The only reason I was offered ‘Punisher’ was because I had made an indie film that was rated R for violence and was filled with fight scenes.
The thing is, you never know with any movie how it’s going to turn out. It’s always a mystery – you’ll do pages and pages of scenes that will never make it onto the screen.
All I can say is that with ‘The Golden Compass,’ I didn’t get to make the movie I had planned to make. When I look at the film, at the casting and certain scenes, I’m very happy. As for the final product, I can’t vouch for that.
Intimate scenes are always super awkward – and that is the truth. I know everybody says it, but it really is true.
The so-called commercialism includes elements like story, plots, rhythms and large big scenes.
I made three or four different fonts during ‘Short Term 12’ -‘ it was how I’d calm my mind between scenes. I have graph paper and gel pens, and I would do the alphabet: just do ‘a’ over and over again until I got it perfect and then go to ‘b’ and then ‘c’.
Something that I learned from ‘Friday Night Lights,’ sometimes if you have four or five scenes in an episode, it’s not having less than having 10. It’s what you do with those scenes.
I do all of my own stunts in videos. The Jet Ski scenes, the fight scenes, all of them!
I often found that my favorite scene that I shoot is often one that I cut out, like in ‘The Last Castle’ and ‘The Contender.’ If you look at the deleted scenes, some of the best scenes never made it into the film.
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.
What I remember myself from films, and what I love about films, is specific scenes and characters.
No more bare bodies in film scenes for me. For my children’s sake, I must stop. The other kids at school keep throwing it up to my children, and they are not kind.
I’ve done scenes in films that I felt like the performance was better in certain takes, but they couldn’t use them because it didn’t match what the person was doing when they came around and the camera was on them.
I’ve realized that I owe people a look behind the scenes of my own story, because I don’t think anyone can have a true understanding of the music without an insight into where it came from.
I am very interested in behind the scenes, and I am very creative.
I don’t actually do anything special to get in the proper frame of mind for creepy/heinous scenes.
Everything in ‘The Tudors’ is initially based on my historical research, and the fact is that the most unlikely scenes were the ones which were probably most based on reality. I prefer to be as real as possible, and there is so much of that story that you just can’t make up.
I like Robo Shankar – he evokes laughter, he has a unique body language and style. I loved all scenes of his in ‘Maari.’
Usually, in a studio, when it’s supposed to look cold, it’s boiling hot. And then, the hot scenes, you’re freezing.
I think the perception of me can be, you know, confused. But that’s only because people only see that side of me when I’m at work, in front of the camera. So they don’t see Miranda at home; they don’t see behind the scenes. They see the glamour of it all but they don’t see Miranda standing barefoot in a dirty old house.
I am kind of the front man for a team of people behind the scenes who are working just as hard as me and are putting in just as much time to make this all happen. I’m not trying to be humble. I just want everyone to get credit where credit is due.
The scene in South Florida when we were growing up, it wasn’t divided. It wasn’t different scenes. If you played loud or crazy music, you were on the same show.
Running my show is really like an actor being in repertory but where, in one day in one performance, you do scenes from a drama, a farce, a low comedy and a tragedy.
There’s scenes where I really want to get things right, and all the kids know me as the person who says, ‘Sorry.’ I think I’ve gotten a lot better with that, but it’s still the thing that I’m still worried about, trying to get the scene perfect.
Some of the best scenes in drama take almost no time – helping to illustrate that life-changing events in real life often occur in a split second, after which nothing is ever the same.
Everyone sort of sees his own life and times as being ephemeral. One thinks that everything good or important that happened, happened in the past. But I think that seeing scenes that you are used to, but with the heightening effects of poetry, perhaps makes you value your life and times more than you might otherwise do.
Looking back, when my cousins and I were kids, we’d put together these little skits – these 10-minute improv scenes. I didn’t really understand what I was doing – that I was writing these mini-sketches and acting – but we were all totally into it.
I think it’s just a lot more pressure to make the scenes work when you’re doing a film, because when you’re doing a series you feel like, I have so many scenes, so many episodes, so if I don’t get it exactly right this time, I have another scene later. You feel less pressure.
Stage acting lets you feel the character a little better, but in the movies, you have to keep regenerating your energy level when shooting scenes over and over again.
Every other show that I’m on, they’re always rushed, and you feel this pressure to hurry up and get out of the scene, but I don’t feel that way on ‘Transparent.’ They like to linger in these scenes.
When I’m working, I don’t wake up and say, ‘OK, time to go be intense.’ I just look at whatever scenes we’re working on that day and break them down – just real intense everyday work.
My wife knows that I love her too much, so she is fine with the intimate scenes I do. She also knows that only if my role justifies such a scene will I do it. She understands my work as an actor.
The key to making good movies is to pay attention to the transition between scenes.
My tutors at drama school commended and criticised my use of comedy in my acting for a long time at drama school. They said I had a tendency to somehow perform the most tragic of scenes in a slightly flippant way.
When ‘Pune-52’ was offered to me, I liked the script, but I wasn’t convinced about the kissing and other intimate scenes. I tried talking to the director, but things didn’t work out.
The great thing about Snapchat is your fans can get a detailed experience of what your life is like behind the scenes.
I was doing a lot of boxing through ‘Lost,’ thrashing a bag at least three days a week. If I had shirtless scenes, I’d do it six days a week.
You think about D.C. as a boring stuffy place. That’s kind of its image. But if you grow up in that, you see all these energetic, fun people and crazy stuff that happens behind the scenes that no one knows about.
Parts that are desexed, matronly – to just put me in a couple of scenes and have me be the older, you know, dead character, is not gonna fly with me.
Scenes change all the time. Scenes will change while you’re shooting them, and you just have to roll with it ’cause that’s what makes it funny. It’s not being stuck in your character and how you’re gonna do something, but to react to other people and to really have a real-life conversation.
Nobody really knows who I am, where I came from, what’s in my heart, why I believe in the things I believe, what I see behind the scenes and they don’t see.
The most boring scenes are the scenes where a character is alone.
‘Lassie’ was amazing. I didn’t have any scenes with humans. There’s a couple little bits, here or there, but mainly just me and my horse and a couple of dogs in the Isle of Man.
Young actors often don’t think of the consequences of doing nudity or sex scenes. They want the role so badly that they agree to be exploited, and then end up embarrassing family, friends, and even strangers.
I tend to stay in character between scenes… to be rather serious on set, but here’s why, and I think people will find it surprising. I’m one of the worst ‘corpses’ on a movie set, which means you can’t keep a straight face. You start to get the giggles and you can’t stop.
I’m always impressed with the work of animators. You have to be able to draw the scenes in between movements. I’m impressed with the way they can do that – I don’t think I could.
No one really sees pro athletes behind the scenes. They don’t know how hard they work. They don’t see how you work on the basics. They couldn’t possibly know. You wouldn’t think that someone who hits like Alex Rodriguez needs to use a tee every day. But that’s how he stayed on top of it.
With ‘Call Me by Your Name,’ they locked off the camera and let scenes play out in long, wide shots to make them feel almost voyeuristic.
Something I learned as an actor was which scenes needed to be rehearsed and which actors are good with rehearsal, which actors learn from it, and which ones grow stale because they start to second-guess themselves.
When you’re adapting a novel, there are always scenes taken out of the book, and no matter which scenes they are, it’s always someone’s favorite. As a screenwriter, you realize, ‘Well, it doesn’t work if you include everyone’s favorite scenes.’
In ‘Dark Skye,’ I rewrote every one of the Pandemonia scenes over and over before I was happy with them – hundreds of pages are now sitting in a folder called ‘Cuttings,’ never to be read. Ouch!
