As an actor I am always waiting for my luck to run out.
Tom HanksRead
I'm lucky enough to be able to make only movies I'm interested in seeing. That has to be an instinctive thrust. The audience knows when you're faking it. They can hang any kind of moniker they want on me.
Interpretation
The quote emphasizes the importance of authenticity in filmmaking and pursuing personal passion.
Tom Hanks expresses his belief that filmmakers must create work that genuinely interests them, as audiences can easily discern insincerity. He implies that true artistry comes from a place of genuine passion and instinct, which ultimately resonates more profoundly with viewers.
In practice
In a film class discussing the importance of authenticity in storytelling.
As an actor I am always waiting for my luck to run out.
Even the simplest choice can make a jaw-dropping difference in our world.
My kid could get a bad X-ray and I could get a call from the doctor saying I have something growing in my bum and that would change my perspective on everything instantaneously, on what is and what is not important.
Back in World War II, we viewed the Japanese as 'yellow, slant-eyed dogs' that believed in different gods. They were out to kill us because our way of living was different. We, in turn, wanted to annihilate them because they were different. Does that sound familiar, by any chance, to what's going on today?
I think it's better to feel good than to look good.
If you look at romantic comedies as pieces of commerce, the audience is looking for wish fulfillment.
I cannot life for life itself: but for the words which stay the flux. My life, I feel, will not be lived until there are books and stories which relive it perpetually in time. I forget too easily how it was, and shrink to the horror of the here and now, with no past and no future. Writing breaks open the vaults of the dead and the skies behind which the prophesying angels hide. The mind makes and makes, spinning its web.
Film is really the one art form that can effectively use silence. Music and theater can play with silence, but they can't sustain silence without losing energy, whereas film can go into a silent mode and stay there for minutes at a time.
As music becomes less of a thing--a cylinder, a cassette, a disc--and more ephemeral, perhaps we will begin to assign an increasing value to live performances again.
There is no more difficult art to acquire than the art of observation, and for some men it is quite as difficult to record an observation in brief and plain language.
I consider writing practice a true Zen practice because it all comes back at you. You can't fool anyone because it's on the page.
The business of art is to reveal the relation between man and his environment.
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