Being performers, that’s what we do: We put on shows and want people to watch.
I got to sit down with people who I admired, and have conversations with some of the greatest thinkers and artists and performers. It’s a huge privilege for me to be a journalist.
I think we live in an entertainment world where performers like to flaunt how great they are. The Conchords don’t do that. Even when they stumble onstage, people like it.
My love of performers is not really different than my love for painters. Everyone’s really high-strung and trying to do the best they can.
Honestly, I just love great performers and people who love what they do.
I firmly believe the industry does not let down performers.
At the end of the day, I look at it like this: pro wrestling is really hard on the performers, the luchadoras, and any time a performer is in a position to do something good for themselves and make money, I’m always happy to see that happen.
The climate in the ’50s and ’60s for black performers or black people in the entertainment business was atrocious. It was atrocious.
For directors and producers, you’re not going to get competent performers on your set if they didn’t start at a young age and understand professionalism.
Actors very often are people who think it’s always about ‘me,’ and I can see why! No one else is going to support you or say, ‘Gosh, I’m sorry about that,’ or, ‘Here, let me give you a job.’ It doesn’t happen that way. You can see why performers get very self-absorbed.
There is just a lot of creativity and theatricality in performers who happen to be gay. Maybe there’s a success in numbers, so by the law of averages we are going to get these jobs.
I think performers who pretend fashion doesn’t matter are huge liars.
Steve Martin is one of my favorite performers, writers, artists of all time.
Performers are the neediest people in the world. Unless you’ve been in that goldfish bowl – nobody can judge unless they’ve worn those shoes.
When you have great performers and have set your movie in the right direction, it’s a beautiful privilege to let the camera watch the action unfold without spoken words.
I don’t view the fans in the way that most performers do. As a mass of people who have paid money, I know what they want. It’s a very, very, very, very, very low common denominator.
My work is very popular with performers, and there are theatre people who get what I’m doing and what tradition I’m working in. I’m very grateful to them – they’re my people, who understand why I work the way I do.
The biggest trap that all performers and writers find is that when something really crazy, really bad happens, your mind immediately goes to, ‘Can I write about this?’ – which is good and bad.
Songwriters aren’t always performers, and even performing songwriters aren’t always the kind of show-biz performers you think they’d be.
Artists like Mehmood, Dilip Kumar, Amitabh Bachchan are performers… they are born in centuries.
People react differently to puppets than they do to human performers: they become more playful, more open.
Nowadays, performers worry too much about how they look. They’re not concerned about what they’re really saying to their audience.
I love working with talented young performers.
It doesn’t matter where we’re from, we all have to stick together and help each other out as performers and as human beings.
Roman Reigns is, if not the best, one of the best performers in the world, hands down.
I’m honored to be in a position to have young girls or performers look up to me.
I once went to La Boca district, where you can watch street performers doing tango, and joined in. But it’s very hard to dance in Birkenstocks.
You need actors and performers, but there has to be content in a film.
The cast you are working with is important because it involves a give-and-take relationship. For me, when you have strong performers, multiple things happen, the magic of creation happens. That’s where you build the craft.
The biggest concern for most actors has and always will be getting enough work – it’s just part of our profession – but a real change is the idea that performers have to be more versatile and entrepreneurial in their careers.
I think for me, as far as cooking, some of it came naturally just from watching my dad. My dad was more of the cook than my mom was, so it’s just handing it down from generation to generation. I just love to cook and have fun. And as performers, we love to cook, and we love to entertain people.
It always gave me the creeps when I saw performers who desperately wanted the audience to like them. That’s not what I’m about.
We performers sacrifice so much for your entertainment.
The words we use have weight. Whether it’s in a conversation with a friend or something said publicly on stage or broadcast. And as performers, we know that because that’s why we choose the words we use – that’s the whole point of comedy.
You know, there’s still a lot of great songwriters out there who hand in songs. And there’s a lot of brilliant singers and performers out there who sing other people’s words. I enjoy doing both.
I was waiting for the world to change. I’m no longer waiting; I’m part of that movement. I think our role as performers and entertainers is so much bigger.
I was very aware of performers who have a persona, whether it’s Siouxsie Sioux or Patti Smith or Lydia Lunch, and I’m just this middle-class girl coming from a more conventional upbringing, this California person. But in a way I felt like it’s important to represent the normal.
Canada has given us John Candy and Martin Short and Bill Shatner and Lord knows how many other wonderful performers.
It has been my experience that the greatest performers in the genre of sports-entertainment are usually natural extensions of their own, true personality.
Ibushi isn’t going anywhere. He’s staying with me, and I support his success 100%. But we will continue our success as the Golden Lovers, both as a tag team and as single performers.
Kids listen to performers and we have a duty to give them certain critical information.
I love to work with performers that are very different to me.
I had to find a way to get off the streets because it was too windy. So I started organizing variety shows of street performers. I would rent a hall, cafe or bar so I could put on a show. I did that for years before the ‘Tonight Show With Johnny Carson’ heard about this odd thing I did with bubbles.
What I love so much about drag is that it has politics at its very core; drag performers aren’t afraid to talk about politics in our community and the changes we need to see systemically in society.
We aren’t people who believe that just because we’re performers our opinions on everything need to be known.
There are some strong female performers out there. But the industry’s pre-occupation with the packaging of how a woman looks has gone completely the other way, back to almost the 60s, early 70s.
We’re not very confident performers, and if we don’t get a laugh we get insecure.
For me, it’s all about having the performers feel confident in their movements and surroundings. And then I’ll figure out how to photograph it afterward.
Part of the Hong Kong style is the fact that a lot of the performers can perform the moves, and we don’t over-rehearse this stuff.
When we perform music at TV shows, we always try to do something that’s not scripted because anything that’s a surprise for the audience and the crew and the other performers, it works better on camera and for the people back home, too.
We’ve never been, really, singers or performers. We are a little bit but we are not like Mick Jagger or Keith Richards or anyone like that.
There are a lot of bands and performers whose careers are permanently derailed by spectacularly bad management.
I’m from the school that great performers and great leaders create more great leaders. Give people other experiences, other responsibilities. Have them join organizations within the company and outside the company.
There are few performers who would have had the audacity to even bring up the fact that they had been poorly reviewed.
A lot of performers don’t want to leave the circuit, the European opera house circuit, partly because most singers don’t sing many concerts, or at least not while they are in their prime.
When I look around, I see so many incredible Black performers, inside and outside of our company. It feels like a really great time for Black wrestlers, and there are so many Black wrestling fans that I feel are starting to see themselves on screen.
I have been trying to find out exactly when listeners and performers decided that applause between movements would not be allowed, but nobody seems to have been willing to admit that they were the culprit.
There are performers who have built their whole career doing magic on TV and can’t really perform live at all – don’t really have jobs and skills.
Wrestling is to go out there and perform and make people believe that either of the performers in the ring can win – either the bad guy or the good guy.
Perhaps it is no surprise I became an entertainer because many of my relatives were natural performers. Dad, who had a fine pair of lungs, was master of ceremonies at East Ham working men’s club in east London. I felt so proud when I saw him in his white gloves calling out the names of the dances.
