Bruce Campbell Quotes

I don't outline at all; I don't find it useful, and I don't like the way it boxes me in. I like the element of surprise and spontaneity, of letting the story find its own way.

I don't have a plan for a story when I sit down to write. I would get quite bored carrying it out.

There's no game plan when it comes to thinking up new characters; inspiration can come from anything - from a wig I've seen to an expression I've heard someone use.

I never plan my novels because if I know what is going to happen, it bores me rigid. I let the story tell itself.

Part of being an actor is letting things come about organically as opposed to forcing them.

Most of my favourite moments in film have been when I've had an opportunity to say something from scratch, something original, whether I jotted down a few lines or it came out in improvisation.

I'd play the same character for ten years if the words and the moments that I'm playing are authentic.

The whole trick is to make it feel like you're spying on real people's lives as they get through the day. When I'm writing, I have to trick myself as a writer. If I consciously say, 'I'm writing,' I feel all this pressure and somehow it doesn't feel as real as when it doesn't seem to count as much.

If I'm not clear with the character, I can't do anything with it. But once I get that character, the possibilities are endless. When you have such a defined character, I feel like I can actually read the phone book and make it funny.

One of the things that makes any good entertainment, whether it's a play, drama, comedy, television, film, whatever, is that you feel a certain amount of spontaneity.

Once we got the scene down, we were told to improv.

Choosing to write a play is some kind of surrender. I don't make an outline. I sit and work, and suddenly the door opens, and out it comes.

I guess, taking away all the theatrics or the costuming and the outer layers of what I do, I'm a writer... I write.

My only qualifications to be an actor were that I'm daring, and I'm a quick learner. I've always learnt by watching what other people do. It's the same with my writing. I write what I know. Structurally, I write in a very undisciplined way.

I didn't necessarily have a total idea when I was writing the movie of where everything was going. I just wanted to have really realistic dialogue and write like people I knew talked. I tried to keep it very real.

My greatest fear is feeling like a professional novelist. Somebody who creates characters, who sits down and has pieces of paper taped to the wall - what's going to happen in this scene, or this act. What I like is for it to be a much more scary, sloppy reflection of who I am.

In the theater, characters have to cut the umbilical cord from the writer and talk in their own voices.

I've always felt that I'm in a spontaneous business and if you script something, if you plan something, it will sound that way.

I did plays in college, and I have half of a play. But I'm kind of stuck. I keep revisiting it so maybe it will move somewhere. There's something about plays where you can feel that sense of artifice at any moment.

It's so cliche, but I love the feeling you get from improv that anything can happen. The audience is already accepting that there are no props or costumes or furniture, so the performers can be anywhere doing anything; cut from underground to space, and it doesn't matter.

I start with a character and a situation, but I don't know what's going to happen until I write it. Sometimes things happen that surprise me.

I just think there's always room for humanity in acting, one can only hope, so when you bring in the whole life of a person that's playing a character, then surprises happen and are allowed to happen, and so it makes it more interesting.

What I learned in 'Sons' is that I would come in with a blueprint of a season and how it would go, and I realized that the looser my grip was, the better it became because the story found itself. Things happened as I wanted them to in terms of the bigger mile markers, but the fun part was I never knew how we would get there.

I think that the more comfortable and the more you rehearse - granted, I don't like to take the air out of a tire; there is a fine line - but I think the freer you are with your dialogue, for example, the more open you are to a good idea walking up to you.

When you hire Sam Jackson, he'll figure out the character, and he'll figure out the character's look, and he'll provide it to you. With Sam Jackson, you basically yell 'action', you go get a sandwich, and you come back and yell 'cut.'