It is interesting to be here and to see that for certain actors they have to live in a way that you think of nobody living anymore except for in small towns. They have such elaborate double lives.
For me, someone like the Eddie Murphy character doesn’t live anywhere; he lives on a stage and when he’s not on the stage he’s on a bus getting to the next stage.
There’s nothing quite as good as folding up into a book and shutting the world outside.If I pick the right one I can be beautiful, or fall in love, or live happily ever after. Maybe even all three.
I had a couple of movies that I was passionately involved with that I could never get made. ‘Richard Pryor,’ I wrote for – gosh – over a year. That was close to getting made for two-and-a-half years after that.
The thing I’ve noticed about life is that it just keeps coming at you. And it can be a real bummer. What you need to remember is that you’re not alone.
When it comes to two of the big social earthquakes in the last fifty years – which are the gay movement and the women’s movement – I think there is a direct line from Kinsey to those.
I do think that’s so much a part of what being a director is – in working with actors – to really try and be sensitive to what each actor needs to get to where he wants to be.
Above all they have always shown great respect for the fans who made these movies such a success. Now it’s time that some of that respect be returned to them.
But you really – I always think that a director has got to adapt to whatever the needs of the actor are. You know, so if you take someone like Eddie Murphy, who is not a big fan of rehearsal.
