Tracy Letts Quotes

Often in the past, there have been authors that were deeply disappointed in their adaptation, but that's because they haven't accepted the fact that a movie is a different thing, and it can't possibly be the same as the book.

I think of a book and a play, or a book and a movie, as two separate things - I don't think of it as my novel having a new life.

I think it's always a challenge to adapt a beautiful literary work into a fresh and alive film.

I think comics can be the basis for great films, but I think the focus of such a project should be on making the film as good as possible, not on painstakingly replicating the comic.

Always remember, there's no point trying to be faithful to the book because film and writing are just two completely different things. Any film stands on its own, apart from whether it's based on a novel.

The world of the cinema and of painting are very different; precisely, the possibilities of photography and the cinema reside in that unlimited fantasy which is born of things themselves... a piece of sugar can become on the screen larger than an infinite perspective of gigantic buildings.

I think people should just make art and let the art speak for itself.

As an artist, I want to interpret my feelings

I became disconnected from the childlike play that art could be. I spent so much time fearing I wasn't good enough that I lost the sense that my artistic expression was worthy.

I never thought about whether film is inherently more sincere, because certainly I think if Guy Maddin had directed A Series Of Unfortunate Events, there probably could have been more of the stage-y irony that is in the books. But I was just interested to see what people would do with it, and worrying that Brad Silberling wouldn't do what I had in mind.

The artist is called a creator.

. . usually, the biggest problems of adapting plays into screenplays is that they stick too close to the play, and I think film is a completely different medium. I think a novel is much closer to a film.

It's different if you're a painter. You can hidethe ones that don't work. You can't do that with movies. They tellthe story of who you are at the time, and that's the wonderful thingabout it.

As an artist, I have been a risk-taker. And I've done a lot of different things. I don't make it easy for people. Identification is difficult. One doesn't recognize my art right away.

Each movie is different because each audience is different. You're not dictated by what they tell you to do. You're more dictated by seeing symptoms of things you didn't intend, and how you can fix those symptoms.

Art is the only serious thing in the world. And the artist is the only person who is never serious.

Artists should never look at pictures, but should stutter in a language of their own.

No one who looks at my paintings can see whether a painting is upside down or not anymore. I've made or developed so many image models that some people have given up trying to keep track of me. But others have only one or two ways of doing things and are successful with that.

I don't want to direct a movie as good as Antonioni, or Kubrick, or Polanski, or whoever. I want it to be my own. I think I've got the seed of it and, what's more, that I can make movies that are different and informed by my taste.

I know I repeat myself in all my movies, but I just let it go, let it happen. Clearly, I'm not finished with that issue. But they seem to me like completely different movies. They're definitely coming from me.

I think every time you take on a new role, you're trying to help find that voice and you add your own bits and pieces along the way but with Noah [Baumbach] it's already done.

But ‘art’ is not anything serious or exclusive: it is the smell of oil paint, Henri Murger’s Vie de Boheme, corduroy trousers, the operatic Italian model: but the poetry, above all, of linseed oil and turpentine.

What is it that an artist does when he is left alone in his studio? My conclusion was that if I was an artist and I was in the studio, then everything I was doing in the studio should be art . . . . From that point on, art became more of an activity and less of a product.

In a general sense, to convert any short story, novel, play, or opera into a movie, you have to re-rig it. Even though they're all narratives over time, they're very different forms.

I don't believe in the reality of painting, so I use different styles like clothes: it's a way to disguise myself.