Pacing Quotes

There are times when I could cheerfully walk out on the whole God damn setup. I don`t have to make pictures any more.When I first came out here to work from the New York stage,l I was carved up in all directions, a dumb actor tied to a slew of contractual clauses. Today I`m my own man - free, off the hook. This is a collective business, I know. But now it`s up to me to decide the stories we use and the kind of picture in which I`m prepared to get involved. I`m no longer the dumb and trusting ham being shuttled from picture to picture at someone else`s whim. I`m a company boss who has to make big decisions right or wrong, responsible only to myself in the long run. For years, we actors have been fighting for our so-called artistic freedom. We wanted to get rid of the moguls and their accountants. We damned the studio Shylocks for their materialism and lack of taste. Now, most of us are on our own. So what happens? This morning I had to call my office and scrap a production on which people had been working for months ... I decided it would be best to chuck it in rather than risk making a bad picture. All night I`ve been pacing up and down the house trying to make the right decision. I tell you there are times when I wish Hollywood actors had retained the status of bums and gypsies and left the planning to others. Right now, I`m tempted to say, `The hell with all of it.` The picture has changed, my friend. The old omnipotent caliphs are dying fast. Television plus the weight of years has weakened the survivors. It will need energy and a fresh executive approach to redirect the creative drive, re-channel the talent. The monopolies of the studios have been broken. The anti-trust laws have severed their distribution outlets. The shackling of actors to loaded long-term contracts is virtually a thing of the past. In effect, I have complete control over what I do. A year of two back this was considered some kind of victory of art over tyranny. Now I`m not so sure. I`m a free soul, you remember. Before I became an actor, I wanted to be a writer. Freedom of mind and action is important to me. Right now I`d like to take off for Mexico and fish for a while and swim and read books without wondering whether they would make a good picture. Now I`ll have to follow another production through from the drawing board to the cutting room. And then go out on the road and sell it with personal appearances. It can be stimulating. A challenge, as they say at Chasens. But there are times when actors like myself find themselves wishing we could resurrect Thalberg and pass the ball to him or people like him. The town`s wide open for any operator with the ability to finance, package and sell motion pictures. (1965)

I always have a rule that acting is acting and truth is truth and you just go out there and you do it. But what happens in each medium is that you have other responsibilities. The acting remains the same, but each medium dictates assuming other halves to make the acting work. When I`m working on a film, I just play the absolute purity of the moments. I don`t worry about the pacing, because the pacing is going to be dictated by the director and the editor. On the stage I have to give pacing to the play. As an actor, you, in fact, become the editor of the piece, in terms of the timing. You are required to engineer the pace yourself. In television, everything is in so close, that you realize that most of what you do has to register in your thought process.

Comedy is so hard; it`s so much harder than drama. The pacing of it, the energy of it.

As far as pacing the shoot is concerned, I know when I`ve got it. I don`t think there`s any reason to take ten takes unless you need them.

But it`s mostly about pacing yourself when you do these movies.

With a mini series you can give the story a proper sense of pacing, a proper sense of closure.

Have you ever heard a good joke? If you`ve ever heard someone just right, with the right pacing, then you`re already on the way to poetry. It`s about using words in very precise ways and using gesture.