Modern Storytelling Quotes

Stories now, to suit a public taste, must be half epigram, half pleasant vice.

We say it’s a modern American Western - two gunslingers who ride into town, fight the bad guys, kiss the girl and ride out into the sunset again. And we were always talking from the very beginning that if you’re going to have cowboys, they need a trusty horse. —Eric Kripke on the decision to add the Impala

In the old days villains had moustaches and kicked the dog. Audiences are smarter today. They don't want their villain to be thrown at them with green limelight on his face. They want an ordinary human being with failings.

I think there is a lot of technology that is finding its way into our storytelling - it's pretty unavoidable.

When I saw 'Louie' and 'Girls', I was blown out of the water. They were fearless portrayals of real life. Everyone has a different experience.

It is a curious thing that the more the world shrinks because of electronic communications, the more limitless becomes the province of the storytelling entertainer.

Sometimes I feel that in religious content, religious drama, it's almost told like a tale, like an account of facts, and in 'A.D. The Bible Continues,' it's drama, it's real drama that we like to see on TV today, seeing the characters struggle and doubt and be completely in conflict with each other, kind of like 'House of Cards.'

Chick Lit uses humor to reflect life back to us. It's a very comforting genre, and it's the first time our generation has had a voice. It's a very important genre for all of those reasons.

I think that first-person narration is very characteristic of contemporary optics, in which the individual performs the role of subjective center of the world.

In the future, I would like to do more films with contemporary themes. Perhaps comedy, which is something I have done in theater but not in cinema.

Minimalism seems closest to the sophisticated storytelling of movies. Movies have really educated contemporary audiences to be the most intelligent, sophisticated audiences in history. We don't any longer need to have the relationship between one scene and the next explained. We will figure it out ourselves.

People have forgotten how to tell a story. Stories don't have a middle or an end any more. They usually have a beginning that never stops beginning.

I mean suspense, twists are almost impossible these days.

Storytelling has changed. Shows like 'Adventure Time' have taken storytelling in a different direction.

I really like the short stories that Melissa Bank writes. I think she's sort of channeling the female version of J.D. Salinger in more recent days.

For those actors and directors who produce films which are always about the old kingdom or about heroes, you know about the fantasies related to the classics, but there is no real discussion about today's life and no discussion of the real conditions - which is really sickening. They've become part of a conspiracy, collaborators of the crime, which is lying to the general public and trying to hide the kind of criminal acts happening in many cases.

I don't know how to write a novel in the world of cellphones. I don't know how to write a novel in the world of Google, in which all factual information is available to all characters. So I have to stand on my head to contrive a plot in which the characters lose their cellphone and are separated from technology.

We're used to a story in modern terms as an information delivery device. Certainly on television and even with the studio films, there's really only one note that you get, and that's clarity. And people will sacrifice everything for clarity. They'll sacrifice the joke. They'll sacrifice the moment, or the romance.

'ADHM' is a very contemporary kind of film. Ranbir Kapoor has performed very well.

Honestly, I'm a firm believer in the next generation of filmmakers. It's very important to keep things fresh, new, current. They have a pulse on what's important today.

When I read 'Another Country' when I was in my early 20s, you know, as soon as I put the book down, my first thought was, 'I will never be able to write a book like this.' And my second thought was, 'I really want to try writing a book like this for the 21st century.'

It was easy to believe, between lessons on Shakespeare and Dickens and Austen, that all of the great stories had already been written by dead Europeans. But every time I saw 'The Outsiders', I knew better. It was the first time I'd realized that real people write books.

I think what traditional studios probably don't understand is that it's a genuine advancement in the actor's tradition. And you know, the tradition and craft of acting. And it's the latest step. You know, we, we tend to find forms of delivering stories that fit our times.

The one thing I have never been comfortable with in the modern presentation of character - and it may have changed, this is some years ago - is their total isolation from the rest of the world. It's all about superheroes interacting with superheroes. There's no normal life. No normal people.

We don't perceive a contradiction between writing books, making films or producing a television program. These days you can't choose how you want to express yourself anymore.