Top 1200 Broadway Quotes & Sayings - Page 17

I've been reading scripts where they've been doing a lot of singing now, but within the dark, realistic story line. I would love, love, love, love to do that. But not a musical on Broadway, I don't have that kind of energy or stamina.

Even when I did my Broadway show, I did 15 minutes no one had seen before, because that was the night that Michael Jackson protested about Al Sharpton bailing on him. I said, "Wow, if that man bails on you, this must be really a lost cause."

When you think about Broadway, you think broad and big, but the fact is there are so many plays that are very intimate, but fill a 1,500-seat house. Plays like 'Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?' have deep moments of silence and intimacy to them.

I'd love to go back to Broadway if there was a place for me there. I would absolutely go back; it's just a part of me.

I know, it's weird that I've never done a musical. I turned down two of them. 'The Lion King' and 'The Producers.' I turned two of the biggest Broadway musicals down, am I a mess?

Performance art is going to be the future. Plays on Broadway are so restricted. But performance art is like haikus, just one line thing. And it's more casual but more interesting.

Burlesque thrived during the Great Depression, and by extension, so, too, did Gypsy [Rose Lee]. Men could no longer afford to pay $5.50 to see a show on Broadway, but they could scrape together $1.00 for a matinee at a burlesque house.

Even before I was working off-Broadway, there were lots of different TV shows that I would actually say 'no' to, and my agents would be like, 'Are you crazy?' but they stuck with me because they know the kind of things that excite me.

I want a TV series, I'm gonna do some acting jobs, I'm gonna do some Broadway jobs, everything!

Is Hollywood the cruelest city in the world? Well, it can be. New York can be that, too. You can be a Broadway star here one night, and something happens, and out--nobody knows you on the street. They forget you ever lived. It happens in Hollywood, too.

When I got out of the Army, I started writing the usual 'Catcher in the Rye' imitations, and then I wrote something that was done Off-Off Broadway in a theater. It was called 'What Else Is There?' and it was four or five people playing missiles in a silo waiting to take off.

The producers and I first talked about the Big Fish musical, right before we did the first test screening of the movie. I said, "I think there's a Broadway musical here." And really, from that day, we started figuring out how we would do it.

There was a week where I was depressed with the rain, and people were telling me to get a light box. But I live on the 14th floor of an apartment complex, and I see the Broadway Bridge and Mount Hood, and it keeps me such company. And like true Oregonians, I don't carry an umbrella anymore.

I'm probably going to be ashamed to say this... It was a Sir Mix-a-Lot album. I think I was 12, 13. I had just enough money for the 'My Posse's on Broadway' single, so I bought that single. That was the first thing I bought with my own money.

'Tommy' was my first Broadway show. Long Pause. I don't know how you can surpass the excitement or get more excited or feel more on top of the world than when you are sitting in a room singing The Who, and Pete Townshend is sitting there tapping his foot.

My parents had normal jobs, and I didn't just want to work all day, and so I thought if I could break into music I wouldn't have to work all day. And I had an uncle who was on Broadway, so I was like, 'I have to be able to sing.'

The secret to life is to put yourself in the right lighting. For some, it's a Broadway spotlight; for others, a lamplit desk. Use your natural powers -- of persistence, concentration, and insight -- to do work you love and work that matters. Solve problems. make art, think deeply.

There is nothing wrong with loving musical theatre, but I think that it's naive to hold it superior any other musical classification, especially since these other genres have been influencing Broadway more and more in recent decades.

I love 'Annie Hall,' but then I adore 'Hannah and Her Sisters.' Dianne Wiest is amazing in 'Bullets Over Broadway,' but her in 'Hannah and Her Sisters,' I absolutely loved it.

My skirt fell off on stage during a performance of Hairspray on Broadway, revealing my fat suit over my own natural fat suit. I turned to the audience and said, 'Now you know why I spent six years in a square.'

I always wanted to work on Broadway. That's something I always wanted to do.

The people I idolized I saw once a year on the Tony Awards. I would buy the cassette tapes of the various Broadway shows and scour the photos inside the recording package. That's how I exposed myself to the arts - New York and professional theater felt like a very distant thing.

I've never seen a theater community to rival that of Chicago. Neither New York nor L.A. has the raw talent or integrity that Chicago theater has, and I think it's because Chicago doesn't have Broadway or the film and TV business to distract it.

If you try to do a genuine rock musical, rock people will think you're flaccid and Broadway audiences will think you're too loud.

I would love to go into musicals. I got a chance to sing in 'Big Momma's House,' and that's something I would love to do more. But only in Broadway or in the movies. I don't think I would ever seek a career as a singer.

I worked with Ismail Merchant on 'The Mystic Masseur,' I did 'Sakina's Restaurant,' I've done plays, I've been on Broadway, I've done movies, I've done TV... but nothing has had the pop culture penetrative impact as 'The Daily Show' has. It's the nature of the beast.

We have some extremely talented people that we've ripped off the Broadway stage. It's awe-inspiring how talented they are, and how can-do they are. They're at that stage of life where it's like, "Yeah, let's put on a show!" That's really fun to watch.

When I got out of school, I just started doing plays of the off-off-Broadway route, and for many years, that's what I did, slowly doing work in tiny theaters, building relationships with people in the business. It's not a showy story.

If you want to be a theater actor, where do you live now? Young actors struggle on a Broadway salary. A lot of them live in shoe boxes; some of them are literally three to a shoebox. New York has gotten prohibitively expensive.

I was in California, and I was going to UCLA, and I knew I certainly didn't have movie star looks. I remember seeing pictures and photos of Ethel Merman and Mary Martin, who were kind of average looking. I said, 'Well, that's for me, then, to go back to New York and try to be in musical comedy on Broadway.'

What success I achieved in the theatre is due to the fact that I have always worked just as hard when there were ten people in the house as when there were thousands. Just as hard in Springfield, Illinois as on Broadway.

Let's give a big cuddly shout-out to Pat Healy, infant provocateur and amateur journalist at The New York Times. Keep it up, Pat - one day perhaps you'll learn something about how Broadway works, and maybe even understand it.

I don't consider success doing a show for 30 years; I'm sorry. To me, you're successful when you graduate from something. I did a series, I did a talk show, I did movies, I replaced Mickey Rooney [on Broadway] in "Sugar Babies." You understand?

When you're trying out on Broadway, it's very hectic, and you're making changes night after night. There's a lot of pressures from producers to make some changes, and you're writing for actors who are in it - and sometimes the limitations of actors who are in it.

The pop artists did images that anybody walking down Broadway could recognize in a split second — comics, picnic tables, men’s trousers, celebrities, shower curtains, refrigerators, Coke bottles. All the great modern things that the Abstract Expressionists tried not to notice at all.

When I auditioned for 'Bye Bye Birdie' on Broadway, Gower Champion said, 'You've got the job!' I said, 'Mr. Champion, I can't dance.' He said, 'We'll teach you what you need to know.'

There is one thing I should say, and it's important: Young Broadway singers and anybody who is an orator of any kind - lawyers who have to speak in court or pastors or anyone who has a lot of stress on their vocal cords: You should do the maintenance. You should do whatever it takes to feel fresh and good.

I think every show I do, whether I am doing eight shows a week of a Broadway show... I think, "that's a show I'll never get back"... I go home at night and I think to myself, "that was my favorite".

Somewhere along the line, a concert became a variety show. It was no longer enough for four dudes to play together in front of some guitar amps. Costume changes, an army of dancers, and Broadway theatrics suddenly became standard for a 'concert.'

What's interesting was with all the shows I did on Broadway, I was either the dance captain or the assistant choreographer - I sort of worked my way up to that kind of thing - and I always was interested in more than just the dancers and the numbers. I would always sneak into the room and watch the scene work.

'Tommy' was the first show I ever saw on Broadway. I was 14. It wasn't 'the show' that started that flame in me or anything, but it did excite me in a way no other show had. I'd never seen a show so brilliantly cast and directed.

In the seventies when I was struggling, I ate the same thing every day at Big Nick's Burger Joint on Broadway and 77th Street. A cottage-cheese omelette with tomatoes, French fries, rye toast, orange juice, and coffee. It was consistently the most satisfying meal I could possibly imagine.

In high school, I was doing my magazine 'Rookie' and a lot of writing, and I became a little less interested in the fashion world. I was approached by an agent for writing, and I said I wanted to act as well. They sent me scripts, and then I got my first Broadway play, 'This Is Our Youth'.

You know, things kind of happen organically and, you know, Broadway sort of happened out of a career in performing and - which happened out of practicing piano when I was a kid.

I've had offers for Broadway and Hollywood musicals, but I do not want to take just any musical. I want the musical that's right for me when I'm right for it.

'Story of My Life' was essentially a two-man musical play. In hindsight, I don't know if there was room for a two-man musical on Broadway.

Here I am flying high over enemy lines in my Sopwith Camel searching for the Red Baron. Who's that behind me? It's the Red Baron! He has me in his sights! Give my regards to Broadway.

I certainly wanted my name in lights. I wanted my name on a marquee. I wanted recognition on Broadway.

I never wanted to get a job of musician. That was kind of my thing. I came from somewhat of a musical family. I had an uncle on Broadway. My dad kind of knows how to play instruments. Although, I always find it annoying when he does play an instrument.

I did Broadway shows. And I started realizing that this is actually how I'm going to make my living. So maybe I should try to do television and film and make a better living and get an occasional residual check so I can pay a mortgage someday.

I've gone from a kid who was sneaking out of my childhood house and lying to my parents to do shows in a community theatre in Reading, PA, to now having two shows on Broadway opening within two months of each other. That's sort of crazy, that trajectory.

I think that I always thought that if my uncle was on Broadway, then I must inherently have a good voice. I don't think that for a while I did. Eventually, out of sheer will of never wanting to get a job or go to college, I found my way into doing music full-time.

I've had such an amazing opportunity to work on so many different types of projects that continued on to Broadway. Unfortunately I didn't always continue on with them. Still, you know, I always had such a great pride in kind of helping the authors and directors create the show.

on Broadway money rules. Like a host of vultures, the ticket brokers, the speculators, the craft unions, the agents, the backers, the real estate owners move in on the creative body and take their bite. The world of dreams breathes in an iron lung; and without this mechanical pumping it dies.

I can go out raw with nothing, and my fans would still be happy, but I feel that I owe it to them to give them almost like a Broadway musical at this point in my life. I have to give them something more, so I do have to think of different ways to do it.

I've never lived in New York. I've never done a play off or on Broadway, so I think that's in my future. Have that experience - get a little apartment in the city and grow a beard and walk around with earbuds in my ears, and a stocking cap and a big giant scarf.

I always, always meant to be on stage. I only ended up even auditioning for television and movies because I was understudying a Turgenev play on Broadway and was so broke that, when I got a mini-series, I had to take it and was so ashamed because I was such a snob.

Since nobody upstages Rudolph Giuliani, his will be a Broadway-class show, perhaps his final bravura performance before November 2000, when he hopes to be turned out of the mayor's office by virtue of his election to the United States Senate.

What I like about Broadway is that you are still entertaining. You're standing in front of an audience every night and the critics are not friends at all - and that's good for me as an entertainer because I want to grow. It also gives me the structure of remaining in one city so I can get creative in different ways.

They can't hurt me. Sure, they can crush you and kill you. They can lay you out on 42nd and Broadway and put hoses on you and flush you in the sewers and put you on the subway and carry you out to Coney island and bury you on the Ferris wheel. But I refuse to sit here and worry about dying.