This making studies and then taking them home to use them is only half right. You get composition, but you lose freshness; you miss the subtle and, to the artist, the finer characteristics of the scene itself.
I can remember visiting one school in Nottingham - where there were about 10 pupils on the brink of exclusion. They had about a term-and-a-half to go and I said to them that - if they didn't miss another day - I'd get them football tickets at the end of their studies.
The stars of eternal truth and right have always shone in the firmament of human understanding. The process of bringing them down to earth, remolding them into practical forms, imbuing them with vitality, and then making use of them, has been a long one.
I don't miss scenes at all the way that I used to miss them when I was younger making a film. It's actually quite fun to get rid of them now.
My editor and I remain very disciplined. It's just sometimes when you're making a film, you get into the cutting room and you see a scene that's slowing you down in a certain section, but if you remove that scene then, emotionally or story-wise, another scene a half-hour later won't have the same impact. You just get stuck with it.
I was playing in a band and was approached to score an independent film. I had never done it, but had written instrumental music, so I figured I could do it. Turns out I loved scoring the film, and took on another couple films before realizing that if I was to be an effective narrative composer, I should study the craft of composition. I stopped taking projects and got a degree in orchestral music composition, and followed that with film scoring studies. Near the end of my degree studies, I started taking on student films as a way to get back into film scoring.
If you buy all the stocks selling at or below two times earnings, you will lose money on half of them because instead of making profits they will actually lose money, but you will only lose a dollar or so a share at most. Then others will be mediocre performers. But the remaining big winners will go up and produce fabulous results and also ensure a good overall result.
You have got to not get hit. You could be the best puncher in the world, but if you're going to keep constantly taking punches you're going to lose your heart. Once you learn how to miss the punches and then you start to punch them, you become an all-around fighter.
Then, there are the places you would rather not go-a tax collectors' convention, a sewage treatment plant, or maybe the home of someone who keeps spiders as pets and insists on taking them out of their cages and making you hold them.
Giving a reader a sex scene that is only half right is like giving her half a kitten. It is not half as cute as a whole kitten; it is a bloody, godawful mess. A half-good sex scene is not half as hot; it actually moves into the negative numbers, draining any heat from the surrounding material.
I miss my father. I miss my grandfather. I miss my home. And I miss my mother. But the thing is, for almost three years, I managed not to miss any of them. And then I spent that one day with that one girl. One day ... It was like she gave me her whole self, and somehow as a result, I gave her more of myself than I even realized there was to give. But then she was gone. And only after I'd been filled up by her, by that day, did I understand how empty I really was.
If you're a movie star, you get the girl, you lose the girl, and then you get her back. But if you're a character like me, you lose the girl, then you get another one, then you get another one, then you lose them all, then you lose your life.
Crafty men condemn studies; Simple men admire them; And wise men use them: For they teach not their own use: but that is a wisdom without them, and above them, won by observation.
Never make heads straight on the shoulders, but turn them aside to the right or to the left, even though they look down, or upward, or straight ahead, because it is necessary for them to look lively and awake and not asleep. And do not depict the front or rear half of the whole person so that too much straightness is displaced, one half above or below the other half; and if you should wish to use stiff figures, do so only in portraying old people.
I was very proud of that, of taking women and making them vulnerable and so I continued doing that. Right after Beaches I did "Pretty Woman", then I did "Frankie and Johnnie" and then I did "Other Sister" and "Princess Diaries" so that helped me get into the vein there of understanding women and trying to make them very pretty and very interesting.
When we look at a painting, listen to a piece of music, read a novel, or watch a movie we are taking in the artist's composition. The composition is the totality of the work.
If I am making a spice rub or a spice mix for a braise or even just to crust a piece of fish, I'll use mustard seeds. If you soak them in a little bit of vinegar and let them get plumped and soft and then you puree them, they're delicious.