Analogies between the stage and the screen assume that they deal with the same material. But they don't. The material of the scree...n is not actual objects but images fixed on the film. And the very fact that they have their being on film endows these images with properties which are never found in actual objects. For instance, on the stage the actor moves in real space and time. He cannot even cross the room without performing a definite number of movements. On the screen an action may be shown only in terminal points with all its intervening moments left out. Similarly, in watching a performance on the stage the spectator is governed by the actual conditions of space and time. Not so in the case of the movie spectator. Thanks to the moving camera he is able to view the scene from all kinds of angles, leaping from a long-distance view to a close-range inspection of every detail. It is obvious that with this extraordinary power of handling space and time--by elimination and emphasis, according to its dramatic needs--the motion picture can never be content with modeling itself after the stage.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Because work involves producing things, it takes place within fixed boundaries. Not only is it tied to a specific neighborhood, em...ployer, or industrial quarter, it is time-bound and regulated by hours and weeks. Careers, by contrast, tend to be loosened from the constraints of space and time. People who have careers are prepared to move anywhere in search of the next stage, either within the firm or within the country. They are not, however, prepared to punch a clock. Process, not output, counts as the measure of success. Those who pursue careers manage rather than produce. Indeed, one of the things they devote a great deal of time to managing is the transition to an economy that produces less.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
While enclosed shopping malls suspended space, time, and weather, Disneyland went one step further and suspended reality. Any geog...raphic, cultural, or mythical location, whether supplied by fictional texts (Tom Sawyer's Island), historical locations (New Orleans Square), or futuristic projections (Space Mountain), could be reconfigured as a setting for entertainment. Shopping malls easily adapted this appropriation of "place" in the creation of a specialized theme environment. In Scottsdale, the Borgata, an open-air shopping mall set down in the flat Arizona desert, reinterprets the medieval Tuscan hill town of San Gimignano with piazza and scaled-down towers (made of real Italian bricks).LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Go into the streets, into the slums, into the fashionable quarters. Go into the day courts and the night courts. Become acquainted... with sorrow, with many kinds of sorrow. Learn of the wonderful heroism of the poor, of the incredible generosity of the very poor--a generosity of which the rich and the well-to-do have, for the most part, not the faintest conception. Go into the modest homes, into the out-of-the-way corners, into the open country. Go where you can find something fresh to bring back to the stage.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Their rebukes have never made me angry, because I have always wondered why they did not rebuke me more. They should have. Their fr...iendly praise has been one of the sweetest, most warming things in my life in the theater. I do go on the stage unafraid of them and with love in my heart for them.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The basic unit of construction in the theatre is the scene, and the amount of dramatic time that elapses during a scene is roughly... equal to the length of time the scene takes to perform. To be sure, some plays cover many years, but in general these years pass "between curtains." We're informed that it is "seven years later," either by a stage direction or by the dialogue. The basic unit of construction in movies is the shot, which can lengthen or shorten time more subtly, since the average shot lasts only ten or fifteen seconds. Drama has to chop out huge blocks of time between the relatively few scenes and acts; films can expand or contract time between the many hundreds of shots.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Haggerty: Girls! Girls! Girls! Be careful of my hats. Chorus Girl: Well, we gotta get down on the stage.... Haggerty: I don't care. I won't allow you to ruin them. Dressing Room Matron: See, I told you. They were too high and too wide. Haggerty: Well, Big Woman, I designed the costumes for the show, not the doors for the theater. Dressing Room Matron: I know that. If you had, they'd have been done in lavender.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
I know, it must have been my imagination, but it makes me realize how desperately alone the Earth is. Hanging in space like a spec...k of food floating in the ocean. Sooner or later to be swallowed up by some creature floating by.... Time will tell, Dr. Mason. We can only wait and wonder. Wonder how, wonder when.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »