When we finally came to start work on this, the joy was it was only Joel and I, we didn't have to answer to anybody, and we didn't have to submit a screen play or anything like that. We just wrote it and then made it.
My movie is born first in my head, dies on paper; is resuscitated by the living persons and real objects I use, which are killed on film but, placed in a certain order and projected on to a screen, come to life again like flowers in water.
I've composed a fair amount in my life, and some of them have made it on to the screen, some compositions that I've done, a few. And I like doing that. I had never really considered doing a full-length thing. I've worked with other people creating full-length pieces.
The truth is, when I started to make films, I was terrified. I had a huge difference in what I was writing in the screenplay and what was on the screen after. Sometimes there was a big gap. Now, the more I have experienced, the more I do movies, the more I feel that the dream is closer to the screen. It's coming with experience.
The thing is, you never know with any movie how it's going to turn out. It's always a mystery - you'll do pages and pages of scenes that will never make it onto the screen.
My favorite day at '30 Rock' is Thursday when the show airs. At lunch, we screen the episodes. For everyone to watch together, to see the stuff we all worked on, to hear the crew laugh - it's great fun.
I don't look like Brad Pitt or Tom Cruise. When you put me on the screen, the women don't want to make love to me, and the men don't want to be me.
I couldn't imagine something asking as much of me as 'House Of Cards.' It's a great warm-up for coming back to the screen.
Each day a few more lies eat into the seed with which we are born, little institutional lies from the print of newspapers, the shock waves of television, and the sentimental cheats of the movie screen.
I'm not sure I agree with the thesis, because I think that even though something grotesque or gross has been part of film since way back, what we accept or what we can get away with on the screen is broader now.
The nature of the movies is different than it was five years ago, and they're all driven by the possibilities of CGI, which means you can make anything happen on screen that you can possibly desire.
Characters who are on screen from start to finish are not necessarily the ones who have the greatest impact.
Document preparation systems will also require large screen displays.
The little song and dance number at the end - that's me, my voice, howling out. It was a new experience for me. I've never sung before and I've certainly never sung on screen. I think I sung on stage when I was 13 and for some reason nobody's asked me to try it again since.
I think artists who are attracted to working on the Net will adjust their work to the capabilities of a very small screen.
Sex is more exciting on the screen and between the pages than between the sheets.
Most of the sex I've seen on the screen looks like an expression of hostility towards sex.
When we draw on the tablet, the drawing shows up on the computer screen. If we have chosen to tell the computer that the stylist is to behave like a piece of chalk, or a pen, or a wet brush, it will.
Once we were in the studio, we realized we were getting certain effects through the shooting of the dramatic scenes on video, shooting off a screen and then getting wave patterns and stuff like that.
Most writers have no idea how to make a film. It's a totally different skill set. Nor is it just to translate exactly what's on the page directly on to the screen - because that would be terrible. It would be five hours long, and the structure would be a mess. But the writers know the characters and the story.
One of the joys of being at St. George is you were operating under the radar screen a lot of the time, and you could actually get on with things a lot more quickly and easily.
I firmly believe that you can't get a good movie without risking a bad movie. A good adaptation of your book is worth it because it is such a wonderful experience to see your world translated onto the screen.
I'm the star of stage, screen, and television now, but I'm also available for children's parties and bar mitzvahs.
It is not as though the process of production holds any mystery for me, I know exactly what it involves and I know the predominant concern in shooting one of those things is production values - or as they would say, seeing it all up there on screen.
There is not much irony when people are being happy on screen.
On some level, acting is the art of pretend, and you have to have a highly cultivated sense of imagination. You have to be able to see things that aren't there, no matter what aspect of acting, whether it's green screen, whether it's on stage, whether it's anything else, whether you're working on the radio.
I gave up on the big screen. The Witching Hour was at Warner Bros. for 10 years and it just didn't work out.
Four months of preparation and about 12 hours of shooting turned into about 30 seconds of screen time.
Los Angeles is a city of few hard targets. Its iconic buildings are private spaces, mostly residential, visible by invitation only or in the pages of a Taschen book. Its central industry is as mirage-like as the projection of light on a screen.
Funnily enough, when I originally went in for my screen test, that set was already built.
It can be difficult to be subtle and not cartoony in prosthetics. But when you see characters like Bubbles and Desiree from 'Little Britain' on screen, it makes all the hard work worth it. It's such fun watching those transformations.
Acting must be scaled down for the screen. A drawing room is a lot smaller than a theatre auditorium.
As an actor, I get my insurance from the Screen Actor's Guild by union, and you have to make so much every year to get that type 1 insurance.
The great difference between screen acting and theatre acting is that screen acting is about reacting - 75% of the time, great screen actors are great reactors.
I'm very serious about becoming a dramatic actor. I don't want to play cameo parts walking on as Carl Lewis the athlete. I want to go on stage or screen and be taken seriously.
I always knew I'd be an actor. I always knew I'd at least be on a big screen somewhere.