A Quote by Courtney A. Kemp

The baseline character in a lot of Western literature is a man. So we, as women, do a lot of suspending of our disbelief to experience a novel or a play or a movie through that male character.

Courtney A. Kemp

Quote Topics

Character Disbelief Experience Literature Lot Male Man Movie Novel Our Play Through Western Women

Quote Author

Courtney A. Kemp
American - Writer
Born: May 4, 1977

You can't really do a big character in an action film; you're already suspending your disbelief in the action, then to suspend your disbelief in the character is too much.

Adam McKay

'Friends With Benefits': it feels like a two-hander to me, but it is a big movie, and this is the first straightforward male I've been able to play. I would describe my character in 'The Social Network' as a kind of sociopath. I would describe my character in 'Bad Teacher' as... just a weirdo. But this is a male's male.

Justin Timberlake

Especially when you play a character for so many years, the character ends up reflecting a lot of who you are and I think I've changed a lot since then, but that represented a lot of who I was as a teenager.

Sara Gilbert

Identifying with a character is one of the best parts of seeing a movie, but as women, we've had to train ourselves to experience the male journey.

Geena Davis

Shows like 'Empire'... one of the most profound powerful things is that there's a gay male character who is loved. That character is going to save a lot of people's lives. Black families are confronting the idea that a gay black character can be human.

Justin Simien

The first thing that happens is the cleansing of the former character. I don't think a lot of actors talk about it, but there is usually a process where you essentially purge yourself of the character played prior to the movie. Then you want to think about what the character represents, and you write down all of the elements about this character and then take the time to find some synchronicity and start breathing the character.

Vin Diesel

At the end of the day, it's a show [Daredevil ] not about a superhero, but it's about a man. Hopefully, that's what we're doing with The Punisher, as well. It's an enormous honor to play this character. It's a character that's quite iconic and very important to a lot of people.

Jon Bernthal

There's a point I can get to where I start writing character and then through the dialogue, after all of this preparation, the thing starts to feel like it's a character developing through the dialogue. A lot of character traits do come from writing dialogue, but I have to be ready to do it.

Charlie Kaufman

Practically every movie that shows the pope or even a bishop as a character, and in much of western literature of the last 300 or 400 years, these are portrayed as awful figures.

Michael Novak

It's very rewarding to see the movie, and it's very rewarding to make the movie, but playing the character [Riddick] is sometimes a lot more difficult than other characters because it takes so much preparation to get into that character.

Vin Diesel

It's difficult to make a movie about a complicated, non-traditional female character. We see a lot more movies with male characters who are at that point in their lives, but not that many about females.

Megan Griffiths

Michael, from 'Six Dance Lessons...' He was somebody who had a lot of self-loathing; being a gay man who lost his family and felt ostracized. It was an interesting character to play. He was so bitter and jaded about life. Even though I'm not like that personally, everybody has a side of themselves that tends to look at the negative side of things. He was an interesting character to play.

Cheyenne Jackson

A lot of my humor centers on the act of telling jokes and I think this can prevent certain audiences from suspending their feeling of disbelief. It might piss a few people off, but I can't help it.

Michael Showalter

Filming a movie is different from a TV show because film is a lot quicker, you get to see the character progress and grow all in one script, and in television, you wait for a weekly update on each character.

Ariel Winter

I learned a lot from Dick Wolf. I'll always remember playing that character because it was such a good character. It was great to be able to be a character like that for television. I think the thing that I'll bring from the whole experience, the whole 10 years, is I had never been interested in the television business before.