My show was revolutionary, ground-breaking. When I came on the scene, people were not doing a thing.
I heard that the same thing occurred in a scene in Alien, where the creature pops out of the chest of a crewman. The other actors didn’t know what was to happen; the director wanted to get true surprise.
I find that kid actors are great reminders of the simplicity of acting. As you get older, you can sometimes complicate things a little more. You can become too aware of, ‘Okay, this is the scene emotionally. This is where we need to be. We’ve got the climax coming up.’ You can start to analyze it too much.
I will walk out on a scene if it’s all lit and ready to go but it’s not happening.
When Scorsese shoots a violent scene, it’s very uncomfortable – it’s not like watching ‘Rambo.’
I played a scene at the end of my first year, and that’s how I was discovered.
I do readings at the public library. I just did a benefit scene night for my old acting teacher.
I care less if I can’t be part of your scene because I am the scene. I am everything that is.
The battlefield is a scene of constant chaos. The winner will be the one who controls that chaos, both his own and the enemies.
Dave Van Ronk, for those who don’t know him – probably most don’t know – was a folk singer. He’s kind of the biggest person on the scene in 1961 in the folk revival in Greenwich Village, biggest person on the scene until Bob Dylan showed up.
Any time a writer thinks he has all the answers to how someone should talk or react or end a scene, it’s a spontaneity-killer.
I’m not into the whole showbiz scene.
On ‘EastEnders,’ if someone gets surprising news on the phone, the scene ends with them looking at their handset in amazement. No one in real life does that.
I love ‘Troy.’ I love Brad Pitt’s character – when he went to Troy, he just ran over it. Then this particular scene where they made this big old horse or something out of wood, and they hid inside the wood.
I love when you get to work with people you know because there’s so much more trust, and you’re much more willing to be vulnerable in a scene with someone you trust.
In ‘Zombieland,’ it was such a freewheeling plot it almost didn’t matter what the characters were doing scene to scene as long as there was a consistent banter.
I lose tons of stuff on the cutting room floor. For Scary Movie 3, for example, we had a lot of Matrix spoofs, a Hulk scene, and some of that stuff just doesn’t hold up – it’s too much plot, audiences just didn’t want to hear about it.
A scene has to have a rhythm of its own, a structure of its own.
Yes, and there were changes of light on landscapes and changes of direction of the wind and the force of the wind and weather. That whole scene is too important in Homer to neglect.
When you’re on an ensemble show and you’re messing around with everybody every day and you’re not in every scene, and then all of a sudden you’re in every scene, it’s rough.
Jimi was always at The Scene when he was in New York and we played many times together. He was just everywhere – he went out and jammed everywhere he was.
I was in Deadwood at the time and on hearing of the killing made my way at once to the scene of the shooting and found that my friend had been killed by McCall.
I don’t storyboard, and I don’t really shot list. I let the shots be determined by how the actors and I figure out the blocking in a scene, and then from there, we cover it.
I’ve worked with actors who tell everyone what to do in the scene – that makes me go pretty atomic.
All an actor has is their blind faith that they are who they say they are today, in any scene.
There’s no platform for an unsigned music scene in the main cities – it’s all hyped acts or showcases behind closed doors. I read about artists that are doing it ‘the old-fashioned way’ and touring, as if that’s a unique thing to do – well, that should just be the way it is.
I tell students they will know they are getting somewhere when a scene is so painful they can just barely bring themselves to write about it. A writer has to draw blood.
I hadn’t been a recording artist all that long when albums came on the scene, and I was one of the first singers to point the way to how varied an album’s contents could be.
When I was a kid, I was a big fan of the regional scene. I read ‘Pro Wrestling Illustrated,’ and I watched Portland Wrestling and everything I could.
I look out the window sometimes to seek the color of the shadows and the different greens in the trees, but when I get ready to paint I just close my eyes and imagine a scene.
I sit every once in a while and I think about plays and films I can do with William Petersen into our eighties. He’s the most incredible scene partner I’ve ever had.
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 think is very beneficial to relax yourself so that when you are doing it you are not staggering for lines and your concentration is not on what I am going to say – but the scene itself, the character that you are talking to.
Before college, I acted in my room, to classical music, because music tells stories. I’d put on a record and proceed, silently. I’d keep putting the needle back to a certain segment because I hadn’t died well enough. I had to really, really feel dead. I’d love to do a death scene.
Also, there are seats in the diner that always fall off the table. If you have a scene where you’re packing up at the end of the day and putting them on the table, they just slide off.
I changed my mind because of a scene between Howard Cunningham and Richie. The father-son situation was written so movingly, I fell in love with the project.
I’m sure every film it’s going to be like, ‘Okay, this is the scene where your shirt gets ripped off.’ I’ll never be able to keep my shirt on.
The music scene is more competitive in the States.
First scenes are super-important to me. I’ll spend months and months pacing and climbing the walls trying to come up with the first scene. I drive for hours on the freeway.
What I have in advance are people I want to write about and a problem or problems that I see those people encountering and that I want to explore – it all proceeds sentence by sentence, paragraph by paragraph, and scene by scene.
Minimalism seems closest to the sophisticated storytelling of movies. Movies have really educated contemporary audiences to be the most intelligent, sophisticated audiences in history. We don’t any longer need to have the relationship between one scene and the next explained. We will figure it out ourselves.
When I was in high school I got involved in the fringe theater scene in Chicago, and I met some openly gay people. I could see that it got better, that they were happy and loved and supported. I saw with my own eyes that it got better.
The script of ‘Shogun’ was so tight that you could not take a word out of a sentence, you could not take a sentence out of a scene, and you certainly couldn’t take out a scene without putting ripples right through the back or the front of the overall story.
It was my first scene in any movie and my only scene in Kramer vs. Kramer. I was petrified.
For every LeBron James that jumps onto the scene, or every Derrick Rose that does really well in year one, you have a lot of others that take time to transition. Those guys are just brilliant in their own way, but a lot of other guys need a little help along the way.
The bad guy always gets the best scene and the best lines in the film, and they usually get the most days off.
When some people get parts, they feel they can now relax, but for me it was always the opposite. Sometimes before I do a movie or before I act out a scene, I may not sleep well the night before. If I don’t know what the scene is about, I might get all worked up.
If the boy and girl walk off into the sunset hand-in-hand in the last scene, it adds 10 million to the box office.
Language cannot describe the scene that followed; the shouts, oaths, frantic gestures, taunts, replies, and little fights; and therefore I shall not attempt it.
There was a little less pressure to be fit on ‘The Avengers’ than ‘Captain America.’ I had just finished ‘Captain America,’ so I was already built. Plus, ‘Captain America’ has that one scene dramatic scene where my transformation is revealed. ‘The Avengers’ has not one shirtless scene.
I used to write chronologically when I started, from beginning to end. Eventually I went, ‘That’s absurd; my heart is in this one scene, therefore I must follow it.’
A song versus an album is not like a scene versus a play.
What impresses me is the young actors with terrific talent arriving on the scene. They’d have blown us all away in the old days. Guys like Brad Pitt.
I want to be a a good influence to other people and in the music scene.
I was in a play directed by my father, and I was doing a fight scene, and the choreography went haywire, and I flew backward over a chair and ripped my thumb all the way to my wrist and had to have surgery to sew up all the tendons in there.
Never sit staring at a blank page or screen. If you find yourself stuck, write. Write about the scene you’re trying to write. Writing about is easier than writing, and chances are, it will give you your way in.
