script adherence Quotes

You don't really work together with Clint Eastwood. I mean, he takes the script and he shoots it - and he shoots it very faithfully.

The thrill of acting is the discovery part, so it all changes, but it has to change in a way that fits what is written. You can't just wander off and get interested in your own tangent.

In films, you have to follow the director's vision. Filmmaking is a director's medium. So everything happens as per the script and his vision.

I'm one of those lazy actors; I like to take what the playwright wrote and work with that.

In the year and a half I was on SNL, I never saw anybody ad lib anything. For a very good reason - the director cut according to the script. So, if you ad libbed, you'd be off mike and off camera.

I always try to stick to the script because I want to respect the writers, and I want to respect the director. But if the director and my fellow actors are okay with me playing with it a little bit, then I definitely want to play with it.

You just play what a writer writes, in terms of what a character chooses to do and how a character chooses to deal with their various relationships.

I'm not very good when I'm given scripts.

You don't really have time to do other than what's written. It's very rigid. Shows have a certain rhythm that nobody wants disturbed. So a lot of that doesn't take place on television, at least the television I was doing at the time when I first started.

I think the actor has two responsibilities. One is to be visually compelling, and the other to recite the lines as written by the writers.

Mark and jay Duplass really like to improvise. Even if we beg them to go back to the script, they invariably ask us to go "off the rails," as they like to call it. It's just the way they work. You get a full written script. And it's really, really, really good, so that's why it's kind of peculiar that they always want you to improvise, because if I wrote something that good, I would want everyone to stick to the dialogue that was written.

I worked on a show called 'West Wing' before. I didn't work with Aaron Sorkin, but he created the show and set the tenor of the show, which was you follow the words of the script perfectly because there's a dramaturgical thing behind it.

I'm not someone who comes onstage and says, 'I'm rewriting this now.' I don't think it's fair to the writers or the director, or the other actors.

Whatever is on the page is what I'm married to. I'm very prepared. I'm a thespian. I don't like to improv. I don't like to go off course 'cause I think that's where stuff happens. When you stick to the material 'cause it's written so well, that's where the magic happens.

Television's very much a writer's medium, as it probably should be, but if you're not the writer, then as the performer, you defer to that. It's just kind of how it's constructed. Is there some leeway? Yeah. But I also don't want to come across as a jerk.

See, that's the thing: I'm not one of those actors who thinks, 'God, I've got to improvise and make it my own.' No, my first job as an actor is to take what's written and make it work. And then, if they want me to improvise, I'll do that.

When you're an actor working in the theater, you would never say anything to the writer, never alter the dialogue, never dream to ask for changes.

As an actor, your text is your bible, so you're not making a documentary, but you still have to follow the choices made by your writer.

I've done a few roles in the past where people got quite worried when I started drifting away from what was written on the script. Often, they see improvisation as worrisome, because that's adding time to their day. But, in 'The Umbrella Academy,' they didn't worry too much about that, because Netflix has loads of money.

What people think improvisation is and non-improvisation is, it's nothing to do with what you like or dislike. It's all about how it happens with certain directors and certain scenes. That's the way it works. It's not something, in general, that you can decide.

On 'Stranger Than Fiction,' the script was so good that I stuck to every line because it was just such brilliant writing from Zach Helm that I felt like I really just want to shoot the page.

'My character wouldn't do that.' That was always my favorite thing people say: 'My character wouldn't do that.' I said, 'Well, it says right here in this script your character does that.'

I'm sticking to the script, I'm putting that organic feeling back in the game.

The voiceover thing is very selfless. You go in there and they've hired you for your voice, but they know exactly what they want, and the writer's there and he knows exactly how it's supposed to be said. So you can't really argue with them, you just have to let them tell you what to do and then do it.

Bob Hope was totally regimented. I go in and say a line like, 'Hi Bob' and I'd have to do it five times, and then Bob would take me to the writers to say the line different ways. He wouldn't let me ad-lib.