A Quote by Alan Ball

A lot of times, the choice of the right song will save a scene. Or there will be a scene that's a little flat and you put in the right song and somehow it just comes alive.
The ACLU spent this entire holiday season protesting public displays of the nativity scene. Yeah, that's the problem with America right now: Public displays of Christ's birth, that's the problem. It's unbelievable to me. The ACLU will no longer fight for your right to put up a nativity scene, but they'll fight for the right of the local freak who wants to stumble onto the scene and have sex with one of the sheep.
A lot of times, somebody will say something and it will give you a good title. So you carry a pencil with you and jot that down. You don't just write a song right quick, though. You fool around and work with it. You have to keep going over and over it and see if you can't write a song that means something.
There are times when I want to be plainspoken about my feelings in a song. But there are other times when it's really good to try and get my head around different kinds of song structures, or maybe I might get turned on by trying to write a song that would fit in this one scene in a movie. And by the end of all this, you just end up with a bunch of different ideas. And songs are really just ideas.
You give me a song now, I will give my judgement, and 90 percent of the time I will be right. It is simple for me but is otherwise tough to do. But there are times - because I am not God - 10 percent of the times, when a song has worked though I said it would not.
What I don't like is when I see stuff that I know has had a lot of improv done or is playing around where there's no purpose to the scene other than to just be funny. What you don't want is funny scene, funny scene, funny scene, and now here's the epiphany scene and then the movie's over.
The fun part, I will admit this much, there is a period when listening to my music is fun, and that's when I'm making it. There's a tiny little window before something gets old, but after it's come to fruition. There's a little window there where I can listen to a song probably about five times, and I'll really think it's awesome. That's kind of the period that lets me know when I - 99 percent of the time, that period is right about whether a song is going to be a keeper for an album or just a throwaway track that never gets - in that little window.
If something gets under my own skin, and keeps reoccurring, it starts to take on a certain weight and value, and I think, "I have to put this in the song. I have no choice but to mention Greek Cypriots in this song." It's a little internal challenge to myself. Like creating little imaginary rituals in yourself to help the song go from nonexisting to existing.
When I get all focused on songwriting, I get into all the marketing and promotion that we do to make it happen. Then the right song comes along and blows it all out of the water. The right song will do it for you every time.
Setting can be something that is a major player in a scene, something that makes the mood leap from the page. But if an author doesn't handle it right, it falls flat or seems overdone. It is a challenge getting it "just right".
How it works for me is that a scene comes to mind, usually a scene between the hero and heroine, that depicts the emotional conflict. From that scene, the characters come alive for me. I don't do a lot of preplanning in any way when I write.
It's no good in a scene to have one actor lie down because the scene says it's the other actor's moment. Each actor has to believe that with extra will, the outcome of a scene can be different. An actor can win the scene if he exerts the most powerful will in that moment.
When I'm singing a song, I'm in that song, and I'm thinking about what emotions I should bring to the song. Voicing a character was very similar. It was high energy, and I had to really think about the emotion of what was going on in the scene.
I felt alive when I read a script and acted out a scene, or sang a song. It was my dream. I'm just very lucky that I'm still doing it and able to earn a living from it.
Every scene in 'Ganga Jamuna' has been spellbinding for me. I can see the film any number of times and still not be able to pinpoint a scene and say 'This is the best scene!' Every scene is perfect.
A fantastic actor in a scene that's just closed off will be good. But when working with a director who knows little tricks - correct music, slowly pushing in - that stunning performance will somehow become even better. I've always seen it as a symbiotic relationship.
Sentences are not different enough to hold the attention unless they are dramatic. No ingenuity of varying structure will do. All that can save them is the speaking tone of voice somehow entangled in the words and fastened to the page for the ear of the imagination. That is all that can save poetry from sing-song, all that can save prose from itself.
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