My stated goal as a filmmaker is to feel something. Is to have a palpable emotion in my life, carry it through the gauntlet of the filmmaking process and try and have it land for an audience at some point during the viewing experience. That to me is successful filmmaking.
The most hardcore, edgiest comedian in the world has no desire to hurt people and make people have a bad evening. Everybody wants everybody to have a good time.
I think good music makes you feel free, and if people feel free when they come to a show or listen to my music, that would mean the world to me.
The movies I make and my interests are always about pushing the technology as far as we can in support of telling great stories and showing an audience things they haven't seen before.
People pay a lot of money to go see shows now, they don't wanna know about your technical problems, or if you're not feeling good, they don't wanna know we have a glitch. It's their night, you better do something to earn that money.
With 'Hannibal,' I just really want people to feel something.
In a sense, touring is crazy. You go city to city playing the show over and over again. But there's something magic about being in front of people, so it's not like going through the motions every night. It's a different experience.
I don't any longer make any quality judgement between theater and cinema. They are different experiences for the audience, and they also are for the actors - although they have a lot in common.
I'm obsessed with audiences and obsessed with the journey that an audience goes on.
To be honest, I think about the clubs when I write. But I should probably start thinking about stadiums, because the songs sound even better there - and bigger.
You shouldn't even be writing this story if you haven't heard me play live. You can't write with the passion you receive until you see a Dick Dale concert.
The goal is to blow the audience's mind.
The experience you're going to take the audience on is as important as the story you're trying to tell. And that experience needs to excite me so much that I am desperate to share it.
We are filmmakers, and we are specifically trying to entertain people.
It was great to play for a live audience on a stage.
There is no substitute for taking off in flight in front of a live audience.
Sound is 50 percent of the movie going experience, and I've always believed audiences are moved and excited by what they hear in my movies at least as much as by what they see.
I don't want people to come and see our gig because of the magnificent things I'm doing with my hips, but it's their evening, you know. They have to have fun. I'm a little bit naive.
I've been told by a lot of people after concerts that they felt the show was just for them. And I try to make it that way.
When you're watching an action movie, you experience an action movie more outside of the aquarium, you're out of the aquarium looking in at all the swimming fish that are in there. Whereas horror films and thrillers are designed to put the audience into that box, into that aquarium.
It doesn't matter if a critic pans or praises my movies, I am only concerned about that one audience member and what their experience is.
If you're doing a musical, you should be out to give the audience something special, emotional, an uplifting feeling, something that stays with them. And you're not going to do that by bumming them out.
Everything happens every night for this audience, and it's a very special occasion to come to the theatre.
Carnegie Hall is as good as they say it is. It's not like Stonehenge which looks great in books but then you go there and it's a pile of rocks next to a highway. There's actually a highway right next to it, but you don't see that in pictures.
It doesn't matter if I'm playing a lead role or that of a comedian; I want my audience to have entertainment worth their money.
