Roger Bart Quotes

I'm always a little skeptical when I hear people promoting a film and they say it has something for everyone.

It's difficult to keep anything fresh for an audience these days. With technology being what it is people seem to know everything there is to know about a film before you've even made it.

The trick with sequels is, you have to give people what they liked before, yet be innovative enough so they don't feel like they're seeing the same movie.

You can't give someone five hundred punches in a film anymore. You beat on them, and they continue to stand there staring at you. That doesn't work. People just don't buy that anymore.

Anytime you take a book and make it into a movie, you're going to have people who have their version of it in their minds and whatnot. You can't please everybody.

Whatever I am, I'm not as bad as the person that read the novel before watching the film. I'll enjoy whatever they [producers] are putting in front of me. If they made an attempt to get things right, then I'll criticize them for what they got wrong. If they made no attempt to get things right, and yet they stumble on something that's right, I'll comment on what they got right.

I've never written an original piece for film; all the original things I've done are for the stage.

The way I make art - the way a lot of people make art - is as an extension of language and communication, where references are incredibly important. It's about making a work that is inspired by something preexisting but changes it to have a new value and meaning that doesn't in any way take away from the original - and, in fact, might provide the original with a second life or a new audience.

If I were doing somebody else's script or I adapted a book by Philip Roth, on set there could be a million different interpretations of the material and people could argue with me. Certainly on Synecdoche, New York we had discussions and arguments, but I felt like I had authority because I'm a writer.

In the comics, Supergirl is quite, um, buxom...so I hope people won't come to the film expecting that.

You usually get a script and you tell people what the story's about, and they have no idea what's going on. Whereas with an adaptation, you come into it, and it seems like everyone you talk to has a million opinions on the cast and the way the story should be told.

Talking to fans has really blown my mind. It's made me so happy to know my work has touched people.

What I have seen in the past 10 years of traveling- performing at a church one day and a casino the next- is that a lot of people in the church want to be entertained, and people in casinos want to be ministered to. That's hard to understand, but I see a hunger in the world that I don't see in the church.

The digital world has allowed me a connection with my reader that I'd never had before. I didn't meet the people who read my material. The fan letters were mostly answered by professional people that'd done them for a living. And I didn't have any daily connection with their response to my work. I didn't have a relationship with my audience. And every artist should have it.

If there are some people that like the film and some people that do not, that's fine for me, because I do not intend to make very broad films.

You really have to keep people interested, at all times, until the punch comes. You can do that with a film that lasts 90 to 100 minutes. That's very difficult to do at 160 minutes.

It is a surreal life living on a television series set, and especially when I go out in public. I have people who recognize me and will come up to me, saying how much they enjoy seeing me, asking for a picture, and I still think to myself, "Uh, why?"

I've tried to consider stories that I have read, making them into films, but they would turn out unnatural. If a producer wants that, he should call other people. Not me.

Sometimes what works in a book is too "in your face" when converted to the big screen and sound.

My Facebook page confuses a lot of people. I'll post a Beyoncé Knowles song, and, people are like, "What are you doing?! This is bullshit," and I'm like, "No! Beyoncé is the Linda Ronstadt of our day, you don't understand!"

I had never met an actress or an actor when I thought that I might like to be one. I had never been around people in show business or from the theater or from movies or anything. And I say that as an encouragement, I don't know some people who want to be doing what I'm doing or be involved in film. You don't have to be from it to get interested and get involved. I certainly wasn't.

I was kind of surprised that, about 99 percent of the people grabbed the thing [in Valerian].You know it's their thing. And I'm very impressed by that.

As I got into the animation, as I learned more about the business, I learned that you need a lot of people to do anything animated - even a short, let alone a feature film. And you need a lot of money.

The more we can be honest about ourselves as filmmakers, than the more we can be honest with people who see the films.

The expectations of the viewer are what you're asking about. And the expectations of the viewer are manifold. However, they are very fixed, given who I am in the world. People have certain expectations of me as an artist.