dialogue management Quotes

In my family, Father is the world champion at ending conversations.

There are people who've told me cinema is a visual medium and you don't need to say so much. When I write the script, all these lines of what the characters are thinking are written. Once the film is shot and the lines are dubbed, I tone it down in postproduction if I feel it gets heavy.

Before I'd written movies, I never could do big set-piece scenes with a lot of different speakers - when you've got twelve people around a dinner table talking at cross purposes. I had always been impressed by other people's ability to do that.

I think we need a 12-step group for non-stop talkers. We're going to call it On and On Anon.

Always say less than you think you need. Inject some space into the conversation.

With my characters, I prefer to not say too much, and in fact, I tend to cut down some of the lines in most scripts I get.

Then they started pulling me in and I was very resistant. All the other actors would be saying write more, more dialogue for me, and I'd always be saying 'No, less, less'.

To tell a woman not to talk too much was like telling Jesse James not to carry a gun, or a hen not to cackle.

Sometimes that happens when people don't really know how long they're going to have to stretch their story out for.

conversation is like a dear little baby that is brought in to be handed round. You must rock it, nurse it, keep it on the move if you want it to keep smiling.

Great talkers should be cropt, for they've no need of ears.

As an actor, my attitude towards using of film versus digital is, if you have film, filmmakers have to cut eventually so you don't have to learn all that dialogue. With digital, they can just go on forever and it's a nightmare. So, I like film - nice short takes.

The issue is not answering questions, but leaving discussions open. Not in the sense that probably one day you are going to have an answer or you are not going to have an answer. Just live your life, do what you have to do, what you are enthusiastic about doing.

I'm someone who has a hard time turning down a conversation. And an even harder time starting a conversation and ending it abruptly - ending it before it's over.

If you interrupt somebody too early, if you miss it and don't interrupt at all - that's the difference between a good interview and a bad interview. It's about the absolute moment.

I do study Marcel Proust, for multiple technical virtuosities but also his swerve, as you say, between characters and in scenes. Certain films can help for that, too, in terms of understanding how multiple conversations at a table, or in a room, can take place and remain separate, and dissonant, and also gather themselves, accidentally, into a collective rhythm and an affect.