Don Knotts Quotes

If you're playing a character who says whatever he wants, I felt free to say whatever I wanted on set.

In orthodox film-making, you never shoot sequentially - but with improv, obviously every move you make has a knock-on effect; it is a cumulative process. I have improvised, on the non-scripted 'Timecode.' It can become entirely indulgent: actors smashing crockery and competing verbally.

If I'm practicing making up what the characters will do, it's never good. In fact, when I catch myself doing that, I try to get rid of that section, and try and let them start making the decisions.

Some comedians love their characters. I don't fall in love with mine. In fact, I get tired of them very fast. You have to be willing to throw it all away.

Korean cinema is very improvisational, and there is a unique power that stems from this.

I always believe that Kar-Wai has a complete script: he just doesn't show it to us. He wants us to experience and explore the character. He gives you a lot of space, and you know every time will be a very long journey. You just live in the character, and that's very different from other directors.

If you're playing a cop in a modern film, you don't have to walk with your spine straight up and bow before a fight. There's a lot of free form of expressing yourself as an actor.

It's not so much that I got that idea at some point, it came up naturally because of the improvisational nature of the story I was telling.

The first feature film I did, when I did 'Night Shift,' I improvised quite a bit because I would improvise at the audition, so sometimes I would return to the original lines, and then when I was on set, I would improvise even more.

With movies, depending on who your director is or what kind of movie you're shooting, you kind of have more of an ability to play around with the material, go off the page, improv. It's like we did with '21 And Over.' Same thing we did in 'Walk Of Shame.' Same thing we did in 'House Bunny.' You have the freedom to do that.

I've done a few roles in the past where people got quite worried when I started drifting away from what was written on the script. Often, they see improvisation as worrisome, because that's adding time to their day. But, in 'The Umbrella Academy,' they didn't worry too much about that, because Netflix has loads of money.

With 'The Crazy Ones,' we were really encouraged to improv and go off script.

If you create a fun environment, people will take liberties and grow and expand. And then you'll get your final screenplay in my favorite style, which is 'tossed away' - as if the actor just thought of it.

We always try to leave room for the actors to come in and make discoveries on set, in their interpretation of the scene. The shot list is scaffolding.

That's what frees up an actor: when you don't have to be responsible to likability.

Sukumar comes from a very different school of working style. He never shoots with set dialogues and scenes. Most of it is improvised on the spot. He'd tell me, 'Rakul, if this is your character, how would you behave? Show me.'

If you're doing six takes, instead of doing six variations on the same words, why not just throw out the words and make them up as you go along, if you're comfortable with it? It gives the movies a slightly rangier feeling, and more of an accidental feel, but it also makes them edgier.

Sometimes people that are very good at improvisation in life, meaning like stage improvisation, aren't good in films because you have to ultimately take a scene where it needs to go. It's not about just saying something that's funny. You can say something funny but if it's not on story or driving the scene to its end it's really not very helpful at all.

I really am passionate about making low-budget movies. You can try new stuff and unusual stuff, and you can break the rules.

Because of the way we let the actors improvise, it feels like you're watching people react rather than actors reading lines - so I think that's always going to be something I like.

Casting is everything. Getting the person that you imagined is this character and then seeing what they bring to it.That's why you hire them, so why tell somebody first what it is you want? I'm more curious to see what they bring to it and then be inspired by it and say: "OK, what if you tried this?" or "What would happen if ... ?"

Even if the script's well written there's something about the life of an improvisation that resonates better than a written word, sometimes.

I really admire actors who have time, because time is really the greatest luxury for an actor to live with a character, to develop a walk and a talk, or to listen to tape if you're playing a real character. But without time you're really just forced to make quick choices and move on and hope that the spaghetti sticks against the wall.

All these teachers and [screenwriting] books mean you see movies that have been worked over by more committees wielding more rules, that all originality and authorship is lost. That's why you're seeing superstars like Brad Pitt in THE FIGHT CLUB and Tom Cruise in MAGNOLIA. They're desperately searching for people writing and directing off-formula movies.

There should always be that leeway because if you think of your character as sort of absolutely fixed, then you just try and find actors to come and do exactly that thing, then you're not gonna be working with that actor's own set of internal impulses and who they are, so the best work is always a coming together of the actor and the character.