A Quote by Lucas Neff

There's sort of a very symbiotic thing that happens on good TV shows with great writers, which is that they start to sort of embrace who the actors are and try to make the roles more specific to what they bring and what they can do.
One of the things I really love about TV is this symbiotic relationship you can get between the writers and the actors, and the characters start to come to life because you start to collaborate.
There are good roles for actors of every age now. In fact TV is a breeding ground for new talents. There are so many actors who start their journey with television, learn so much from here and then start try in films and web.
I think there are a lot more writers who are actors than you know; they just don't have roles on famous TV shows that you recognize.
In a way, 'Lost,' or maybe TV in general, is a kind of a contract between the writers and the viewers. And the actors - of course we have a great deal to do with it - but where the drama's made, sort of where the meeting of minds is, is between those two parties: writers and audience.
I sort of have open invitations from a lot of people to do TV. But it's very hard for me to do roles in sitcoms and movies because I'm not a great actor, so if the material isn't good, I'm in torment while I do it.
On these matters of specific fact, like is the mushroom an extraterrestrial and that sort of thing, I haven't the faintest idea. The mushroom itself is such a mercurial, elusive, Zen sort of personality that I never believe a word it says. I simply entertain its notions and try and sort through them, and I found that to be the most enriching approach to it.
In America, I am brown; I'm 'of colour', so I would be offered Latin roles, and I've fought against that. I don't want to be put in a category, to be just offered the same sort of thing. For me, it's all about different roles, telling the stories of the great writers.
I went from doing something that was very original, sort of subversive, and specific in its voice - The Grinder - and loved every minute of it, but having done that, I was anxious to do something that had more broad appeal and to embrace the good things about that.
I try to create a kind of dynamic thing that hopefully some people will become interested in. And what they do with it after that is sort of up to them. But it's a specific item, it's a specific thing that I've done. And what they do with it is their problem.
The one thing I think I've noticed about shows that are supposed to be funny on television is that they've sort of become routinized, so there's an awful lot of mannerisms and joke lines that are sort of there to trigger laughter, rather than give actors a chance to play a moment.
You know so many documentaries now are very carefully scripted before you start, and then people are sort of put in chairs which are beautifully lit, and they tell their stories and you do that with another 10 people and you then construct a story from what they say. You do a sort of paper thing, and then you put some images in-between, and that's your film. And that's so not what I think is a good documentary. It can be so much more than that, it should be much more of an adventure and much more uncertain... like real things are.
I always try and bring screenplay, shooting and editing into a sort of symbiotic - as close into alignment as you possibly can get them, consistent, obviously, with the resources that you've got and the time you've got available.
The thing I worry about is, what happens when your talent flees? Because you see that with writers sometimes: they start writing these awful books. And there's something sort of horrifying about it.
People have libraries at home, they have bookshelves, they have CDs. And they sort of try, people try to bring great artists into their lives, into their physical houses and sort of live with portions of them. But they're not really deeply engaging with them.
I think it's sort of rare in TV shows or movies to see people being vulnerable. That's sort of scary to an audience.
I know that actors and actresses have a great reputation for being very, very selfish, and in some cases, that's very true. But in the theater I find it doesn't help you to be selfish. You sort of have to be selfless in the theater, and the more selfless you are - that doesn't mean don't take care of yourself - but the more you sort of surrender to the work, I find, the better the work is. That's just my experience.
This site uses cookies to ensure you get the best experience. More info...
Got it!