A Quote by Jerry Stiller
Would you go to see a brilliant actor who's been framed for something that he didn't do, and put him on a stage and say he's going to do Hamlet for you, and why don't you enjoy it? That's a hell of an analogy, but it's about the same thing.
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Donald Trump's a hell of a performer, he's a hell of an entertainer. If you put him on and let him say his crazy stuff, you're going to get a lot of viewers. If you take him off and have some sober discussion about what's going on in Syria, you're going to lose 80 percent of your audience.
Géza Röhrig is just incredible because he's not an actor, he's a Hungarian poet. He also happens to be a brilliant actor. He's totally unusual, the way he talks and thinks and operates isn't in the same language as you're used to from actors who've been in a lot of things before. It brings this completely bizarre and fresh, wonderful way of approaching everything that I love being around. Not where I'm, as a producer, having to interact with him as an artist, but as somebody who can stand back and admire what he's bringing to this thing that I've nurtured to create a stage for him.
As an actor, I enjoy variety. That's a big thing for me. So, if I'm going to put my name to something and commit to something that's going to take up a lot of my time, it has to be something that I know is going to be enjoyable and worth my while. Otherwise, what's the point?
I'm not going to Russia and tell them to go to hell and think - that's not the way things are done. You chip away at something and you hope that there will be dialogue and that the situation can get better. You don't just go in there with guns blazing and say well, to hell with you because they're going to say to hell with you and get out of the country.
Someday, I expect to see a television version of 'Hamlet' and see Hamlet come on during the intermission and hold up his sword and say 'This is made of the same fine steel as such-and-such razor blades.'
Every time I'm in the studio, I always think of my professor in undergrad. He was like, "There are so many artists in the world. If you're going to be an artist, make sure you have something to say. Don't just be an artist and put out bullshit. Have something to say." I guess that would be my philosophy and something I think about all the time. Every day when I'm in the studio I hear him and I see him. I remember him saying it in class. So that's something that I always want to make sure I have: I'm saying something with the work.
Literally, no man ever sees himself as others see him. No photograph or reflection ever gives us the same slant on ourselves that others see. It has often been proved on the witness stand that no two people ever see the same accident precisely the same way. We see through different eyes and from different angles. But if we could see things as other people see them, we could come closer to knowing why they do what they do and why they say what they say.
Even when I play in World Cups, I don't look at things like that. It's something that I want to be doing, so why would I put extra pressure on myself? I'm just going to go out there and enjoy it.
There is only one thing I want. I would like to be seriously ill, and to hear nothing more about him for at least a week. Why doesn't something happen to me? Why do I have to go through all this? If only I had never set eyes on him!
I've never wanted to be anything other than an actor. I started performing on Broadway when I was 8 years old. My first night on stage, I told my mom, "This is what I want to do. I was always a very out-there kid. The sad thing about acting business is it's so fleeting. If I couldn't do that, I was going to go to school and study law and become a lawyer. But I probably would have been miserable, or they would have had some very theatrical court sessions.
People say you have to know when to retire, which is a dumb thing to say. If you want to go out on top, yeah, it becomes important when you quit. But I wasn't afraid of that. And I wasn't worried about getting fired. I knew the risk. To me, it's not an ego thing. I enjoy coaching. I enjoy helping people achieve something.
Hamlet 's character is the prevalence of the abstracting and generalizing habit over the practical. He does not want courage, skill, will, or opportunity; but every incident sets him thinking; and it is curious, and at the same time strictly natural, that Hamlet, who all the play seems reason itself, should he impelled, at last, by mere accident to effect his object. I have a smack of Hamlet myself, if I may say so.
People sometimes say, "Isn't it boring, isn't it always the same? It's the same lines." I go, "Well, do you play tennis? Because that's the best analogy I can give." If you go out eight times and play tennis eight times this week, yeah it's the same rules but it's a different game every time you're out on that court.And that's the best analogy I can come up with the theater.
The thing framed says that nothing framed it; the tongue never made itself to speak, and yet talks against him that did; saying that which is made, is, and that which made it, is not. But this folly is infinite as hell, as much without light or bound as the chaos or the primitive nothing.
One of the first roles I had on stage was with a brilliant director in a brilliant play with a brilliant cast, but I just couldn't find my way into the heart of the character. I found myself straining a lot. When it started. I felt lost. That was the Eugène Ionesco play Rhinoceros. I don't think I was prepared for that. I don't think I had the full tool kit to do it justice. It's a very difficult play, it's an extraordinarily difficult part, and I never felt I really got it right. Far from it. To a degree, Hamlet was the same.
It's extraordinary to think that if you walked into a room and said you had never heard of Hamlet, you would be regarded as a Philistine. But you could walk into the same room and say, 'I don't know what a proton is,' and people would just laugh and say, 'Why should you know?'
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