A Quote by Stuart A. Staples

There seems to be such an insecurity with a lot of films. When they're made, you have to pack every moment to feel something and use the music in that way. That's something I just naturally don't feel.
Acting has given me a way to channel my angst. I feel like an overweight, pimply faced kid a lot of the time - and finding a way to access that insecurity, and put it toward something creative is incredibly rewarding. I feel very lucky.
I don't feel I'm very present in each moment. I feel like every moment I'm either thinking about something that's coming down the road or something that's been in the past.
Eventually, when I got the 'Meadowland' script, I saw something in it that made me think I could make something special out of it, something that could work with my style. Emotionally, I connected to it. I thought, 'If I feel this way just imagining it, maybe we can make that happen on screen and make people feel something when they watch it.'
I feel that so many sci-fi films and films in general have just become really dependent on and addicted to CGI, and that some of the big CGI films of the summer, you see these effects that look like crap. You don't know if you're watching a cartoon or something that's real. And I didn't want to fall into that trap. I really thought there was a way to use a lot of these old techniques to do some new and really neat stuff.
I really like to absorb the project and watch it and work on the music a lot and just get the feel for it until eventually a moment comes where I know I've got it. A lot of it is trial and error. Some days a piece of music doesn't work then other day another piece of music finally says something and works with the picture and suddenly casts a light on all the other stuff you've done - probably because my mind is getting to understand it and the piece is educating me. I always feel like the score is in there already somewhere and I just have to channel it and accent it.
So if there was a way that I knew something about my character's desires or the things that they were resisting because I was saving it for some grand epiphany moment for my readers, I just feel like that's when you can feel the machine at work in a story. That's when you can feel the writer pulling the strings of the puppet.
I just don't feel that we've traveled very far in the realm of social equality. There just seems to be a little bit of unrest. And sometimes I think that happens when you really feel like something's about to change. Right before the moment of lift off, sometimes things feel a little bit unhinged, and that's what it feels like to me right now, both as a woman and just as a human on the planet as an American woman in America. I feel like we're on the precipice of change. I feel a little nervous.
I studied Comparative Literature at Cornell. Structuralism was real big then. The idea of reading and writing as being this language game. There's a lot of appeal to that. It's nice to think of it as this playful kind of thing. But I think that another way to look at it is "Look, I just want to be sincere. I want to write something and make you feel something and maybe you will go out and do something." And it seems that the world is in such bad shape now that we don't have time to do nothing but language games. That's how it seems to me.
We think we have to be a certain way because we have been taught to be a certain way. Actually the only truth is to keep quiet and see what happens from there. When I feel ill-tempered, when I feel sad, when I feel distant, it's just something that is happening. When I don't compare it to the past and project it into the future, then it's just something that is happening now. It's a way of dying now.
You're creating music to pull people into a world, whether it be a visual medium where music is just one element, or a purely musical medium. Either way, you're trying to transport people and to create a connection. I've always felt that the best films and the best albums can be the best company. If people feel a little bit less alone because of something I had a hand in creating than I feel like I'm contributing to the world in a positive way.
Where I feel something that I had written was misinterpreted in a way that made people feel bad, that is absolutely horrifying to me. I feel so embarrassed and I feel ashamed that I should make people feel bad.
Music is a lot more powerful than anyone gives it credit for. I can sing something right now and make you feel something that you would not feel if I said it. If somebody can sing and connect to people just through voice, just through sonics, capturing an emotion, that's a direct string to somebody's soul.
If I find something and feel as though I can contribute to [it] in a way and feel I'm in it, whatever that means, I'm expressing something that I feel is a way to exercise my talent and help communicate a role as a human being in a movie, I will do that.
The vexing thing about human behavior is that when we say we know we should do something, we really and truly do know it. It's hard to be 50 lbs. overweight or smoke a pack a day or feel miserable every moment you spend at work and not understand in a deep and primal way that change is in order - and that in some cases it could even save your life.
If I feel something, it's how I feel. I never say, 'I feel this way, so you should feel that way.' Not that there's anything wrong with it, but I just am who I am. But, yeah. I think you would call me a feminist.
I really enjoy acting, and whether it's TV or films, I feel lucky to be doing it at all. In the end, I'd love to do films, but I'm not going to work just to do work. I only want to do something that I feel right about.
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