Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
My older brother always tells me I changed as a person when I saw 'Ace Ventura.' Because when I saw 'Ace Ventura', I became obsessed. I watched the movie as many times as I had to - back then, you couldn't go on the Internet and find the script - so I watched it as many times as I could to write my own script of 'Ace Ventura.'
The first thing, when I read the script, is that I need to care about what happens and feel compelled by the story and engaged by the characters. It needs to resonate with me, even if what the characters are going through is not something that I have experienced in my life. I have to feel like it has some sort of meaning to me.
I kind of went into soap opera with 'General Hospital' in the '80s. It's like theater because every day it's a new script, which really doesn't have a beginning, middle or end like a play or a movie script. So you have to be on your toes and bring it every day. And you have to be spontaneous, which is really how I like to work.
The great thing I think when you do independents is that people are really there for the same reason. They're not there because they got a lot of money and they want to just go home and get it over with. They're there because they believe in the script or the director or the cast or whatever it is, and they want to make it work.
I'm not going to tell you the movies, but I remember getting halfway through the thing and everything sort of tunnel-visioned on me and I couldn't read the script anymore. I looked at the people and I just turned and ran out in a cold sweat. It took me about a year to study it and feel comfortable going in and reading for people.
I like, for instance, 'Serpico.' I enjoyed playing Serpico because Frank Serpico was there. He existed. He was a real life person and I could - I could embody him. I could, you know, I could work and get to know him and have him help me with the text, the script and become him. It's almost like a painter having a model to become.
A film can be big or small - I have to just fall in love with it. To connect with the character, the script, and the director. Sometimes they say to you, 'You should do that for your career; it's a big thing, people will go and see it,' but I wouldn't be able to, because my heart wouldn't be in it. I would drive people quite mad.
The great thing about working in comics is that visually, you're the sole voice. You have to figure out the staging, the lighting, the composition, the character emotions, the action. You get a script, but you're trying to work it out in individual panels. It's a terrific exercise in creative thinking and creative problem-solving.
We got to the moon on Christmas Eve 1968, at the end of a poor year for this country. We had Vietnam. We had civil unrest. We had the assassinations of Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King. But we went around the moon and saw the far side for the first time. A script writer couldn't have done a better job of raising people's hope.
I love being on stage if I'm not on a set. If I'm at home, I'm usually in my office editing or reconstructing my website or whatever it may be. I just love putting creativity into a performance, so if the right script comes along, and I certainly am reading comedies and dramas now, then I'm ready willing and able to give it a shot.
The idea is to make the script out of a political analysis and then to convey that - sometimes in poetry, sometimes science, sometimes all it takes is a film. The film itself is less and less spectacular because I think very strongly now the more spectacular you are, the more you are absorbed by the things you are trying to destroy.
I truly think a long career is to keep the audience guessing and not being able to be boxed, and for me, I'm not hell-bent on playing the lead in things as long its an interesting character with phenomenally talented people, and it's a script that I feel is genuinely innovative, creative, and potentially interesting for an audience.
I think that's a great opportunity, to pick a script where you can build up a good skill. I think the main thing I look for when I look at scripts is if it's inspirational. If it's something that teenagers can relate to. And is it something that the audience is going to get something out of. If not, then it's really not worth doing.
When I got a call to do the voice of Johnny in an episode of 'American Dad' titled 'I Can't Stan You,' it was a great opportunity to be a part of a really funny cutting-edge show on television. I really got into the character, and I was able to do some improvisation, which allowed me to mix in part of my personality into the script.
When you're in a movie with Will Ferrell, well, it's time to at least sometimes throw the script away. And that character in 'Talladega Nights' I found a lot easier to kind of riff with because I related to it more, those kind of Southern, almost rednecky guys. That's a culture that I'm familiar with, that makes sense for me to spew.
What's interesting for me is that I generally consider myself to be more of a physical actor, and I'm somebody that doesn't really want to use the dialogue but prefers to act through my body, and then sometimes when I have a script, I look and kind of throw away the dialogue and I just look at how I can expressive it through my body.
There have been times when I've been asked to do things and I've thought, 'This is great! This is a great script. But, I do not believe myself in this role.' I pretend I'm the producer and I think, 'If I was making this movie, would I cast myself in this part,' and if that doesn't feel right to me, then I don't even go audition for it.
For me, in general, it's always about the material. Obviously, it's about the material and hoping that someone wants to hire me for a job, too, but I've certainly seen films like 'Orphan' and movies like that where I know that if I had had the opportunity to read that script or had an opportunity to do it, I would have wanted to do it.
I play Father Francis in 'The Exorcist Prequel.' It's fantastic. We are shooting in Morrocco and Rome. Paul Schrader is directing; Stellan Skarsgard plays the younger Max Von Sydow character. It's just a fantastic script. It's a very eerie, very scary script. It encomposes a growing dread that I think is really appropriate for the film.
The only real difference between shooting 'Firefly' and 'Serenity' was that on 'Serenity,' we had a lot more freedom with time. When you're shooting a television show, you usually have anywhere between six and nine pages of script to shoot a day, and only twelve hours to do it. But with 'Serenity,' we could shoot one scene all day long.
But, yeah, I'm really happy when I'm writing. When I'm being creative and when I have something that I can put down. You know, if you go out and you overhear a conversation or you have a thought, you have a receptacle to go home and say, 'Oh, this would be great in this script.' Your antenna's out in a different way, and I love that time.
As a writer myself, my job has very often been to also write on the job. So you get the script and a vague idea of how the scene might work, and you then add funny words or change the script. I'm not the world's best writer or the world's best actor, but I can do that thing where I can fix - or ruin - fix-slash-ruin, add quirk, add value.
When he first started - Jim Henson, who created Bid Bird and Oscar - he said Big Bird was just a big, goofy guy. And it was - a script came along and I said, 'I think Big Bird would be much more useful to the show if he were a child learning all the things we were teaching in the show.' And so he didn't know the alphabet, even, for instance.
I think I'm a story-based artiste. So I would opt for the performance-oriented role. I usually go by intuition while choosing a script. Also, I do not analyse my performance, nor do I bother about how my film has been performing at the box office. I personally love challenges and am game for taking up things which I haven't attempted before.
Not all television scripts are created equal. And the process is ridiculous. They send you a script and want you in the next morning. That's not how acting works. You can do anything to me as an actor; I'm a very resilient guy. Just don't rush me. If you ask me to do it immediately with no time to prepare, I know you have contempt for actors.
The thing that was most harmful was that there was always something that was about to happen. So I found myself indulging in the writer's luxury of doing another draft, another idea. If this project isn't happening, then I'll shelve one script and start writing another. And in that way, the years go by, and there's very little money coming in.
Meteorologists don't use a script, and most create their own graphics and certainly put together their own forecasts. Most of us went to school to become scientists - at least I did - and studied thermodynamics, physics, and tons of calculus to take this young science to the next level. Our accuracy is amazing and will only continue to improve.
I can't wait to do a fully improvised script again, to find people who are really comfortable and into it. It's about the capabilities of the people you're working with, what are their strengths and weaknesses. Some of the most brilliant actors need the spine of the text to work off of, and there's no shame in that; they're actors, not writers.
When I was nine, the teacher asked us to write a piece about our village fete. He read mine in class. I was encouraged and continued. I even wanted to write my memoirs at the age of ten. At twelve I wrote poetry, mostly about friendship - 'Ode to Friendship.' Then my class wanted to make a film, and one little boy suggested that I write the script.
