Kristin Lehman Quotes

I love it when you like a character, and then she does something you don't like, and you hate her for a while - then you love her again. I'd like to see her have unlikable moments that the audience understands and sympathizes with.

When I go for a project, I wonder what underpinning a project will have that's going to give the audience some emotional access to it.

You can sustain visual beauty and innovative visual ideas for a certain length of time, but in a two-hour experience, which is really what movies are, usually audiences - whether they know it or not - most want an emotional connection to character.

The goal, I suppose, any fiction writer has, no matter what your subject, is to hit the human heart and the tear ducts and the nape of the neck and to make a person feel something about the characters are going through and to experience the moral paradoxes and struggles of being human.

I think that's something that people feel that I do really well; I don't mind it, because ultimately I think the characters I play move people, and who wouldn't want to move people?

You may not quite understand the cinematic tricks that go behind the making of a film, but as long as you feel it, I think that's the important thing.

The real trick to these movies and making the big action sequences work - and I've forgotten this sometimes and screwed it up - the characters really have to be humanized. Because you can have the greatest special effects in the world, but if you don't care about the people in those effects, there's no impact.

We could make the most beautiful film in the world, but if it doesn't have a heart beating underneath it, then no one's going to be interested.

My hope is that each of the villains I write will have his or her own motivation that readers can understand, whether they agree or disagree.

A strong story can move me to tears, and it doesn't matter whether it's a science-fiction or fantasy world. It's about what happens to a person, the choices they make. That's what's interesting.

Whatever films I make, the mandate is that it should touch the audiences and engage them from the first scene.

At heart, we believe that the films that work well are the films that do touch people emotionally.

If you watched a movie about a guy who wanted a Volvo and worked for years to get it, you wouldn’t cry at the end when he drove off the lot, testing the windshield wipers. You wouldn’t tell your friends you saw a beautiful movie or go home and put a record on to think about the story you’d seen. The truth is, you wouldn’t remember that movie a week later, except you’d feel robbed and want your money back. Nobody cries at the end of a movie about a guy who wants a Volvo.

We have no filter for music, but we feel it when what's being spoken and sung is telling a story and evidencing a character.

You know, we didn't want to kill anyone, but we knew that "Star Wars" is a generational tale. It always is. And for it to have some guts and some resonance and true stakes, I don't think that everyone could have come through the story unscathed.

You can't but know that if you can capture the emotions of the audience as well as their minds, the play will work better, because it's a narrative art form.

I don't think people are ever going to a place where they're like, 'I'm over stories about character and love.'

I wanted to make people feel the same way I feel when I see a good movie.

You can be a smarty-pants director, but that won't matter if the movie doesn't work emotionally as well as intellectually.

And the most important thing - apart from telling a good, believable story, and being a true character - is to be someone the audience will care about, even if you're playing a murderer or rapist.

A great byproduct of a TV show, movie, or play is when it can act as a catalyst for someone.

The tragic element of a character is always intriguing I think.

It's like fiction - the fact that somebody's telling you a story about people who didn't exist doesn't make the experience of the story any less real in your heart and mind. You go through heavy emotional responses to these stories, and wrestling is a similar thing - but it's happening in real space.

I firmly believe that emotions are universal, and I know that when they connect with the audience, it works. There is no such thing as an entertaining or a serious film; there are good films and bad films. Good films will always find a vast audience.

I had a moment - and I don't know if it was funny, necessarily, but I realized the effect I could have on people - when I was doing a production of 'The Little Prince,' and I played the snake.