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
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It takes three to make a child.
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But the process of making a film is not glamorous. Certainly not my films.
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The loneliest Chinese man I ever met lived halfway up the Three Gorges, in Sichuan Province.
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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.
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Film is anti-language.
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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.
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The notion of directing a film is the invention of critics - the whole eloquence of cinema is achieved in the editing room.
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I will only do a Hollywood film when there is something special offered to me.
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When you're in theater or the circus or film - to me it's all one - affairs happen. People fall in love.
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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.
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I started taking ballet lessons when I was three and a half and I still take dance classes.
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There are three rules for writing a novel. Unfortunately, no one knows what they are.
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There is something magical about three you know - a trio is tight and nicely economical.
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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.
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A film has its own life and takes its own time.
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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.
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When you're struggling to get a feature film off the ground, there's no big overarching tenure plan or anything like that.
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I despise the phony, fancy-pants rhetoric of professors aping jargon-filled European locutions - which have blighted academic film criticism for over 30 years.
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The reason my films work is because every actor on set is very secure. They're able to fly.
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Certain types of films will never test well. My films never seem to test well.
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I know there are things I did in education that will never be reversed. I have not done that in film yet because I have only been here for about nine months.
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Jews are not part of a European ruling class imposed on helpless natives, but are caught up in a tragedy in which two peoples are struggling for the same piece of land.
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Computers and rocket ships are examples of invention, not of understanding. ... All that is needed to build machines is the knowledge that when one thing happens, another thing happens as a result. It's an accumulation of simple patterns. A dog can learn patterns. There is no "why&rdqo"; in those examples. We don't understand why electricity travels. We don't know why light travels at a constant speed forever. All we can do is observe and record patterns.
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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.
