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I Started Writing Plays In Around 1967, And At A Certain Point, I Thought, 'i'm Writing Plays, I Should Learn About Acting And What It Is.' So I Went To The Hb Studio In New York, And I Was There For About Nine Months.

-Wallace Shawn

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I Started Writing Plays

Wallace Shawn

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I Started Writing Plays In Around 1967, And At A Certain Point, I Thought, 'i'm Writing Plays, I Should Learn About Acting And What It Is.' So I Went To The Hb Studio In New York, And I Was There For About Nine Months.

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I Don't Happen To Have A Sense Of Humor Personally, So I Don't Know What's Funny About A Character... This Happens To Be A Feature Of My Life Generally.

I Grew Up In A Very Polite Family, And I Suppose My Parents Were Both Very Polite, And From The Time I Was A Young Boy, I Suspected That There Were Passions Seething Underneath And Not Being Mentioned, And That Was Something That Came To Preoccupy Me. Somehow I Had Some Drive To Write Down What People Might Really Be Thinking.

"the Fever" Is A One-person Play. I Decided I Would Perform It Myself, And I Decided I Would Not Perform It In Theaters, Because The Character In The Play Says Certain Things That I Meant.

Patriotism Is Considered To Be An Emotion A Person Ought To Feel. But Why? Why Is It Nobler To Love Your Own Country Than To Love Someone Else's?

I'm Trying To Write Truthfully About Life, And Naturalism, Or The Way People Normally Talk In Movies, Is A Convention. The Way I Write Is About Life And Is Quite Truthful, And There Is A Kind Of Brutal Side To The Relationship, And To The Feelings, That Makes It Somewhat Painful, But I Think It's A Very Intense Portrait Of The Relationship Of Two People. And A Bit About What People Feel Like When They're Alone, Because It All Takes Place In One Day, And During The Day, They Spend A Lot Of Time Alone In Their Different - You Get To Imagine What Their Fantasy Lives Are Like.

The Life Of An Actor Can Be Very Enviable.

I Think I'm Trying To Write Truthfully About Life, And Naturalism, Or The Way People Normally Talk In Movies, Is A Convention. It's Not The Way People Talk In Life At All.

I Never Planned To Be An Actor. It Turned Out I Could Make A Living Doing It.

A Play Presents A Self-enclosed Little World For The Audience To Examine. It's An Opportunity To Look Objectively At A Group Of People, To Assess Them, To React To Them, And To Measure Oneself Against Them, To Ask 'am I Like That?'

Sleep: A Poor Substitute For Caffeine!

I Never Grew Up Thinking, 'one Day I Will Play So And So' Because I Wasn't Expecting To Be An Actor At All.

I Choose Parts Because I Don't Want To Be Embarrassed When The Movie Comes Out. What If My Friends Were To See The Movie? What If My Niece Or Nephew Wandered Into The Theater And Saw The Movie? I Don't Want To Be Too Ashamed Of It.

It's Obviously A Characteristic Of Human Beings That We Like To Feel Superior To Others, But Our Problem Is We Are Not Superior

Characteristics

The Actor's Role In The Community Is Quite Unlike Anyone Else's. Businessmen, For Example, Don't Take Their Clothes Off Or Cry In Front Of Strangers In The Course Of Their Work. Actors Do.

And My Singing, I Don't Think I Could Sing Wagner Or Opera, But I Could Probably Carry A Tune. I Was In A Musical Once, But It Was Never Performed.

My Plays Have Been Strange From The Beginning, And They Never Got Unstrange.

My Father Was A Jazz Listener, And I Think, At Least Before I Was 5, I Was Not So Into That. Although There Were Records That Emphasized Percussion That I Liked, Like Baby Dodds.

I'm Not Proud To Be Me, I'm Not Excited To Be Me, But I Find That I Am Me, And Like Most Other Individuals, I Send Out Little Signals; I Tell Everyone Else How Everything Looks From Where I Am.

I See Myself As A Citizen Of The Planet. Even As A Child, I Always Found It Mindless To Root For Your Own Team. I Was Puzzled By The Fact That People Said Their Own Team Was Better Than Other Teams Simply Because It Was Theirs.

I Grew Up. I Began To Think The United States Had Some Problems That Really Required The Help Of Artistic People To Solve. And I Gave Myself Permission To Be A Writer Instead Of A Civil Servant.

You're Always Fighting The Contradiction Between The Supposed Intimacy Of A Two-person Conversation And The Blunt Reality That You're Trying To Sell The Play To People Who Are Sitting Maybe Too Far Away From You.

You Know, I Haven't Written As Much As Most Other Writers. Certainly Maybe Those Who Keep A More Regular Schedule Accomplish More.

Children, I Always Think, Are Just Putting On A Performance Of Being Naive And Not Understanding Anything. I Have Worked With Children In Films, And They're Treated As Adults And They Just Drop The Pretense Of Being Children.

I Love Going To Plays. There's A Subconscious Side To It, Obviously-some People Like To Be Spanked For Xyz Psychological Reasons, And I Like To Go To Plays, And I Can't Entirely Explain Why.

But Because We've All Been Readers, We Know What The Experience Is Like, And We Hope That What Certain Writers Have Given To Us, We Will Give To Someone.

I Probably Have A Higher Opinion Of My Writing Than The Average Person, At Least When I'm In A Good Mood, But I Don't Really Think Of My Plays As Only Being Relevant To A Particular Month Or Year.

I Have More Free Time Than A Lot Of Individuals, So, Instead Of Talking, I Sometimes Write.

I Don't See That Many Plays, And For Me, Musicals Are Rarely Pleasing. I Feel The Actors Are Being Put Through A Kind Of Nightmarish Labor. They're Like Animals Being Forced To Pull Heavy Carts Of Vegetables At Incredible Speeds.

I Was Making My Living From A Joke About My Appearance That I Didn't Understand, And In A Way Still Don't, Because When I Look In A Mirror It Doesn't Seem Funny To Me.

I Wrote My First Play At The Age Of 10, 55 Years Ago, And I've Always Found It A Fantastic Relief To Imagine I Know What Things Would Be Like From The Point Of View Of Other Individuals And To Send Out Signals From Where I Actually Am Not. Playwrights Never Need To Write From The Place Where They Are.

As Writers, We Can't Predict Who Might Come Along Who Might Find Our Offerings Valuable.

My Style As A Human Being Is To Indulge People Who Need To Escape, Yet I Insist On Confronting Them As A Playwright. It's Quite Embarrassing, It's Quite Unpleasant, It's Quite Awkward.

I Spend Most Of My Time Thinking About Things Like Laundry And Buying Stationery Supplies.

I Am Recognized A Lot For Clueless, But I Am Recognized A Great Deal For The Princess Bride. I Dont Know... Maybe Everybody Who Has Seen That Movie Just Goes Out On The Street.

In An Amusement Park, You Can Go On A Roller Coaster That Carries You Up And Down, Or You Can Go On Another Kind Of Ride That Whirls You Around In A Circle. Similarly, There Are Different Sorts Of Entertaining Experiences In The Theater.

I Sincerely Believe That If Bush And Cheney Recognized The Full Humanity Of Other People's Mothers Around The World, They Wouldn't Commit The Crimes They Commit.

Acting Is An Escape From The Boring Person That I Am In Real Life.

In Real Life, Every Person Is The Leading Man Or Woman. We Don't Think Of Ourselves As Supporting Or Character Actors.

My Personal Life Is Lived As 'me,' But My Professional Life Is Lived As Other People. In Other Words, When I Go To The Office, I Lie Down, Dream, And Become 'someone Else.' That's My Job.

We're In An Emergency Situation. The United States Has Become An Absolutely Terrifying Country, And I Would Hope That I Could Participate In Some Way In Stopping The Horror And The Brutality.

All Of My Plays Have Puzzled Some People, And I'm Happy To Say Delighted A Few, But A Lot Of People Have Just Not Seen How Quite To Look At Them. And This Film... If You Like My Writing, You'll Like This Film. If You Don't, You Won't Like The Film. It's Pretty Faithful To - It's A Pretty Uncompromising Presentation Of My Way Of Seeing Things, I Suppose.

There's Nothing Regular About My Life At All, Really. I Don't Keep A Regular Schedule And Every Day Is Different. It's All Rather Chaotic.

I Do Things, And Other People Laugh At Them. I Rarely Know What The Joke Is Supposed To Be Or Why They're Laughing.

I Don't Have An Idea For A Play Until After I've Finished Writing It. I Write First, And Come Up With What It's About Later. My Technique Could Be Compared To Having A Large Canvas And Coming In Every Day And Putting A Dot On It Somewhere, And After Several Years - Literally - I Begin To Say, That Reminds Me Of An Elephant, So I Think I'll Make It One.

I Have An Enormous Appetite To See Life As I Know It Presented In Front Of My Eyes.

For Some Reason, People Find Me Funny. It's Quite Hard To Define Why A Thought Is Funny. It's Even Harder To Define Why A Person Would Be Funny. It's A Word That I Can't Define At All. But Whether I Know Quite What It Is Or Not, I Seem To Be It.

Acting Is Trying To Be Absolutely Truthful; To Get Audiences To Believe That You Are A Dean, When, Actually, Not Only Are You Not The Dean, But If You Walked Into The Building They'd Probably Throw You Out. That's Very Hard.

If My Relation To Each And Every Peasant In Cambodia Is Indeed Exactly What The Principles Of Morality Would Demand It To Be, It's A Miraculous Coincidence, Because It Takes A Lot Of Effort To Behave Correctly In Regard To My Friends, And From One End Of The Year To Another I Never Give Those Peasants A Single Thought.

I Have Been Vain Since Birth.

I'm A Very Lucky Man. It's A Beautiful Thing For A Writer, To See People Allowing Your Words To Enter Their Own Unconscious And Their Souls.

When I Was A Child, I Did Always Feel That People Were Hiding Things, And That They Weren't Expressing Their True Feelings. When Adults Are Too Complicated, And Cover Their Emotions With Layers Of Well-intentioned Subterfuge, The Child Isn't Seeing Reality Clearly Enough And Gets Upset.

I Don't See That Many Plays, And For Me, Musicals Are Rarely Pleasing.

What I'm Really Involved In When I'm Writing Is Something That No One Ever Mentions When They See Any Play. Writing Is Like Trying To Make Gunpowder Out Of Chemicals. You Have These Words And Sentences And The Strange Meanings And Associations That Are Attached To The Words And Sentences, And You're Somehow Cooking These Things All Up So That They Suddenly Explode And Have A Powerful Effect. That's What Absorbs Me From Day To Day In Writing A Play.

After Being In One Movie, It Didn't Seem Like That Would Be My Life. I Had Done Several Jobs, Briefly. I'd Been A Shipping Clerk, I Worked In A Copy Shop, I Didn't Think The Acting Was Going To Go On And On.

For Me, A Play Is A Form Of Writing Which Isn't Complete Until It Is Interpreted By Actors. But It's Still A Form Of Writing. And So Most Of My Time Is Spent Thinking About How To Write A Sentence.

I Have Been Vain Since Birth. I Expected Other People To Like What I Did, Although My Vanity Has Definitely Diminished Over The Years.

I Know That I Am One And I've Made A Living As An Actor And I Enjoy Being An Actor, But When I'm Not Actually Doing It, I Forget That I Do It.

We Are Not What We Seem. We Are More Than What We Seem. The Actor Knows That. And Because The Actor Knows That Hidden Inside Himself There's A Wizard And A King, He Also Knows That When He's Playing Himself In His Daily Life, He's Playing A Part, He's Performing, Just As He's Performing When He Plays A Part On Stage.

I Was Clever Enough To Know That John Donne Was Offering Something That Was Awfully Enjoyable. I Just Wasn't Clever Enough To Actually Enjoy It.

'the Princess Bride' Is By Far The Most Popular Film I've Ever Done. I Don't Think I'll Ever Top It.

When I Was First Exposed To The Films Of Ingmar Bergman, I Found Them Frank And Disturbing Portraits Of The World We Live In, But That Was Not Something That Displeased Me. They Were Beautiful. I Thought People Would Respond To My Plays The Way I Responded To Bergman's Films.

From Being A Writer Of Plays, It Was Not That Surprising That Somebody Thought Of Giving Me A Job As An Actor. After I Played One Part, Others Came Along.

It Is Hard Enough To Make A Plan For How You Are Going To Spend An Evening With Somebody Else. So To Make A Plan For How You Are Going To Behave In 25 Years Seems Based On A View Of Life That Is Incomprehensible To Me.

Even With My Wife, I Find Sharing Soup Is Hard.

In My Early 20s, I Studied History And Politics, And I Really Thought That Perhaps I Would Devote My Life To That.

I'm Being Mocked Because I Don't Live Up To A Socially Determined View Of What Other People Think A Person Should Look Like.

In Terms Of Number Of Movies, I've Been In An Extraordinary Amount. If You Count Only The Minutes I'm Onscreen, It's Not So Long.

Who Says One Instance Of Writing Has Anything In Common With Another Instance?

I Started Writing Plays In Around 1967, And At A Certain Point, I Thought, 'i'm Writing Plays, I Should Learn About Acting And What It Is.' So I Went To The Hb Studio In New York, And I Was There For About Nine Months.

I Think The Whole System Of Education Would Change If I Were In Charge And Had The Ability To Make Changes. I Don't Think I Would Keep Princeton Exactly Being Princeton.

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