You never know what you do that could be totally out of left field, which actually might work and give something fresh to the whole scene, to the character, whatever. If you have that with a director who then knows how to shape it, either in the direction, in the moment, or in the editing, then that's good.
Interpretation
The quote emphasizes the value of creativity and collaboration in art, highlighting unexpected contributions.
Robert De Niro's quote reflects on the unpredictability of creativity and the importance of collaboration in the artistic process. He suggests that sometimes, the most unconventional ideas can bring freshness and vitality to a project, particularly when working with a director who has the skill to refine and shape those ideas. This highlights the synergy between artistic freedom and skilled direction, which can lead to innovative and compelling results.
In practice
This quote can be used in a creative workshop to inspire participants to think outside the box.
I spent lunchtime in a grave during the filming of 'Bloody Mama.' When you're younger, you feel that's what you need to do to help you stay in character. When you get older, you become more confident and less intense about it - and you can achieve the same effect.
I think Hollywood has a class system. The actors are like the inmates, but the truth is they're running the asylum.
The mind of a writer can be a truly terrifying thing. Isolated, neurotic, caffeine-addled, crippled by procrastination, consumed by feelings of panic, self-loathing, and soul-crushing inadequacy. And that’s on a good day.
If you're an actor, always be true to your character. If you are not an actor, have character and always be true to yourself.
All I try to do is portray Indians as we are, in creative ways. With imagination and poetry. I think a lot of Native American literature is stuck in one idea: sort of spiritual, environmentalist Indians. And I want to portray everyday lives. I think by doing that, by portraying the ordinary lives of Indians, perhaps people learn something new.
In the theater, while you recognized that you were looking at a house, it was a house in quotation marks. On screen, the quotation marks tend to be blotted out by the camera.
Creativity is putting your imagination to work, and it's produced the most extraordinary results in human culture.
After all everybody, that is, everybody who writes is interested in living inside themselves in order to tell what is inside themselves. That is why writers have to have two countries, the one where they belong and the one in which they live really. The second one is romantic, is is separate from themselves, it is not real but it is really there.
I'm going to make a film where not one word is really important. I'm going to make it all action.
And so when studying faces, we do indeed measure them, but as painters, not as surveyors.
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