A Quote by Shawn Levy

Why hire these geniuses if they're forced to stick with the script? You want to empower your actors as collaborators. — © Shawn Levy
Why hire these geniuses if they're forced to stick with the script? You want to empower your actors as collaborators.
Particularly, the actors, to have analyzed the script in great detail from the point of view of their specific character. So that they have a handle on exactly where the character is in the chronology of things. In that sense the actors become your best check on the logic of the piece, and the way in which it all fits together. They become essential collaborators. The main thing is you have to work with very smart actors.
For 'Mad Men,' we really had to stick to the script, and you want to. It's not like you feel your hand is being forced. The words you get are the words you say.
A lot of people don't want to hire disabled actors. They think you're going to take twice as long over a shot, or they don't want have to put up a ramp for disabled access. They think, 'Why would I do that when I can just hire an able-bodied actor to play the disabled character?'
I always try to stick to the script because I want to respect the writers, and I want to respect the director. But if the director and my fellow actors are okay with me playing with it a little bit, then I definitely want to play with it.
There's only one way to prep, so far as I know. You have your script, you hire the people you want, you find your locations and your setups, everybody shows up and you shoot the film.
As a director you already have a script, you have actors... you have collaborators when you're a director. When you're writing there's no one to collaborate with, there's no material to look at. I haven't adapted something yet, so, I'm sure that would be helpful. When you're writing an original piece you have nothing.
Every time I prep a script, I hear it in my head, but I have to keep my mind open so that when an actor does something different than that, I can think, 'Well, that wasn't what I had in mind, but it works. Let's go with that.' That's why you hire actors and not technicians to do voiceovers, because someone who will creatively bring something to the party.
Actors are loved because they are unoriginal. Actors stick to their script. The unoriginal man is loved by the mediocrity because this kind of artistic expression is something to which the merest five-eighth can climb.
What if someone hurts you with a weapon? Wait. Think it over. You probably feel angry. That's normal. But wasn't it the stick striking your body that hurt you? Can you be angry at the stick? Of course not. Should you be angry at the wielder of the stick? Wouldn't it make more sense to be angry at the hatred in the mind of the stick wielder? If you think about it, isn't the end of hatred in the world what you want most of all? Why, then, would you add to it by giving energy to your anger? After all, it will pass on its own if left alone, especially if you respond to it with compassion.
If you walk into somebody's office with your hair uncombed and a pick in the back, and your shoes untied, and your pants half down, tattoos up and down your arms and on your neck, and you wonder why somebody won't hire you? They don't hire you 'cause you look like you're crazy!
Mark and jay Duplass really like to improvise. Even if we beg them to go back to the script, they invariably ask us to go "off the rails," as they like to call it. It's just the way they work. You get a full written script. And it's really, really, really good, so that's why it's kind of peculiar that they always want you to improvise, because if I wrote something that good, I would want everyone to stick to the dialogue that was written.
The most advanced, creative and original thinking is always a product of historical context and the influences of previous geniuses, mentors, and collaborators on the mind of the originator.
I'm not one of these actors who can make a bad script good. Some actors, a script can be terrible, and they can bring something to it and make it really special. I can't.
I get offered a lot of parts where I want to say, 'Why don't you just hire a model? Don't hire an actor.' I'm trying to convince people I'm a real actor, not some mannequin.
I always try to stick to the script because I want to respect the writers, and I want to respect the director. But if the director and my fellow actors are okay with me playing with it a little bit, then I definitely want to play with it. I definitely want to do that, because I tend to... when I put things in my own words, it comes out way better. It flows naturally, it just feels better. I can put some weight into the words. Even in comedy, it just comes better.
The great thing about David Poile and Nashville is they believe in the people that they hire and they stick with the people that they hire.
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