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" I'm an enormous fan of 'The West Wing.' It was one of the very few shows I would watch every week. "
Mike Nichols
Fan
Few
West
Related Quotes:
" It's very weird about movies: you never know which ones are going to stay alive and which one are going to be meaningless. When you're there, you couldn't possibly predict it. Some things slowly die, and others slowly stay a while. "
Mike Nichols
Alive
Weird
You
" I asked a shrink: 'Everything is so great. Why am I still so angry?' He said, 'Anger doesn't go away.' I always thought it was kind of a good engine. "
Mike Nichols
Great
Good
Angry
" I came to love silence, because it's so rare, and it's now my favorite aural condition. "
Mike Nichols
Because
Silence
Rare
" There's nothing better than discovering, to your own astonishment, what you're meant to do. It's like falling in love. "
Mike Nichols
Falling In Love
Better
You
" When we talk about reviews, what we are really talking about is just a market report - it's like reading about the new Lexus. You have to know what the guy writing the review cares about to understand his take. Does he like sports cars, or does he like Bentleys? "
Mike Nichols
Know
You
Writing
" All the theories that acting is reacting to imaginary circumstances as though they are real, and directing is turning psychology into behavior, those are all stabs at something that can't be taught. All the great actors can't talk about what they do, and they don't want to begin to talk about it. They just do it. "
Mike Nichols
Behavior
Circumstances
Great
" Fear of comedy is all so much about who you do it with. "
Mike Nichols
Fear
Who
Much
" For a director, a musical is a special kind of hell. "
Mike Nichols
Director
Hell
Kind
" As a director, my job is, and always has been, divided into a number of things: dealing with the crew, the money and the studio, and the marketing and publicity. These are all different jobs that have to be learned and done as well as possible. The celebrity part rarely touches a director. "
Mike Nichols
Celebrity
Money
Job
" Limitations are inspiring: they lead to thinking, so I don't mind them. "
Mike Nichols
Limitations
Lead
Mind
" 'Streetcar' is no longer about the moment at all. There is no Blanche DuBois anywhere; south, north, east or west. We don't have Blanche DuBois at the moment. But we have Willy Loman; everywhere we look we see Willy Loman. We are Willy Loman. We're on Facebook; we need to be known; we're selling all the time. "
Mike Nichols
Need
Look
Moment
" The reason that most British actors are better than most American actors in the end is that they don't make any money. At the very end of their lives, they get into a space movie and they make a lot of money, but until that happens, basically, they don't have bank accounts. They live from day to day. "
Mike Nichols
Money
Space
End
" There's nothing in the American dream about character. It's a serious flaw. "
Mike Nichols
American
Character
American Dream
" I keep coming back to it, over and over - adultery and cheating. It's the most interesting problem in the theater. How else do you get Oedipus? That's the first cheating in the theater. "
Mike Nichols
Interesting
You
Cheating
" The greatest thrill is that moment when a thousand people are sitting in the dark, looking at the same scene, and they are all apprehending something that has not been spoken. That's the thrill of it, the miracle - that's what holds us to movies forever. It's what we wish we could do in real life. "
Mike Nichols
Looking
People
Moment
" Most great plays of the past lose their grip on immediacy; on application to our lives right now. "
Mike Nichols
Past
Now
Most
" Never let people see what you want, because they will not let you have it. Never let anybody see what you feel, because it gives them too much power. You're probably better off not showing weakness whenever you can avoid it, because they'll go for you. "
Mike Nichols
Power
Better
People
" Any good movie is filled with secrets. "
Mike Nichols
Good
Any
Secrets
" All movies are pure process. A commercial movie isn't less process than an art movie. You can't make your decisions about a film on the basis of, 'Is it important enough? Is it serious enough?' It's either alive or it's not for me. If it's alive, I want to do it. "
Mike Nichols
Process
Art
Decisions
" It's very, very corrupting to the spirit, doing comedy. And you have to be almost a saint, like Jack Benny was, like Steve Martin is, to avoid the corrupting of it, because there's very little work where the actual work and the reward are simultaneous, and comedy is that. "
Mike Nichols
Doing
Reward
Work
" The only safe thing is to take a chance. "
Mike Nichols
Chance
Take A Chance
Take
" I don't know that a political climate - as long as it's still a free country - makes much difference in the film world. "
Mike Nichols
Know
Free
Film
" That seems to me the great American danger we're all in, that we'll bargain away the experience of being alive for the appearance of it. "
Mike Nichols
American
Experience
Great
" As a little kid in a sometimes hard place, I went to the movies as often as I could. Movies - making them, seeing them - is not something that could ever lose its pleasure for me. That puts them on a short list of things that eternally give me joy - love, family, food, movies. "
Mike Nichols
Family
Love
Joy
" I had a high school girlfriend whose mother gave us theater tickets, so I saw the second night performance of 'A Streetcar Named Desire.' My girl and I could not get up during intermission, we were so stunned. To this day it's the only thing I've seen on stage that's 100 percent real and 100 percent poetic simultaneously. "
Mike Nichols
Night
Desire
School
" Improvisation has to do with exploring something like two brothers in a room together. You find out things about situations by discovering the things that they aren't saying. It's a way to explore scenes. Sometimes it's more useful than others, but it's always there to see if there's anything that you might improve. "
Mike Nichols
Together
Find
Saying
" I'm in the theater because of two plays: 'A Streetcar Named Desire' and 'Death of a Salesman.' "
Mike Nichols
Desire
Two
Salesman
" A great thing is happening on cable TV. You see characters change in stories over years, like in Tolstoy. That's a whole, thrilling new form that I really enjoy. They are Tolstoy-an in their endless character development and narrative changes... a show like 'Breaking Bad' is astonishing. "
Mike Nichols
Character
Changes
Change
" Everybody wants to be known. Everybody's a Kardashian. "
Mike Nichols
Wants
Known
Everybody
" The thing is, as a film director, you're essentially alone: You have to tell a story primarily through pictures, and only you know the film you see in your head. "
Mike Nichols
See
Story
Alone