Norman Lear Quotes

In the commercial theater, I've been pretty fortunate. The producers that I've worked with have allowed me to define the artistic integrity, the artistic limits of the work.

A play is not a play until it's performed, and unless it's a one-person play that is acted, directed and designed by the author, many other people will be deeply involved in the complicated process that leads to its performance.

I'm trying to do the kind of projects that I want to see in the theatre.

I come up with the ideas for my videos, and I write the lyrics and choreograph them, and I direct them and tell everyone what to do and how I want them to sing the parts and do the tongue pops and eye rolls and stuff like that.

One of the great joys of being able to write something you can make, if you get certain actors you want and love, you're kind of buying yourself a front row seat to watch them work.

I think I'm drawn to films more as a director with a directorial mind even as an actor. I make movies to make the films, not to act.

If you're an actor, you're at the mercy of a script. You've got far more control if you're the photographer.

There's a gap between what I want to do, what I do on camera, and what gets edited. Right? So the goal is to try and close the gaps. What's the biggest compliment is if I read a review and it's exactly what I wrote down in my diary before ever filming it. That's really cool. That's the biggest signifier of closing the gaps.

I want to make my own films from my own scripts based on stories I want to tell, but they take time to put together.

I had a sort of bad experiences as a playwright early on, when directors were putting in huge concepts that I didn't intend, or they were stylizing something that was compromising the play, so I started to think like, 'Well if I'm going to fight against this, I should learn how to direct.'

When I got to the reading all the work, I was reduced to being an actor in an experimental play that I'd already written. And I didn't want to be an actor.

There's something really nice about writing something on Wednesday and watching it being performed live for a studio audience on Tuesday. You never really get that with novels.

I wrote a play that I directed and I was in, and I paid for the sets and the costumes and to put it up in a theater all through modeling. It really afforded me a lot of creative control in my life.

I don't work for the commercial success of the film. I work to satisfy my producers who give me the money. I work to satisfy the director who has written a script for me. Of course, I have to satisfy the actor in me, but I want to satisfy them first.

I don't get to make many features. It's not like that's something I can just snap my fingers and make happen.

Basically, we had the idea of doing this production of 'Steel Magnolias,' and we spoke to Queen Latifah about it, and she got excited.

Commercials are 20 seconds long, so you don't get to experiment with your characters. But in films, you get to try out your acting skills.

As an artist, you're thankful to get a shot at a story more than once, because it doesn't happen all the time. Whether you talk about 'Hamlet' or 'Death of a Salesman,' you always want to see what the next group of actors will do.

I got busy with films and found it difficult to devote time to theatre.

I did musical theatre for about four years. One time, I did six shows in one year whilst juggling school.

Regularly in music videos, I'll write the pitch and convince the artists that this is a good idea, and then I'm having to make concessions to meet in the middle.

I became a producer because of projects I wanted to pursue and develop as a director or actor.

We couldn't even contemplate doing 'Hairspray' without a live audience.

I don't get why radio shows allow artists to do shows without creative control, without any art direction at all. Instead of that, I get their press guys, their camera guys to be my backdrop of my show.

I'm always going to be an actor first and foremost, but I certainly want to have a voice in the kind of work that I'm doing.