actors-from-indiana

"Best Director (C.E.1986)"

"Making a film, in America, is a combination of actors and directors doing belly dancing in front of the producers. (p. 199)"

"Redford is a very good collaborator, a kind of alter ego for me: he was that young prince who was blond in appearance, but who had a much darker interior. It was clearly a metaphor for America. And most of the stories we've done together have become love movies, romantic movies. In my opinion, he was the ideal prototype of this kind of event. We never got tired of working together. We've always been somewhat demanding of each other, trying to get the most out of each of us. And we didn't waste time knowing what would work or not. It was a great advantage: we knew each other perfectly. (p. 199)"

"I have some radical theories about the difference between acting on stage and acting in front of the camera. [...] In a play the focal point – and the goal at all times – is to deprive the actor of dependence on his director, because the director is useless once the curtain rises. In the cinema it's the other way around. At the really important moment, it is the director who finds himself alone, with his reels, at the time of the final cut. [...] I don't think we can talk about a real performance of actors during filming. There are only repetitions, it's mechanical, fragmentary, because you can always redo it over and over again. (p. 195)"

"I've never had a mad desire to become director, nor have I had to lay siege to a producer to fulfill that desire. Simply, I have become a director. Better yet, I was a director, and I didn't know what it meant or what I had to do. For a long time I was a director without realizing that it was the realization of a childhood dream. (p. 194)"

"Best Picture (C.E.1986)"

"You don’t tear up the room because there’s a sweet spot for the microphones, and you can’t deviate very far from that or else the engineer gets mad. You have to act with your whole body, but keep it right in the zone."

"I do so many convention appearances and have a lot of face-to-face interaction with the fans. They tell me that they prefer seeing a live human being in a costume. Humans like to watch other humans, period, whether it’s in makeup or not. They can appreciate the artwork that goes into computer graphics—it’s an art form unto itself, getting better all the time—but there’s something connectable when you actually have a live person. The true fanboys actually want to connect with another person, that’s what I’m told. Me personally, as an audience member, I can appreciate the artistry of both types. When it’s completely rendered by an artist with no live performers involved, sometimes it can look like you’re watching a video game. That takes you out of the film for just a second. What I love about the medium is when they can be combined."

"A comedian goes out and hits people right on. A clown uses pathos. He can be funny, then turn right around and reach people and touch them with what life is like."

"With one prop, a soft battered hat he successfully converted himself into an idiot boy, a peevish old lady, a teetering-tottering drunk, an overstuffed clubwoman, a tramp, and any other character that seemed to suit his fancy. No grotesque make-up, no funny clothes, just Red. There is no one around who can take a comic fall as magnificently as he can. He also sings, dances, delivers deceptively simple comic monologue and plays a dramatic scene about as effectively as any of the dramatic actors, Method or otherwise."

"Don't laugh but I think the logical successor to Chaplin is Skelton. Red, to my mind, is the most unaclaimed clown in the business."

"Why quit? It's the only thing I know. Quitting is like hanging up your soul on the wall and closing the door on it."

"They're taking shortcuts to get a big laugh instead of working for their audience. They can finish a show, hang up their tux and shirt, and put it up for next time. With mine, you have to wring out the sweat and send it to the cleaners. You gotta go out and work for your audience."

"I wanted to play Rick. I was missing it. I’ve been waiting for the call from the studio since then. I love it. You get to do so much fun stuff, as an actor. You get to go to great places. They strap you into harnesses and throw you around. You have to look like you really know how to take care of business and beat people up, when you’re actually really a wimp. They’re great fun movies. There’s real appeal. Every kid or pinstripe executive in an elevator asks me, “When’s the next Mummy movie?” I’m like, “I wanna know the same thing!"

"They lockin' old white cookbook bitches up!"

"I'd fuck you, but I don't have a change for a 5."

"It's the story of a very unfortunate colored man Who got arrested down in Old Hong Kong He got twenty years' privilege taken away from him When he kicked old Buddha's gong."

"I'm a Cranky Old Yank in a Clanky Old Tank on the Streets of Yokohama with my Honolulu Mama Doin’ Those Beat-o, Beat-o Flat-On-My-Seat-o, Hirohito Blues"

"You sittin' here chained to your rockin' chair."

"English is an outrageous tangle of those derivations and other multifarious linguistic influences, from Yiddish to Shoshone, which has grown up around a gnarly core of chewy, clangorous yawps derived from ancestors who painted themselves blue to frighten their enemies."

"Many a person has been saved from summer alcoholism, not to mention hypertoxicity, by Dostoyevsky."

"A good heavy book holds you down. It’s an anchor that keeps you from getting up and having another gin and tonic."

"A dog will make eye contact. A cat will, too, but a cat’s eyes don’t even look entirely warm-blooded to me, whereas a dog’s eyes look human except less guarded. A dog will look at you as if to say, “What do you want me to do for you? I’ll do anything for you.” Whether a dog can in fact, do anything for you if you don’t have sheep (I never have) is another matter. The dog is willing."

"In the beginning, Atlanta was without form, and void; and it still is."

"I do hope you realize that every time you use disinterested to mean uninterested, an angel dies."

"Any given generation gives the next generation advice that the given generation should have been given by the previous generation but now it's too late."

"A convention has to be something that more than one person is moved to take hold of. It's a convention to call your sweetheart "dumplin" or "honeybun." It would also be a convention to call her "gulag," if she would stand for it, which she won't, and why would you want to be around someone who would?"

"Usage ain't always a matter of ought."

"I know, you want to make a citizen's arrest of anyone whose menu lists "Idaho potato baked in it's skin," but you can't."

"I have to be firm on this: unique is not to be modified. Adding very or absolutely is like putting a propeller on a rabbit to make him hop better. It won't work, and he won't be a rabbit anymore."

"People don't necessarily want or need to be done unto as you would have them do unto you. They want to be done unto as they want to be done unto."

"That's American English for you: more roots than a mangrove swamp."

"The level of perversion and lawlessness demonstrated by Mr. Fogle is extreme."

"If people didn't give a damn, I wouldn't be in the position I'm in. I try not to lose sight of that."

"I had no intention of anyone ever finding out what I had done."

"I want to redeem my life. I want to become a good, decent person. I want to rebuild my life."

"I think when he talks to people they can see he's not a slick, polished spokesperson… He's smart and well-spoken, but I think people can see he's just a regular guy."

"You can really bring so much more to rock'n'roll. Rock'n'roll is the most accepting, is the most fertile ground for creating hybrid forms of music and hybrid forms of show, if you draw from many, many different wells. It's just unfortunate so many rock'n'roll stars only bother to learn how to play like Led Zeppelin and/or the Rolling Stones and that's what you get, disc after disc and show after show.""

"Fun is the pivotal point of our existence. Fun is what the United States is based on. The thing is, when you are working all night in the studio, is it possible to have fun?"

"I'm not conceited. Conceit is a fault, and I have no faults."

"What I do is dangerous for sponsors, dangerous for editors. But I'm really a radio kid. I grew up on radio, not TV. Ultimately, I'll probably do radio."

"For the last 30 years, I've been leading a life of crime and international intrigue that's involved 40 stamps in my passport, love affairs, and broken hearts to go with each one of them. You would have to live three lifetimes to catch up with just the allegations that follow me!"

"Nine times out of 10 when people do a tribute album or tribute songs for somebody, it's what I call 'white boys playing reggae'. They know they can't, we know they can't, so they sing like they can't and play like they can't. They gently make fun of the idiom or sing in a false accent."

"I think that there is a whole lot turning upside down at rock radio -- not -- excuse me, talk radio particularly. Radio as we know it is pretty much changing completely. You know, the diversity of the taste of the folks that are watching the show right now is way more than what is available in the little Motorola in your car today. And where are the new personalities? Where is the new Stern, somebody who has that much impact? Where is the new."

"Maybe I'm like acts of Congress or your favorite chinese restaurant -- you don't really want to know what's going on behind the door. I'm a real study in contrast, I expect, looking from without. But it adds up to what you get on stage."

""It's not about money right now. My ambition is to further create a signature sound, a signature spirit, that makes some kind of contribution to music in general."

"I change as the times change. I'm a reflection of what's around me without trying at all."

"I believe more and more that this business is about people. People, people. The idea is to make friends at the retail level, the warehouse level, let people see you exist, can form sentences and have an interest in something other than yourself."

"Somebody asked me the question not too long ago: 'Dave, do you think the music business has turned corrupt'. I said: 'Absolutely not - it has always been corrupt."

"It's interesting about life. You learn things over that you already learned. And then you forget, because you're drawn to the mundane so you can't be sucked into the reality, the drama, and the ugliness that can be provided by life. So, you're drawn toward the mundane."