James Lapine Quotes
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I love the visual aspect of the theater. But I like what people have to say, too.
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I need an audience to look at what I've done so I can understand it, so I can step back and watch them respond and figure out what they're understanding about what I'm trying to do and what they're confused about.
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The music is the emotional substance of the show; the book just sets it up. Nobody goes to a musical to hear the book. That's the way it works.
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I think visually... so, even when I'm writing a play, I'm envisioning it.
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I've grown more and more appreciative of good writing, and I now really hope I can become a better and better writer.
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When you're trying out on Broadway, it's very hectic, and you're making changes night after night. There's a lot of pressures from producers to make some changes, and you're writing for actors who are in it - and sometimes the limitations of actors who are in it.
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Fairy tales cross generational lines, and how you respond to them depends on when in your life you're seeing them.
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I'm never so into the three-act movie thing. I know that's the form that people talk about, but it seems to me, in the movie, you just have to keep charging forward. You couldn't start over again like you do after an intermission. You just had to keep the plot moving forward.
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The one thing you don't want to do is go off and keep rewriting. If something's not quite right, it's often about modulating what's already there.
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Sometimes good news is hard to absorb.
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Fairy tales, which teach a moral lesson, are about ourselves. Myth deals with forces greater than ourselves.
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I've ended up working with Disney a lot, which is kind of peculiar. In theater, I've done a couple of projects with them and written a couple movies and whatnot.
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Good musicals, a strange world, seem so easy. People say, 'Ohhh, it's magic.' Nothing's magic. A thing doesn't jell. Adapt. Change the rhythm. Shorten the scene. Rewrite the character. Maneuver the waters. Seeming easy is why so many shows aren't good.
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I like the stage challenges of having somebody literally falling apart before your very eyes.
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It so fascinates me how we always laugh when somebody falls on a banana peel, how comedy and injury are often so interwoven. I've always been a sucker for that.
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I like to keep a low profile.
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I am thrilled to receive the Sondheim Award from the wonderful Signature Theatre. I have already received the invaluable gift of over twenty-five years of collaboration and friendship with Steve. Now I get to have his award, too!
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I just don't really think of career. I've never been driven by career.
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There are certain images that always haunt me.
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I did 'Impromptu,' which was a thrill and a horror all at once - my first movie and having to do it in Paris, and my wife wrote it, and I had some difficulties on the set, blah, blah, blah.
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I'm a very laid-back person.
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I designed a theater magazine that was full of plays and essays about the theater, and then I worked at a theater school. By osmosis or something, I was learning from reading plays and not being analytical about them, but when I would read them, the joy in me was mostly from imagining them in my head and visualizing them.
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I don't do movie junket-y things, because I don't really do movies that much.
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That's the thing about dreams - they're ineffable. If you can get to the bottom of it, it's not a dream.