I don't do a lot of rehearsal. I don't like rehearsals. I rehearse the day or morning. I spend one hour and a half with all the actors, and we go over the scenes, and we change it and change the dialogue, and we do a lot of things to it, but prior to...
I remember watching 'Colombo' a lot with my dad. That was one of the first detective shows I remember watching. And I remember my dad turning to me - my dad loves to turn to me and explain why things are funny. He used to do that with 'Seinfeld' all ...
Social media reactions to celebrity death have taken on a predictable pattern: an outpouring of shock with expressions of grief, followed by a ghoulish need to know all the details, to see the scene of the death and the family in mourning. Then a pos...
I find that kid actors are great reminders of the simplicity of acting. As you get older, you can sometimes complicate things a little more. You can become too aware of, 'Okay, this is the scene emotionally. This is where we need to be. We've got the...
I spend a great deal of time on research, on finding all the available accounts of a scene or incident, finding out all the background details and the biographies of the people involved there, and I try to run up all the accounts side by side to see ...
My view is that musicals are love stories with great final scenes. It's just that simple. Musicals are also conflicts between two worlds. And by those criteria, 'The Color Purple' is actually exactly the kind of story that makes for a great musical. ...
Every time you do a take on a movie, you're not sure if it's going to succeed. Even if you have a great cast, like we had, every scene you're kind of waiting for the release. 'Oh, yes; it happened. We got it!' There's always the possibility that it's...
If you give me a typewriter and I'm having a good day, I can write a scene that will astonish its readers. That will perhaps make them laugh, perhaps make them cry - that will have some emotional clout to it. It doesn't cost much to do that.
I believe how you measure a good movie is how many times you can see it. With comedies, I like to be a producer, because comedies can get corny and go off track real fast. I'm always the 'less is more' guy when it comes to a scene. So I'ma be the one...
If you've been around as long as I have, watching the literary scene, then you know that who's in and who's out changes by the year. It's really a very fluid situation that requires that the person who is having the good luck now isn't having it a ye...
What I enjoy most with acting is when it's a good scene with one or two other actors, and you feel a strong connection, and you don't know how you're going to respond, and everybody is listening to each other and getting affected by each other, and e...
In the States, this type of jam-band phenomena has opened it up for groups to improvise, admittedly more in the groove area, as opposed to the straight-ahead jazz thing - which is good for me, as that's one part of where I'm at. It's been so great pl...
I would always prefer radio or working behind the scenes where I don't have to be seen. I don't like how appearance oriented TV is (especially now that I'm middle aged!). But I am developing a show revolving around animal rescue which will hopefully ...
I'm proud of 'The Hidden.' I feel like we took a B-movie and kind of turned it into an A-minus action movie. We kind of elevated the material a little bit. It's got a great car-chase scene at the very beginning. It has some terrific moments in it, so...
But I've always felt that the less you know about an actor's personal life, the more you can get involved in the story in which he's playing a character. And I don't like to see movies where you know about everything that happens behind the scenes. I...
I would say my fraternity was nothing but a bunch of farm boys; we weren't really in the whole fraternity scene, but yeah, that's a safe assessment of who I am. I've lived that life, growing up in agriculture and then going off to college and joining...
Usually when I'm making a movie, what I have in mind first, for the visuals, is how we can stage the scenes to bring them more to life in the most interesting way, and then how we can make a world for the story that the audience hasn't quite been in ...
I love working with the Farrelly brothers. I'm a big fan and feel very lucky to have gotten to work with them a few times. One thing that I learned while working with them is that you have to keep your cell phone off when filming scenes, or you owe t...
I love directing more than anything in the world, and I love being in the editing room. I love cutting. When I'm shooting, I cut it in my head anyway. That's not to say that it always turns out that way, but you have a sense when you're composing a s...
Mainstream media has convinced people that black people aren't relatable. So when a Jewish person comes up to me and is all, 'Oh man, I love that one scene from Episode 3, I watch it over and over again,' I'm so happy. Because that's what I want.
Work out really hard and be confident because bodies are beautiful, sensual and natural. I've also trained in Wushu, a form of martial arts - it's very beautiful and flowy, and it's predominantly used in fight scenes in movies, which is how it was in...
