When I got a call from Hansal Mehta, the CEO of White Feathers, asking me to come for one of their films, I was very happy. I thought they’d have an interesting role for me. But when I got to know they just wanted me to stand in for Sanjay Dutt for some scenes, I decided to give this offer the pass.
Scenes on phones are really boring!
When the characters are believable and endearing, action scenes, for example, make an impact. Otherwise, the audience gets no kick out of action. The biggest strength of ‘MCA’ is that its characters are real.
I have never been to an acting school, and on the sets of ‘Karwaan,’ Irrfan was my acting school. By observing him, I learnt to improvise in the scenes along with focusing on the smallest of the details.
Because Blue Peter can get you access to places – if you go to somewhere like Nasa, you don’t just see what most people see, you can get a lot of behind the scenes access. You can talk to an astronaut.
I think there’s a lot of things that occur within the African-American community, that we would prefer to stay within the African-American community – that we get a little nervous when you start having scenes or dialogue that we know is going to be viewed and heard on a national or global scale.
I have fear of the audience and I am responsible for the scenes involving me, be it as a comedian or hero.
I was really impressed with the dining scenes and how amazing the culinary scene is in Nashville.
I must have written 15 lyrics for ‘The Lion King,’ and only five or six were used. Some were scenes that disappeared, some were earlier versions of songs that didn’t work, or else the characters changed.
With things like ‘Dragon Ball,’ in the case of fight scenes, I’d take the panel layout across two pages when the book is opened and alter it by angling them, and making them bigger or smaller, to give movement to the panels themselves.
Watching the scenes out of New Orleans, if you turn down the sound it could be the Sudan or any Third World country. But it’s not. it’s the United States of America.
I think I went more toward writing because that’s my talent. I don’t think I was a great performer… And I like being behind the scenes a little bit.
I did a 20-minute selection of scenes from the play ‘Spring Awakening’ in college, well before the musical came around, so when the musical was becoming a hot thing, and I was reading interviews with Duncan Sheik about how he came to do the music, I think it’s interesting.
Chase scenes normally just have to be exciting and, you know, not a lot of emotion you need to go through. It’s just about getting from A to B with as much excitement as you can.
Apparently, I’m very good at firing a gun without blinking, which is unusual. That’s why so many action characters have to wear sunglasses during shoot-out scenes. That’s my party trick.
The hardest part of writing ‘William Shakespeare’s Star Wars’ was probably the sheer amount of iambic pentameter and tiptoeing around certain scenes I knew would be hot-button issues for ‘Star Wars’ fans.
For a director, the most challenging scenes are the dialogue scenes.
To this day I over prepare. I draw storyboards for every scene – chicken scratches so crude that they amuse and horrify the crew. I send out shot lists, act out the scenes, and search for a theme that I can relate to. It’s my favorite time of the process.
I try to stay away from stuff that’s just action, action, action, action, action, and you kind of fast-forward through the dialogue scenes. I’m not interested in doing that. Give me a reason to fight, and I’ll go there. But don’t just make it, ‘You touched my pen! Haaa-yah!’ I’ve done that before.
It was really an experience, being my first time directing a movie. The scenes that I was in, Brooke really directed me all the time. And the scenes that both of us were in, Brooke directed those. Come to think of it, Brooke directed most of the scenes.
As an artist, as I design and lay out a page, the less-important things, things I want you to spend less time looking at, I draw them very small, maybe even silhouette them. The more-important pivotal scenes, I draw them larger, maybe even a double-page spread.
The challenge for me is to make sure I’ve done my work. To make sure not every scene is quiet, that other scenes rise up, that there’s different tension.
Usually, I don’t revisit a scene once shot. However, in ‘Gentleman,’ every morning on the sets, I had to revisit the last four scenes and then shoot for the next set of scenes.
I am extremely lucky that I have a husband who is so supportive. He’s not in the slightest bit jealous or worried about the things I do in certain scenes.
These scenes deal with what happened before Hannibal Lecter was captured for the first time.
I think L.A. actors don’t have much continuity, so you kind of have to force the issue by doing plays and putting up scenes and staying in class.
The fight scenes are pretty easy and come pretty naturally for me, to be honest.
The real rulers in Washington are invisible, and exercise power from behind the scenes.
I love working with the Farrelly brothers. I’m a big fan and feel very lucky to have gotten to work with them a few times. One thing that I learned while working with them is that you have to keep your cell phone off when filming scenes, or you owe them a lot of money!
There’s a difference between publicity and marketing. A lot of writers don’t realize how much marketing goes on beyond the scenes, with sales reps and advanced reading copies, all that stuff that happens months before a book is published.
In the following pages I have endeavoured to describe all that appeared to me most important and interesting among the events and the scenes that came under my notice during my sojourn in the interior of Africa.
I’m a technician. I don’t go for the get-into-the-role stuff. I read the lines and play the scenes.
When we did ‘Boomerang,’ which is one of my favorite scenes, the whole dinner scene was ad-libbed.
I don’t start with a list of historical scenes that I want to include in the book. At a certain point, the narrative totally takes over, and everything that I include I can only incorporate if it answers to the internal terms of the novel.
I’ve been campaigning like anything for restoring these changes. For 27 years. I wrote a book about it, well, a portion of the book was devoted to these scenes and why they should have been in the movie.
I feel like all the songs are little scenes, different angles, of the feelings that come around something ending.
To be honest I don’t watch the show, I don’t watch any TV, so I have no idea what the show is about. I go to Hawaii, shot my scenes and script and ‘Ciao.’ I’m not a ‘Lost’ fanatic and it’s a disappointment for thousands people and friends that are dying to know what will happen. They know more than me.
Let me completely condemn these sickening scenes; scenes of looting, scenes of vandalism, scenes of thieving, scenes of people attacking police, of people even attacking firefighters. This is criminality pure and simple and it has to be confronted.
When you cut a film, certain scenes fall away and don’t fit into the shape of the movie.
If your character is written well and is meaty enough, even two scenes has the potential to stand out.
My favorite way of making films – and what has allowed me to get key scenes in ‘Cartel Land’ and ‘City of Ghosts’ – has been when I’ve been able to operate alone.
Because of ‘Line Of Duty’s proper adherence to police procedure, by definition we end up doing some very long interrogation scenes which are difficult to learn, and require lots of concentration to sustain them across shooting.
Well the Bombay film wasn’t always like how it is now. It did have a local industry. There were realistic films made on local scenes. But it gradually changed over the years.
I went swimming the other day and my wife was watching and she said, ‘You know, it’s funny, it’s when you’ve got no clothes on, no one recognizes you.’ I said, ‘What are you saying? That I should do more love scenes?’
I’m not the kind of actress that goes home with the character. I mean, you’re thinking about the work or the next day’s scenes, but not staying in character. But as a film goes on, you become more and more fragile, emotionally. And physically too, actually.
Some scenes you juggle two balls, some scenes you juggle three balls, some scenes you can juggle five balls. The key is always to speak in your own voice. Speak the truth. That’s Acting 101. Then you start putting layers on top of that.
There’s entrenched homophobia behind the scenes at all levels of the music industry.
When I realised, on ‘The Straits,’ that physical work in the theatre takes much longer than directing scenes, it was like a eureka moment. If you want to work physically, you have to accommodate it, and it takes a disproportionate amount of time.
You see a lot of talented people, but you usually don’t see talented people who, behind the scenes, know how to conduct themselves on a higher level.
It’s hard to leave behind scenes and characters I am in love with.
The action scenes you’ll see in ‘Saaho’ are all real – it’s going to look fantastic.
In terms of graphic versus prose, I could probably do a lecture on that topic. But what stood out most was the difference in pacing the language and resulting scenes. One illustration can do so much for the reader.
