I don’t know that you can do an absurdist film and just have everybody embrace it in terms of filling out cards. I just don’t think it happens. So you have to prepare an audience.
BARRY LEVINSONFirst of all, just to get Diner made would have been an achievement in that I got a chance to direct.
More Barry Levinson Quotes
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We’re never going to be the ultimate-insider look. You can do 50 insider looks at this Hollywood business, and the satire didn’t intrigue me. I think others can do that.
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I never really wanted to be an actor. And that was the beginning of it, I began to write things down and eventually became a writer on a television show.
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I always think that there is the good and the bad of it all.
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No one really has the power, and everybody’s trying to get through the day, and everybody’s nervous and desperate.
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When I began to think about the head of the family, the storyteller, the rise of television which became the new storyteller, the break-up of the American family as an idea and then Avalon came.
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I don’t know that you can do it as a satire. I mean, the business is crazy enough as it is. It’s like doing Wag The Dog – we took a thing that was almost completely absurd on one level, and then ultimately those things came about.
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I worked at a local television station and I got a chance to direct and do all those things – worked kiddie shows, Ranger House show with the hand puppets and things like that.
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You don’t always have to have the ending, but you want to have a satisfactory conclusion.
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The interesting thing about movies, it’s not always – y’know, you have to have structure etc and all those things, but an audience responds, in many ways, we walk away and certain things stay in our heads that are memorable.
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I got involved with an acting school and studied for a couple years. They used to have improv exercises that you would work on and you would do improvs.
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I’ve had a lot of movies that didn’t get great numbers on test screening, but a lot of times the film was able to survive, or the studio still stayed and supported it.
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Even back in the ’90s, I shot certain things on something that wasn’t digital then, but it was on VHS with a smaller camera and we would up it to film.
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Studios just sometimes make decisions on their own that you’re always flabbergasted by. It just happens that way for whatever reason – not even pointing fingers, it just is.
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I think when Sarah Palin opened her mouth and started talking, the more she talked, the less appealing she became.
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I would give the cameras to the kids in the swimming pools and they would play with them, and then I would collect them and we would upload it. If you’re in the process, you’re there.
BARRY LEVINSON






