Richard Clayman

Novelist,"Town of Beaver Tales" Series, “The Actors' Toolbox - A Practical Guide to Success in Auditions & Performances," on Amazon/Kindle, Filmmaker. No DMs.

[Richard Clayman @RichardCla64861]

@Gitmo99 Check out Norman Bates’ guard at the end of “Psycho.” Ted, with no lines.

[Richard Clayman @RichardCla64861]

@60sPsychJukebox Poor thing, what a voice. She’s buried in the same small graveyard as my dad. Others there include Marilyn Monroe, Dean Martin, and Armand Hammer.

[Richard Clayman @RichardCla64861]

Today's Actor's Inspiration!

“Every person who is really an artist desires to create inside of himself another, deeper, more interesting life than the one that actually surrounds him.”

- Konstantin Stanislavski, “An Actor Prepares”

[Richard Clayman @RichardCla64861]

Today's Director's Inspiration!

“When you’re not really touching something within the actor, you’re not conveying the feeling that ‘This is life.’”

– Elia Kazan, “Kazan: The Master Director Discusses His Films”

[Richard Clayman @RichardCla64861]

Today's Inspiration!

“A stander-by is often a better judge of the game than those that play.”

– Samuel Richardson, “Clarissa”

[Richard Clayman @RichardCla64861]

@softhesoul136 Hitchhiking through Germany that summer at 16, playing everywhere. Always an instant time travel.

[Richard Clayman @RichardCla64861]

@LADodgersMuse Indeed he has. That’s how you focus and answer the critics, Dalton.

[Richard Clayman @RichardCla64861]

@geoffschwartz Great job, Geoff.

[Richard Clayman @RichardCla64861]

Today's Director's Inspiration!

“I think a close-up is such a valuable thing – like playing a trump in a bridge game.” (on why he uses close-ups so sparingly).

- Billy Wilder

[Richard Clayman @RichardCla64861]

Today's Actor's Inspiration!

“The anxiety I’d felt just minutes earlier was suddenly something I knew to be universal. I was not unique. I was not alone in my self-centered obsession. Everyone experienced anxiety and emptiness. Iago felt it. That was why he acted as he did. Human behavior was beyond good and evil. Nothing was black-and-white. And so I would play one of the cruelest figures in Shakespeare with no trace of bad intent.”

– Anthony Hopkins, “We Did OK, Kid”

[Richard Clayman @RichardCla64861]

@Gitmo99 @baker_girlie Jean, a delightful woman to work with, had the same voice long before AITF. Check out “Damn Yankees!”

[Richard Clayman @RichardCla64861]

@Texas_jeep__guy @baker_girlie Pretty much any NBA player.

[Richard Clayman @RichardCla64861]

Yesterday's Director's Inspiration!

“Well, what was George Stevens thinking about, walking alone and smoking his pipe for an hour? As a fellow director I think I know. He was mentally reviewing his whole picture – scene by scene – from the beginning to end; analyzing the characters, their growth, their degradation, their effect on each other. Did the preceding scene (shot or unshot) logically build to the one at hand? And would the present scene lead logically to the ones that followed? Was the scene he was shooting necessary? Why? Which character (or characters) should it most affect? Did it ring true? Did he believe it? If not, why? Should he pitch the girl’s emotions higher? Could the leading man’s reaction be more effective if played silently, or should he make more of his spoken lines? All gut decisions the director must make for himself.”

– Frank Capra, “Frank Capra: The Name Above the Title”

[Richard Clayman @RichardCla64861]

Yesterday's Actor's Inspiration!

“Actually, while we talk we look intermittently at the person to whom we’re talking in order to see how they react to what we’re saying, to see if we have their attention, to see if they get the point, etc. What we see in them at these moments conditions how we continue our tale. In between these moments of eye contact, we contact the inner objects we are dealing with, and our outer, secondary focus is on something inconsequential in the place. Listening and looking are certainly not mechanical processes, but are linked to the center of our psychological and physical being. Simulated looking and listening must produce bad acting.”

– Uta Hagen, “Respect for Acting”

[Richard Clayman @RichardCla64861]

Today's Inspiration!

“The only place I ever found in my life to put a paper so as to find it again was either a side coat-pocket or the hands of a clerk or secretary more careful than myself.”

– Ulysses S. Grant, "Memoirs"

[Richard Clayman @RichardCla64861]

@BarrySchust Bridge Over Troubled Water

[Richard Clayman @RichardCla64861]

Today's Inspiration!

“For the possession of reason would not raise his worth above that of the brutes, if it is to serve him only for the same purpose that instinct serves in them; it would in that case be only a particular method which nature had employed to equip man for the same ends for which it has qualified brutes, without qualifying him for any higher purpose.”

- Immanuel Kant, “The Critique of Practical Reason”

[Richard Clayman @RichardCla64861]

@mikemovies Great film, screenplay by Frank Pierson, and wonderful score by Lalo Schifrin. “What we have here…”

[Richard Clayman @RichardCla64861]

Today's Director's Inspiration!

"Every picture that is really successful has one little miracle somewhere in it."

- Elia Kazan

[Richard Clayman @RichardCla64861]

Today's Actor's Inspiration!

“If an action has no inner foundation, it cannot hold your attention. It takes no time to push a few chairs about, but if you were compelled to arrange some chairs of different sorts for a particular purpose, as for guests at a dinner who must be seated according to rank, age, and personal harmony, you could spend a long time over them.”

- Konstantin Stanislavski, “An Actor Prepares”