Quotes About Storytelling

That's the great thing about the 'Sin City' movies. Each little slot is incredibly meaningful, and each character has their own moment.

I think it's more interesting to throw people into a story and let them catch up instead of explaining and feeling like you have to slow down for them. I think audiences, for the most part, they don't want to be ahead of you.

There's different kinds of improv. There's Second City improv where you try to slowly build a nice sketch. There's stuff you do in college coffee houses where you just go joke, joke, joke. Bring another funny character with a funny hat on his head. Christopher Guest is more the line of trying to get a story out.

With our movies, you start off getting to know the characters in the way that you meet someone in real life, and then slowly, over time, you get little clues as to who they are. By the end there are still some mysteries, but hopefully you're starting to understand them more.

I think the original Matrix was really incredible. It was so original and it did so many innovative things with film. It was a much bigger film. Bound was just a smaller film. It was kind of like an old noir film.

With things like 'Dragon Ball,' in the case of fight scenes, I'd take the panel layout across two pages when the book is opened and alter it by angling them, and making them bigger or smaller, to give movement to the panels themselves.

I really loved making 'A Walk to Remember', so I'm not afraid of making smaller films. But for me, I just need to connect to the characters.

I'd be more interested in doing a smaller, character driven thing, rather than another action picture.

I think that because television is shot on a really fast schedule, and it gets piped into your home on a smaller screen, it's much more about character and dialogue in a lot of cases than the movies are.

For me, it's all about smaller character-driven pieces, about finding a person that I connect with and that I'm interested in bringing to life.

At one time, smaller, and story-heavy films were not appreciated much but exposure has made the audience aware of what great story-telling is. This has also ensured that the right actors are cast for the right kind of roles.

Action shouldn't just be seeing all those crashes. You can blow up a cathedral; next time you blow up the Great Wall of China, and then what? But when you're in love with your characters, the smallest action becomes an important action.

I'm not a writer. I'm not smart. I couldn't possibly even write my own story.

When I cook certain dishes, I smell my grandmother's kitchen, my grandmother's smells. I thought, 'What a wonderful way to tell a story.'

To hear someone talk about their life - you get to know the way their eyes moisten up, how big the smile is or how comfortable their body language is while talking to someone.

You try to bring a smile to people's faces, and try to tell people of the adventure you've been on, the success you've had and what it takes.

I like writers who seem to write because they have to. You get the feeling of this burning desire to tell a story. I find it in Peter Carey, Nicola Barker, Ali Smith and David Foster Wallace.

Kevin Smith is a very challenging conversationalist and Jay has many great stories.

I don't keep an ongoing dribble of updates of my day, but I tell little compartmentalized stories every day on Snapchat. I use it much more like making a movie than maintaining a diary. When people watch my 60-second clips, there's a beginning, middle, and end.

I try to sneak a bit of education into the entertainment. We don't preach to people, but we do try to give them very strong messages.

It's really important to me not to be a snob about age division or about genre or whatever. The story needs to be what the story needs to be.

That's what was so amazing about 'Mulan.' Here is this story with all Chinese characters, and yet so many people related to her character and loved the story. So I really think as long as you have a good story that relates to a lot of people, it doesn't matter what ethnicity it is.

In this day and age, when there are so many people creating work online and writing their own shows, I wouldn't tell another actor, 'If you can do anything else go do that.' I would tell them to figure out the story they want to tell, to figure out what artists inspire you and why, and then figure out a way you can create that for yourself.

That's what has been so much fun about the whole creative process. You can make your characters have adventures that you haven't had and might wish to have.