the West--the music, the dress, the excitement, everything that was associated with the opening of a new territory. It took everybody out of their own little world. The cowboy lasted a hundred years, created more songs and prose and poetry than any other folk figure. The closest thing was the Japanese samurai. Now, I wonder who'll continue it.
The art is about opening, it is not about prejudice, it is not about contempt prior to investigation. It's about endlessly trying to keep from having contempt by admitting that you don't know. Even if you know a lot compared to some other people, usually, I think, the honest experience would be: "God, how little I know! And how much I need to have compassion for myself and for other people."
Failure's relative. I've always felt, even early on, if I lose the freedom to fail, something's not right about that. It's how you treat failure, too. There's something to learn from it. I've had movies that have failed colossally, so you kind of analyze your failures: What kind of failure was it? A failure because it's misunderstood by others? A failure because you misunderstood it yourself?
I was well aware of that when I heard they were remaking 'Total Recall.' My first reaction was: 'Ewww, really okay?' And the director said you should really look at it, the script is good. I had already done a remake. I had just finished 'Fright Night.' When I heard about that being remade, I had a whole ego thing... remake?. 'That is so uncool! I loved the original, I can't possibly do that.
I hate the word "method acting." It's just so silly. You hear people going, "Yeah I'm a method actor." I'm like, "So what happens if you're playing a period film or something? You're in the Second World War. And what happens when your mom calls you on your phone? Do you go, 'Oh! What is this strange talking brick device?'" No. It's stupid. But you do everything you can to get in that mindset.
My interest in music tends toward being orchestral music. And the repertoire of music that exists is, to me, far more emotive than what is standardly used in movie scores. That isn't always. I think there've been some excellent movie scores by excellent directors. But for the most part, watching a film, one of today's movies, I think that the emotional undertone of movie scores is pretty poor.
When you are on the set, you have different departments - you got camera, sound, props, hair, makeup, catering, executives. Imagine each one of those are spokes on the wagon wheel. All the spokes come into a hub: the hub is the director. The wood the spokes go into are distribution and promotion; the steel wheel around the hub is the film. None of these have anything in common with each other.
I grew up in the theater, and you can't improvise Shakespeare and Ibsen. You have to speak the language. But obviously, in a contemporary film, there's often room for improvisation and spontaneous things that happen. As long as I know what I'm trying to achieve in the scene, and when something comes up, I know that the response is genuine, I'm comfortable. That's really how I build everything.
In a country like India, we don't want to put everyone in one big mixture. We have a different language, culture and cuisine for each region, even though we are united in the larger context. We are more like a fruit salad, where each ingredient has its own specialty, each fruit its distinct flavor, and together, the salad makes a tasty dish, without losing the individuality of each constituent.
I can't wait to go back home and disappear into relative obscurity for a bit. I just want to go back to my house and just get away from it all for a bit. It's so flattering to hear people say nice things about the performance, about the Harry Potter film. It's great. Don't get me wrong. I'm not ashamed of it. I'm not shunning it. It's just been such a bubble I've been in, with these promotions.
After I got out of the military, I was going to college and doing everything I was supposed to do, but I was completely numb of any emotions. I remember telling my mom, "I don't want to be like this, for the rest of my life." The military enabled me to turn off my emotions, for obvious reasons. That's why we have so many guys coming back who are going through so much. They just can't reconnect.
My movies are always being played on television, I'm very well known and all that stuff - I go all over the world, I have access to many things, many people, many places and it's wonderful. But now I'm at a point where...I thought it was time to show some of it, to show some of my feelings about things and what I preferred at the time. I prefer them still but not to the extent I did at the time.
I think none of the humor in the first Evil Dead was intentional. We weren't that sophisticated. We got more sophisticated with Evil Dead 2 and Army of Darkness where you can start to manipulate the audience a little more, having more control over the medium instead of just trying to figure out how to do it. I suppose that's pretty normal with any craft. Every carpenter is better 20 years later.
The truth is that it's just really hard for me to get to sleep without a dog in my bedroom. I once had a dog named Beau. He used to sleep in the corner of the bedroom. Some nights, though, he would sneak onto the bed and lie right between Gloria and me. I know that I should have pushed him off the bed, but I didn't. He was up there because he wanted me to pat his head, so that's what I would do.
I also wanted to have fun with it. I wanted to have the scope, which I felt Merlin has, in his Machiavellian bi-polar way. He's not to be trusted, yet he is fighting for this great power and is really a master, to some degree, in orchestrating Camelot and King Arthur. He's a strange, dark devious character, and I just wanted to have fun, and get away from the cloak and long beard and pointy hat.
I enjoy the physicality a little more, with Vinnie Paz [in Bleed for This] that was the most prep I've ever had to do for a film, that was a legit like 7 months of diet and working out. And then I was able to do like an accent, I was able to change myself physically, I was able to do a lot of the things that I'd always looked at actors and admired when they did that. So I was excited to do that.
It does if you put yourself out there being a pirate. It's like if you have an army and your army sit around and not doing anything and living the lives of decadence and they're faced with a battle, and you slide. Do they deserve the right to call themselves an army? Do these pirates who are basically languishing deserve the right to call themselves pirates? They're victims of their own success.
I do have someone that I work with and she is amazing and I definitely don't have unmitigated abusive tendencies towards her. She is very sweet. I also know what that is like. I have heard my agent thinking he has hit mute on the phone before he, you know, physically unleashes broken glass and cellphones at his poor assistant. It is a tough job under the best of circumstances. I understand that.
Caesar [from the Rise of the Planet of the Apes] was brought up with human beings and because of the drug he had pretty much grown up with his whole life, he felt like an outsider, he felt trapped in an ape's body but he didn't really feel like an ape and that was my way into the character. So he's always had this duality playing him from an infant all the way to now as a fifty-five year old ape.
There's this script that my dad wrote that portrays my brother's life, and I don't want to bore you with the details, but there's something in that that's really great. I would love working with him. I don't know in what way, but if I need a coach next time I'm on the set, or to produce or make something, absolutely. He's one of the main reasons I am where I am today. His mentorship and guidance.