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Mittwoch, 14. September 2016

Happy 80th Birthday Walter Koenig!

Freedom prospers when religion is vibrant and the rule of law under God is acknowledged.

Ich suche immer ein einfaches Skript, um eine interessante Rolle zu spielen.  


Religious tolerance is something we should all practice; however, there have been more persecution and atrocities committed in the name of religion and religious freedom than anything else.


Religiöse Toleranz ist etwas, was wir alle üben sollten; jedoch hat es mehr Verfolgung und Gräueltaten gegeben, die im Namen der Religion und religiösen Freiheit begangen wurden, als irgend etwas anderes.


For to be free is not merely to cast off one's chains, but to live in a way that respects and enhances the freedom of others. 


I didn't watch Raumschiff Enterprise the first year it was on, before I was on the show. I took one look at the Styrofoam rocks and said: "There's no way I'm going to watch this!


If you want total security, go to prison. There you're fed, clothed, given medical care and so on. The only thing lacking... is freedom. 


Well, an actor is an actor is actor, to paraphrase someone or other and the opportunity to work, to have a steady engagement, certainly seemed like an appealing concept to me.


I am free because I know that I alone am morally responsible for everything I do. I am free, no matter what rules surround me. If I find them tolerable, I tolerate them if I find them too obnoxious, I break them. I am free because I know that I alone am morally responsible for everything I do. 


Enterprise has given me a considerable amount of satisfaction and a certain amount of respect in the industry community and among people who watch TV and movies. I enjoy that. I enjoy feeling good about myself. God knows it's easy enough for me to feel bad about myself -- I need all the support I can get. Star Trek deserves the respect it has received. If I'm going to be aligned with something, it might as well be something that makes a worthwhile statement most of the time. No, I don't have any regrets about my involvement with Star Trek.


Freedom is not worth having if it does not connote freedom to err. 


I'm always looking for a low-budget script with an interesting character to play.


Movies can be effective in influencing people to think in ways they might not otherwise be exposed to. Social commentary in films is most effective when you're not aware of a soapbox. Making the point without force-feeding the audience is the most desirable approach.


I was only one of two people who auditioned for the part, which is quite extraordinary. Considering that this has so materially effected the last 35 years of my life... a couple of hours after I auditioned, I heard that I had gotten the role.


Twittering:
Fed Con: The most enthusiastic , energetic and supportive Star Trek fans anywhere. Just blew my mind away

The Sitges International Film Festival in Spain  - "the worlds's foremost science fiction and fantasy film festival "...

I think this is going to be extraordinary.

Once again ST Creation Con Las Vegas was absolutely amazing!

Payson Ave.? Lee, I'd ask if we ever knew each other but with at least 25 years between our ages I'd have to believe that we do not.

I think we have an excellent picture but we need money for post production.  Renegades II : Requiem ...

the saga of Pavel Chekov. I've heard the story and it's very exciting. Undoubtedly, the  best about his life I've ever heard.

Was misinformed on the name of the award. It's called "The Time Machine" award.

The Republican Benghazi Committee is a sham. It's time to shut it down. 

I don't know Leslie Jones. I wish I did. I bet she'd be great fun to hang out with.

I grew up during W.W. II thinking Germans were born that way and gay people were not. 
Knowledge is a wonderful thing.

will bestow their Maria Honorary Award for career achievement to Walter Koenig in October of 2016.  Past  award winners include Anthony...

That is incredible! More than incredible!!l

Correction: the footage Ill be shooting for "Captain Pike" is not a trailer but about 25 minutes
from the story itself.
Was fitted for a uniform  today. Actually fits rather well. Things are shaping up with that project!
If you're coming to the Rose City Con in Portland this weekend look for footage from a new film "Neil Stryker Tyrant of Time". Funny stuff!
Had  lunch with "Nobility" producer today. His fully edited film will premier at Comikazie Con in L.A. over Halloween weekend. I'll be there
But enough about me.

You can't obligate friends to help. They do it out of friendship or not. Someone with millions of followers said he'd get the word out....
and did not. So we're starting  over at Indiegogo and looking to raise $50,000 to shoot the first third of the film. We're determined

We know the project is that good. I'm talking about "Star Trek: Captain Pike". The link is  http://tinyurl.com/p94xfnz    Please check us out.

I misspoke regarding Captain Pike. It's definitely not a pod cast. It's a 45 minute film regarding the adventures of Capt. Pike.
My contribution is an actor and as one of the writers and producers. My vision is to make it as edgy as "Mad Men" and "Game of Thrones".
Unexpected behavior from the characters and unexpected plot twists are things that Todd Tei, Walter Dody and I are looking to bring to it.
Please go to Kick Start "Star Trek: Captain Pike" for information on the actors already on board. I'm excited. Hope you will be too.

I know someone who knows someone who catches feral cats for a living. There's got to be a screenplay in there somewhere. Any ideas?

At the airport. A 15 year old with eyes wide, trembling lips and chin spittle  cries out "IT'S WALTER KLINGON" . Hand to God.

"Boy, do you look old!", says the disco guy curling his lip. I was 39 then. I must be 10 years dead now and writing this from my grave.

Wow! I'm genuinely overwhelmed. Thanks George and Nichelle. The response is amazing! Hope I'll have some interesting things to report.

I promise I won't chat about what time I stepped off the curb or my dripping faucet.

I skipped over water, I  danced over sea
And all the birds in water couldn't catch me
...I mean, really, what more could you ask for?

The king of Spain's daughter came to visit me,
And all for the sake of my little nut tree.

I had a little nut tree, nothing would it bare
But a silver nutmeg and a golden pear;

My shrink tells me the reason we're all here is to "actualize" our potential. 
I can buy that.

How about "top of the heap stoked"? There are more than seven thousand people under you.

Got a 7 minute film on You Tube  under:   Walter Koenig Handball

I've just  come back from a dinner for wounded soldiers. The obscenity of war was never more evident.

I've written a graphic novel  handled by a publisher with limited resources. I need  help to spread the word.


I'm very new at this. I'd love to say something witty every day and announce something you've never heard before every several hours.

Freitag, 9. September 2016

Happy Birthday Jeffrey Combs!

I went to a lot of theatre schools, got a lot of training, did a lot of repertory where you do a different play every night. I took a lot of voice, movement, and acting classes.

Writing has never been a driving force within me.

"Bride of Re-Animator" was cobbled together. I don't really have all the details, but I think there were some issues with the script they were going to shoot. Someone claimed they had propriety over some of the ideas. So at the last minute, the script that was going to be shot was jettisoned, and the one we shot was thrown together. I feel there were some great moments in that movie. Especially, the sort of idea of building a human being out of parts: I really love that whole classic horror idea. But I think the tone got lost a little. Sometimes movies are on a track to get made and you don't have time to pull over and do a polish, because the deal is the deal and we've got a start date, and the money goes away if we don't. It suffered from all of that.

I gravitated to acting out of a mixture of instinct, naivete and opportunity.

Brian Yuzna, who produced Re-Animator, was directing this trilogy of horror stories, and the glue that bound them together was this interweaving story of Lovecraft coming to an exotic, mystical library. He wanted me to play Lovecraft. I kind of resisted. I said, "I don't look like Lovecraft." But John Vulich is a great special-effects makeup artist. He really got me looking like him as much as he possibly could with a chin and a nose. I always felt weird portraying Lovecraft in that movie, because Brian, for the project, really wanted Lovecraft to be an Indiana Jones character, and that's not a particularly accurate portrayal of Lovecraft, if you've read any of his biographies. You do what you can with what you've got.

I always try to make my characters people, and yet I always want to entertain.

"From Beyond" was a very difficult movie. I'm kind of schizo about it. It involved a lot of makeup. I counted it up once, it was 30 days in that hideous, bald-headed, dog-dick-out-of-my-forehead thing. I hated it. It was so uncomfortable. And yet on the flip side of that, it was shot out of Rome, Italy, and I got to spend a glorious eight weeks in one of the world's greatest capitals. It was good. I feel like Charles Dickens: It was the best of times, and it was the worst of times. But I also felt like the role in From Beyond was so polar-opposite to what I had done in Re-Animator, where I played a strong, driving personality that pushed the action forward. Here, I was really-for all intents and purposes-being a victim. Someone standing there going, "No!" So I felt like some of the tools in my kit were being taken away from me. That was a bit frustrating, too.

I think there's something in the human psyche that we're titillated by the person who flies too close to the candle and their wings get singed.

God, I had no idea what was to come. All I knew was, I was doing a play in Hollywood, and a casting director came to see it. I did not invite him. As I recall, he said, "I'm casting something you might be right for." I went in and met Stuart Gordon, did my read, got a callback where I was paired up with the great David Gale. We did a scene. I guess we both got cast. Very low budget, shot in 18 days. Who knew? I am not rich from the movie. Somebody got rich.

It's who you know and who can help you.

One of the greatest experiences of my career. Peter Jackson is a genius. He makes it look easy and effortless. A visionary. Very collaborative and sharing. No real ego. I remember my [character's] chest is a bunch of scars, and they came to me with their drawings and [Jackson] said, "What do you think?" Which is unheard of in film. It was one of the highlights of my life to work with him.

I also sort of find the idea that not only do actors want to please when they're onstage, I find actors really want to please off stage a lot of the time, don't they?

You get known for something, and then they pigeonhole you. They don't want to view you as being particularly versatile. They just want you to do that thing you did before. It perpetuates itself. You can certainly say no, but then you're not working. So a long time ago, I just told myself I'd just turn everything, even if it's all stuck in a particular genre, I'd try to expand people's perception of me by what I did within the framework I've got going.

Feelings are universal, and if an actor's doing his job, I think he's making people sit there, and if it's in a movie or a theatre, going 'Hmm, yeah, I know that... I know that.'

It's just stories around the campfire.

Freitag, 2. September 2016

Happy Birthday Keanu Reeves!

I am waiting for the right story to tell. Just like 'Man of Tai Chi' just seemed to be the right story to tell. So I'm looking for that. Because I really love directing. I love developing the story. I love actors. I love the cinema of it, the way that you tell a story visually.

I'm not a photographer, so I didn't get into F-stops or ND filters or background, foreground, cross-light, all that stuff. But I was interested in the camera and the lenses. That's the world that I'm moving in, in terms of acting and giving a performance.

I mean, if you didn't get it or if you didn't feel like you enjoyed it, sometimes that experience can change.

I used to have nightmares that they would put 'He played Ted' on my tombstone.

Energy can't be created or destroyed, and energy flows. It must be in a direction, with some kind of internal, emotive, spiritual direction. It must have some effect somewhere.

I've been pleased to work with so many wonderful stars through the years. This has been an amazing journey. I hope it continues. 

People were saying that David Geffen and I had gotten married and it just blew me away. Not that they thought I was gay, but that they thought I could land a guy that hot.

It's fun to be hopelessly in love. It's dangerous, but it's fun.

The whole aspect of cinema and film festivals should be a moment to come together and celebrate art and humanity. It would be a shame if there was such a divide.

I'm sorry my existence is not very noble or sublime.

I think the form, the Hollywood movie, I think the quality is obviously always going to be there and I think that the question of taste, there's always a question of taste.

Eventually, it came to this place like, 'I'd like to direct, but I need to find the story to tell.' 'Man of Tai Chi' became the story to tell.

I'm a meathead, man. You've got smart people, and you've got dumb people. I just happen to be dumb.

The simple act of paying attention can take you a long way. 

I'm a meathead. I can't help it, man. You've got smart people and you've got dumb people.

Sure I believe in God and the Devil, but they don't have to have pitchforks and a long white beard.

I mean, I went to a Catholic boys' school for a year, but that was to play hockey. Religion class was quite contentious for me.

Because we're actors we can pretend and fake it, but I'd rather the intimate investment was authentic.

My name can't be that tough to pronounce!

Grief changes shape, but it never ends.

Mortality is very different when you're 20 to when you're 50.

But, you know, it's still a drag to get your picture taken when you're eating a sandwich. It's a downer.

Artists are losing the choice to use film. People have a love for it - the grain, how it feels, the texture.

Kissing someone is pretty intimate, actually very intimate, and your heart always kind of skips a beat before you do that.

How do I confront aging? With a wonder and a terror. Yeah, I'll say that. Wonder and terror.

I do think there must be some kind of interaction between your living life and the life that goes on from here.

I have a producing partner named Stephen Hamel, and we've been trying to generate material.

When the people you love are gone, you're alone.

I want to make a good, solid kung fu movie.

Letters are something from you. It's a different kind of intention than writing an e-mail.

I was always interested - I mean, it's kind of part of your job - I was always interested in the camera.

It's the journey of self, I guess. You start with this kind of loner, outside guy, which a lot of people can relate to, and he goes out into the world.

And of course to work with Jack Nicholson and Diane Keaton, and work with a wonderful, beautiful script directed by Nancy Meyers, it was really for me a dream come true.

I am not handsome or sexy. Of course, it's not like I am hopeless.

Basically it starts with four months of training, just basic stretching, kicking and punching. Then you come to the choreography and getting ready to put the dance together.

Money doesn't mean anything to me. I've made a lot of money, but I want to enjoy life and not stress myself building my bank account. I give lots away and live simply, mostly out of a suitcase in hotels. We all know that good health is much more important.

But I did 'Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure.' They made a cereal out of it, so once you've had a cereal, it doesn't get much more surreal than that. Surreal cereal.

I'm Mickey Mouse. They don't know who's inside the suit.

I don't know the law, the kind of law of quantity and quality, but I think the opportunity of people being able to express themselves and to have the means of production is a great thing. It's also changing how we're telling stories.

When I don't feel free and can't do what I want I just react. I go against it.

I had the classic 40 meltdown. I did. It's embarrassing. It was pretty funny. But then I recovered. To me, it was like a second adolescence. Hormonally, my body was changing, my mind was changing, and so my relationship to myself and the world around me came to this assault of finiteness.

How do people relate to movies now, when they're on portable devices or streaming them? It's not as much about going to the movies. That experience has changed.

I have definitely been curious and involved in the process; even as a young actor. I was always looking at where the camera was, what story it was telling. And as my experience grew, I wanted to know even more.

On a good night, I get underwear, bras, and hotel-room keys thrown onstage... You start to think that you're Tom Jones.

I loved the material when I first read it, and the experience of making the film was a great one. So when we came around to complete the trilogy, I just signed on board without even reading the scripts because the experience of the first film was so good.

You want to play another kind of character in another genre, and it's been something I've been trying to do if I can in the career so far, and it's something I hope to continue because it's interesting to me and you get to do different things as an actor.

I think - I don't know, maybe it's nostalgia. But the choice, losing the choice to be able to use film is going to be - it's gone. It's going to be gone.

Here comes 40. I'm feeling my age and I've ordered the Ferrari. I'm going to get the whole mid-life crisis package.

It's easy to become very self-critical when you're an actor. Then you get critiqued by the critics. Whether you agree with them or not, people are passing judgment on you.

I try not to think about my life. I have no life. I need therapy.

Sometimes when you make a film you can go away for three months and then come back and live your life. But this struck a much deeper chord. I don't have the ability yet to speak about it in an objective.

It's always wonderful to get to know women, with the mystery and the joy and the depth. If you can make a woman laugh, you're seeing the most beautiful thing on God's Earth.

'Speed' and 'Point Break' were a lot of running and jumping, and then 'The Matrix Trilogy' had a lot of fights and wire work and green screen elements.

I've had the opportunity to work with so many great directors. Different styles, as well, like Gus Van Sant. He just does the casting and the milieu and let's you do your thing, quietly. Bertolucci, who can talk to you about your internal world in quite a creative way or just say, 'Well, put your hand over here.'

The truth is often terrifying, which I think is one of the motifs of Larry and Andrew's cinema. The cost of knowledge is an important theme. In the second and third films, they explore the consequences of Neo's choice to know the truth. It's a beautiful, beautiful story.

I believe in love at first sight. You want that connection, and then you want some problems.

Oftentimes, when we think of 3D, we think of things coming out of the screen, but actually, you've got this zero, this negative space, what they call the negative space, which is the scene, what's being filmed in the positive space of the audience. As you can have things come out, you can have all of this depth.

But I think we're also just talking about the literacy of the audience. The visual literacy of the audience. They've seen so many images now, especially here in the States. There's so much to look at, to watch. So the visual storytelling literacy is harder to impress.

I just felt that if I went into Speed 2, I just... wouldn't have come up out of the water.

Falling in love and having a relationship are two different things. 

You know what, I'd done an interview show when I was like 16 or 17. One of my first jobs. I did interviews for this television show in Toronto.

I've been really fortunate to be able to do different kinds of films in different scales, different genres, different kinds of roles, and that is important to me.

When we talk about how movies used to be made, it was over 100 years of film, literal, physical film, with emulsion, that we would expose to light and we would get pictures.