A Quote by Jake LaMotta

I been in jail twice. The first time was reform school: they got me for carrying burglar's tools, something like that. The morals charge was a frame-up. — © Jake LaMotta
I been in jail twice. The first time was reform school: they got me for carrying burglar's tools, something like that. The morals charge was a frame-up.
One of the great tools we use in acting is the idea of immediacy, that the audience gets to see you witness something apparently for the first time, so you create a lot of tools to kind of trick yourself into making it appear something is happening for the first time.
Spending time in jail really helped me stay away from what my brother did because I got a taste of jail time. I realized this isn't the life I want to live being locked up 24 hours a day.
I think about photographs as being full, or empty. You picture something in a frame and it's got lots of accounting going on in it-stones and buildings and trees and air - but that's not what fills up a frame. You fill up the frame with feelings, energy, discovery, and risk, and leave room enough for someone else to get in there.
There have always been ­gangland-type areas in Nottingham - but what's really hit me hard is kids as young as eight are now carrying knives to school. That was something I never saw when I was growing up. The police and ­families have got a ­responsibility. These young people are ­feeling trapped. They don't even have somewhere to go to just have fun.
It is the first time the burglar has been appointed as caretaker.
My dad was a doctor who worked at a jail. He was more like a jail administrator. My mom was a public school teacher. There's no artists in my family whatsoever. So I don't know how that got in my gene pool, but it did.
My happiest memory of childhood was my first birthday in reform school. This teacher took an interest in me. In fact, he gave me the first birthday presents I ever got: a box of Cracker Jacks and a can of ABC shoe polish.
I remember my first meeting with Guillermo Del Toro - he couldn't have been warmer, but I always had a kind of immaturity about me dealing with people that were in charge. Not really knowing how to conduct myself. And I got on the floor and curled up into a ball under a desk, which is so weird - as I was doing it, I was like, "Oh, my god, you're a freak. Get up. What are you doing?" And I looked at him like, "I'm so sorry," and he's like, "No, it's natural. Why wouldn't you want to do that?" He's just the most giving person and made me feel not like a freak.
When I was a kid, I got caught shoplifting by a store security guard in Ellensburg. The next time I saw that store guard was when I got thrown in jail again - this time for not paying court fees. The guy happened to be in jail, too, right next to me. That's what Eastern Washington is like - you never get too far away from anybody.
By the time I got to school, I had already read a couple hundred books. I knew in the first grade that they were lying to me because I had already been exposed to other points of view. School is basically about one point of view -- the one the teacher has or the textbooks have. They don't like the idea of having different points of view, so it was a battle. Of course I would pipe up with my five-year-old voice.
All the kids in school taunted me, 'Your dad's going to jail,' and I believed my parents when they said no it wouldn't happen. Then one day I was driving into school with him, which was weird because my mom always took us. And he was like, 'yeah, I'm going to jail.'
I grew up in Michigan and - where to start? I mean, my dad was a doctor who worked at a jail. He was more like a jail administrator. My mom was a public school teacher. There's no artists in my family whatsoever.
'Brisco' was the first show I created, and of course, at the time I had no idea what a special experience it was because I didn't have a frame of reference. After it was over I was like, 'Damn. Shoot. That was something special.' I'm still upset that it got cancelled.
When they put me in jail, that's when they turned me into an activist. Up until the time I went to jail, I was just a comedian.
For so long, it was just my secret. It burned inside me, and I felt like I was carrying something important, something that made me who I was and made me different from everybody else. I took it with me everywhere, and there was never a moment when I wasn't aware of it. It was like I was totally awake, like I could feel every nerve ending in my body. Sometimes my skin would almost hurt from the force of it, that's how strong it was. Like my whole body was buzzing or something. I felt almost, I don't know, noble, like a medieval knight or something, carrying this secret love around with me.
Probably my first memory of theatre, the first one I guess that had an impact on me was when I saw my very first panto with my Primary School. I think just going there and experience that for the first time, being so young, it's something that's actually stuck with me right up until now. And to think back and to sort of remember that magic and that first little hint of it was brilliant.
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