A Quote by Sharon Needles
After I went on 'Drag Race,' I was allowed to do so many things. I was allowed to do theater, commercial work, television work, modeling, fashion design, and it was great. But the thing with reality television fame is that it's got a pretty quick expiration date.
Related Quotes
When you do television, you're filming out of sequence sometimes. You have to ground yourself very quickly in the character and in the work and in the words. I think theater allowed me that sort of sharp, quick focus to do that.
In the commercial theater, I've been pretty fortunate. The producers that I've worked with have allowed me to define the artistic integrity, the artistic limits of the work.
I started in theater. I would liken sitcom work more to theater work than I would, perhaps, to dramatic television. It's so quick. It kind of feels like the pace of a play.
I try to bear pain and not panic. I try to remember that it's got an expiration date, even if I don't know when that expiration date is. And I try to use it as fuel for my work.
You're not allowed to park a truck in your driveway. You're not allowed to work on your house on Sunday. The people who enforce these laws are nuts. After I wrote a column on this, I got I don't know how many letters from Coral Gables homeowners, story after story after story, wonderfully horrible stories. And the venom they felt for their own government!
TV was my life, growing up. I ran home from school to watch television, and even did my homework with the TV on - my mom had a rule that as long as my grades didn't fall, I was allowed to. So it was my dream to work in television.
Television is an excellent training ground for a director. If you work consistently in television, as I did, you have to come in on time and on budget. What you are allowed in feature films are, fortunately, more time and a larger budget.
My parents were really encouraging of me doing theater, but the one thing they did do was say, 'You're not allowed to do film or television in high school.'
I did a little theatre work after that and the following year I got another part in a television series. Then it was almost to the end of the year before I got more work. That was coming to terms with the reality of the vocation I had chosen.
I come from what we call the pre-'Drag Race' drag world where I didn't start doing this with aspirations of being a reality television star, or this going any further than the small smoky bars of Pittsburgh.
Drag Race' was, like, my outlet and finally being able to see myself in television and that was through Manila Luzon, who was a 'Drag Race' contestant. Manila was the first Asian queer person that I ever saw on mainstream media and 'Drag Race' really did that for me.
Because of the power of television, I was visible to everybody all over the world. But there are many things in the theater that are more fulfilling and that I look forward to doing more. But really, I love it all: theater, film, television.
The crazy thing about television is that you are rarely allowed to grow. You are molded into a character based on some of your strongest traits, and you are forced to stay that way for your entire television life.
We are already expected to be the goodie two shoes. I went through that during my junior high schools where I wasn't allowed to watch television. I wasn't allowed to listen to the radio.
Reality television is to television what marble and gold are to real estate. The point is to dispense with the idea of taste. It's all id. The more unrestrained the better. We all know that 'reality' in reality television is not real. That anybody who would participate in reality television is a fake. But pretending otherwise makes them real.
There's exceptional work being done on television. Some of our great writers are writing for television. When you have things to choose from, you typically go after the writing - unless you're going after the money. There are fewer opportunities in film to make money with good writing, unless you're an action hero.
Related Authors
Adam Carolla Quotes
American
Entertainer
Andrew Flintoff Quotes
English
Entertainer
Conan O'Brien Quotes
American
Entertainer
David Copperfield Quotes
American
Entertainer
Dick Cavett Quotes
American
Entertainer
Earl Nightingale Quotes
American
Entertainer
Jamie Hyneman Quotes
American
Entertainer
Jon Stewart Quotes
American
Entertainer
Khloe Kardashian Quotes
American
Entertainer
Marc Maron Quotes
American
Entertainer
Martha Stewart Quotes
American
Entertainer
Oprah Winfrey Quotes
American
Entertainer
Penn Jillette Quotes
American
Entertainer
RuPaul Quotes
American
Entertainer
Rush Limbaugh Quotes
American
Entertainer
Simon Cowell Quotes
British
Entertainer