There tends to be this hierarchy of film and television, and theater is somewhere else in its own milieu. However, as actors, yes, we love to do theater because it's our story. Nobody can edit it, the curtain goes up, and it's ours for two hours or three, or whatever. And we tell it.
History tells us that America does best when the private sector is energetic and entrepreneurial and the government is attentive and engaged. Who among us, really, would, looking back, wish to edit out either sphere at the entire expense of the other?
Write drunk; edit sober.
Possibly the most important thing you do is actually edit the team.
You can't edit a blank page
Separate out the creative act from the act of editing and execution. Make it a two-step process. First, let ideas flow and encourage EVERY idea to make it to the whiteboard. Don't criticize, judge, edit, budget, or worry. An idea on the wall can't hurt anyone, so let them rip without restriction. After any and all ideas have the opportunity to "come out to play", only then should you apply your analytical and logical side to the effort. Don't mix the creative process with the editing process or you'll kill your ideas before they even get a fighting chance.
[Bill Shawn] didn't edit the writers very strongly, but he knew what he wanted.
I write to find what I have to say. I edit to figure out how to say it right.
I'm too diplomatic. I tend to edit my mind before I speak - it can be incredibly draining.
I can write for weeks or months sometimes and edit it down to a song. I feel like it's a piece of music that will hopefully stand the test of time and hopefully capture a moment in history if I'm doing it correctly and honestly.
We'd record a song that people liked and wanted to hear on the radio, and the radio wouldn't play it because it was too long. Or they wanted to edit it, which we wouldn't allow.
I think a lot of people try to edit themselves out and I think that's a big mistake, because the person being interviewed is responding to a person, and if you don't know who that person is then you don't really know what's going on with the person being interviewed.
Without poets, without artists. . . everything would fall apart into chaos. There would be no more seasons, no more civilizations, no more thought, no more humanity, no more life even; and impotent darkness would reign forever. Poets and artists together determine the features of their age, and the future meekly conforms to their edit.
I was going to be credited as Wray Nerely, my role in Con Man. It got cut in the reshoots. I was like, "Wait a second. I'm cut. " It's a better telling of the story, but unfortunately, Wray Nerely gets cut, which is actually exactly right because if Wray Nerely was ever in Star Wars, he wouldn't make it to the final edit.
We've done things that are faster at times, but it's definitely different when we direct all the episodes because it's like we have to write them all, then shoot them all, then edit them all. So we have to just get ahead on those scripts basically.
