A third variety of drama ... begins as tragedy with scraps of fun in it ... and ends in comedy without mirth in it, the place of mirth being taken by a more or less bitter and critical irony.
I'm just looking to make good movies and looking to be as good as I can be in them and that's about it. But I feel much more comfortable doing a comedy, but the fact that I got to try a few dramas, I feel I've tested myself a little bit.
Whence had they come The hand and lash that beat down frigid Rome? What sacred drama through her body heaved When world-transforming Charlemagne was conceived?
Ruin, weariness, death, perpetually death, stand grimly to confront the other presence of Elizabethan drama which is life: life compact of frigates, fir trees and ivory, of dolphins and the juice of July flowers, of the milk of unicorns and panthers’ breath, of ropes of pearl, brains of peacocks and Cretan wine.
Drama, instead of telling us the whole of a man's life, must place him in such a situation, tie such a knot, that when it is untied, the whole man is visible.
When I say that I can write nothing but weird fiction, I am not trying to exalt that medium but am merely confessing my own weakness. The reason I can't write other kinds is not that I don't value & respect them, but merely that my slender set of endowments does not enable me to extract a compellingly acute personal sense of interest & drama from the natural phenomena of life.
I actually find in America, there's a slight snobbery about actors who go back and forth between big heavy dramas and popcorn fare. That always intrigues me, because that doesn't exist in the same way in Britain. And I imagine it would be worse. In terms of the sort of class, and the sort of snobby, slightly on the back-foot thing Britain has. But it's much more prevalent in America. I'm really intrigued by it. I don't know why that is. But I'm aiming to break down those barriers by being in a Shakespeare film and a Smurfs film within six months of each other.
An interesting play cannot in the nature of things mean anything but a play in which problems of conduct and character of personalimportance to the audience are raised and suggestively discussed.
I'm not a plumber who accidentally blew up or a math professor who accidentally backed into notoriety. I have a master's from Yale drama, and I auditioned for this. So obviously I want to be in the limelight in some capacity, or I want to be in entertainment in some capacity.
I feel like a lot of my past career was going to film school, making a lot of different kinds of movies. I made a bunch of comedies, I made one drama and I made a couple musicals.
The popular definition of tragedy is heavy drama in which everyone is killed in the last act, comedy being light drama in which everyone is married in the last act.