Rushes Quotes

During Double Indemnity (1944), Fred MacMurray would go to rushes. I remember asking Fred, `How was I?` `I don`t know about you, but I was wonderful!` Such a true remark. Actors only look at themselves.

On the making of Taxi Driver (1976): "There was a welfare worker on the set every day and she saw the daily rushes of all my scenes and made sure I wasn`t on set when Robert De Niro said a dirty word."

I have always watched the rushes, and have learned more because I have done so, because you can have all manner of ideas in your head, but they have to end up on the screen.

Not everyone likes watching rushes, but it makes me work harder, and I don`t feel I am watching myself, but watching the progression of the character.

I noticed that when I went to see the rushes or the first showing that there was something quite human in this desperation, and I hadn`t planned it.

(From 1994 interview when asked the reasons for the success of A Room with a View (1985)) "I`ve never seen it, so I don`t know. Florence was lovely of course, and it`s a wonderful love story. I did enjoy doing the part, because Maggie Smith and I were old friends from 1958. We both arrived in Florence on the same day and neither of us had any family with us, so we would spend all day together filming and then go out to dinner together, catching up on our Old Vic days. But, I didn`t enjoy working with James Ivory. I didn`t feel that I was on his wavelength and I didn`t feel that he wanted me in the film, I have to say that. I remember doing that scene in the middle of the square where she goes mad and attacks the man selling postcards; James went to see the rushes and told me afterwards that everyone had laughed at it, they`d thought it was very funny. `Well done`, he said to me. I thought perhaps we`d turned the corner but, when I came to post-sync the film, that scene was missing. When I asked why, he told me that Helena Bonham Carter hadn`t been feeling up to it that day, so he`d cut the whole sequence. I don`t know if that was the real reason he cut it - I just don`t know".

Film is not an actor`s medium. You shoot scenes in order of convenience, not the way they come in the script, and that`s detrimental to a fully developed performance. There`s the terrible tedium and boredom involved in waiting around for the camera to be set up, and then you have to turn on and off when they do the scene over again. When you see the rushes is the first time you begin to judge your performance. If you get 50% of what you hoped for, you`re lucky.

(on Peter Lorre) Peter Lorre was one of the finest and most subtle actors I have ever worked with. Beneath that air of innocence he used to such effect, one sensed a Faustian worldliness. I`d know he was giving a good performance as we put it on film but I wouldn`t know how good until I saw him in the rushes.

Sometimes the fool who rushes in gets the job done.

The versatility he brings to this defense is what stands out. I don`t think I`ve played with a better overall athlete. He can do it all, and this defense allows him to use his talents. He rushes, plays the run and covers. You saw that all tonight.

If I go to a seminar and someone like you or someone like him is talking, I`m never part of the group that rushes him directly afterward. I always wait in the back corner with my head down until everyone is gone, and then I go up and do my thing.

Male and female represent the two sides of the great radical dualism. But in fact they are perpetually passing into one another. Fluid hardens to solid, solid rushes to fluid. There is no wholly masculine man, no purely feminine woman.

When they leave that guy open out there, that`s in our play to throw it to him. It just so happened to be the first punt of the year. I was lucky that I saw it, and Ronnie Prude knew it was coming too. I saw (the defender) creep in, and I was thinking about it, `If he rushes, then I`m going to throw it to him.` As soon as the ball was snapped, he was rushing and I threw it to (Prude). I just saw the opportunity and took it.

Time rushes towards us with its hospital tray of infinitely varied narcotics, even while it is preparing us for its inevitably fatal operation.