Audience Manipulation Quotes

Insight into character comes from listening intently to the spoken word. The physical person, their charisma, charm and dramatic flair is more often used to persuade audiences, as they use these stealth tools of disguise and deception.

I'm not just gonna go after the black Jesse Jackson they all want to make fun of, but I know the wrong people are gonna laugh at that. I don't want to play to that crowd. I don't.

Don't ever let the viewer settle in and get ahead of you.

Professional wresting is like performance art. It truly is. You're taking the crowd on a ride, on an emotional roller coaster.

The secret of the demagogue is to make himself as stupid as his audience so they believe they are clever as he.

It is a mistake to make propaganda many-sided, like scientific instruction, for instance... As soon as you sacrifice this slogan and try to be many-sided, the effect will piddle away, for the crowd can neither digest nor retain the material offered.

What I've discovered is that in art, as in music, there's a lot of truth-and then there's a lie. The artist is essentially creating his work to make this lie a truth, but he slides it in amongst all the others. The tiny little lie is the moment I live for, my moment. It's the moment that the audience falls in love.

I always feel that a viewer has an expectation about every moment of the film and where it's going, so if I act against that, I've created a twist. In fact, it becomes a kind of game with the expectations of the viewer. This is the superficial appearance. In the layer beneath, there is a hidden theme.

Every once in a while, when the audience is expecting to see one thing, you have to show them something else.

Dark comedy is very difficult. You have to bring the audience in and push them away at the same time.

I am not a fan of referencing your own work when it's in a different universe than what you're doing. That, to me, is a wink at the audience, and winking isn't actually cool when you're not, like, 10.

With 'Good Will Hunting,' Miramax made certain the recruited audience wasn't expecting to laugh at Robin Williams like they normally do. From my limited experience, you can really blow test screenings by conducting them in the wrong way.

Lead the audience by the nose to the thought.

The laugh track was invented to cue the audience to the jokes and encourage laughter in response. But it has another effect: if you hear people laughing and you're not, you start to question if maybe there's something wrong with you for not getting it.

I remember a show in New Jersey several years ago when a big fight broke out in the crowd. I took the microphone and introduced Frank Sinatra. He wasn't there, but even the guys creating the disturbance stopped to look.

What I react against in other people's work, as a filmgoer, is when I see something in a movie that I feel is supposed to make me feel emotional, but I don't believe the filmmaker shares that emotion. They just think the audience will. And I think you can feel that separation. So any time I find myself writing something that I don't really respond to, but I'm telling myself, 'Oh yes, but the audience is going to like this,' then I know I'm on the wrong track and I just throw it out.

Trying to seduce an audience is the basis of rock & roll.

If there are some who talk the same language as myself, then why should I neglect their interests for the sake of some other group of people who are alien and remote? They have their own 'gods and idols' and we have nothing in common. ... If you try to please audiences, uncritically accepting their tastes, it can only mean that you have no respect for them: that you simply want to collect their money.

It is a truth universally acknowledged that a delusional Housewife in possession of an audience must be in want of a ludicrous storyline.

Being a comedian is like being a con man. You have to make 'em like you before you can fool 'em.

Acting is bad acting if the actor himself gets emotional in the act of making the audience cry. The object is to make the audience cry, but not cry yourself. The emotion has to be inside the actor, not outside. If you stand there weeping and wailing, all your emotions will go down your shirt and nothing will go out to your audience. Audience control is really about the actor

The nature of oratory is such that there has always been a tendency among politicians and clergymen to oversimplify complex matters. From a pulpit or a platform even the most conscientious of speakers finds it very difficult to tell the whole truth.

[Malipiero's advice to Casanova.] If you wish your audience to cry, you must shed tears yourself, but if you wish to make them laugh you must contrive to look as serious as a judge.

I like antagonizing the audience, poking at them.

I'm dragging the audience to hell with me