American - Director | April 6, 1922 -
Writing by committee becomes much less about a vision. It is really about a piece of merchandise.
Barry Levinson
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We excuse movies like 'Independence Day' that really lack logic and say, 'It doesn't make any sense, but it's a ride.' I thought a movie was a movie and a ride was a ride.
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Paterno had that almost legendary reputation, and then all of a sudden, the scandal broke. Why would I be interested? You can't quite figure it out at face value.
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At the end of the day, you can't do a copy of somebody.
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You have to do a version of somebody that's the essence of Paterno. I think that's what Al is so great at. You have to create a man, a life, and the emotions that go with it. He's truly brilliant.
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You can't tell the story of the thousands of people whose lives were destroyed by Bernie Madoff because there are thousands of stories. What you can do is to start inside, and that's the picture that you do, which becomes like a Greek tragedy in that regard - that whole collapse.
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Now, a lot of people didn't know him at all - it went through feeder funds, so they wouldn't even have known anything about Bernie Madoff. But everybody finds a justification for their behavior, and obviously, Bernie had a half dozen justifications in his own mind.
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You just start going through that process of trying to put together a cast that works. I don't know that I can explain it in a way that you can go, 'Oh.' It's a little bit like saying, 'How would he be with him? How does that feel?'
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Some stories seem to lend themselves to telling right away. 'All The President's Men' was done, what, four or five years after the event? It certainly seemed to work there, as opposed to something that happened 40 years ago.
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There is always a hesitancy with actors, and inhibitions can get into the work, so you have to figure out how to make it feel so loose that you can do anything, and if it is not right, that is okay because we'll do it again.
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The more pressure that an actor puts on himself, the harder it is to deliver behavior that's interesting, and so I just try to find a way without talking too much.
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My advice is that it's easier to write than direct. If you have an interest in writing, write. You might as well start with yourself or some event you know well, and you need a point of view.
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