When we filmed the premiere episode of 'United Shades of America,' it was like we were turning over a rock in the woods. The KKK was not part of the national conversation. They were really just a punchline for comedians when you needed to let the audience know something was really, really, really racist.
I stumbled on a joke idea and style that worked, the audience went with it and, from that moment on, I was hooked. It's an amazing feeling.
The American audience has really opened up to women being A.) funny and B.) kinda crude. 'Bridesmaids' is R-rated, and I think it was a major coup for women to have an R-rated comedy that did really well. Same as 'Bad Teacher.'
Confronting a stadium audience, you can't see the whites of their eyes. It's just an amorphous mass of noise and, of course, you can't see the alleged billions watching at home either, so the degree to which you are intimidated is quite low.
As a writer, I try to appeal to the 'elusive boy audience' the same way I try to appeal to everyone: I do the very best I can to create interesting characters, addictive plots, tons of conflict, believable settings, unexpected plot twists, intriguing beginnings, and satisfying endings.
I'm not standing above the audience trying to manipulate them as a puppet master or a trickster; I'm inside the story I'm writing and making and thinking about things very seriously and feeling very deeply at times, and trying to translate that into a narrative.
To me, art's highest purpose is to entertain, to enlighten, to inspire, to evoke emotion and to change an audience in some way, big or small.
I learned a great lesson early on, even before I was really an actor, from that movie 'Planes, Trains & Automobiles' that John Hughes made: that you could make a movie that's really, really, really, really funny, and sometimes you can still achieve... making the audience feel very deep emotions as well.
You have to be willing to deal with the ups and downs of the music, the ups and downs of the audience.
I think if the movie has resonance and stimulates the viewer to talk about it, you can have as large an audience as you want. The most important thing for me is that the movie exists. And that's success enough already.
When I saw 'Chess' in London, I thought it was horrible. It was so static. People were coming down front and just facing the audience, singing.
There's some anxiety the 30 minutes before the show starts. But once you step on stage and face the people, everything goes away, and you have fun and enjoy the audience.
I definitely enjoy the kind of magic that happens being on stage with a group when everything's working. The vibe when that's happening gets even better if the audience is involved and you can feel that interaction. That's something you don't get with your headphones on in a studio; it's much different.
I just look at Miley Cyrus, and I'm like, 'Great, you've doubled your audience. But you've also doubled the number of people that hate you, and doesn't that hurt?' It takes a crazy person not to be affected by that.
But, what did happen is I went to Woodstock as a member of the audience. I did not show up there with a road manager and a couple of guitars. I showed up with a change of clothes and a toothbrush.
I don't approach my movies with a target audience in mind. I try to make something that's true to the subject matter as much as possible, while still being entertaining and fun.
Privacy is important to me. But it's not just about sticking two fingers up and saying I don't want anyone to know my business. It's an artistic choice. I think that for any actor to convince their audience that they have completely inhabited a character requires a certain level of anonymity.
Many friends of mine told me that normally only guys like a kung fu movie and the girls would be turned off - they want to see a love story. But Ip Man is a family man, so the women see this and go: 'I want my husband to be like this man. He'll be a scholar, he'll be fighting, he'll care for the family.' So we had a bigger audience.
I thought we would have at most an audience of 5,000 devotees because I made the decision to stick to craft, not to gossip, not to be interested in any of the juicy stuff that they talk about on other shows, but stick to the question of craft.
Here's the rule that I set for myself, and I believe it - even on a show like 'Curb Your Enthusiasm': the more personal you are, the wider your audience.
My experience tells me that any time you hear people laughing on a sitcom, it's the writers who happen to be closest to the microphones - not the audience.
I wasn't playing the music, the music was playing me... and once that went away, and I had the feeling I was playing music, I had to stop. The need to go onstage and get my brain flattened every night left me, and what I didn't wanna do is go onstage and perpetrate a fraud... You cannot fool an audience.
I give the spectator the possibility of participating. The audience completes the film by thinking about it; those who watch must not be just consumers ingesting spoon-fed images.
A film with an untidy plot cannot grip the audience and define their emotional response.
You don't make a film because the audience is ready for it. You make a film because you have questions that are in your gut.
I think the most appealing characters for the audience are the ones that you never know whether to root for them or whether to hate them. That's what keeps people drawn to their television sets.
It wasn't so much that I was all alone on stage, but it was the realization of how much you need the response-you need the audience to tell you where to go.
You play with the audience, and they play back with you. They get into it, and then everybody gets into it. I don't want to be like a monkey on stage and just go through the motions because then it wouldn't be fun anymore. I just pay attention to the audience and appreciate the fact that somebody wants to see us. That gets me psyched.
You're following your track, the story, your only plan, your map for the audience, and all the other stuff is, like, the fun stuff: the costumes, the locations, the set-dressing and the actors. They can all be variable as you like if you stick - however roughly - to the path.
TV is such a great medium in what it can do in terms of enlightening an audience. We can really inspire and teach people about other people. That's a powerful tool, and that's something that the arts has always been capable of doing.
Touring has been a major part of my career. I've done a lot of huge shows, including a 13-night sell-out stint at the Indoor Arena in Birmingham, playing to a total audience of 65,000.
It's interesting sometimes when an audience can empathize with a villain.
The audience for 'Lootera' is far less than for my other kind of films. Just because I pulled it off doesn't mean I will change my tastes. I love to watch masala films, and I love to sing, dance and say those larger-than-life dialogues. But whenever I get a chance, and I really feel the connect, I will do a performance-oriented film.
A liberal public is interesting to have as an audience. It is for that very reason that corporations make such an effort to ally themselves with cultural institutions.
People have really long attention spans, and they love complicated plots. TV series are giving the audience what they want.
Film gives us the luxury of deciding where the viewpoint of the audience is, and by knowing that, we can very effectively design around what is actually seen on camera.
