Mike Mitchell Quotes

My characters are not thinking about the act breaks. They're thinking about what they need to do to move forward. As long as I focus on that, the story starts to progress. As soon as I think, 'We're 20 pages in, something better blow up,' we're in trouble.

'Evita' was four pieces of slick paper and a record album. It's the most scary, to sit down and dictate a musical scene by scene. It was a musical unlike anything I'd ever seen before myself.

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

I think with musicals, it's much more part of the script. They don't want songs that would stop the show; they need songs that keep the plot moving.

Every story starts with an idea, but it is the characters that move this idea forward.

An attempt to write nothing but characterization will soon bog down; I for one don't want to have somebody tell me about someone else.

You just drop a character like this that and the other and it's done.

You have to understand the medium you're writing for. People jump into writing musicals without realizing how complicated they are. Knowing one form doesn't necessarily mean you know the other. You have to be comfortable with it.

A song must move the story ahead. A song must take the place of dialogue. If a song halts the show, pushes it back, stalls it, the audience won't buy it; they'll be unhappy.

For me, screenwriting is all about setting characters in motion and as a writer just chasing them. They should tell you what they'll do in any scene you put them in.

After the Rodgers and Hammerstein revolution, songs became part of the story, as opposed to just entertainments in between comedy scenes.

With 'Carousel' I had an idea and it all came out quickly.

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

I'm very much about stories that are fast but character development that moves slow.

Characters develop as the book progresses, but any that start to bore me end up in the wastepaper basket. In real life, we may have to put up with tedious people, but not in novels.

There's an arc to an action sequence, and you need to come out the other end knowing your character better, and maybe the story has moved forward in a compelling way.

It was really fun to start writing movies because you could actually take characters whose voice you enjoy writing in and have actual things happen to them for more than five minutes. It was really fun to thread it together.

Stepping back into theatre, a childhood dream, I always felt like I would be onstage. I hadn't imagined myself in a composer role... I find it so satisfying to be behind the scenes and writing the music and watching it elevated and characterized by different voices than my own. It's so exciting.

With TV season structures - and I'm a huge TV watcher - you look at shows like 'Breaking Bad,' which is my favorite show of all time, and 'The Sopranos,' which is pretty high up there as well, and there was that thing where, every season, Walter White would go up a level, but there would be a new bad.

Every step is basically a word, especially with musical theatre, because you're not doing it for dance's sake, you're promoting a story - and, more than that, a moral. You're propelling a story.

Some directors ask for a hero introduction number, a duet and a fast number towards the climax. Most of the times, these songs only hinder the story.

Musicals aren't two-dimensional froth.

'Chicago' kind of set the bar in terms of how we approach musicals, and tone is one of the key elements.

When it comes to a character, I make sure that it adds to the plot.

I think every character is important in every film - be it small, primary, or lead - because they are adding something to the story, taking it forward.