Bartlett Sher Quotes

Most great plays of the past lose their grip on immediacy; on application to our lives right now.

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

Any scene in Shakespeare can be vulgarised almost out of recognition with the wish to have a modern concept.

What makes a book great, a so-called classic, it its quality of always being modern, of its author, though he be long dead, continuing to speak to each new generation.

We took Beowulf, the epic poem in Old English, and put it right together with John Gardner's contemporary retelling. If you bring it into today, we really feel that it has something very fresh to say now.

There are certain historical figures of such importance that we need to know everything about them, which is why books about Napoleon, Lincoln, Julius Caesar, Joan of Arc, Queen Elizabeth I, and the great religious founders continue to proliferate; these lives require constant reevaluation and interpretation.

When I wrote 'Noughts and Crosses', I was halfway through it when I realised this was very like 'Romeo and Juliet'... as long as you make it your own, and put your own spin on it, I think it's brilliant to use other great work to find your own voice.

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.

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.

That has been everybody's challenge, above the dancing, the singing, the lines: getting into who these characters would be in 2015. Today's Tin Man is heartfelt, but he wouldn't be soft. Today's Dorothy would be sassy.

Translation is an act of recreation.

What's wonderful about Tolkien and Shakespeare is that they show up your own individual microscope. They're so infinitely vast. You can reinterpret them in so many ways. Each age will have its own resonance with Lord of the Rings.

Paul Goodman was not ahead of his time but IN his time.

A lot of people say to me, 'Is this good, to do to a Shakespeare piece?' And I think, 'You know, 'West Side Story' did it very cleverly, in a different way.' But if you look at 'Bonnie and Clyde,' 'Titanic,' 'Avatar,' 'Grease,' 'Brokeback Mountain'... they're all 'Romeo and Juliet' stories.

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.

I'm not big on remakes.

I really liked 'Premam,' and when we decided to remake it, our intention was never to make a better film.

When I take from my influences, it's rare that I do it literally.

High tech is for a short time. But art is forever. People still admire a Picasso or a Van Gogh. But they don't admire the steam locomotive anymore.

Doing a remake of an iconic song is always nerve-racking because you never know if you can actually do justice to it.

I did Kushi Kushiga,' the remake of Chronic Bachelor;' Kalyana Ramudu,' which is the remake of Kalyanaraman;' and also Software Ganda' in Kannada, the remake of My Boss.'

Satish Kaushik has a knack of coming up with very good remakes.

I think about Shakespeare. Because there have been hundreds of variations of Shakespeare's plays since they've been written, and I believe it's because they're important. They're still relevant today. 'Roots' is still relevant today. The idea that we shouldn't tell this story again is very strange to me.

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.

The truth is that we're not remaking Sam Peckinpah's 'Straw Dogs,' we're making 'Straw Dogs.' We're taking this story, and we're putting our own spin on it. The mere fact that I have James Marsden in it is an indication that it's a very different film than the one that had Dustin Hoffman in it.