My plan was I just knew, I think the first time I was in a high school play, and I liked the feeling of that. Getting on the stage and entertaining and audience. Eventually, I went to New York and studied my craft, and I was in school for two years in the same class with Joanne Woodward and Steve McQueen.
I think improvisation is a technique and a tool. I think that even the best of them fail most of the time, and in the end, the audience is not interested in how you got there but in what you're saying. The more clearly and concisely and artistically you say it, the more effective it is.
I need to know who the audience are in any particular play. It's no good forgetting that they're there.
My victory is when the audience buys a ticket to watch my film. I am extremely thrilled when they give it a thumbs-up.
Although there was a point with the Tijuana Brass where we were playing for such huge crowds that I kind of lost contact. At one point, the only connection I had with the audience was with people out there lighting cigarettes.
When you see a comedian on stage, the best comedians make it feel like a conversation. But it's not. We have very little interest in what an audience has to say during a performance. Being a stand-up comedian, you're an egomaniac to some degree. Everyone wants to hear what you have to say, apparently. That's not how real relationships work.
You don't go to your 9 to 5 and share every story with your coworkers, and in the same way, not every YouTuber shares every story with their audience.
I pretty much believe that a film is a film and when an audience watches a film, they finish it.
The challenge to me as a director was for the audience to see the film as going on in a straight line, so that they did not sense all of these break-ups. I did not want a film to be a collage of all these images.
The film is a romance with songs and dances, aimed at a family audience.
It doesn't matter what you feel - ultimately, it's what the audience feels. You can finish a scene and think to yourself, 'Oh, God. I was so deep in that moment,' and find it just didn't play. I don't know if I have very good radar about that or not.
I did theatre when I was nine, I think. Nine and ten, and that was just the beginning of my whole involvement in acting, my whole interest. I don't really remember it that well. But it was really fun. I mean, it was exciting just to be on stage in front of an audience. It gives you a different kind of rush.
There were times in my career I went a little further than I wanted because of expectations. Doing certain things onstage when children were in the audience, wearing certain clothes, singing certain lyrics.
I always try to keep in mind that while the characters in a farce may find themselves in outrageous dilemmas, and may behave in a way that the audience finds amusing, the characters themselves don't have the consolation of knowing they're in a comedy.
If I make assumptions about the audience and start overthinking things, I can drive myself crazy about how the audience perceives me. I try not to do that anymore.
The more you can create a structure by which people live in a fantastical situation and by which they will act, and the more you lay that out for the audience, the more they will feel at home in it.
They want to let the audience figure things out and let the reaction shot get the laugh.
If you think you're boring your audience, go slower not faster.
I never tell an audience what they can expect. I never have and I never will. I'm an entertainer for 75 years.
And I think that when I play these villains, maybe what is different is that the audience sees me play these and they know that that's Chris and he's having fun and he knows that and he knows that and you know that and everybody knows that.
On 'Master of None,' the majority of the episodes were just one story, and that was by design because we really wanted to focus in on the character of Dev and get the audience in his head.
I don't know why people are so surprised by my live performances. My approach is so simple; every song I sing, every story I tell, every move I make, must move the audience to laughter, tears or inspiration. Otherwise, why should I do it?
You know those movies where the people in the audience are screaming, 'Don't go in that door!' because you know the killer is there? Well, it is the same thing with this debt. We know how this ends.
The reactions haven't differed; the concerns have been different. When I read for a predominantly Indian audience, there are more questions that are based on issues of identity and representation.
I've developed an audience over the years and I don't want to loose them.
When I made 'Hard Boiled,' I had no idea that it would be released to an international audience. I just wanted to make a film to team up my two favorite actors, Tony Leung and Chow Yun-Fat.
The two things in the world we all share in this world are laughter and pain. We've all got problems. The levels of those problems vary, but we've all got problems. When you can take things that are painful and make them funny, that's a gift - to you and your audience.
To me the recognition of the audience is part of the filmmaking process. When you make a movie, it's for them.
My desire is to continue to make the audience proud of what's happening in the television world of 'The Walking Dead.'
You can sway an audience if you win the women over. The gentlemen will follow 'cause they can be so foolish like that at times, they are easily led.
I have performed my one-man show '700 Sundays' over 400 times now. There were only two times that I can honestly say I was nervous. The first was when I knew Mel Brooks was in the audience, and the second was when Sid Caesar came.
I don't like to chase an audience. You can smell when someone is chasing an audience and it's not good.
In France, they call the people who come to the theatre 'les spectateurs'; in Britain and Ireland, they are the audience, the people who listen. This does not mean the French are not interested in language. On the contrary. It actually says more about the undeveloped visual sense over here.
We had a huge audience, we sold truckloads of albums. If we do something that's cool, people will listen to it. If we don't, we would be selling people short.
The audience that surprised us the most was definitely Paris, when we played there last. They were just incredibly into us and we weren't expecting it at all.
I feel that doing theater does give you a good grounding to work on camera. The audience is the lens.
