A Quote by Ethan Coen

All we think about is how to keep the audience engaged, and normally we're big on plot because that's the easy way to do it. — © Ethan Coen
All we think about is how to keep the audience engaged, and normally we're big on plot because that's the easy way to do it.
I think plot is very overrated. Plot is obviously necessary, but what I really care about is emotionally affecting the audience. Having a thought myself and then an emotional experience myself, somehow transferring that to the audience.
The challenge CEOs will face three to five years from now is the same one that they face today. That is engagement. It's hard to keep people engaged in what they are doing. As this generation grows up around social media like Twitter where things are 140 characters, how do you keep them engaged all hours every day at work? How do you keep them focused on the big goals you have?
Anyone can write five people trapped in a snowstorm. The question is how you get them into the snowstorm. It's hard to write a good play because it's hard to structure a plot. If you can think of it off the top of your head, so can the audience. To think of a plot that is, as Aristotle says, surprising and yet inevitable, is a lot, lot, lot of work.
I don't think about the audience, I don't think about what makes them happy, because there's no way for me to know. To try to think of what makes for entertainment is a very Japanese thing. The people who think like this are old-fashioned. They think of the audience as a mass, but in fact every person in the audience is different. So entertainment for everyone doesn't exist
Well, I think it's important to keep things secretive because what's happened so much is the press competes with each other to put as much information out there as they can and sometimes it can be very damaging to the films to have the stories leaked or certain plot details. I think it's important to have something remain secretive for the audience and something special for the audience so there aren't spoilers all over the internet.
I’ve always said to my agents and stuff, like, it’s going to be 10 years before people forget about Twilight, And that’s totally understandable. Normally people keep working and working until their big break. You just keep trying to make the best of your decisions. Like I try to think how I used to think before all the Twilight movies.
Nothing was ever easy in Memphis and I think that's why the fans were drawn to our team so much. It's because the way we played and the way we got overlooked and the respect that we didn't get most of the time was very similar to how the city felt and how the locals felt about life in general. It was an easy bond.
Any plot you impose on your characters will be onomatopoetic: PLOT. I say don't worry about plot. Worry about the characters. Let what they say or do reveal who they are, and be involved in their lives, and keep asking yourself, Now what happens? The development of relationship creates plot.
I've always figured the only way I could finish a book and get a plot was just to keep making it longer and longer until something happens - you know, until it finds its own plot - because you can't outline and then fit the thing into it. I suppose it's a slow way of working.
Well, normally I’m against big things. I think the world is going to be saved by millions of small things. Too many things can go wrong when they get big.” — Pete Seeger (on how he felt about attending his big 90th birthday bash last year)
I think about the audience in the sense that I serve as my own audience. I have to please myself the way, if I saw the movie in a theater, I would be pleased. Do I think about catering to an audience? No.
I don't think plot as a plot means much today. I'd say that everybody has seen every plot twenty times. What they haven't seen is characters and their relation to one another. I don't worry much about plot anymore.
Each time I'm starting to work on a film, even if I love to settle the plot in the real world, I start to think about the plot as a fairy tale, or a dream, or a nightmare... As if it was the best way to tell the truth about characters or narration, instead of realism.
No matter how much you know, no matter how much you think, no matter how much you plot and you connive and you plan, you're not superior to sex. It's a very risky game.... It's sex that disorders our normally ordered lives.
When we think about big records, a lot of producers are thinking of how to make it as standard as possible. I think those days are gone. I think you have to surprise the audience in 2015.
David Foster Wallace: I think one of the insidious lessons about TV is the meta-lesson that you’re dumb. This is all you can do. This is easy, and you’re the sort of person who really just wants to sit in a chair and have it easy. When in fact there are parts of us, in a way, that are a lot more ambitious than that. And what we need, I think—and I’m not saying I’m the person to do it. But I think what we need is seriously engaged art, that can teach again that we’re smart. And that there’s stuff that TV and movies—although they’re great at certain things—cannot give us.
This site uses cookies to ensure you get the best experience. More info...
Got it!