I knew I could only play Cyrano if he were Americanized. I had no intention of writing the script myself. I was afraid of it. You're playing with fire when you tamper with a classic. So I went looking for a writer. But it was such a personal idea, and anyone I would give it to would make it his own. It's hard to ask Neil Simon to write your idea.
Interpretation
Steve Martin emphasizes the challenges of adapting a classic work while maintaining its original essence.
In this quote, Steve Martin reflects on the complexities and risks involved in reinterpreting a classic character for a modern audience. He expresses his desire to Americanize the character Cyrano while acknowledging the difficulties of finding a writer who could faithfully translate his vision without altering it too much. This highlights the delicate balance between honoring original works of art and making them accessible or relatable to contemporary audiences.
In practice
During a speech on creativity in theater, one might say, 'As Steve Martin noted, tampering with a classic can feel like playing with fire.'
When I first started doing my comedy act, I just desperately needed material. So I took literally everything I knew how to do on stage with me, which was juggling, magic and banjo and my little comedy routines. I always felt the audience sorta tolerated the serious musical parts while I was doing my comedy.
You want to be a bit compulsive in your art or craft or whatever you do.
I have heard it said that a complicated childhood can lead to a life in the arts. I tell you this story of my father and me to let you know I am qualified to be a comedian.
...it is not the big events that hurt the most but rather the smallest questionable shift in tone at the end of a spoken word that can plow most deeply into the heart.
Reviews for someone like me come in three packages. One is justifiable praise, the second is justifiable criticism, and the third is, "This is only published because he's a celebrity."
If he thinks he would harm Mirabelle, he would back away. But he does not yet understand when and how people are hurt. He doesn't understand the subtleties of slights and pains, that it is not the big events that hurt the most but rather the smallest questionable shift in tone at the end of a spoken word that can plow most deeply into the heart.
I try to write something that would interest anybody and keep them turning the page. You must have a plot and good storyline.
Nothing, of course, will ever take the place of the good old fashion of 'liking' a work of art or not liking it; the more improved criticism will not abolish that primitive, that ultimate, test.
The role of a museum of modern art is to make a good selection and identify what we believe to be the coming movements, and that requires taste.
The musical scale is a convention which circumscribes the area of potentiality and permits construction within those limits in its own particular symmetry.
I was always trying - I never wanted to let my fans down; I always wanted them to see me in my art form.
I paint what cannot be photographed, that which comes from the imagination or from dreams, or from an unconscious drive.
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