And I thought if I don't pre-interview - first of all, we couldn't afford it - but the second thing was it would force me to do my own research, which takes two weeks.
And I thought, my God, there's an off chance that they will say something that's really worth preserving and there is one way to do that and I knew what it was because I come from television.
Because - Bobby Lewis said this once to us in class, the better you get, the less credit you'll get. Because the better you are, the more it looks like walking and talking and everybody thinks they can walk and talk.
Comedians don't laugh. They're too busy analyzing why it's funny or not.
Geniuses always think it's easier than we make it out to be.
Hackman is able to live in the moment which means there is nothing for him at that split second than what is occurring in the scene.
I am going somewhere with them. And in order to get there, I need a kind of road map.
I criticize those critics. The reason being that they're doing one of the worst things that ever can be done to an actor, which is to say, Look, you do what we like you to do or else.
I did get Tom Hanks to say, Life is just a box of chocolates.
I had something called the back of the chair test. Where I sit, we don't sit like you and I do. I can see a sliver right behind them and they come out and they sit like this like god students and they don't touch the back of the chair.
I think that anybody's craft is fascinating. A taxi driver talking about taxi driving is going to be very, very interesting.
I thought we would have at most an audience of 5,000 devotees because I made the decision to stick to craft, not to gossip, not to be interested in any of the juicy stuff that they talk about on other shows, but stick to the question of craft.
I threw Spielberg out at 12:15 in the morning. Spielberg and the students. Coppola, out at 12:15. Billy Joel out at 12:15 in the morning.
I wanted when we began this to have a conversation, the kind that you're able to have, and the only way I knew how to do it was not to have a pre-interview.
I was dealing with craft, and that's the surprising thing, the number of people who have literally broken down on our stage, because when you're talking about the thing that is most important to someone, they're liable to feel something strong.
I was originally going to be a lawyer, and the only thing I remember from the art of cross-examination is - you can see this one coming up Sixth Avenue - never ask a question the answer to which you do not know.
I'll tell you why, I don't invite the ones I don't like.
If I were to ask you for example right now to go back with me and define those moments in your life that shaped you as a person and you began to reexamine them, something would happen.
It can be summed up in one sentence. Does this person have something to teach my students? No one has ever let us down.
Not just project, but on stage, you have to begin at the beginning and end at the end, and you're out there, you can't stop for anything.
Olivier was another case of a genius, who couldn't understand why anybody would have any trouble doing this, because for him it came so easily.
The definition of genius, really, should be that that person can do what the rest of us have to learn how to do.
The difference - the fundamental difference between theater acting and film acting is that film acting is disjunctive.
The first people who responded were Arthur Penn and Sally Field and Dennis Hopper and Alec Baldwin and Paul Newman.
The foundation for film acting is stage acting.
The studio is meant to be always a place where, first of all, they can be out of spotlight, and second, where they could work with a peer group on parts that they might not have played otherwise.
They change. They're different. There are no two alike, that's the miracle of it. But if they have something to teach the students. You can see them writing during the show.
They will take a role that scares them over a role that doesn't. That's another thing I like about actors.
Usually they're there for about - it's about two hours with me on stage, because we're covering the whole career.
We are the only school in America, drama school in America that trains actors, writers and directors side by side for three years in a master's degree program, and we want them - to expose them to everything.
We teach them ballroom dancing, because for so much of their careers they will be partnering each other the way you and I are right now.
What I didn't know that by sticking to craft we would blow open some doors that I never saw opened before.
When it began I wrote this passionate letter to people I knew, studio members, of course, and other people with whom we have worked over the years and I said come and teach our students.
Mr. Lipton is a licensed pilot.
In 2005, James Lipton was nominated for the Non-Fiction Producer of the Year Award by the Producers Guild of Amercia.
On one St. Patrick's Day James "shotgunned" a can of beer in celebration of Spring Break.
James can speak French and Latin.
James married Kedakai Turner in 1970 who is a former model and now a Vice-President of the Corcoran Real Estate Group, who has created illustrations for some of his books. They are still married today. They have had no children together.
James has a strong disliking to the "N-Word" and has said he finds it to be the ugliest word in the English language.
When asked who he'd most like to interview, living or dead, James replied Judy Garland. Lipton had the opportunity to have Garland's daughter, Liza Minnelli as a guest.
You can share a link to this page with your friend!