“When you're starting out as an actor, you keep raising the stakes. First, you just want to be a character who comes on stage and gets a laugh or two and exits. Just five minutes on a stage, not even Broadway. But every time you say your little prayer at night, you place more demands.” WantFirstsLittlesTwoCharacterNightActorsPrayerLaughingFiveMinutesStageDemandStartingStakesBroadwayFive MinutesExitStarting Out Author:Charles Kimbrough
“I was blessed enough to meet Pope John Paul when I was about 19 or 20 years old in the Vatican; I had that privilege, .. My mother took me to visit him and I remember distinctly his incredible charisma and personal charm and his warmth and compassion. You felt it immediately the minute you met him, and that spirit I came away with, having met the man, is something that I've been constantly working on to infuse the character with, so that we can have his spirit and his love and his compassion, because that's really the essence of the man.” MenYearsEnoughCharacterRememberSpiritMotherFeltCompassionMinutesHe ManMetsEssenceBlessedIncrediblesPrivilegeCharmWarmthPopeHis LoveCharismaJohn PaulPope John Paul Author:Cary Elwes
“The ones [comedies] that I always liked, whether it's Terms of Endearment, Broadcast News, or Fast Times of Ridgemont High, they were all about two hours, or a little bit over two hours. With that extra 15 or 20 minutes, you can get to real character and you're not just stuck in plot.” LittlesTwoRealCharacterBitsTermHoursComedyMinutesLittle BitNewsStuckExtrasPlotEndearmentReal CharacterTerms Of EndearmentFast Times Author:Judd Apatow
“Every time I'm in editing, there's always a moment where you think, "Maybe this should be six or seven minutes shorter, but I'm losing character and story that I think is important." When I like things, I'm not in a rush for them to end.” ThinkingShouldImportantEndsMomentsCharacterStoriesMinutesSixLosingSevenEditing Author:Judd Apatow
“When you adapt a book to a film, you take all the best parts and put them into an hour and 15 minutes and have to compromise on the characters.” BookCharacterFilmHoursMinutesCompromiseAll The Best Author:Channing Tatum
“To me, acting is a matter of absolute concentration. You can laugh and giggle with your friends up to the minute the director says, "Action!" Then you snap your mind into shape and into the character that you're playing and relate to the people that you're acting with and forget everybody else that you've been joking with.” PeopleMindMatterCharacterActionForgetActingLaughingMinutesShapesDirectorsAbsolutesRelateConcentrationSnapsGiggle Author:Elizabeth Taylor
“The petty cares, the minute anxieties, the infinite littles which go to make up the sum of human experience, like the invisible granules of powder, give the last and highest polish to a character.” GivingHumansLittlesCharacterCareLastsMinutesAnxietyHighestExperienceInfiniteInvisiblePettyHuman ExperiencePolishPowder Author:William Matthews
“I think people were not expecting us [with Robert Ben Garant] to, they were just like, "Well here come the writers," but we both were coming out of a sketch comedy background, so when we pitch a movie, we play every character in the film. You act it out, you perform it - you do a 10-minute performance of the movie.” PeopleThinkingWellsPlayCharacterFilmComedyMinutesPerformancesBackgroundsComing OutExpectingSketch Comedy Author:Thomas Lennon
“I love the gothic literature. It always has such great stories with characters bigger than life and the stakes are always high. And because there's always a wolf at the door, the emotions are high; the romance, the sexuality, friendships, and relationships. You don't know if the guy kissing you one minute is going to bite you the next. This heightens all of the sensibilities and emotions, and therefore, it sings to me. And that's where the music comes from.” IfsKnowsCharacterStoriesRomanceGuyNextLiteratureEmotionDoorsMinutesKissingBiggerSexualityBitesStakesSensibilityGothicOne MinuteKissing YouBigger Than LifeFriendships And Relationships Author:Frank Wildhorn
“"Would you, do you, my dear?" rejoined the Captain ... "I don't know. It's difficult navigation. She's very hard to carry on with, my dear. You never can tell how she'll head, you see. She's full one minute, and round upon you next."” KnowsHardCharacterNextDifficultInterestingMinutesRoundsDearCaptainsOne MinuteInteresting CharactersNavigation Book:Dealings with the Firm of Dombey and Son: Wholesale, Retail and for Export Source: Dealings with the Firm of Dombey and Son: Wholesale, Retail and for Export
“I fell in love with the classical crossover genre when I was on AGT. I found out that I could use the microphone to establish a deeper intimacy with the audience. I did not portray an opera character; I was my true self. I would sing a four-to-five minute piece for the audience and then I could talk to them and say "Hi" to them! I would not need to act out scenes where my character was dying from tuberculosis or killing somebody else on stage, I could have a nice conversation with them.” NeedsSelfCharacterUseFoundAudienceFivePiecesFourNiceMinutesStageDyingSceneConversationKillingDeeperIntimacyGenreOperaTrue SelfFive MinutesMicrophonesTuberculosisCrossover Author:Barbara Padilla
“The tweets are getting shorter, but the songs are still 4 minutes long. You're coming up with 140-character zingers, and the song is still 4 minutes long…I realized about a year ago that I couldn't have a complete thought anymore. And I was a tweetaholic. I had four million twitter followers, and I was always writing on it. And I stopped using twitter as an outlet and I started using twitter as the instrument to riff on, and it started to make my mind smaller and smaller and smaller. And I couldn't write a song.” WritingYearsMindLongStillsCharacterSongMillionsFourMinutesYears AgoInstrumentsI RealizedFollowersOutletsTweet140 Character Author:John Mayer
“In displaying the psychology of your characters, minute particulars are essential. God save us from vague generalizations! Be sure not to discuss your hero's state of mind. Make it clear from his actions. Nor is it necessary to portray many main characters. Let two people be the center of gravity in your story: he and she.” PeopleMindTwoStatesCharacterStoriesActionClearPsychologyMinutesHeroEssentialsState Of MindGravityVagueGeneralizationMain CharactersCenter Of Gravity Author:Anton Chekhov
“If Bruce Springsteen, Harlan Howard, or Tom Waits can tell a character's whole story in four minutes, maybe you don't need as many words as you think to make an impact.” IfsThinkingNeedsWholeCharacterStoriesWaitingFourMinutesImpactTomsSpringsteen Author:Tim Leffel
“The start of a film is like a gateway, a formal entrance-point. The first three minutes of a film make great demands on an audience's patience and credulity. A great deal has to be learnt very rapidly about place and attitude, character and intent and ambition.” FirstsCharacterFilmThreeDealsAttitudeAudienceMinutesDemandAmbitionFormalEntrancesCredulityGateways Author:Peter Greenaway
“To a large extent: it's about economy of space. You have so little real estate when you're writing a half hour show. It's really twenty minutes. So you have to with a pilot introduce all your characters, set up the premise in a way that shows the potential for a series and make it funny and do it all in about thirty-five or forty pages. It's very hard.” WayWritingLittlesRealHardCharacterShowsHoursSpaceHalfEconomyFiveMinutesPagesTwentiesSeriesThirtyFortyPilotsIntroducingEstatesPremisesHalf Hours Author:Jonathan M. Goldstein
“I think that television has become really, really interesting, in terms of character development. You can have 13 hours to develop a character, as opposed to 25 minutes in a movie. That excites me.” ThinkingCharacterTermHoursInterestingMinutesTelevisionDevelopmentReally InterestingCharacter Development Author:Nicolas Winding Refn
“The function of a newspaper in a democracy is to stand as a sort of chronic opposition to the reigning quacks. The minute it begins to out-whoop them it forfeits its character and becomes ridiculous.” CharacterDemocracyMinutesFunctionRidiculousNewspapersOppositionForfeitQuacks Book:Diary of H. L. Mencken Source: Diary of H. L. Mencken
“What justifies a character singing one idea for 3 minutes on the screen? I get impatient and want the story to carry on. I don't get impatient in the theatre.” WantIdeasCharacterStoriesMinutesSingingTheatreScreensJustifyImpatient Author:Stephen Sondheim
“My own idea about 3D is that it is there to enhance the viewing experience but I don't think that you have to use it in a tricky way, I think that the minute you sacrifice story and character for something coming out of the screen, I think you've lost it.” ThinkingWayIdeasCharacterStoriesUseLostMy OwnSacrificeMinutesScreensComing OutTricky Author:David Yates
“In my mind what novels do best is that they immerse us deeply into our character's world - they truly transport us deep into these spaces - but the same way you know a Hollywood movie won't end after thirty minutes, you carry in yourself the implicit contract that the novel won't throw you out of itself 'til the very end. That bulk of pages is a form of consolation, of security.” KnowsWorldWayMindEndsCharacterFormSpaceNovelMinutesSecurityPagesHollywoodThirtyContractsConsolationTransportImplicitHollywood Movies Author:Junot Diaz
“Whatever job I had, I was always writing like crazy. All I ever liked about offices was being able to type up stories on the computer when no one was looking. I was never paying much attention in meetings because I was usually scribbling bits of my latest stories in the margins of the pad or thinking up names for my characters. This is a problem when you're supposed to be taking minutes of the meeting.” ThinkingWritingCharacterStoriesProblemAbleJobsNamesBitsAttentionCrazyMinutesTypeOfficeComputerMeetingsSupposed To BeMarginsPads Author:J. K. Rowling
“I know, we can barely fit them in. That is a big challenge. Treating four lead characters equally, within a 30-minute format, is definitely challenging.” KnowsCharacterBigsChallengesFourMinutesFitFormatBig ChallengesLead Characters Author:Mark Duplass
“When I do a film, the days before or the night before, I throw up. Sometimes it's just in my mouth and I swallow it back, but sometimes it's real. Whatever it is, it's hard. I don't do the first five or ten minutes of my character's appearance in a movie until the middle of the shooting schedule because I don't want him to be defined by my nervousness. So, we do the middle of the picture first.” WantFirstsRealSometimesHardCharacterFilmNightFiveMiddleMinutesTenMouthsAppearanceDefinedShootingSchedulesWant HimNervousness Author:Donald Sutherland