D. A. Pennebaker Quotes

I became fascinated by the fact that people write to give away rather than write to be read. It's the difference between playwrights and novelists.

The issue of doing an adaptation of a book is the theater of the mind, and so you always face that.

The point of songs in theater is that you're supposed to end up in a different place than where you started.

When I go for a project, I wonder what underpinning a project will have that's going to give the audience some emotional access to it.

The best adaptations are the ones that really excavate the material. The movies that work are the ones in which somebody very smart figured out how to take all the thematic material, all the character material, all the filigree, all the beautiful writing and put it into a story.

I think that what we were doing with the live musical version of 'Shrek' was taking the ideas and the structure of the movie and not necessarily reinventing it but reimagining it. It is a very different medium to perform.

I think a lot of composers get into trouble just making up a plot and expecting an audience to follow that.

What I've realized is that a film operates both on the intellectual and emotional levels, and if you can find a way to tell a riveting story and draw ideas out of that, it's very powerful.

If people need to be informed by lines, then there's no reason why the actor is saying the line except for information for the audience; I think there's something wrong.

Theater and film are essentially the same - just different kinds of storytelling.

At the heart of any successful film is a powerful story. And a story should be just that: a narrative with a beginning, middle, and end, powerful protagonists that audiences can identify with, and a dramatic arc that is able to capture and hold viewers' intellectual and emotional attention.

There are all kinds of ways that people present their films, but that's kind of a good feeling, if you can make it seem like the characters are really there.

I feel like the great filmmakers who have a true voice, yeah they take the notes, they understand the notes, but it's really about the notes underneath the notes. When you do a test screening and somebody says, 'Well, I didn't like the love story,' but it was probably just too long.

I don't care what anybody says. Stick to the spirit of the play and you're doing it right. It's about embracing the spirit of the text instead of noodling some idea about things.

You know how when you read a book and it becomes a movie, and it's different than you pictured? In some ways, acting is a lot like that.

A lot of actors, whatever movie you're working on, you make up a back story just for your own, to work off, even if the audience doesn't have it revealed to them. I think it's important that the audience makes up their own mind.

'Sleepy Hollow' was really the first thing I'd done that gave me the opportunity in the modern age to build an authentic relationship with an audience that was a lot more like what happens in theater.

I guess I have a fascination with the idea of puppeteering. I think, in a lot of ways, directing is puppeteering. I guess I see a lot of analogies between what puppeteers and filmmakers do.

I like making people feel things. Acting doesn't seem like lying but like storytelling.

Every director knows it is his job to be manipulative. When you make an edit, you are trying to manipulate.

I love the interactive nature of theater. I just craved it. As much as I love working on a film or TV set, most of the storytelling happens in the editing, whereas when you're doing a play, the storytelling is in your hands as an actor.

My job as an actor is to just tell the story as best I can from my character's point of view and let the audience decide.

When I get a beautifully written piece of material, I immediately start imagining how I would interpret it. I love just daydreaming about it for months, breaking it down, seeing where I can spin something. How I can turn this into the most fun ride for the audience that I can make it? That's my job.

Obviously, a theatrical masterpiece needs more than a plot; many television shows are nothing but plot, and it is doubtful that they will stand the test of time. But I also don't think that making fun of plot or acting like we're all somehow 'above' structure is such a good idea.

The challenge is to stay true to the characters while also having them be entertaining every day, because it turns out that just watching someone be true to themselves isn't that rad to watch.