A Quote by Tom Stoppard

Directors sometimes have good ideas that I wished I'd had, not on rewriting but simply on staging. — © Tom Stoppard
Directors sometimes have good ideas that I wished I'd had, not on rewriting but simply on staging.
Your ideas dry up sometimes, and you get lazy sometimes 'cause you're around the same people. That was the good thing about having different directors. You had to stay on your toes.
You've got to remember that improvisers are writers and actors and directors all simultaneously. That's what's happening in real time because you're writing on your feet, and you are acting out the words and you are directing what the staging is. You're deciding what staging is.
Good writing is writing and rewriting and rewriting and rewriting. Sometimes, it happens to work right away, and that's amazing. But most of the time, it happens to work, and then you rewrite and rewrite and rewrite, and maybe it even comes back to the thing it was in the first place, but then you know for sure that it is good, and it's what you wanted to do.
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 studied philosophy, religious studies, and English. My training was writing four full-length novels and hiring an editor to tear them apart. I had enough money to do that, and then rewriting and rewriting and rewriting.
In the past, those who had ideas they wished to communicate to the public had the unquestioned right to disseminate those ideas in an open marketplace, called a mall, we should not abridge that right.
Collaboration is being open to each other's ideas and benefiting from each other's perspectives in an open way. Collaboration is all about rewriting and rewriting and rewriting and helping each other to constantly improve a piece. And, it's also about spurring each other on to doing really great, hard work - it's easier to do it in a collaboration than on your own.
For each detail I include, I throw dozens away. So I guess the first trick is to pick the right details, the most revealing details. Then I think one must simply write quick, clean, bright prose. For me, this means rewriting and rewriting: almost never adding, almost always cutting.
I felt I knew Lugosi. Like him, I had worked for good directors and terrible directors.
The next best thing to having good ideas is recognizing good ideas from your users. Sometimes the latter is better.
I have a lot of ideas come to me when I'm working that are different from the plan, and sometimes that can be a little overwhelming and difficult for directors.
Sometimes I felt as if there were no tomorrows, that everything, my whole life, was crammed into one long day. A continuous stretch of meaningless time. Sometimes I even wished there was no tomorrow, if this was all I had to look forward to.
As for the Canadians - good actors and good directors are sometimes taken by the American market, you know, if they're good enough.
I began stealing a lot of ideas from other directors I had worked with.
I do like to work with young directors because it's such a difficult business that I think after directors have been around a while sometimes, not always, but sometimes their passion gets siphoned off because they get hurt.
I certainly wished I hadn't stressed quite as much or had such insecurity at times. I wish I had trusted my instincts on some occasions when I didn't and I wish I had listened to better advice when I didn't. But overall, I have to look at the glass as half full and acknowledge that I am all of the moments of my life, the good and the not so good.
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