They put me in an office with the TV set up and said "Here's the tape. When you're finished writing your copy for the little trailer you're going to do, you'll come out and show it to us and we set you up to go edit it." I turned it on and it was just this hardcore film and I was like, "Oh my God, I've fallen down the rabbit hole."
Oh, I like going down the rabbit hole. You know, that's kind of my job. When you play Macbeth, you gotta dive down that one. The trick is figuring out how to do it with love and a sense of humor so you can pop back out again. But, kind of the actor's job is to go down the rabbit hole.
I don't think writing stops until the film is out. In the edit, it's another draft. [The script] is the food for set, and then the set is food for the edit, and the edit is food for the screen. It's constant, and this is just the first stage of it.
I played a paraplegic on a show called 'Neighbours.' Just turned up on set, sat in a wheelchair. The producer came up to me one day and said, 'We have to cut around that entire scene because your leg was moving.'
I was at a party, and some squiggly looking dude with a bow tie came up and said, 'How'd you like to be on TV?' Turns out he was the programming guy at the Food Network. They had me come into the office, and I did a 'Ready, Set, Cook' with Emeril Lagasse, I believe.
You can't show up on set and expect it all to come together. You have to have a plan, much like how the director can't just show up and go, well, where should I put the camera? That is gonna determine how it is lit, you should have already been in the room looking at it earlier, pre-lit the room, you know there is a lot of prep that goes into it, so it is the same thing with acting. You can't just show up.
Kids don't say, "Wait." They say, "Wait up, hey wait up!" Because when you're little, your life is up. The future is up. Everything you want is up. "Hold up. Shut up! Mum, I'll clean up. Let me stay up!" Parents, of course, are just the opposite. Everything is down. "Just calm down. Slow down. Come down here! Sit down. Put... that... down."
That first tape I did dropped in 2009. It was just for fun, I'm like 'I'm just going to do something to have fun.' Everyone was just 'put out a tape. You're young. You've got money. It ain't gonna hurt you. Who's it gonna hurt?' So what I ended up doing was I put out the tape, pressed up 20,000 CDs, flooded the streets.
I didn't know why I was coming to this room. Someone just told me to go to Sam Raimi's office. I knew that I uniquely had the comics version of his job, which was to take Spider-Man and put him into the modern day. But I thought, "Maybe he wants to tell me to cut it out." So I come in, it's in his office, and then Stan Lee comes in, and I'd only ever met Stan as a fan, not as a professional. And then they sit us down on a couch, and roll in an AV cart with a TV on it and go, "We're going to show you the first cut of Spider-Man."
Set goals for yourself and put actionable steps in place to ensure that you achieve them. Whether you aim to get a promotion at work or set up your very own business, these ideas will only remain dreams until you write plan out how you are going to reach them by writing down realistic steps towards hitting your targets.
Went to the grocery store, got everything on my list and went up to the checkout. I put a bag of pet food for our rabbit on the conveyor. The girl looked at me and said, Do you have a rabbit? I looked at here and said deadpan, Nope. Just like 'em 'cause they're crunchy. Here's your sign.
I had to be on the set for 'Who Framed Roger Rabbit' because my character was interacting with Bob Hoskins. It's a lot of 'hurry up and wait.' So there I was, at 2 a.m., sitting in a trailer at Griffith Park trying to stay awake. And I said to myself, 'This stinks.' The way I do it is better. I go into the studio about 10 a.m. There's no makeup to worry about. I can wear whatever I want. As soon I get there, I'm good to go. I record my stuff and go home.
Walking in stop-motion animation is probably the most difficult thing you can do... The way that they have these puppets connect to the set is they actually drill a hole in the set, and they put a threaded rod up through that hole and screw it into the bottom of their foot, and that keeps them in place.
I think there is also a certain degree of expectation that's set up by trailers, where even if you know what's going to happen in parts of the film based on the trailer, you almost anticipate and look forward to those moments based on having seen the trailer.
When I drove up on the set one day, and they'd put up a sign that says 'The Bill Engvall Show,' I stood there for 20 minutes just staring at it. The director, James Widdoes, came up and said, 'What are you doing?' And I said, 'Look at this! There's my name on a stage door in Hollywood!'
When you audition for something, and you book it, you think, 'Okay, well, I got the job, and now I actually have to show up on set and do it.' So, you show up on set, and you don't know, 'Am I going to get swallowed up by these people?'
When I'm on the set, I'll come up with ideas if I'm sort of just between responsibilities, because there's a lot of sitting around on set. Invariably, though, the stuff I come up with on the set tends to be bad.