If I can get you to laugh with me, you like me better, which makes you open to my ideas
John CleeseRead
Some actors, I think, want to feel that they are as creative as the writer. And the answer is, frankly, they're not.
Interpretation
This quote emphasizes the distinction between actors and writers in the creative process.
John Cleese suggests that while some actors may desire to be seen as equally creative as the writers who craft the narratives they perform, the inherent nature of their roles distinguishes them. Actors interpret and portray characters based on the writers' creations, which raises the question of creative ownership and contribution within the arts.
In practice
During a panel discussion on the creative process in film, this quote could highlight the collaborative nature of writing and acting.
If I can get you to laugh with me, you like me better, which makes you open to my ideas
Because, as we all know, it’s easier to do trivial things that are urgent than it is to do important things that are not urgent, like thinking. And it’s also easier to do little things we know we can do than to start on big things that we’re not so sure about.
If you are leaping a ravine, the moment of takeoff is a bad time to be considering alternative strategies.
In Britain, girls seem to be either bright or attractive. In America, that's not the case. They're both.
I used to desire many, many things, but now I have just one desire, and that's to get rid of all my other desires.
When the target audience is American teenage kids, you can have problems. My generation prized really fine acting and writing. Sometimes you have to go back to the basic principles which underpin great visual comedy.
I think that you certainly don't have to be aged and travel the world to write a poem.
I grew up watching period dramas, as we all did in the 1980s and '90s - endless adaptations of Jane Austen and Charles Dickens - and I loved them. But I never saw anyone like me in them, so I decided to find a story to erode the excuses for me not doing one.
I've spent most of my life embracing violence in wars and revolutions. Even a famine is a form of violence. Because I photograph people in peril, people in pain, people being executed in front of me, I find it very difficult to get my head around the art narrative of photography.
A girl’s got to use what she’s given and I’m not going to make a guy drool the way a Britney video does. So I take it to extremes. I don’t say I dress sexily on stage - what I do is so extreme. It’s meant to make guys think: ‘I don’t know if this is sexy or just weird.
What they don't teach you in art school is how your whole life is about discovering who you already were.
What makes people the world over stand in line for Van Gogh is not that they will see beautiful pictures but that in an indefinable way they will come away feeling better human beings. And that is exactly what Van Gogh hoped for.
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