A Quote by Joel Surnow

A good movie with bad music can kill a great dramatic scene. — © Joel Surnow
A good movie with bad music can kill a great dramatic scene.
Maybe my movie isn't over, I say, because sometimes moviemakers trick the audience with a false bad ending, and just when you think the movie is going to end badly, something dramatic happens, which leads to the happy ending. This seems like a good spot for something dramatic to happen, especially since it's my birthday.
I'd rather have one good scene in a movie by a great director than a small role in a mediocre movie.
For me, in movies, it's always a mixed bag. I've never made a movie where I thought, "You were really good in that movie; you were good all the time." No. It's always, "You didn't get it, you didn't do it in that scene, but the other scene is pretty good." So I just hope that in balance there's more good scenes than not.
On the first movie we got good reviews, but we were still dealing with genre stuff. It's going away. Judge the movie - is it a good one or a bad one? We know we made a great movie and it's being judged for just being a good film.
When the movie's done, you talk about either the score or source music over a particular scene, what might work. You just throw a piece of music over the scene, and we both listen to it.
There's never been a mathematical equation that says a good experience making a movie equates to a good movie, or a bad experience on a set is going to lead to a bad movie.
I've begun to believe more and more that movies are all about transitions, that the key to making good movies is to pay attention to the transition between scenes. And not just how you get from one scene to the next, but where you leave a scene and where you come into a new scene. Those are some of the most important decisions that you make. It can be the difference between a movie that works and a movie that doesn't.
When you're watching a show like this or watching a movie, sometimes when you have big music in a scene, it tends to push the viewer out of the scene and makes someone feel like an audience member rather than like they're in the scene.
It's more important for me to have a good record with good music and be part of a movie that's good and where the music is used in a really great way. That's the important thing. The other stuff you want to say about it, I don't care.
A lot of times you can write a scene with a specific song in mind, and then you lay it over the image, and it kills it. I can never figure out why certain music works. Some music you listen to and say, "Man, that would be great for a movie." But when you try it, it's horrible, because the music itself is cinematic. The weight of it kills the image.
It's like you might have some great scene that you love but for some reason - and you can't necessarily put your finger on it - the movie's not working or it seems slow or ponderous in some way, and even though it has your favorite scene in there, actually the favorite scene is the culprit. That's the painful thing about editing, is trying to locate those things that are holding the movie back and then having the guts to cut them. And it is painful to do it.
You can be good in a good movie, you can be good in a bad movie, you can be bad in a bad movie, but never, ever, be bad in a good movie.
I cooked a little bit in my first movie; I did a movie called 'Made.' For the little kid in the movie, I do a scene where I'm preparing a pasta puttanesca. I always loved watching that scene.
There's the movie you write, there's the movie you shoot and the movie you edit, and often, you find that you're getting the same information out of a scene that you already have and a scene that's actually more powerful, so you have to make the tough decision to take it out.
In movies, you don't get reactions: Live, when you do a joke, you know in a second whether it's good or bad. But in a movie, since no one is allowed to laugh or do anything, when you're done with a scene, you're left asking, 'Was that funny?'
The Ramones were a great bunch of guys. They were very quiet, very shy. They were a little in awe of the filmmaking process, probably because we started at 7 a.m. I do remember the very first day of shooting, I met them and did the scene in the bedroom where Joey sings to me, and they were all scattered around my bedroom in my little fantasy scene. That was the first scene we shot of the movie. That scene is kind of a strange way to start a movie. "Okay, get undressed, and these weird guys in leather jackets and ripped jeans are going to sing to you."
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