Robert Gottlieb Quotes

I'm not rigid about directorial changes: I judge them on a case-by-case basis. In the case of a play whose text is widely familiar, I'm open to drastic changes that may alter the author's meaning, perhaps even considerably. If the results don't work, then I say so.

I think plays deserve other interpretations. They should live on, and other people should should take their hand at them. I'm very supportive of that.

A lot of writers want everything put on screen, but it doesn't work like that. The screenwriter brings her own imaginative interpretation, just as the director and actors do.

No, we've been performing our old songs a little differently each performance.

Unless you're doing Shakespeare or Chekhov... the written word is not sacrosanct.

The challenge of a revival is how to bring something fresh. The reward is the opportunity to add different flourishes. You're dealing with different actors, designers and a different time.

I like to cast actors I admire, one's that are talented. Each one will bring something new to the part. This play has been done thousands of times and now certain characters are too familiar.

Any good piece of material like Shakespeare ought to be open to reinterpretation.

If I was doing a musical, I would never listen to the cast album, because I wanted to do my version of something.

In my mind, I'm no longer daunted by the idea of a remake. In fact, I now look at it as a genre unto itself - so long as you make it your own.

When doing a remake, you're on safer territory. You know you cannot go absolutely wrong. But how right it goes depends on various factors like casting and the way you adapt the film.

Musicians are also interpretive artists and we are just as creative as painters and writers. We interpret in a way that expresses ourselves.

Let's just say that I don't think our show has very much in common with the book any more.

In a very literal way, of course, Shakespeare did change the course of history: when it didn't fit the plot he had in mind, he simply rewrote it. His English histories play fast and loose with chronology and fact to achieve the desired dramatic effect, re-ordering history even as it was then understood.

A lot of art and visual crafts are based on appropriating things.

An actor cannot be a censor. I'm there to interpret.

I'm not into replicating old movies. But one should never say never. Tomorrow I may feel like making a part 2 of some of my movies.

We want to do for 'Hamlet' what Baz Luhrmann did for 'Romeo and Juliet' in terms of like a really cool kind of re-imagining.

The work of art is always unfaithful to its creator... Art lays at a higher level; it says something more, and almost always, it says something different from what the artist wanted to say.

Dance is not endangered - it will always find a way to express itself.

Maybe it's egocentric or whatever, but when I'm playing Beethoven, Bach, Hendrix, or whoever it is, in the end, it just feels like my own music and I'm making it up as I'm going along.

Another thing that really excites me: I'd like to do multiple versions of the same film.

Oh see, first off you gotta realize - everything for me is a reconstruction or deconstruction. I would actually say deconstruction. Mission: Impossible would be the exception. That would be a reconstruction- deconstruction.

Classics stay alive because a great actor or a great director wants to do them.

I think a lot of fans immediately go, 'ugggh' when they hear that someone is doing a prequel or a remake, they sort of assume the worst sometimes.