I love TV, don't get me wrong. But with film, you're just banging out this one product, and you're not waiting on another script. You have your script. It's great in that way. It's as close to theater as you can get.
'Among Friends' was really well written and had strong characters, and while all the elements were there to make it a great genre film, it also left room for me to put a creative flair on it that wasn't your typical slasher or psychological thriller.
I had to go and sing with the musical director of the film, Simon Lee, who is just incredible, and it went great. I sang with him about five things, things we'd worked on. And then I went to sing for Andrew Lloyd Weber.
There's a great deal of women in film school. I was not the only woman in my class at UCLA. When I went through the Sundance program, it was half women and half men.
When women get great roles in life, they start to get great roles in films and TV. Look at Janet Reno, Madeleine Albright, and Mrs. Thatcher. Because those images are coming at us in life, they are reflected in acting.
I guess I judge my films by how pleased I am with the work I do, so it's kind of on another level. If they do well at the box office, then that's great. Then I'm really pleased about that too.
What I loved about 'Goodfellas' is that it's a film about bad behavior - but told with great energy and without judgment - but it doesn't actually shy away from the consequences of that behavior in the characters' lives, which I think is similar in '...
'Dark Circles' is a great relationship/character piece and also a horror film. It tinkered with the genre, which I loved. I was sick of seeing the same thing, sick of people just trying to get a movie made.
We work in an environment where your options are to do, you know, Batman 10, so when you get to do a movie that's a really great film like this, people really step up to the plate and enjoy it.
Obviously I've had great experiences with people I've worked with on films - I've married half of them! I should come with a warning sign that says, 'Don't worry, I'm not going to try to marry you. I'm done.'
It's a great thriller or mystery, but on another level it's a film about the fact that, if you only look at a person through one lens, or only believe what you're told, you can often miss the truth that is staring you in the face.
Content that's generated out of America, whether it be film or music, has, in my opinion, much greater impact in sustaining our credibility and our place as a cultural capital. This is our great export.
Randy Newman and I grew up together in Los Angeles. We are both products of the film studio era. Randy is one of the great songwriters of our time and one of the fun people to be with.
There came a point in time when Michael was under a great deal of pressure to alter the film in a way that was just disturbing to him. I had not seen the movie, yet. He phoned me in July of '92 to look at his version.
TV and film were always governing passions of mine, and that first wave of great HBO shows in the early years of the millennium was feeding my desire for fiction more than the books I was reading.
I really subscribe to that old adage that you should never let the audience get ahead of you for a second. So if the film's abrasive and wrongfoots people then, y'know, that's great. But I hope it involves an audience.
I was opposed to doing TV for a long time because I thought the quality of writing wasn't very strong, as opposed to film, but there's been a shift in term of the quality of scripts. HBO has attracted a tremendous amount of great writing talent.
Old film-noir movies. There's something comforting about watching black-and-white movies, and hearing this kind of music just puts me in a fantasy world. It's a really great escape for me.
It just seemed to me to be a great story, set back in its time but something that seemed to have relevance for our time. Now that the film is coming out, it looks like we're back in another time where repression of expression is all the rage.
I think I've done more recording in the past 10 years than most people, but it's all been directed toward film composing and soundtracks. Just the same, it's been great.
I grew up in a small town, in a small community, and I would not have had access to great plays when I was a kid were it not for the films of 'Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?' and 'Cat on a Hot Tin Roof.'
