Quote

Going to the Far East was my first eye-opener to a world vastly different from my own. Then when I was 16 I lived in Paris for a year and studied mime. At 21 I went to Indonesia. I had planned to go for three months, but I stayed four years. I just got lost in the culture.

Julie Taymor

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Julie Taymor
Age: 72
Born: 1952
Born: December 15
Costume Designer
Director
Film Director
Film Producer
Opera Director
Scenographer
Screenwriter
Theatrical Director
Newton
Massachusetts
Firsts
Months
Indonesia
First
Went
Vastly
Different
Four
Planned
Going
Year
Stayed
Years
Eye
Studied
World
Culture
Paris
Lost
East
Opener
Three
Lived
Mime

More quotes by Julie Taymor

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What I don't have in theater is editing.
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When I'm working as a director, I might have an idea of my own but I'm also trying to get great ideas out of my actors. Directing is much more psychological - it's a lot like being a general. And you have to be organized. While you're making a film, you have between 2 and 500 people asking you a billion questions.
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Growing up I had amazing parents who really let me be creative and free. I was the youngest of three by six years, the child who was the outsider and observer. When I went off to Boston to act, I was very young - 10. And my parents didn't fear that. They had the respect to let me make my choices.
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I am, to be quite honest, sick of hero stories.
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Americans in particular are myopic. They're not traveling as much. When you were a college student, the next thing you would do on graduation was to take a year off and travel. That's what I did. I went to Indonesia.
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There is incredible power in the arts to inspire and influence.
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In America, the word art has become like the word adultery. It's this big scarlet letter. When you say you're an artist, people are like, Ugh.
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I lived in Indonesia for four years and I understand trance and magic and where it comes from.
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What I don't know for sure is what's next for me - and I don't mind that. I know for sure that whatever happens will be interesting and will challenge and excite me.
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In a way, artists are shamans, facilitators who take what's there, channel it through themselves, then put it out there for people to appreciate.
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A performance can have amazing visuals and special effects, but it has to tell a good story, even if that story isn't original.
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I'm not going to spend two years on a film or four years on an opera if I don't feel like I can put my own self into it. That doesn't mean it has to be about myself.
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We're really having a problem right now in our culture. I haven't seen one movie lately in which the story and visuals have been equally good.
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I've never been a puppeteer, I conceive and I write and I design and I direct. And not just puppets. I direct actors, I direct dancers, I direct singers, I direct films. I also direct puppeteers. I'm really a theatre maker, but there's not a word for that.
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What I adore is the juxtaposition of high tech and low tech. It's sort of like I love the sacred and the profane. I love to put these extremes in the same hopper.
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An artist is an entertainer, number one - a storyteller who takes people someplace, who gives them what they didn't know they wanted.
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Children have an easier ability to tap into the surreal than adults do, in a funny kind of way.
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Creativity is a gift, but if you don't know how to use it you might not even know it's there. There's a lot of creativity in the air, but it's meaningless if you're not open to receiving it.
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I've had male executives say that my lead character was unlikable because she slept with a lot of guys.
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When I'm sculpting, I work with wood and clay, and though some say that an image is already in the material and the sculptor just has to discover it, I also believe you have an image in your head that you're trying to get to. So you're in a dialogue with the piece, a back-and-forth.
Julie Taymor