Stephen J. Cannell (Stephen Joseph Cannell) Quotes
I believe in three-act structure. When I say that to novel people, or people in the world of books, they go, 'Well, that's a film thing.' However, even a good joke has three acts.
Quotes to Explore
-
It takes three to make a child.
-
But the process of making a film is not glamorous. Certainly not my films.
-
The loneliest Chinese man I ever met lived halfway up the Three Gorges, in Sichuan Province.
-
I was in a mountain biking accident and broke my sternum about three months before my unit was supposed to deploy to Iraq, and it's such a close-knit community that the idea of not getting to go is hugely jarring, so I tried to get put back in training and wound up injuring it worse.
-
Film is anti-language.
-
That's what film can do in a way that TV and other long-form storytelling can't. It gives you this very immersive moment.
-
The notion of directing a film is the invention of critics - the whole eloquence of cinema is achieved in the editing room.
-
I will only do a Hollywood film when there is something special offered to me.
-
When you're in theater or the circus or film - to me it's all one - affairs happen. People fall in love.
-
I called Daley Thompson after the Games of '84, when he won. He'd had this phenomenal decathlon for nine events - and then he went out there and jogged the 1,500 meters and missed the world record by, like, three points.
-
I started taking ballet lessons when I was three and a half and I still take dance classes.
-
There are three rules for writing a novel. Unfortunately, no one knows what they are.
-
There is something magical about three you know - a trio is tight and nicely economical.
-
I'll often get obsessed with something for about three days, and I'll be utterly into it, and I'll read every single thing about it possible. And then three days later, I'll just forget about it, and I'll be onto something else.
-
A film has its own life and takes its own time.
-
In the first three years of Mint, from when it was founded to when it was sold, I can honestly say that in a sustainable way, I couldn't have worked any harder on it.
-
When you're struggling to get a feature film off the ground, there's no big overarching tenure plan or anything like that.
-
I despise the phony, fancy-pants rhetoric of professors aping jargon-filled European locutions - which have blighted academic film criticism for over 30 years.
-
There was also the myth of the western films. But my films are borrowed not from the story of the West in America but from the story of cinema.
-
God help me if I ever do another movie with an explosion in it. If you see me in a movie where stuff is exploding you'll know I've lost all my money.
-
I think I'm drawn to more villain-type characters, because it's so cool to get to say all the things you want to say. In Hollywood, you get to this position where you have to bite your tongue so much. You take all your experiences of not being able to say what you really want to say, and channel that through your character.
-
I believe in three-act structure. When I say that to novel people, or people in the world of books, they go, 'Well, that's a film thing.' However, even a good joke has three acts.
