The producers who wanted me to do it liked me and trusted me, and more than one scene was only one take, because I’d plan ahead what I thought would be appropriate for that scene-so one take was enough.
Science is the greatest creative impulse of our time. It dominates the intellectual scene and forms our lives, not only in the material things which it has given us, but also in that it guides our spirit.
I really dig the scene that’s happening now, I really do, because there might be a lot of bad things going on, but if out of all of those bad things ten per cent of the groovy part of it stays, wow… you can’t beat that.
We have so much pride in welcoming these passengers onto the plane, and they have so much pride in travel. It’s something that I definitely always remember, when I’m playing a scene on the plane, just to imbue everything with that sense of excitement.
You jot down ideas, memories, whatever, concerning your real life that somehow parallels the character you’re playing, and you incorporate that in your scene work.
These were all middle-class kids from literary backgrounds, joining this sort of train going by, this pop train, jumping on. Whereas the rest of the rock scene, you’ll find that there’s mostly working-class people.
For about seven years. I really like it there. There are a lot of great musicians. The scene is very open. A lot of stuff going on. People’s ears are really open, they are not closed. A lot of scenes here, people just get tunnel vision and are into one thing.
That’s a rule in the business. No tongue. You can’t really get into it, otherwise, it’s weird. I think that particular scene made his (Adam Brody) girlfriend jealous. There were issues.
A James Cagney love scene is one where he lets the other guy live.
I checked myself out in that funeral parlour scene. I saw myself laughing, because there was a shot of Ed and I together and Mary was right in back of us. My head turned from the camera and I saw myself laughing, because Mary was absolutely brilliant in that thing.
The thing with film and theater is that you always know the story so you can play certain cues in each scene with the knowledge that you know where the story’s going to end and how it’s going to go. But on television nobody knows what’s going to happen, even the writers.
Now, what is it which makes a scene interesting? If you see a man coming through a doorway, it means nothing. If you see him coming through a window – that is at once interesting.
However confused the scene of our life appears, however torn we may be who now do face that scene, it can be faced, and we can go on to be whole.
‘Mandie and the Secret Tunnel’ – the book and now the movie – pits a very young woman against forces she cannot control and events she cannot possibly know about. She’s in way over her head, and you’re pulling for her from the opening scene.
I love scoring. Putting music to picture is a rewarding challenge and one that relies on interpretation of emotion – as in, what is the pivotal feeling in a scene and which character’s point of view is driving it at any given moment?
I’ve gotten very good at scheduling my life, scheduling the scene and preparing myself for knowing, saving the energy, consuming the energy, knowing when to go for it and having the available reserves to be able to do that. You have to think about that, because it’s endurance.
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.
There’ll be moments when I’m out in the prison yard, chatting with the cast and the crew, getting ready to shoot a scene. And then I’ll remember if I were actually an inmate, I’d only be out there an hour. The other 23 hours of the day, I’d be in my cell. It’s kind of a downer.
If you’re sitting in the audience, you probably can’t see the preparation and work that goes into creating a great scene or a great part, but I can assure you that a good film depends on lot of different things falling perfectly into place.
I was always really into the music rather than the scene.
When I finally turned 18, I started to wonder if rave was now different to what it was and whether I’d missed out on the golden days of rave. So, I thought I’d talk to some of the legends in the game and get an education on how music was made, listened to and the rave scene from before I was even born.
I’m working on a snow scene right now, and it’s summer. It’s hot, and I will get chilly. I’ll have to turn on the heat. My wife walks in, and it’s 95 degrees in the studio. I know it’s nutty, but it’s a projection you have where you step into the painting.
He also didn’t like a lock of my hair and said that he couldn’t get into the moment without the hair being just right. I quietly knew that he was anxious and that the hairdo wasn’t the real issue. But we all let it go and came back to the scene sometime later.
Panic is rare, looting is essentially insignificant, people are not terrified and trampling each other to flee from a disaster scene, but in fact are trying to manage a situation. We may in fact revert to some sort of primordial civility.
It’s never really fun to have to cry in a scene or anything like that.
I was the last member of the family to get involved on the professional scene, although music has always been with me.
When I’m composing a scene for the first time, I try to imitate my character. The less critical distance the better – particularly when they’re acting badly.
There is a scene in the movie with DJ Cutkiller, one of the biggest European DJs from France, and he was scratching like crazy. When I saw that, I was 14, and I was like, ‘Yo that’s what I want to do. That’s crazy.’
Watch MTV and you can see what the music scene is like in England. The Spice Girls? Not a lot of creativity in the commercial area. There are still great musicians in England, but not a lot being heard that much.
There was one very special scene at the end of the film. My character, Zhao Di, has been sick. She wakes up and her mother tells her that the man she loves has come back from the city and had spent the day by her bedside.
Mostly, when you are shooting for action or intimate scenes, and you need to hold them, it takes away the mood if you both are not in sync. I have faced such situations and I think having a good bond with your co-stars only adds value to the scene.
I just wrapped ‘Eclipse’ yesterday and the last scene we shot is probably my favorite thus far. I finally got to tell my story, in a very gentle yet elaborate way.
Yeah, it’s funny, working on a show with as large a cast as we have here, your work gets sort of compartmentalized. There’s still about half the cast that I’ve never had a scene with but I have missed working with Terry.
When you suddenly appear on the scene and you are the new face, everything centers on you. I experienced this in my mid-20s and I found it rather hard.
I’ve been told, and I think I recognize it, that there’s a cinematic quality to my writing, with a sense of image and place and scene – and, some would say, my tendency to finish my books the way Hollywood finishes its films.
Almost every scene, I re-think as I’m about to start drawing it, and at least half of the time I’m changing dialogue or whatever, or adding scenes or different things.
When you do a play, you have all this time to rehearse and grow into the character. In television, even though you’re waiting and waiting and waiting, once you’re actually on set engaging in the scene with another actor, time is of the essence.
I don’t believe in myths of decline or myths of progress, even as regards the literary scene.
It’s like that scene from The Player when they talk about merging Star Wars and Kramer vs. Kramer, or whatever. You could do that with music and it would just be awful.
The Supreme Court has ruled that they cannot have a nativity scene in Washington, D.C. This wasn’t for any religious reasons. They couldn’t find three wise men and a virgin.
You have to examine a scene on the page first. Then you get into the basics of acting: Who are you? Who are you talking to? How do you feel about that person?
Sometimes a scene may be about one thing, and it may end up still being about that, but the emotionality of it comes from somewhere else, or the humor of it comes from somewhere else, and it gives it that real-life quality.
I’m a very recent convert to the gay scene. I went to a party a couple of years ago and met a very nice man who took me under his wing and started taking me out to clubs. It was a revelation.
Because I actually find the next take after they’ve controlled it a little bit and repressed the laughter is actually a really interesting take, because that’s still going on underneath the surface. That struggle to maintain composure becomes part of the joy of the scene.
In rare instances you have to give up what you thought was a great scene.
As a result of World War II, European artists migrated to America, enlarging the scene and diminishing Paris as the center. America was beginning its dominance of the art world with the emergence of the Abstract Expressionists.
There’s something very surreal about driving a truck, looking in the rearview mirror, and seeing 20 cop cars behind you. Even though you know, ‘We’re just shooting. This is just a scene; we’re making a movie here,’ it’s very unsettling.
