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Two-thirds of American movies are extensions of commercials -- they tell you how to feel and they tell you how to think -- rather than letting you figure it out on your own.
Alan Arkin
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Alan Arkin
Age: 90
Born: 1934
Born: March 26
Actor
Character Actor
Film Actor
Film Director
Film Producer
Musician
Science Fiction Writer
Screenwriter
Singer
New York City
New York
Alan Wolf Arkin
American
Rather
Commercials
Tell
Extensions
Two
Letting
Feel
Thirds
Feels
Figure
Think
Figures
Thinking
Movies
More quotes by Alan Arkin
My favorite kind of film is serious comedy. Comedy with serious underpinning.
Alan Arkin
A product is most easily sold when it has an identity. So they wrap you all up and put a label on you. And then that's what you have to be. But what I'm looking for is the opportunity to explore what I can do, probing the limits, learning.
Alan Arkin
If I'm doing a fake movie, it's gonna be a fake hit.
Alan Arkin
No matter how much time you spend reading books or following your intuition, you're gonna screw it up. Fifty times. You can't do parenting right.
Alan Arkin
That's what we're all doing, all the time, whether we know it or not. Whether we like it or not. Creating something on the spur of the moment with the materials at hand. We might just as well let the rest of it go, join the party, and dance our hearts out.
Alan Arkin
Is it possible to have an endless series of successes without falling on our faces? I suppose it is, but I think it would entail doing the same things over and over again without taking chances, without taking risks or exploring our limits, without finding out what we can and can't do.
Alan Arkin
I'm an actor. My life as an actor depends on who sends me what. I'm just taking the best stuff that I can find that's sent my way, regardless of how big or little the paycheck is. I don't want to work for scale anymore. I'm at a point now where, no matter how good something is, I'm not going to kill myself and end up in the hole.
Alan Arkin
For many years my acting came from a place of surmounting some enormous obstacle, confronting some stern and faceless judge who would condemn me to a pit of hell if I didn't achieve the zone, if even for a moment. Not a particularly happy place to work from.
Alan Arkin
Things are never going to turn out how you think they will.
Alan Arkin
Hollywood is a strange place. The class structure here is more rigid than almost anyplace I've ever experienced. It's made more difficult by the fact that it's constantly changing. You never know what class you belong to unless you're one of the two or three people that have been in the same echelon for a long, long time.
Alan Arkin
No matter what you do or where you are, you're going to be missing out on something.
Alan Arkin
Marriage requires searing honesty at all costs. I learned that from my third wife.
Alan Arkin
I don't believe in competitions between artists. This is insane. Who has the authority to say someone is better?
Alan Arkin
There's a familiarity that sometimes shocks and annoys the hell out of me. People want a relationship with you that they haven't earned.
Alan Arkin
I gotta keep busy. I'm not happy unless I'm working on two, three things.
Alan Arkin
Creativity means learning where the rules exist, and then breaking them! Saying, It's better this way. But you have to know the rules in order to break them with any grace.
Alan Arkin
I know that if I can't move people, then I have no business being an actor.
Alan Arkin
I don't think it does the audience any good to know what I do to prepare. It keeps it more of a surprise. I don't feel like it has to be a mystery.
Alan Arkin
What I've learned about teaching is to refer back to the root of that word, which is educo, which means to pull from. Education does not mean jamming information into somebody's head. Rather, it's that ancient idea that all knowledge is within us to teach is to help somebody pull it out of themselves.
Alan Arkin
I don't believe there's anything in life you can't go back and fix. The ancient Vedas - the oldest Hindu philosophy - and modern science agree that time is an illusion. If that's true, there's no such thing as a past or a future - it's all one huge now. So what you fix now affects the past and the future.
Alan Arkin
