The title always comes last. What I really work hard on is the beginning. Where do you begin? In what tone do you begin? I almost have to have a scene in my mind.
The writer must be a participant in the scene... like a film director who writes his own scripts, does his own camera work, and somehow manages to film himself in action, as the protagonist or at least the main character.
I watched a couple of really bad directors work, and I saw how they completely botched it up and missed the visual opportunities of the scene when we had put things in front of them as opportunities. Set pieces, props and so on.
I have a number of writers I work with regularly. I write an outline for a book. The outlines are very specific about what each scene is supposed to accomplish.
I definitely want to work with Thom Yorke. I want to work with Damien Marley; there's a few international artists I wouldn't mind working with - like Massacre Children would be ill, and I still have an affinity for the U.K. hip hop scene.
If I've done my work well, I vanish completely from the scene. I believe it is invasive of the work when you know too much about the writer.
I believe I'm doing the right thing in trying to step away from that and to take chances and work on little independent films and do stuff like that wild dance scene.
If it's not in New York, let's say it's in St. Louis, then they've got to find a place or get with someone who knows about the work... they've got to find a place like that and do scenes, and then try to get in plays.
Honestly, as an actor, all I need to know, the way I kind of look at a scene, is like a puzzle. There are certain puzzle pieces that are bigger than others, and all I need to know is if this is going to fit here to make this part of the puzzle work.
The comptroller of New York City ought to have all the characteristics of a major corporation's CFO - quiet rigor, obsessive care for detail, incorruptible judgment, an ability to work assiduously behind the scenes with the key stakeholders.
Of course, women have long exercised influence behind the scenes. A few thousand years ago this drove Aristotle to distraction: 'What difference does it make whether women rule or the rulers are ruled by women? The result is the same.'
At the last parent visitation night I'd sorta accidentally watched a majorly nightmarish scene between Aphrodite and her parents. Her dad's the mayor of Tulsa. Her mom might be Satan.
If you haven't caused a scene in a psych unit, it's just because you haven't been inside long enough.
The true magic of novels dwells within us individually. Each reader will interpret every single character, scene, and metaphor in a slightly different way
So now books were her only friends. She'd read so often she could recite whole scenes by memory. It was not a skill that aided one in becoming popular.
We're standing here, beat to shit, walking away from a crime scene where either or both of us could have bought it, and you're asking me to marry you?" "Perfect timing.
I was enjoying myself now. I had taken two finger bowls of champagne and the scene had changed before my eyes into something significant, elemental and profound.
A brick could be used to direct traffic. Use a brick from the scene of the accident, where some driver ran into a brick wall.
We were the ones on scene when everything went down. We weren't better. We weren't worse. We were just the ones standing in the blast radius.
A scene should be selected by the writer for haunted-ness-of-mind interest. If you're not haunted by something, as by a dream, a vision, or a memory, which are involuntary, you're not interested or even involved.
I learned from an early age that my heritage, my love for people, and my desire to be a vehicle that can be used through my voice, that my expressions and actions can transport a person to experience a scene from the past, present and future.
