A Quote by John Turturro

In a lot of movies, honestly, the directors don't talk to you that much. Maybe they say, "Faster, slower," whatever. Sometimes they give you little adjustments, because sometimes you want to start out neutral, but a lot of times you wind up directing yourself anyway, just doing what you think is the right thing to do.
I don't actually talk about my books much, because I find if I talk about them I don't want to write them anymore. I write to find out what happens. You know how you read a book? That's what I'm doing except I'm just doing it a lot slower because it takes a lot longer to do.
Sometimes there's a lot of tangents because I forget what I'm going to say so much. Sometimes there's very little tangents and stuff for some reason, and then some nights it's all tangents and I can't find my way, and then sometimes I wind up just talking about something completely extemporaneously and then never mention it again ever. It's just completely different.
I think that Billie (Jean King) and Zina (Garrison), they have a whole lot of experience. Even if I don't quite agree with something or have a different way of doing it this week, whatever they said, I did it right away and I found out that it was correct. I think that's helped a lot...I'm having fun. I had a lot of fun out there. Sometimes I was ready to smile -- but I knew I'd lose focus -- because I was doing things that I'd done in practice and we talked about. I was ready to laugh and give someone a high-five, but it wasn't time for that.
The main thing is to do each project the way you want, and if they find an audience, that's terrific. And if they don't, there's nothing you can do anyway, so don't let it concern you that much. An awful lot of good movies have done badly and an awful lot of bad movies have done very well. There are no real rhymes or reasons for it. Sometimes the stars don't always align right. But if you've done the best you can, you feel pretty good about it.
I love to take chances. I love first-time directors. I love super-low-budget movies. I've done 80-something movies, and I want to just keep experimenting. First-time directors have new, fresh ideas, and lot of times they're risking a lot to do it, so it means so much to them. They're not just hired; they have their heart on the line, because if you've gone that far, you're probably a very passionate person.
The reasons you have for doing a movie will vary with the way your life is going. There was a time when a made a some movies because I felt I needed to work. And I didn't think about the material as much. But sometimes I've thought about the material a lot and thought I was doing the right thing, and it didn't work out.
There's a lot of time sitting in movies, so you can put alligators in people's trailers in your spare time. So it [making a film] moves slower, which in some ways is great, because you can live with a scene and invest in it a lot. And in some ways it's hard, because sometimes you can start to lose your energy a little bit, but both are fun.
I think directing yourself is a monumental task. Just to self edit as an actor, you work for some directors who don't give you a lot of feedback so you have to do that. That's a difficult thing to do as an actor.
Ten years ago when I started out I was kind of told I was insane for trying to pursue multiple fields at once because in five years everyone who just did one would have five times the resume I would if I was lucky, but I took that gamble because I just my gut told me it was the right thing to do and you know as an actor there is so much downtime you want to fill it with something else and as a writer you know sometimes you're doing a passion project, sometimes it's a paid gig, sometimes there is nothing, so you can do a journalistic piece.
Sometimes I'll meet somebody, and they've looked me up online or whatever, and they've never heard me talk or met me. I think they expect me to be a lot darker than I am and maybe less - not less friendly - but I guess I'm drawn to that dark emotional music. Maybe they think I'm a little more brooding.
It's entirely to do with personality, I think. There are good directors who talk a lot, bad directors who talk a lot, and good directors who don't say much and vice-versa. It just depends on whether people respond to that personality and whether people have a willingness to do something for them.
I think a lot of times photo sessions is just a test, maybe, for models. Sometimes it's for money. I'm going to shoot a girl in a couple weeks in Italy who has been writing me for a couple years. She sends photos all the time and it's kind of like a game. A lot of times people write and then they just want to see if I'm interested. If I say I am, I never hear from them again.
I think a lot of times what practice can do for you when guys are playing a lot of minutes, it sometimes takes away a little bit of their sharpness, because they have the puck a lot and all that.
Supposedly I'm impossible to talk to. But it's honestly not me being difficult. Sometimes you just don't have a lot to say.
Of course, even if the directors like my ideas or the designs I do, they may end up changing the story so much, that those characters have to change, or get cut out altogether, and that's just the way it is. Sometimes the directors are designers themselves, or they want to work with a character designer who will do things in their own distinct way - sometimes the most important thing I do is figure out what they don't want to do, by experimenting. Either way, whether they use my ideas or not, I get paid, so it's all good.
I think sometimes we give people a lot of credit just because they're writing nice sentences even if it isn't adding up to much.
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