Elia Kazan Quotes
I'm small, but I'm neither compliant nor agreeable. I've lost many of my best friends... I'm going to satisfy myself now, not the critics, not even my friends. Miller didn't write Death of a Salesman. He released it. It was there inside him, waiting to be turned loose. That's the measure of its merit. Our relationship was cursed by the fact that we agreed on everything. Stylized acting and direction is to realistic acting and direction as poetry is to prose. The belief that the good in American society will finally win out... I don't believe any more. The Communists automatically violated the daily practices of democracy to which I was accustomed. The essence of the stage is concentration and penetration. Of the screen action, movement, sweep. The first thing you should do with an actor is not sign a contract with him. Take him to dinner. And take him for a walk afterwards. The makers of entertainment must try, in our field, to be honest and grown-up. The more ambivalent you are and the more uncertain you are, then you can get something that you cannot anticipate. The motion pictures I have made and the plays I have chosen to direct represent my convictions. The physical life of the scene is determined by whether the set squeezes people together or whether the set has an escape place in it. The thing about Brando was that I'd make these directions, and he'd walk away. He'd heard enough... to get the machine going. The world was like a huge red carpet out ahead of me to be walked on. And it stretched on and on, no end. The writer, when he is also an artist, is someone who admits what others don't dare reveal. There is only one thing I respect in so-called Broadway actors... and that is their competitive sense. There was no doubt that there was a vast organization which was making fools of all the liberals in Hollywood and taking their money, that there was a police state among the Left element in Hollywood and Broadway. To be a member of the Communist Party is to have a taste of the police state. It is a diluted taste but is bitter and unforgettable. Very often the Group actor is a critic when he's acting and an actor when he's criticizing.
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