Marc Platt Quotes

In a play, a man comes out and says something. Another man comes out and says something. And by the end of the night, we've learned something we didn't know, In a musical, there is singing and dancing for two hours, but you've got to know everything in 5 minutes. Do it in those 5 minutes or you'll lose them.

Getting to do 'December Songs' in a cabaret-style format was so interesting because it's like a one-woman song cycle that actually tells a story. It feels like a theatrical experience more than a cabaret because I didn't talk in between. We went from one song to the next, nine songs in a row - bam - I told the story in half an hour.

In film you can use images exclusively and narrate a whole story very quickly, but you don't always so easily find the form in cinema to dig deeper into human thoughts and emotions. And in a novel you can much more easily express a character's inner thoughts and feelings.

In so many musicals today, the story is moved forward by a song. I don't think we're gonna try to do that.

The nice thing about doing a pop opera - in the way that doing, say, 'Miss Saigon' or 'Les Miz' would be - is that, because the convention is set from the beginning that this is an opera and everything is sung, there is never that feeling of 'Why is this person bursting out into song?' because the whole thing is sung.

When you're trying to do a traditional book musical like 'Book of Mormon,' it's always nice to have characters that could very naturally break into song, and its good to pick a subject matter that allows that to happen in a way that doesn't disarm the audience.

The point of songs in theater is that you're supposed to end up in a different place than where you started.

There are two kinds of films: the ones that are devoid of logic but can still hijack the audience, and those that can win them over with logic. Both kinds can succeed, and I like to work in both.

The think that we hung the film version all on was 'Hedwig' on tour. On stage, it's one theatre, one show. It just seemed natural to change it. In the film, we were able to go to flashback rather than have her talk to the audience. And we had the play to practice and to see where we had made mistakes.

It's important to tell meaningful stories and to find new ways to communicate those stories to people.

'Cabaret' was one of the first pieces of musical theater I saw that showed the possibilities of what musical theater can do.

When I'm writing Broadway, it's for a character, a man, a woman, an old guy, a kid. In the band, you're talking in your own voice in the lyrics, saying what you think or feel. On Broadway, you're expressing that through a character.

I watch films, so I know what it is to be there in a theatre as the audience. So I always want to communicate with them when I make films, but that is not the only thing. I also want to say something which I feel deeply, and which I feel I can connect with the rest of the audience.

If an actor can emotionally bond with the viewer, then it does not matter if he is handsome or ordinary looking.

People think our business is this completely fictional world of big guys in tight clothes with no brains. That's not the way it is; this is a psychology-driven business. You have to take people on an emotional ride without using words.

I want to get in on how the media business is changing, how people are telling stories in new ways.

The theatre always felt like home, and it does to this day. When I do screen acting, I miss telling a story from beginning to end, as you do nightly on stage. I love that relationship with the audience and how it changes each night.

As a writer, every time I create a character, I try to go for something to captivate the audience in some way. It's also an extension of how the audience would like to see themselves.

I think it's touching that the fans feel so close to the characters that they feel personally hurt. I've felt that way in plenty of TV shows - 'Game of Thrones,' 'Mad Men.' How could they do that to that character? That's drama.

You can make what you want. People care about what the artist has to say, what the sound is, and how it affects them.

I hope to create characters that people want to watch - and they either want to be or are, or it's something that they recognize.

It's the basic rule of musicals: Characters sing when their emotions become so intense that they can't do anything else.

Early on, many years ago when we started 'Avatar,' the executive that we were working with said to make the sad scenes sadder, the funny scenes funnier, the scary scenes scarier. That was kind of permission to do what we felt comfortable with.

Doing a musical is not just acting. It's total theater. When you have to justify the enormous projection of energy it takes to just go into song and dance, you realized why it's such a humbling experience every time you go into a show.

I've just looked for ideas and great characters that I relate to and that I think I can offer something to the audience, and I no longer look at them as experiments or genre exercises at all.