Audience Empathy Quotes

When you see the violence of Hollywood movies, there is a tendency that the hero is combating and confronting many people, without much harm to himself. But in my films, the hero takes a lot of hits so the very act of the hero being the one on the receiving end, makes the audience cheer and connect with him.

Fortunately, our audiences are used to a kind of boredom in the theatre, and if the writer is skillful, he will flatter them into thinking: 'Why, that's us up there, and aren't we - for all our little foibles - pretty nice guys and gals?'

With 'Hannibal,' I just really want people to feel something.

My basic mistake in 'The World's Greatest Lover' was that I made the leading character a neurotic kook and sent him to Hollywood. I should have made him a perfectly normal, sane, ordinary person, and sent him to Hollywood. The audience identifies with the lead character.

When you're a war correspondent, the reader is for you because the reader is saying, 'Gee, I wouldn't want to be doing that.' They're on your side.

After I perform 'My Girlfriend's Boyfriend,' it takes a lot out of me emotionally; and, at the end of it, I feel like I know the audience and the audience knows me. It's this weird unspoken bond that we'll kind of always have with each other.

Because I'm a filmmaker at heart, I know a villain can't be too humanized and the audience can't empathize with him too much.

The hardest part about improv is getting the audience to relax and enjoy themselves, because most improv is not very good, and the audience is nervous for the performers the whole time. Not that they don't even like the show, but they feel bad for the performers.

A lot of cop shows, because they have the restraints of having a new case every episode, the victims often become these kind of nameless, faceless plot points, and as an audience we don't feel anything for those people.

I don't know if I'm a gay icon or not, but with 'A Taste of Honey,' the audience were so touched by the whole story that it certainly helped matters. The characters were so sympathetic that it was as if you had met them.

I want to connect with my fans the way Mary J. Blige's fans connect with her.

I don't write scenes where one person is right and one person is wrong. It's very much by design that everyone has a point of view that you as an audience member can understand.

The most amazing thing for me is that every single person who sees a movie, not necessarily one of my movies, brings a whole set of unique experiences. Now, through careful manipulation and good storytelling, you can get everybody to clap at the same time, to hopefully laugh at the same time, and to be afraid at the same time.

It's very tricky to throw a morally flexible character onto the screen and have an audience empathize. It's always an exercise in restraint.

I use myself as the barometer to gauge what is scary. I like to think if something scares me, then there's a very good chance an audience will feel the same way.

There was so much emotional response to 'Dogfight.' You just heard the audience: They were so horrified. They were sobbing. They were joyful at times.

I think being a singer-songwriter... your job is to tell a story that other people can't really tell themselves. And I really hope that people kinda go: "This happened once and I kind of like this song because I relate to it..." So if at least one of my songs over this tour's that song, then that's really cool.

If you cry too much on screen, you're crying for the audience.

I think the audience is getting it right, you know what I mean? And that's kind of rare when the artist feels like their audience understand them. But I feel like people are understanding exactly what I'm going for. And that's awesome.

I have noticed that in plays where the characters on stage laugh a great deal, the people out front laugh very little.

So many nights I'm up there on stage and I wish everybody out in the audience could see what I see and feel what I feel.

In a horror film the protagonist should be vulnerable enough for audience to be worried about him. You can't have a six feet boxer and expect audience to worry about him.

A writer writes for writers, a non-writer writes for his next-door neighbor or for the manager of the local bank branch, and he fears (often mistakenly) that they would not understand or, in any case, would not forgive his boldness.

I want my music to be able to tell a story about what I've experienced and what I think my fans will be able to understand also.

You can't dictate if a character's going to come off as sympathetic to an audience. I just tried to play it as honest as possible.