No matter how close to personal experience a story might be, inevitably you are going to get to a part that isn't yours and, actually, whether it happened or not becomes irrelevant. It is all about choosing the right words.
It's hard to conceive of someone who could work for at least a few hours each day for months and years on the same story without it being close enough to their life experience to fuel their commitment.
The thing is, the Tulsa experience that I wrote about in 'The Outsiders' is closer to the universal experience than it would be if I wrote it from L.A. or New York. It's an everyman story.
Having had that experience... I think, what modern culture wants to see is the relationship with the woman. I don't think you can tell a story on film nowadays where the woman simply is there for the man when he decides to settle down.
I was surprised how relevant the Moses story was to contemporary American debates - from our ongoing debate about values, to our role as champions of freedom, to our place as a country that welcome immigrants.
The nice thing about the Bible is it doesn't give you too many facts. Two an a half lines and it tells you the whole story and that leaves you a great deal of freedom to elaborate on how it might have happened.
It's just so much fun to make up characters, situations, and everything else about a story. I have so much freedom and flexibility to do whatever I want.
War is tragedy. The great war stories are tragedies. It's the failure of diplomacy. 'War and Peace,' 'A Farewell to Arms,' 'For Whom the Bell Tolls.' Those are some of the greatest tragedies.
Like prospecting in the 19th century, reconnaissance of the asteroids would of necessity take place in an arena where trouble is likely and help is distant. Heroic stories of individual triumph and failure, set on landscapes never seen by humankind, ...
The book came after the fall of the Taliban, it says something about Afghan family life. Those kind of stories - what happens behind the scenes on a TV screen - are important.
I just use my life story as a kind of device on which to hang comic observations. It's not my interest or instinct to tell the world anything pertinent about myself or my family.
While this has been a private part of my family's life, it is now clear a media story will soon emerge. My father tragically ended his life while battling terminal cancer in 1979.
My aunts told wonderful stories. Not to me, but to each other. We had a very strong family. My mother's sisters loved each other intensely. The uncles loved each other intensely.
I was very young, and I was on vacation with my family, and there was a retrospective of old films, and one of them was 'The Phantom of the Opera' with Claude Rains that was in color. It was something very important for my career because I began to f...
Sitting down at the table is a sacred event. It's the heart of the home. People have ginormous homes or crappy little homes, but the kitchen is where we always end up sitting. It's where the stories happen, the family happens.
You know, what I like about 'The Family Tree' is it's a kitchen sink movie; you can't think of anything that it doesn't either throw into the story for conflict or poke fun at or attack, even, so I like it.
Those who peacefully gather to express sympathy for the family of Michael Brown must have their rights respected at all times. And journalists must not be harassed or prevented from covering a story that needs to be told.
I actually have a life I said I wanted to have. I wanted to tell stories I want and be with my family. I'm whispering it, because I'm a quarter Jewish and afraid it's all going to be taken away.
As my family story shows, Latinos have been a blessing for USA for many generations. The future of America depends in part on the success of the Latino community, and this opportunity is just one more signifier of that.
So finally, I can feel a sort of pride in all my family - Mum, Lynn, Corin, Tasha, my cousin Gemma - because, I think how wonderful that this troop of gypsies can carry on telling stories.
Hallmark makes beautiful films that feel as if they should be watched in a theater. The Hall family knows the power of stories, and they give us unforgettable movies with heart and depth and the resonance of classics.
