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Because the character is a fiction, he's a composite of other contributors to the science that brought this enzyme therapy through the process. We had the opportunity to make him up out of those things that helped tell the story. We wanted to create both ally and antagonist for John ...
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An icon means nothing to me. I don't understand what it means to anybody actually. It seems like a word of convenience. It seems to attend to the huge success of certain kinds of movies that I did, but there's no personal utility in being an icon. I don't know what an icon does, except stand in a corner quietly accepting everyone's attention. I like to work, so there's no utility in being an icon.
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What I think is important for a young person is to figure out how to be useful and not be so concentrated on themselves, but to see what they can do to make the overall collaboration with all the other people involved in a movie work better.
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Hard work and a proper frame of mind prepare you for the lucky breaks that come along -- or don't.
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Whoever had the bright idea of putting Indiana Jones in a leather jacket and a fedora in the jungle ought to be dragged into the street and shot.
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I do not go to the gym. I do not train. I am not that careful about what I eat. I cannot give you any advice about keeping fit. The best advice I can give is choose your parents wisely.
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Never again will I allow our political self-interest to deter us from doing what we know to be morally right. Atrocity and terror are not political weapons. And to those who would use them, your day is over. We will never negotiate. We will no longer tolerate and we will no longer be afraid. It's your turn to be afraid.
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The only thing that I have done that is not mitigated by luck, diminished by good fortune, is that I persisted, and other people gave up.
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You get a sense of reference there. You feel part of something that's got order and balance and harmony to it. All the distraction and noise, all the confusion of misplaced, misdirected energy just don't happen there.
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You have to remember that baseball really was the American pastime in the Forties, not football, basketball or any other sport.
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I believe that the racial injustice which existed such a short time ago probably would have persisted longer if the color barrier had not been broken in baseball.
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The job's always the same. It involves helping to tell the story and creating an alloy between character and story that serves the film.
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I was 35 when I first hit with Star Wars. I had some degree of maturity and some degree of experience, yet physically I still looked young. That had been an impediment early on in my career, but then it turned out to be an advantage.
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With the CGI, suddenly there's a thousand enemies instead of six - the army goes off into the horizon. You don't need that. The audience loses its relationship with the threat on the screen. That's something that's consistently happening and it makes these movies like video games and that's a soulless enterprise. It's all kinetics without emotion.
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I had the idea that the film would be much better served by a Branch Rickey lookalike than a Harrison Ford lookalike. I didn't want the audience to go into the film thinking that they knew me from some previous experience in a movie.
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'May the Force be with you' is charming but it's not important. What's important is that you become the Force - for yourself and perhaps for other people.
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When I was a carpenter, I once worked with this Russian lady architect. I would tell her, ‘Look, I’m terribly sorry, but I want to change that a half inch,’ and she would say, ‘No limit for better.’ I think that is a worthy credo.
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That film What's My Line was very useful to me because it had Branch Rickey in a social situation. Every other bit of film that I had was him making a speech.
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I've always wanted to be bald. I mean it, completely bald. Wouldn't it be great to be bald in the rain?
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There's a real simple analogy. You have to perceive it from the ground up. You have to lay a firm foundation, then every step becomes part of a logical process.
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I was one of the few people who thought Star Wars was going to work, and I hadn't even seen any special effects.
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What I hate is the loss of anonymity.
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I shaved my hairline back and dyed my hair and wore a little powder, a little paint, a fat suit, and I changed my voice, but the emotions were consistent with what the point of the scene with Branch Rickey was.
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As a matter of fact, that was a bit of a problem for me at the beginning of my career - the problem of identification. In The Conversation I played a character who was gay, so nobody recognised me from American Graffiti. When I did Apocalypse Now, after Star Wars, I played an intelligence officer of the American army. George Lucas saw the footage I had done and didn't recognise me until halfway through the scene.