Quote

One of the problems with putting Huck Finn into a movie or on the stage is, you always make the white people stupid and racist. The point is, they don't know they're racist.

Hal Holbrook

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Hal Holbrook
Age: 95 †
Born: 1925
Born: February 17
Died: 2021
Died: January 23
Actor
Character Actor
Film Actor
Screenwriter
Stage Actor
Television Actor
Cleveland
Ohio
Harold Rowe Holbrook Jr.
Racist
Problem
Make
Putting
Always
Problems
People
Stupid
Stage
Movie
Huck
Point
Finn
White

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Man is the religious animal. He is the only one that's got true religion, several of them.
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I never, ever update Mark Twain. I don't modernize it. I let the audience update the material. When I go out on stage, I'm trying to make the audience believe they're looking at this guy who died 104 years ago and listening to him and saying to themselves, Jesus, he could be talking about today. And that's the point.
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We don't have truth delivered to us very often, especially in this very commercialized world.
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I have a suicide impulse.
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I think I may drop dead on the stage someday. I hate to think of it. But it's getting tough on me, the travel. The show, I somehow manage to rise up to it, you know. But I have no desire to retire.
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To communicate with each other, we got to get mad at each other sometimes.
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Look, see, learn, become a citizen of Mankind, not just Hannibal, Missouri. That is the message of [Mark] Twain.
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Why do I keep performing at my age? What else am I going to do? Play golf? I tried that years ago and all I did was cuss. I can do that without the walk, cuss at Congress and let [Mark]Twain do it. Imagine that you were an idiot. And then imagine that you were a member of Congress. Wait - I've repeated myself.
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You can go into Mark Twain's material and prove anything you want. He was against war. He was for war. He was against rich people and he was for them. He was a kaleidoscope
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I developed a resistance to authority. Not to discipline - I learned that. But to authority. I like to think for myself. And I like to cause trouble.
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Please don't refer to me as channeling Mark Twain. I'm an actor. Not a channeler. That word is an iPhone shortcut. Acting is more eloquent than that.
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I walked the streets of New York for two years begging for a job, and I couldn't get one.
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I tended to lean toward character work. I love to disguise myself.
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[Mark] Twain was a publisher. He published General Grant's Memoirs (a big success) and had a hand in the publishing of many of his own books. He would, I think, be very keen about the question of how a book would sell.
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I've had a very full career in the theater, on stage, in films and on television.
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[Mark] Twain is pointing at you. You, the reader of the book one hundred and thirty years ago and today. That is what has made it a great American novel and the most widely read book in American Literature around the world today.
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