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- “I knew [I was a director] from the beginning. It was just a matter of proving it.” — Martha Coolidge
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- “What are you gonna do, talk the alien to death?” — James Cameron
- The last photo and the Stutz
- “I had never seen anything like him . . . I vowed nothing would stop me from signing this boy for films.” – producer Hal Wallis on Elvis Presley
- “There’s no one ‘right’ way of making a science fiction movie; there’s no one way of making any kind of movie, really!” — Nicolas Roeg
- “Yeah, and I’m buddies with Alfred.” — Eminem on Alfred Hitchcock
- “I like myself poems that are gentle rather than arrogant intellectually. Where language fades into cries or whispers.” — Medbh McGuckian
- “One day I hope I can write happier poems, but most of the things I think about aren’t very cheerful.” — poet Philip Larkin
- “I gave my eardrums to MGM. And it’s true: I really did.” — Esther Williams
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Tag Archives: scripts
“I have been done in by both men and women. I don’t have any preference.” — Anita Loos
“I’ve had my best times trailing a Mainbocher evening gown across a sawdust floor. I’ve always loved high style in low company.” — Anita Loos Anita Loos’ screenwriting credits are so extensive it’s impossible to absorb them. She’s most well-known … Continue reading
“That’s the Irish People all over – they treat a serious thing as a joke and a joke as a serious thing.” — Seán O’Casey, Shadow of a Gunman
“You cannot put a rope around the neck of an idea; you cannot put an idea up against the barrack-square wall and riddle it with bullets; you cannot confine it in the strongest prison cell your slaves could ever build.” … Continue reading
“Make voyages! — Attempt them! — there’s nothing else …” — Tennessee Williams
Tennessee Williams (Thomas Lanier Williams) was born on this day in Columbus, Mississippi in 1911. Will you do a total stranger the kindness of reading his verse? Thank you! Thomas Lanier Williams — Tennessee Williams, letter to editor Harriet Monroe, … Continue reading
Posted in Books, On This Day, Theatre, writers
Tagged A Streetcar Named Desire, Elia Kazan, Glass Menagerie, Laurette Taylor, Marlon Brando, scripts, Tennessee Williams
25 Comments
“The worst enemy of truth and freedom in our society is the compact majority.” — Henrik Ibsen
It’s his birthday today. Some posts from my archive: This is a doozy, an excerpt from an amazing book made up of transcribed lectures on Ibsen, Chekhov and Strindberg, by legendary actress and acting teacher Stella Adler. It’s a great … Continue reading
Posted in James Joyce, On This Day, Theatre, writers
Tagged Clifford Odets, Henrik Ibsen, Lee Strasberg, Norway, scripts, Stella Adler
4 Comments
“If it was raining soup, the Irish would go out with forks.” – Happy Birthday, Brendan Behan
“Shakespeare said pretty well everything and what he left out, James Joyce, with a judge from meself, put in.” – Brendan Behan Brendan Behan, Irish playwright, IRA man, was born in Dublin on this day, 1923. He lived a life … Continue reading
“Medicine is my lawful wife, and literature is my mistress. When I get fed up with one, I spend the night with the other.” — Anton Chekhov
It’s his birthday today. Anton Chekhov, letter to actress (and wife) Olga Knipper January 2, 1901 “Describe at least one rehearsal of Three Sisters for me. Isn’t there anything which needs adding or subtracting? Are you acting well, my darling? … Continue reading
Posted in On This Day, Theatre, writers
Tagged Anton Chekhov, Christopher Walken, Maureen Stapleton, Olympia Dukakis, scripts, The Cherry Orchard, The Seagull
9 Comments
2025 Books Read
I ended last year with a flurry of Oscar Wilde’s short stories, declaring I’d read all the plays in 2025. I mean, there were only five, sadly, due to the homophobic violence of his own society. I know these plays … Continue reading
Posted in Books
Tagged Anton Chekhov, Austria, books read, Charles Lamb, children's books, Croatia, Czechoslovakia, Czeslaw Milosz, David Lynch, Dubravka Ugrešić, England, essays, fiction, France, Frankenstein, Germany, Guillermo del Toro, Hungary, Ireland, Jane Austen, Janet Malcolm, John Keats, Lord Byron, Mark Danielewski, Mary Gaitskill, Mary Shelley, Matthew Arnold, Memoirs, nonfiction, Oscar Wilde, poetry, Poland, politics, Rebecca West, Roald Dahl, Robert Kaplan, Robert Louis Stevenson, Russia, sci-fi, Scotland, scripts, Spain, The Beatles, Twin Peaks, William Shakespeare, Yugoslavia
12 Comments
A Streetcar Named Desire: That’s What Williams Wrote. Deal With It.
A re-post for the anniversary of Streetcar debuting on Broadway. I wrote this essay after seeing a 2011 production of Streetcar at Williamstown. Directed by David Cromer Starring Sam Rockwell as Stanley Kowalski, Jessica Hecht as Blanche DuBois, Ana Reeder … Continue reading
Posted in Actors, On This Day, Theatre
Tagged A Streetcar Named Desire, Sam Rockwell, scripts, Tennessee Williams
55 Comments
“If someone spends his life writing the truth without caring for the consequences, he inevitably becomes a political authority in a totalitarian regime.” — Václav Havel
“Hope is definitely not the same thing as optimism. It is not the conviction that something will turn out well, but the certainty that something makes sense, regardless of how it turns out.” — Václav Havel Václav Havel, whose birthday … Continue reading
Posted in On This Day, Theatre, writers
Tagged Czechoslovakia, Golshifteh Farahani, Iran, Iranian film, Jafar Panahi, scripts, Shabnam Toloui, Vaclav Havel, war
2 Comments