Gem of the Ocean, |
I don't have a musical background. But I do enjoy all kinds of music. It's an expression of the human spirit that illuminates our humanity. |
I feel free, man, |
I feel sort of embarrassed I don't go to plays, but I can't keep the characters straight. I feel I should be somewhere else. |
I first got involved in theater in 1968, at the height of a social tumult. I was a poet. |
I found out life's hard but it ain't impossible. |
I have a robust imagination and I have imagined for myself many things, |
I have to confess that I'm not a big movie person. I don't go to a lot of films. And I don't know very much about the history of stage-to-film adaptations. |
I know some things when I start. I know, let's say, that the play is going to be a 1970s or a 1930s play, and it's going to be about a piano, but that's it. I slowly discover who the characters are as I go along. |
I might be a different kind of fool, but I ain't gonna be the same fool twice. |
I need a woman that fits in my hand. |
I should take a page from my lawyer-every time I call, he's on vacation, four or five times a year. |
I still don't know what works until it works, until I see it working. It wasn't through seeing other playwrights or reading other plays, because I haven't done much of either of those. Again, you have an intuitive sense that this is dramatic or a nice shape to a scene; you intuitively know how to tell a good story... where the highlights are, what information to withhold, and how to reveal things. |
I think it is an extraordinary honor, and it is truly a capstone of my career. I am overwhelmed. |
I think that if I'm at home sitting doing the rewrite, I'm going to write something different than if I'm there in the rehearsal room doing it. It's kind of hard to explain, but if you're tossed into the fire at any particular moment, then you are going to write something different than you will in another particular moment. And that is from day to day. |