Breaking the Fourth Wall Quotes

I always wanted to experience what performance would be like without the fourth wall, so I formed a company in Australia, and we did avant-garde theater, playing with gender norms, conversations about race - we just had a box of issues that we wanted to subvert with our stories, with dance.

I loved Bob Hope and the way he would turn to the camera and break the fourth wall.

I am so used to being up on stage and talking to my fans that it's strange to be on stage and be someone else. I can't look at the audience during 'In the Heights' or I will start talking to them.

I think 'Deadpool' worked because of what it was. I think 'Deadpool' worked because it was funny. I think 'Deadpool' worked because it didn't take itself seriously. That's why it worked as an R-rated film.

It's so difficult to write good music. It's also really difficult to think about how to do it without violating the sanctity of the fourth wall.

We began to do little things, have little scenes where we just talked about things that had nothing to do with the plot. In fact, in the beginning, they didn't want us to do that. But as time went on, you see that in so many shows. I think we were the first to do that.

I always like to break out and address the audience. In 'The History Boys', for instance, without any ado, the boys will suddenly turn and talk to the audience and then go back into the action. I find it more adventurous doing it in prose than on the stage, but I like being able to make the reader suddenly sit up.

Like everyone is either, "I grew up with it," or "I loved it," or loved them now. And when you watch The Muppet Movie now, it is so current. It's like The Simpsons before The Simpsons. It's not as cynical as The Simpsons would be but it's self-aware and there are a billion jokes, it breaks the fourth wall every five minutes, it's astounding, it's awesome. It's very exciting to be a part of that.

At the end of the 1960s, I was part of the downtown theatrical movement in New York that was making work in alleyways, garages, gyms, churches, non-traditional spaces. The idea was to get away from the illusion of the conventional theatre. But then I thought, what's wrong with illusion?

A song in a musical works best when a character has to sing - when words won't do the trick anymore. The same idea applies to a long speech in a play or a movie or on television. You want to force the character out of a conversational pattern.

There's no environment. Use your imagination. There's no fourth wall, whether it's the first time you've told this story about her life, or the sixth time.

As an actor, as much as I'm interested in how you make movies and TV shows, even as a kid, I've always hated making of featurettes and special features on DVDs. I think it breaks the spell.

The expected vertical line of Ikiru's narrative breaks when Kurosawa does a flash-forward in the middle of the film.

You cannot hurt animals, so what do I do? I kill the dog first. Then I do it with the boy. You're not supposed to break the illusion of this being a film, so I make the actor talk to the audience. Provocation is the principle of the whole film [ Funny Games]. It is very ironic.

I've reached a point in my life where my Truman Show boat has hit the painting.

I'm just not made for that kind of live audience where you don't create a fourth wall.

As a comedy writer, I'm always praying for the day I can tell a self-aware/break-the-fourth-wall style of joke.

To me, it's the kiss of death when you start winking at the audience as an actor. I just never liked it. I don't like it when we do monologues, looking into the character.

My major contribution to the format was to suggest that I be able to step out of the plot and speak directly to the audience, and then be able to go right back into the action. That was an original idea of mine; I know it was because I originally stole it from Thornton Wilder's play Our Town.

I love breaking the fourth wall, and being given permission to play with the audience!

Acting is all about relating to the people on stage with you, even in plays that break the fourth wall. Clowning, for the most part, is the opposite. If somebody in the audience sneezes, I can count on it: I don't even have to look at Shiner; he'll have his handkerchief out. It's all about all of us in the room together.

'Pulp Fiction' blew my mind; beforehand, I'd watch films and there was a beginning, middle and an end, and that's it. There is in that film, too, but it's out of sequence.

When the protagonist breaks the fourth wall by looking at the camera in a movie, it's generally been used for comedic purposes, rather than feeling like they're looking into your soul.

Bizarrely, on movie sets, they don't really dig it when you look in the camera, which is a bizarre fact.

It's great finding a comic book character that doesn't care about following traditional comic book rules by breaking the fourth wall and being explicit about everything. This gives Deadpool the arrogance which you just have to love.