Lennon Parham Quotes

And then the really awful thing is that at the end of the day after crying and experiencing things, then you look at what you've written and you're like, 'Hmm, there's half a page that's good here.' Then you throw out everything else.

So when I go home, sometimes, even when I had an amazing game, I always think about what I missed.

If I do a bit on stage, I prepare too much. Those bits are all really, really carefully written, and overwritten, and researched. I really don't feel like I can wing it. So I write it out word for word, and when I'm onstage I'll improvise around it.

A movie is a filmed rehearsal in a way. The audience doesn't know that because you're taking out the things that don't work. There's no comparison to the theater because it's live. But making a movie is just as challenging and exciting, I find. A movie is pure process. The theater is the result of process.

As most actors/actresses, I don't like to watch my own movies, either, and I never look at the dailys while filming.

Live records of mine are very painful to listen to because you always think you can do it better. I don't think I have a single favorite one.

When you're doing a TV show, it's not like you just shoot for six weeks and you're in an editing room with all of your footage. It's like a guitar or a car, you have to fine tune things. You stop doing what's not working, you work on what is working and you add things that do work.

I am usually protective of my work, not showing it to anyone until it has been redrafted and polished.

That's the only way to do it. Just like an actor. You can get a great performance if you do a bunch of takes and edit it. You find the moments and string them together.

It's actually much harder to develop a TV show than I had anticipated.

My toughest criticism usually comes from myself. As my editor can attest to, I'm never done tweaking a book until the production department has to rip it from my hands!

If I do too many takes, I'm too self-conscious. I think I'm better in first scenes.

In standup, it's just you. You're your own writer, your own critic, your own director, and it's never the same. You really don't always have it down. Your continue to learn, you continue to risk, and I really love it.

I went to journalism school, so sometimes writing the script of 'Being Mary Jane' is me putting my journalism hat on.

It's a lot of hard work to do a weekly TV show. It's certainly not fun.

When I started my career on TV, I never knew how my role or character was going to shape up or turn out to be. It was a challenging role for me and I learnt a lot from my senior actors.

One of my biggest fears as a director is that everything is taking too long on camera. The actor saying their lines, the silence between lines, the length of time it takes to walk from A to B. So you try it at different speeds and then see what sticks in the edit room.

Making '1600 Penn' was really fun, and I learned a lot.

There are certainly things in live broadcasts that I've done that I wish I could have gone back to edit and make better. It's hard, because you want it to be perfect, and it just isn't. Even in the edited ones, it's not everything you want it to be - but it's closer.

When I do music videos, I like to do a take, then see how it looks, so I can correct it.

Many times after a game, I get the feeling that I have not done enough, I should have done better, of course there is room for improvement.

I have a great editor and I enjoy, in a masochistic way, being ruthless about my own performance. How do I know, but I think I'm quite good at saying, "That's no good. That's no good. That's it. That's it. That's good." And I'm with the editor who goes, "No, I think you're wrong. That's not your best." There's an initial point in the editing, if you're directing yourself, especially in my case, where you go, "Ouch, ouch, ouch, I can't watch this." And then, there's a point where you become hard-nosed and just take your neurosis away and go, "What's working? That's okay. That's okay. We can lose that, and lose that." You get objective about it.

When you're done shooting, the movie that you're going to release when you're done shooting is as bad as it will ever be. And then through editing, and finishing the effects and adding music, you get to make the movie better again. So I'm really hard on myself and on the movie.

I'm more relaxed about how the editing process will create a performance and that, in a way, gives me a sense of freedom.

I take editing seriously. It's a joy to edit. I always hand a manuscript to several editors and can't wait to get back their notes and see what they've said. I don't criticize myself for making blunders here and there, because it's just natural. You write in chunks, and you may not remember that that sentence you wrote yesterday had the same word repeated three times. I do enjoy that. I love the feeling of repairing. Repairing is really nice.