Mike Colter Quotes

For me, the first thing is script. When I heard 'Mom''s script, it really touched me and moved me. I felt really nice about the story. That's the reason I did the movie.

You can't tell an audience to like a character. And I think the best way to get the audience on someone's side is to embarrass them.

I got the 'Max Rose' script, and I fell in love with it. It just hit me. It was something that needed to be made.

It is very touching that you are able to create some kind of impact through a character.

I'm taken by a story and a character. I'll read a script, and if it touches me and moves me and makes waves, that's why I'll choose it.

You really have to do your job as a writer and push people to be as creative as possible. What's nice about the TV medium is you have such a connection to the characters that when somebody dies, the audience cries. They really feel it. You really don't cry when someone dies in a horror movie.

If a character dies, you should feel that. If a character accomplishes something, you should feel that. That's where you try to find that balance. It's impossible to articulate, as you go through it. You just have to recognize it.

When I read scripts and when I read books, it's more of an emotional response and I was really drawn to these characters.

I'm often moved by the circumstances around some of my characters, but I don't think I've actually cried watching myself.

What I always do is go with the stories that put up the hair on the back of my neck or make me cry or make me laugh.

That's the difference between even the best video game and what's going on in books. Video games can inspire a reaction, but not the emotions.

A strong story can move me to tears, and it doesn't matter whether it's a science-fiction or fantasy world. It's about what happens to a person, the choices they make. That's what's interesting.

Cinema has to move people.

Most games end up with quite caricature scripts because they are just here to serve the game-play mechanics but not to trigger any emotional response.

Wrestling and sports entertainment is not about the moves, it really isn't. It's about being able to evoke emotion in one facet or another.

A lot of horror movies just look at how they can scare people, and no matter which character dies, you don't ever really feel enough to actually care.

My goal is to always try to make you feel something, whether that's humor or sadness or excitement, and to try to manipulate screen space.

When you do a TV show, the cumulative intimacy you develop with the audience through your characters is pretty profound. It may be the most profound storytelling there is, because the character gets to live and roll around in the audience's mind week after week.

You want to have the experience. As far as the creative side, the more I do this, the more I know that it's all about the writing. You got on a film sometimes and it's sort of half-written, and they expect and think that the actor's job is to bring the extra part and the good part. It's not. We're good at saying what other people have written, but for the majority of it, that's about it, comedians aside. It's all in the writing. Whether that's dialogue or character, or whatever, it doesn't matter. As long as they've done something special, than you can do something special.

I believe with all my heart in delivering on my contract with my readers. They've got plenty of other things to do, so I had better give them a reason to turn every one of these 550 pages. This is my promise: I solemnly swear I'll make you laugh out loud at least once, cry a little in private, and burn whatever you left on the stove.

I love doing a television show. It just always feels like it's a little while before you find something that feels unique and that feels like a character that you really want to play for awhile.

I had tears coming out of my eyes. And it was the characters that got me there.

I'm trying to paint a picture of what I have seen and what moved me, as well as I can. That's all.

It's rare that I've read a script where I'm like, "Oh, my god, it's hilarious!" All you want is a good skeleton and good characters. Then, you can go, "Okay, I can bring a lot to this. I can improvise and I can create something out of this."

The job of the art is to really convey and support that empathetic response. I always try to find where the character is mushy, and then bring that to the forefront.