For me it came from the material. It was so well written and brought the opportunity to work with great actors. And of course the opportunity to 'mince about' was an added element that I wanted to take advantage of!
Kevin, as the whole cast is, just wonderful people and great people, and people who are attracted to this kind of material and accepting the idea of going to Newfoundland and knowing the kind of lack of amenities.
Strong female characters - even if they don't necessarily make the same decisions that we might - make such great narrative material, especially when there's an equally strong male character in the mix.
I just like to go where the material is, whether that's TV, or movies, or the stage. As long as it's great writing, it's pretty much something I can't resist.
I have a great respect for the academics who are working with the source material. My hat's off to them.
I never regret things. It's a really dangerous thing to say, but for anyone involved in the arts, the bad things that happen make for good material. It's not a comfortable truth, but it is true.
I can't say that I wouldn't prefer to make small films, basically because I think they are probably more interesting in terms of the material. But every now and again, it's quite good to do a big one.
Good buildings make and are made by their settings, and they are appropriately different in different locations. Climate, culture, topography and materials have helped create regional architectural languages that seem curiously right for their locati...
I wanted to be an actor. That was my real goal. But I wasn't any good at it, so I wrote my own material and acted through that. That's my idea of fun. I get to be all these things in the songs.
First of all, Craig Lucas' work, any of it, for any actor, is such good material. It's so alive in such a poetic, yet human way. It's theatrical, but it lets you emotionally connect with the characters.
In every place there are 100 people who can say no and only one person who can say yes. You have to get a good piece of material to the right person.
The good man is he who rules himself as he does his own property: his autonomous being is modelled on material power.
Film is an editor's medium. You can create very good raw material and they can make it horrible, or you can do not so well and they can make it beautiful. You don't really know.
I fear a permanent Confederation will never be settled; tho the most material articles are I think got thro', so as to give great offence to some, but to my Satisfaction.
More recently, as faith gave way to materialism, anti-Semitism assumed a secular mode, harnessing itself to the dominant ideologies of both the Left and the Right.
I have the feeling it will influence my future writing to the extent that without any material worries I could develop a greater ease, even lightheartedness, in my writing.
So that's why one of my rules of parody writing is that it's gotta be funny regardless of whether you know the source material. It has to work on its own merit.
When I say, 'I can't stay long, I'm in-between meals,' that plays differently on the radio than it does in person. So I have to pick material that works because the words are funny, not just because of the images.
The most important thing is to write material that YOU think is funny. If you don't think it's funny, but you're convinced that other people will think it is, well they won't.
I'm always thinking of stuff; I just don't sit down and write it. I come up with material more as I go along; if something funny happens, I'll make a note of it on my phone.
Your basic person wants to talk about material culture, internet culture. I think about God, cats, nature.
