I knew I could only play Cyrano if he were Americanized. I had no intention of writing the script myself. I was afraid of it. You're playing with fire when you tamper with a classic. So I went looking for a writer. But it was such a personal idea, and anyone I would give it to would make it his own. It's hard to ask Neil Simon to write your idea.
Interpretation
Steve Martin emphasizes the challenges of adapting a classic work while maintaining its original essence.
In this quote, Steve Martin reflects on the complexities and risks involved in reinterpreting a classic character for a modern audience. He expresses his desire to Americanize the character Cyrano while acknowledging the difficulties of finding a writer who could faithfully translate his vision without altering it too much. This highlights the delicate balance between honoring original works of art and making them accessible or relatable to contemporary audiences.
In practice
During a speech on creativity in theater, one might say, 'As Steve Martin noted, tampering with a classic can feel like playing with fire.'
When I first started doing my comedy act, I just desperately needed material. So I took literally everything I knew how to do on stage with me, which was juggling, magic and banjo and my little comedy routines. I always felt the audience sorta tolerated the serious musical parts while I was doing my comedy.
You want to be a bit compulsive in your art or craft or whatever you do.
I have heard it said that a complicated childhood can lead to a life in the arts. I tell you this story of my father and me to let you know I am qualified to be a comedian.
...it is not the big events that hurt the most but rather the smallest questionable shift in tone at the end of a spoken word that can plow most deeply into the heart.
Reviews for someone like me come in three packages. One is justifiable praise, the second is justifiable criticism, and the third is, "This is only published because he's a celebrity."
If he thinks he would harm Mirabelle, he would back away. But he does not yet understand when and how people are hurt. He doesn't understand the subtleties of slights and pains, that it is not the big events that hurt the most but rather the smallest questionable shift in tone at the end of a spoken word that can plow most deeply into the heart.
Playing a violin is, after all, only scraping a cat's entrails with horsehair.
A picture is a thing which requires as much knavery, as much malice, and as much vice as the perpetration of a crime. Make it untrue and add an accent of truth.
Who are you, a hundred years from today, reading my poetry with curiosity?
Theater is my temple and my religion and my act of faith. Strangers sit in a room together and believe together.
Onstage, you just have to tell the absolute truth about the character you are playing. You hope you communicate it, and you hope it comes back like a tennis ball. If you're listening to the sound of your own voice, nobody else is. The audience knows, and they freeze on you.
When you have a few cake formulas and filling ideas in your repertoire, you will find that it's pretty much an assembly job - you can mix and match a different way every time.
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