So we were doing this scene, and the kids get 20 minutes a day, um, so, all I had to do was pick him up out of the incubator and take him out, and that was the whole shot.
I have a number of writers I work with regularly. I write an outline for a book. The outlines are very specific about what each scene is supposed to accomplish.
That a great battle must soon be fought no one could doubt; but, in the apparent and perhaps real absence of plan on the part of Lee, it was impossible to foretell the precise scene of the encounter.
It was a scene in the sense that we were all close and we all knew each other before the different bands had really formed. We used to rehearse in the same place.
If you think you are beautiful in a scene, you will come across as beautiful. I don’t think looks are important; I think what’s important is if someone is sexy.
I don’t like to dwell all day over one scene as you do in a big feature.
When I first came to New York everybody on the scene would treat me like I could play, but I couldn’t.
I didn’t get to go to prom; I was filming a death scene on my prom night. But I got to go to all the homecomings, and even the winter formals I got to go to, but the only thing I missed was the prom, but everything else was great.
I was so grateful to have made ‘Into the Wild’ before I made ‘Speed Racer’ because on ‘Speed Racer’ I was indoors every single day, every single scene, on a green screen. Some of the time, just to pass the time, I would think back to climbing mountains in Alaska. That really helped me.
There is a very vibrant cultural scene in Stockholm. There are lots of places where there are concerts, and there are loads of museums and theaters.
When people embrace character, there’s latzie. It’s the stuffing of a scene that’s not written. It’s not in the stage direction and it’s not in the words. When people embrace character, it informs their living, breathing moments in a scene so well.
I do admit to being challenging, but it’s always for the work, it’s never personal. I will walk out on a scene if it’s all lit and ready to go but it’s not happening.
Film acting is so different from theatre acting, and TV is about letting things pay off and not winning every scene.
With ‘I Want Action,’ I think people take it in the context of the Sunset Strip and the party scene; it was tongue-in-cheek.
I enjoy the element of pushing yourself, learning something new, whether it’s a dance step, a scene, an emotion.
I want to focus on each scene. I’m a real perfectionist, and I don’t want to feel like I didn’t consider every possible variation of a scene. I come from a theater background, so I’m used to a lot of repetition, and I’m used to really attacking something over and over and over again.
Comedians like to see people smile. With acting, I love giving people a feeling, an emotion. I like to give people a feeling. When they come away from my scene, I want them to think.
I take the fact that films cost a lot of money very seriously, but once in a while to have somebody say, This is a big scene, take your time with it, is important. That’s John Sayles.
My instinct was that it was Sidney’s childhood in the Bahamas that gave him the fearlessness to fight racism. So this documentary was a kind of rounding out of what had begun in that scene in In the Heat of the Night.
It’s not the destination that matters. It’s the change of scene.
There’s a bunch of cities I’m not crazy about, but I love Chicago. I love the musical history – the mid-’90s indie rock scene, Chicago house music. It’s a great town.
I’m an emotional actor. When I’m doing a scene, I really believe it. I live the part as long as I’m in the scene.
I like to try the scene over and over, but given the confines of television, I don’t have that option.
We were very fortunate to have been on the scene when we were.
You never know what you do that could be totally out of left field, which actually might work and give something fresh to the whole scene, to the character, whatever. If you have that with a director who then knows how to shape it, either in the direction, in the moment, or in the editing, then that’s good.
I’ve had some painful experiences in my life, but I feel like I’m trivializing them by using them for a scene in a movie. I don’t want to do that. It just makes me feel kind of dirty for having done that.
Very often a change of self is needed more than a change of scene.
I have a painter’s memory. I can remember things from my childhood which were so powerfully imprinted on me, the whole scene comes back.
If a movie is received badly, and I’m in only one scene of it, I still feel responsible. I feel like it was my fault at all times. If people were like, ‘This movie sucks!’ I’d be like, ‘Well, that’s because I’m terrible.’
I think I must have too much to eat, we were doing a scene where we were crawling, and I ripped my trousers. I was very embarrassed. I was sown in, stitched in, quickly!
I found it more challenging to act in a small scene, especially if it has no dialogue and if it is a close-up with only expressions.
You are preparing yourself for a scene, and the most important thing is to remain emotionally available and remain in the moment with your scene partner. You don’t want to let your own self-consciousness block the flow of creativity that’s coming out so that you can act and react, and play what the scene is all about.
The New York gallery scene being as incredibly overpopulated and overmoneyed as it is, deep conflicts and contradictions aren’t hard to find.
The only way to make a scene realistic is to do it the way you know it would really happen.
I just focus on getting the first scene right, with a few lines about the overall plot, and then the book grows organically.
When you’re in that scene, you really wonder if this is all you’re ever going to be. You know how vile and filthy you are inside.
I’ve found that when I’m having trouble solidifying a character or a scene, that music will often free my subconscious just that last little bit to allow me to move forward, and often it’s in a direction that I didn’t expect, but is 100 percent true to the character.
I love working with Alexander Skarsgard. He brings such gravity to a scene.
Art, a book, a painting, a song, can definitely inspire change, whether it’s a small change or a big change but you know there’s novels I’ve read or a scene in a film that I’ve seen where I definitely inspired something and made a change or addressed an issue in my life or done something cliche like make a phone call.
The last thing you want to do when you are about to film a scene is think, ‘Oh my God, so many people are going to watch this.’
Many people think voice over artists just read, there’s much more to it. Without acting beats, scene study and improving skills, you won’t make it.
Good actors, especially when they know their character, will come in and either tell you in advance that they have an idea, or in the middle of the rehearsal or the scene they’ll let it loose and you go, ‘Ah that’s great.’
I’ve always liked pop music. There was a bit of a misunderstanding with the avant-garde rock scene, because I think I was sort of swimming the wrong way, really.
I think, for one thing, all of us remember those teenage years and those songs that we fell in love with and the music scene that we were part of. So, in a certain way, music cuts through time like almost nothing else. You know, it makes us feel like we’re back in an earlier moment.
I don’t personally look to my own life experiences for answers about how to play a scene.
I couldn’t get a job to save my life. That’s why I wrote ‘Road to Paloma.’ That got into Sundance and got into that scene, and that’s how I got the role in ‘The Red Road.’
I think coughing up slugs was quite hard. Ron has a scene where he has to cough up these giant slugs.
It doesn’t matter what you feel – ultimately, it’s what the audience feels. You can finish a scene and think to yourself, ‘Oh, God. I was so deep in that moment,’ and find it just didn’t play. I don’t know if I have very good radar about that or not.
Gradually the live TV scene simmered out, replaced by film, and that took place in L.A. So many actors left New York.
I think as long as there are folks on the fringe who want to make movies, the indie scene will still be around. I do think it’s getting harder to get them seen though.
You don’t need a love scene to show love.
The lighting is so important. One thing that makes me nuts about the lighting now is that they spend an enormous amount of time lighting the set, the background. But the most important thing in the scene is the actor.
Ah, reality TV: where opportunists delight in exposing opportunism! It’s kind of like the indie music scene.
In Birmingham, Manchester or Liverpool there are white gangs that share the same backgrounds – they come from broken homes, completely dysfunctional, mums for the most part unable to cope, the fathers of these kids completely not in the scene.
I haven’t had to do too many, or many explicit ones. Everybody feels weird, and everybody is trying to tiptoe around and make you think they’re not there. The last time I did a love scene, I couldn’t keep a straight face.
The scene changes but the aspirations of men of good will persist.
