Ivan Reitman Quotes

I believe that improvisation is really just a directorial tool. It's a writing tool. It's not so much that the actors get to say whatever they want, whatever pops into their head. It's an opportunity to write the last draft of the screenplay as you're working on it.

I use improvisation as a writing tool to help produce material that goes into a script, but a well-crafted script shouldn't sound scripted, and oftentimes people confuse something that looks like improvisation for what is actually a very well-written script that is well-acted.

I like to originate new roles and characters for musical theater.

Acting is probably what I'm best at, but there are certain stories kind of rattling around in my head that I like the idea of developing over time.

I don't know what I'm going to write when I begin to write. It feels like you are walking down a path, but you can't see around the bend and you don't know where you are going to go, which is fun.

Improv is like writing. It's actually a different discipline to acting. It helps acting greatly, but it's completely different. It's the same side of your brain when you write as when you improv.

The best I do, if I'm just playing around and riffing in a fantasy world, and then I'll write something down. Hopefully I write it down.

What I would do is I would just remember the scene and I'd go home and I'd write out the scene from memory. And anything I didn't remember I would just fill in the blanks myself and then go and give it to a classmate and then we'd do it.

I had always been more interested in playing and improvising than sitting down at a desk and writing out a piece. I'd always found it more fun to play, and the other a little bit tedious. I always had trouble with the decisions.

Improvisation is just writing in front of an audience.

There's no real formula for doing it, it's either just living life and writing down a joke you think of in the middle of the day and then pieces those together later.

It might be thematic work. It might be theatrical. I enjoy that kind of work.

Late night is no different than making a film, really, except that it's faster, and if you do a crap one, you can do a better one tomorrow. Writing a novel and doing stand-up - that stuff is very similar.

If you are opening a play, a play that's really about something, a play that's really about ideas, you have to find a way to sell that play.

I started improvising the Cliff character, based on someone I grew up with.

I hate it, it is tedious... when I write for my act, it is very improvisational, I write bullet points, I cannot sit in front of a computer; that is not my style.

The way I like to work is to attach personal experiences to what I'm doing, so it helps tremendously if I can write my own play under what the writer has written.

If I'm serious, yes, I'd like to have done what Shakespeare did... to act and write. You learn so much from acting. One of our great writers, Alan Bennett, does both supremely well. When I write a story, I tend to speak it aloud as I'm writing it.

I started doing radio pieces with no clear, preconceived idea, except that I have a tendency to be theatrical.

I'm more of a writer than an actor, and I used to say that I'm mostly an improviser, though I haven't improvised in awhile.

I never dreamed that the little ditties I wrote about annoying customers or bagel recipes would turn into a full-length musical comedy. But a very wise person told me to 'write what you know'. So I did.

I'm always trying out new stuff onstage. That's where I do all my writing.

In my mind, I was always a comedian who was going to branch into writing.

Actors take risks all the time. We put ourselves on the line. It is creative to be able to interpret someone's words and breathe life into them.

Everything starts with writing. And then to support your vision, your ideas, your philosophy, your jokes, whatever, you've gotta perform them and/or direct them, or sometimes just produce them.