Frank Oz Quotes

The only reason anyone goes to Broadway is because they can't get work in the movies.

Live theater to me is much more free than the movies or television.

Being in a recording studio is a very different feel from performing onstage. I mean, obviously, you can't just go in and do what you would do onstage. It reads differently.

A video taped stage performance is just - you know, it's never gonna be the same as it is if you're sitting there live in the theatre.

The world of the stage and the performance on the stage usually does not tend to translate very well - it doesn't tend to hold very well - once cameras are on it; it's not like it's terrible or embarrassing or bad anything, but, I, as an actor, would perform a role differently for an audience than I would for just cameras.

Things danced on the screen do not look the way they do on the stage. On the stage, dancing is three-dimensional, but a motion picture is two-dimensional.

Acting in the theatre is fun; acting in film is work.

Given a choice, I prefer directing a play to a film.

I have a background in theater - I went to school for theater. I love film - love it - but there's just something about theater that I really miss.

If you mess up the performance on stage, you do it again the next night. You're like alright, you let yourself off the hook, and you've got to go back in there. Whereas, with a film, I would go home and be like, "Well, I've ruined the arc of the character forever. That scene is never going to work. I know because I can never shoot it again." So, it's all miserable, but in different ways.

The theater's a live thing, and film is, to some extent, a discipline where you're putting everything together and trying to execute something exactly. You do it away from people and then you present it at the end.

You can be a little bit darker and rougher on the stage, partly because when you're in the theater, people have come to see you, and so they kind of know what they're in for. In television, you are sort of sneaking into people's homes. So, I think you can be a little bit darker on stage.

In the theater, you're so much more in charge as an actor. For better or for worse, you know what the audience is seeing. But you can be acting your socks off on film, and then you see the movie, and the camera is on the other actor, or they've cut out the lines you thought were significant, or they've adjusted the plot. So much of it is out of your control.

People call me a theater actor, but I'm just an actor. But I tell my friends all the time - especially a lot that do theater and haven't done a lot of TV/film - that you have so much more control over your work onstage. When you go onstage, you can really see the difference between people who can really do it, and people who are just kind of pretending to do it. There is no editor, there's nothing that's going to stop the actor from showing what they can do unless it's not a well-written role.

The stage is the opposite: you are talking loud so you can project to the back row and you know the whole play. In a movie, you are scene-to-scene; you only know the purpose of that scene. On the stage, that is artistic science. It is real, it is loving, it is truthfully you. It is two different formulas to make two different art pieces, but it is all about truth.

Theater for me is terrifying but much more rewarding, because you know what they're seeing. Film is all little bits and pieces. And you can do an amazing job, but if the camera isn't getting it, it doesn't work. And then other times when you feel you really weren't present, and then you see it and somehow it works. So there's a mystery, there's a strange collaboration that takes place with everybody.

I grew up in music theater playing to the audience - singing and dancing and showing off. That's really my background. But the camera's different. I think I'm more at home on stage.

I would love to work on Broadway, but I don't know that it would manifest itself in musical theater.... I have terrible stage fright that I'd have to get over.

I think I missed all of the wonderful things ... I missed the control that you have in film, and I missed getting it right, really getting it right, the way you hope people will see it. All of the things that people love about theater - the fact that it changes every night and that it's so spontaneous - all of those things just frighten me.

I've always had great satisfaction out of writing the plays. I've not always had great satisfaction out of seeing them produced-although often I've had satisfaction there. When things go well in production, on opening there's no nicer feeling in the world-what could be nicer than watching an audience respond? You can't that from a book. It's a fine feeling to walk into the theater and see living people respond to something you've done.

Performing to me is the most vital, most important. It's my favorite part of all of it. I just want to be on stage.

When you are in a good theatre show, it is a wonderful and very fulfilling experience, entertaining a large audience and their showing their appreciation for your efforts.

I don't know what it would be like to actually play guitar. I've toured with a lot of comedians and it's never been like it is for a rock band.

I love the feeling of letting fly, of pushing as far as I could go with my voice. The only way you can really graduate how you do it is by doing it regularly to people who don't have to be super impressed. You can do it in the studio all day long but you don't get the flashback that you get onstage.

I still perform live primarily. I just keep traveling and doing live shows. The main difference in film, you know in your mind that you are doing it for posterity, you are doing for the eventual audience and it will be around forever.