A Quote by Mark Duplass

If you're locked to the words on the script, as good as those scripted words are, if you didn't have the time to rehearse them correctly or if the perceived dynamic between the actors is different from what the writer imagined, and you're not allowed to stray from that, you're going to have a stilted scene.
'Writing' is the wrong way to describe what happens to words in a movie. First, you put down words. Then you rehearse them with actors. Then you shoot the words. Then you edit them. You cut a lot of them, you fudge them, you make up new ones in voice-over. Then you cut it and throw it all away.
All people in the world - who are not hermits or mutes - speak words. They speak different languages, but they speak words. They say, "How are you" or "I'm not feeling well" all over the world. These common words - these common elements that we have between us - the writer has to take some verbs and nouns and pronouns and adjectives and adverbs and arrange them in a way that sound fresh.
Actors know, with me they aren't going to be allowed to rehearse a scene for a couple of hours and then get away with doing 25 takes before we get it right. So they come with their full bag of tricks.
I don't rehearse with my actors... the first rehearsal is the first time we turn the camera on... Sydney Pollack never rehearsed his actors, and I found out that's allowed... so you film reactions; you don't create them.
Words are a pretty blunt instrument. There's always going to be slippage between the words and the infinite complexities of a thought. As a writer, I find that frustrating, but as a social animal, I wouldn't have it any other way.
As a director, I have to feel realism from actors, and they can't be plastic. The words for me are secondary, but the chemistry between the actors is most important. However, you have to go by the script because it's related to production, otherwise you will not finish your project.
Words, words, words! They shut one off from the universe. Three quarters of the time one's never in contact with things, only with the beastly words that stand for them.
She tore a page from the book and ripped it in half. Then a chapter. Soon, there was nothing but scraps of words littered between her legs and all around her. The words. Why did they have to exist? Without them, there wouldn't be any of this. Without words, the Führer was nothing. There would be no limping prisoners, no need for consolation or wordly tricks to make us feel better. What good were the words? She said it audibly now, to the orange-lit room. "What good are the words?
And I'm a slow writer: five, six hundred words is a good day. That's the reason it took me 20 years to write those million and a half words of the Civil War.
As a writer myself, my job has very often been to also write on the job. So you get the script and a vague idea of how the scene might work, and you then add funny words or change the script. I'm not the world's best writer or the world's best actor, but I can do that thing where I can fix - or ruin - fix-slash-ruin, add quirk, add value.
The words 'alone,' 'lonely,' and 'loneliness' are three of the most powerful words in the English language. Those words say that we are human; they are like the words hunger and thirst. But they are not words about the body, they are words about the soul.
I'm trying to think of myself at a quiet time. I need to do better with a quiet mind because I'm constantly going and I think that's what feeds me. I've been that way my whole life. But I don't think I picture things so much as I talk them through. Words, words, words. Words and melody.
Sometimes I use words to throw you from once scene to the other, and sometimes I use words to pull you from one scene to the other. You might not be aware of it, but I may have overlapping words one way or the other. So, I'm actually using words.
What is the good of words if they aren't important enough to quarrel over? Why do we choose one word more than another if there isn't any difference between them? If you called a woman a chimpanzee instead of an angel, wouldn't there be a quarrel about a word? If you're not going to argue about words, what are you going to argue about? Are you going to convey your meaning to me by moving your ears? The Church and the heresies always used to fight about words, because they are the only thing worth fighting about.
If producers want to lure the few TV holdouts left, all they have to do is give them a good script and a guarantee of enough time to rehearse. They'd be surprised how fast those hard-to-gets would grab at the bait!
For me, if the words are good on the page, the rest of it comes from spending some time with the script, and not like you're learning lines but absorbing what the script has to offer.
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