Public speaking professionals say that you win or lose the battle to hold your audience in the first 30 seconds of a given presentation.
The trick for business professionals, and for educators, is to present bodies of information so compelling that the audience does this (encoding) on their own, spontaneously engaging in deep and elaborate encoding.
Audiences like me doing action and comedy. I am a jovial person and have been so from childhood. I like to laugh my way through my work, and that attitude reflects in my roles. Even women hate me doing rona-dhona roles. So I don't do emotional films.
I have a philosophy that white people would be interested in Native Americans because, first of all, it's probably the only group as a country we all study and know the history and then never study again past the age of 10. So I think we have these t...
Every time I sit in the audience and watch a show that I have been involved with, it is such an amazing feeling to see all those people around me, knowing they are actually watching and enjoying something I have written. That is such a feeling of pur...
I keep getting amazing things to bring to life. There's always something to discover with 'Dr. Bailey,' something that brings her home to the audience, something that makes people say, 'I know that woman. I work with that woman.' It's incredibly flat...
I think the U.K. is an amazing place and has been extremely good to me. Some of my favorite and most-listened-to bands are from England. I have met many good people there and have been in front of some of the most loyal audiences I have ever encounte...
Bob Dylan may be the Charlie Chaplin of rock n' roll. Both men are regarded as geniuses by their entire audience. Both were proclaimed revolutionaries for their early work and subjected to exhaustive attack when later works were thought to be inferio...
Frank Capra, Hollywood's Horatio Alger, lights with more cinematic know-how and zeal than any other director to convince movie audiences that American life is exactly like the 'Saturday Evening Post' covers of Norman Rockwell. 'It's A Wonderful Life,...
Jazz music and, more specifically, jazz musicians, are my artistic heroes. I want to be the Thelonious Monk of acting. He had no concern for how well he was received. He played whatever he wanted whenever he wanted. He just wasn't interested in achie...
Opinions are like nipples, everybody has one. Some have firm points, others are barely discernible through layers, and some are displayed at every opportunity regardless of whether the audience has stated "I am interested in your nipples" or not.
On the stage Tristen bent over the piano, his fingers swift and sure, his blond hair gleaming under the spotlight. I glanced around at the audience, watching their faces, gratified that they were as captivated as I was by the dark, thunderous song th...
And, corny as it may sound, I do cherish the bond between me and the audience, the minority that follows my stuff and always makes me glad it's us against the world.
I heard the silence pouring from them. The audience held themselves quiet, tense, and tight, as if the song had burned them worse than flame. Each person held their wounded selves closely, clutching their pain as if it were a precious thing.
One of the many innovations of modernism was the new demands it placed on the audience. Music, painting, literature, even architecture, would never again be quite so 'easy' as they had been.
Striving to convey to this beloved audience of one what was going on around me during those five years, I learned the power of language to map a life, to overcome a distance, to focus attention on what matters most.
Without any music, I started to dance. I wanted the music to be inside me, or at least for it to appear that way. I imagined myself the lead with an audience here to see me perform in a famous ballet. In my fantasy, there was no panic attack. I was f...
A recovery of the old sense of sin is essential to Christianity. Christ takes for granted that men are bad. Until we really feel this assumption of His to be true, though we are part of the world He came to save, we are not part of the audience to wh...
Despite being named Scott, I really like not being named Scott. I make love like I have no idea what my name is or where I’m at or why there’s always one guy in the audience who’s heckling.
The rocky terrain wasn’t the reason we were on uneven footing. She had no feet, and I was in love. We made love like Nickelback makes music—and I enjoyed it, but I wish the fans in the audience wouldn’t have screamed so loud.
A magician who could make the audience’s problems disappear—now that’s someone I’d pay to throw tomatoes at. If I didn’t have any problems, I’d still have a problem, because I’d have nothing to blame my failures on.
