Alan Arkin Quotes

Improv is like writing. It's actually a different discipline to acting. It helps acting greatly, but it's completely different. It's the same side of your brain when you write as when you improv.

You've got to remember that improvisers are writers and actors and directors all simultaneously. That's what's happening in real time because you're writing on your feet, and you are acting out the words and you are directing what the staging is. You're deciding what staging is.

I'm improvising all the time. Everything I do is improvised. On the piano, at least.

I stopped being interested in improvisation, and I continue to not be that interested in it. Comedians can do it on a different level because they have a goal, but if you're improvising something that's dramatic, there's not that much to be good at.

What people think improvisation is and non-improvisation is, it's nothing to do with what you like or dislike. It's all about how it happens with certain directors and certain scenes. That's the way it works. It's not something, in general, that you can decide.

I became immersed in the cult of improvisation. I was like one of those athletes trying to get into the Olympics. It was all about blind focus. I was so sure that I was doing exactly what I'd been put on this earth to do, and I would have done anything to make it onto that stage.

Even if the script's well written there's something about the life of an improvisation that resonates better than a written word, sometimes.

Improvisation helps because you get what's on the page and you make it a little more palatable to your tongue. And that's the beauty of creating and being spontaneous. That's the way I love to work.

I loved the idea [of improvisation], but I'd never taken any classes or practiced it.

Some of the best stuff in all my movies has been improv.

Chico Hamilton told me, "The first take is important in jazz because that's where the real emotion is." That's your true response to what's happening, and everything else after that, your brain is involved because you have something to reference.

When you improvise on the spot, people are very reluctant to have soft moments or quiet moments or sad moments because they're trying to fill up the spaces. So they always go towards, "How come you're late?! You're supposed to have my shirt ready! You call this a dry cleaner?!" That's what happens. That's why improvising on the spot gets very dicey.

I love performing. I love doing improv. It's a totally terrifying experience, but it's something that I've always felt so strongly about and that I'm kind of obsessed with. And just as an actor, it's a great exercise. It's a great playground, you know, to try things out and to work on your skills. Because the mandate of improv is kind of the same as acting: It's all about your scene partner, it's all about being present and in the moment and exploring together as a team, a collaboration.

I don't think that many people today, understand the nature of what an improv does for an actor in a specific setting. What an improv does for an actor is help him find the life; it's the life that an actor's after.

I improvise whenever I feel it's important, or whenever I think that something's there. It's nice to have a script that's so well-written that I don't have to improvise. I mean, I used to have to re-write whole movies; this is kind of nice.

As I got more confident, I was able to let actors improvise, and do long takes. It's 10%, 5% you learn and experience. The rest you just have or you don't have.

I was on the improv team in high school, and after I graduated, I joined an improv company that had been established 10 years prior to me getting there. They did longform improv, and I fell in love with it. It's acting, character creation, collaborative, artistic expression and comedy - and it's scary. It was a big rush.

I love to do very long and complicated scenes.

Jazz is the only music in which the same note can be played night after night but differently each time.

If you're playing a character who says whatever he wants, I felt free to say whatever I wanted on set.

Many times I'll improvise it, which isn't done a lot in movies or commercials. But a lot of my commercials are improvised.

'Curb' is 100 percent improvised, which is wild. I'd never done anything like that.

I just wanted to experiment with the bass, and my main influence from Jaco Pastorius inspired me to write music in a certain way.

Whatever it is, music should sound spontaneous, I've derived a great deal of pleasure from playing jazz and having the knowledge of that spontaneity.

When I direct - everything I've directed has had improv in it, because I think there's something special in a performance the first time it's said out loud that's hard to recreate.