A Quote by Tommy Lee Jones

You can't instruct an audience to laugh, but what you can do is read well and understand the spirit and subtleties, if there are any, in the dialogue. — © Tommy Lee Jones
You can't instruct an audience to laugh, but what you can do is read well and understand the spirit and subtleties, if there are any, in the dialogue.
If you're going to make a film, and you're going to have dialogue, and you want to take the characters seriously, let's understand what they're saying. If there is going to be technical dialogue, let's render it in a way that the audience can understand it and expect that it's not going to be so far over their heads.
Rain Man certainly didn't test really well. If you look at it carefully, you have a disease autism they didn't understand back then, they didn't know in the test audience whether it's okay to laugh or not laugh, because it's a film that's done in a way where, "Well, maybe I'm not supposed to laugh." At the end of the film, Dustin Hoffman gets on the train and doesn't even acknowledge his brother. Not even a glance, nothing. That's why the studio said, "Can't you just have him look at Tom Cruise at the end of the film?"
I think a lot of fans don't know MMA that well. They don't understand the subtleties.
When you're doing those operation scenes, you not only have to be on top of the dialogue and the rhythm of the dialogue and what's happening dramatically, but you've got to technically get the rhythm right, so that everything is fitting with the dialogue at the right time. And you're performing the operation to the audience that's watching it. Thackery has to present it, as well. In some ways, that's the most challenging.
The audience works as such a mob. They either all laugh or all don't laugh, and, you know, changes from audience to audience.
I think as actors we need to close read scripts and we need to fully understand the intricacies of dialogue as well as the symbolisms of what the actor wears and what they hold in their hand because that only adds more layers to the character.
Reading our Bible is actually fundamental, but there is more if we are going to walk in His truth. Even if we read the Bible, if we do not read it by the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of Truth, we will not understand it correctly.
We should understand well that all things are the work of the Great Spirit. We should know the Great Spirit is within all things: the trees, the grasses, the rivers, the mountains, and the four-legged and winged peoples; and even more important, we should understand that the Great Spirit is also above all these things and peoples. When we do understand all this deeply in our hearts, then we will fear, and love, and know the Great Spirit, and then we will be and act and live as the Spirit intends.
I don't understand choreographers who say they don't care about the audience or that they would be happy to present their works non-publicly. I think dance is a form of communication and the goal is to dialogue with the audience. If an audience member tells me they cried or that the dance moved them to think about their own journey or a family member's, then the work is successful.
I was afraid no one would laugh, and I wanted to pretend I wasn't noticing the audience. I didn't want the audience to get the idea I was telling a joke and waiting for a laugh.
You know, this dialogue is only helpful when we come, both of us, to a point where we realize that no dialogue is possible, that no dialogue is necessary. When I say understanding or seeing, they mean something different to me. Understanding is a state of being where the question isn't there any more. There is nothing there that says, "Now I understand!" That's the basic difficulty between us. By understanding what I am saying, you are not going to get anywhere.
Th left laugh at the idea that you think we might have been on the verge of losing America. They laugh at it. So if they don't understand that, if they mock that, laugh at that, they're never going to understand Trump or why people voted for him. There's no way they can.
You can't expect everyone to laugh or applaud you for doing edgy things. Sometimes you'll miss. But I think comedians are artists and there's a value in failure. It kind of works both ways between comedians and audiences. The audience has to understand that comedians are going to sometimes tell a joke that doesn't work out with dark subjects, and the comedian has to understand that sometimes they 'll fail and it's not the audience's fault for not getting it or loving it.
To read well, that is, to read true books in a true spirit, is a noble exercise, and one that will tax the reader more than any exercise which the customs of the day esteem. It requires a training such as the athletes underwent, the steady intention almost of the whole life to this object. Books must be read as deliberately and reservedly as they were written.
I try to make the majority of my audience laugh. That's my audience. They'll laugh at the dead terrorist.
The best way to make friends with an audience is to make them laugh. You don't get people to laugh unless they surrender - surrender their defenses, their hostilities. And once you make an audience laugh, they're with you. And they listen to you if you've got something to say. I have a theory that if you can make them laugh, they're your friends.
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