Well, in the theater, I think you're actually more responsible for what is going on onstage as a director than you are in film.
Interpretation
A director in theater has a more direct influence on the live performance compared to film.
In this quote, Philip Seymour Hoffman emphasizes the unique responsibilities of a theater director. He suggests that while both theater and film directors play crucial roles in storytelling, the immediacy and live nature of theater require a director to be more actively involved in shaping the performance as it unfolds, highlighting the dynamic relationship between the director and the performers on stage.
In practice
In a lecture about directing, this quote beautifully illustrates the challenges of live theater.
I think I would have drank myself to death, literally, if I didn't just stop, once and for all when I did. I am not ever going to preach to anyone about drugs or drinking. But, for me, when they were around, I had no self control.
Study, find all the good teachers and study with them, get involved in acting to act, not to be famous or for the money. Do plays. It's not worth it if you are just in it for the money. You have to love it.
I've had to make the transition from sweeping in for 15 minutes, doing my stuff and clearing out, to carrying a movie for the duration - in a dress.
I had insecurities and fears like everybody does, and I got over it. But I was interested in the parts of me that struggled with those things.
I didn't have any idea that I would be able to have a career in film.
Thereβs a period of time in your life when I kind of look back, and Iβm like, was I happy, or was I just not aware?
I think of writing as a sculptural medium. You are not building things. You are removing things, chipping away at language to reveal a living form.
Writing a short story is like having a short intense affair, whereas writing a novel is like a long rich marriage.
All my adult life I have been searching for the right adjective to describe my father's peculiarly aggressive comic style. I recently settled on 'defamatory.'
Speak the speech, I pray you, as I pronounced it to you-trippingly on the tongue; but if you mouth it, as many of your players do, I had as lief the town-crier spoke my lines. Nor do not saw the air too much with your hand, thus, but use all gently; for in the very torrent, tempest, and as I may say, the whirlwind of your passion, you must acquire and beget a temperance that may give it smoothness.
Being an artist is this kind of occupation in which you have to make people care about your obsession.
A story is not like a road to follow... it's more like a house. You go inside and stay there for a while, wandering back and forth and settling where you like and discovering how the room and corridors relate to each other, how the world outside it altered by being viewed from these windows.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.