"When you write a script, it's like delivering a great big beautiful plain pizza, the one with only cheese and tomatoes. And then you give it to the director, and the director says, "I love this pizza. I am willing to commit to this pizza. But I really think this pizza should have mushrooms on it." And you say, "Mushrooms! Of course!" And then someone else comes along and says, "I love this pizza too, but it really needs green peppers." - "Great," you say. "Green peppers. Just the thing." And then someone else says, "Anchovies." There is always a fight over the anchovies. And when you get done, what you have is a pizza with everything. Sometimes it's wonderful. And sometimes you look at it and you think, I knew I shouldn't have put the green peppers onto it. Why didn't I say so at the time?"
Nora Ephron
Film director to composer of the soundtrack:“Would you please make the violins more bold”. Next day, producer to composer: “I like very much miscellaneous instruments, could you please replace the violins by a bandoneon?”
ReplyDeleteConsider what happens with the melody, at first produced by a pack of bows, afterwards by one lonely on/off-sound source.
Torquato Tasso had his "Jerusalem Delivered" ready and read it for months to the family d'Este at Ferrara. Everything was perfect, but than his perfectionism pushed Tasso to send the work to various personalities in order to know their impressions... This became a big problem for Tasso.
ReplyDeleteOne has to trust one's perceptions, transpose optionally initial suggestions, but then one's own surprise has to become surprising as a whole.
Otherwise one gets paralyzed like a millipede whom you ask "Which leg do you move first when you are walking?"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Torquato_Tasso