The pledge drive has everything going against it as broadcasting. It's repetitive. It's ad-libbed by people who can't ad-lib. It's about asking for money, which is something nobody wants to hear, even from their own relatives.
I don't think I'd have been in such a hurry to reach adulthood if I'd known the whole thing was going to be ad-libbed.
When you're adapting a novel, there are always scenes taken out of the book, and no matter which scenes they are, it's always someone's favorite. As a screenwriter, you realize, 'Well, it doesn't work if you include everyone's favorite scenes.'
In the year and a half I was on SNL, I never saw anybody ad lib anything. For a very good reason - the director cut according to the script. So, if you ad libbed, you'd be off mike and off camera.
There weren't any deleted scenes, it was just a matter of tightening stuff. I didn't have any deleted scenes in what I did as far as I know. It's very unusual on Game of Thrones for there to be a deleted scene because the scripts are pretty locked in. There's rarely a reason to say, "Hey, we don't need this scene."
I often found that my favorite scene that I shoot is often one that I cut out, like in 'The Last Castle' and 'The Contender.' If you look at the deleted scenes, some of the best scenes never made it into the film.
The line was originally, ‘Captain Phillips, get a load of me: fancy-free on the seven seas,’ but I ad-libbed.
I called Nic Pizzolatto and he said, "No, no. You're in it the whole way through." That was fun to shoot [in The Lobster]. I had a few scenes in that show that were some of my favorite all-time scenes to be in.
No one had ever done a swimming movie before so we just made it up as we went along. I ad-libbed all my own underwater movements.
I didn't sit outside the bank and plan. I just went in and ad libbed because I was so young. But I was smart enough to know I would absolutely get caught.
In the old days, you cut out a scene that might've been a really great scene, and no one was ever going to see it ever again. Now, with DVD, you can obviously... there's a lot of possibilities for scenes that are good scenes.
That scene that I have with Brad Pitt in Meet Joe Black is one of my favorite scenes that I've ever done. He's very modest. He's a real hardworking actor. I think he was going through something difficult at that time, and he never brought his personal stuff - not once! - on the set. He was a real pro. I remember doing that scene, and as I was acting, I thought, "I understand why this guy's a movie star." Because there was just something that he did when the cameras rolled. There was some kind of energy that was really magnificent, a real aura about him.
Instead of just purchasing an ad campaign, target test and measure. Give an ad a small try. If the response is enough to pay for the ad, make it larger. With a franchise, ask the most successful franchisees what they did. Ask the bottom five guys what they did and avoid it.
We did monologues and scenes, and New York I did a scene from Amadeus and a monologue from Pounding Nails in the Floor With My Forehead by Eric Bogosian, and then in L.A. I switched the scene to This is Our Youth and did the same monologue. I was spiky-haired, super skinny. A lot of people were like, "You should come here and do a sitcom." That was the feedback that I got. Obviously it was quite a different journey than the one I've actually had, but I just listened to people.
For me, my favorite scenes, when I'm in my comfort zone, are the fighting scenes Those are my favorite to do, so I'd love to have more of those.
My favorite commercial I did was my Verizon campaign, which I filmed a series of three commercials. My favorite movie I have done was 'House Under Siege' because it was my very first movie at 5 years old. My favorite TV show I have filmed was 'The Night Shift,' which is one of my favorite shows.