As soon as the actor steps into the role, you probably can cut 50% of the lines because there's a person there now. And what a person does with their eyes, with their mouth, with their hands, the way they walk into a room, you can probably cut half the scene.
Stanley TucciThis is the funny thing about Skype. No one is really looking into the camera. People always looking down because they're looking at the image. You wish the camera was there in the center.
Stanley TucciSo yes, I hope to act in other people's movies, big and small, because that's how I make my living, really.
Stanley TucciEvery character, no matter who you play, at times is pretending to be somebody else. People have a public face and a private face.
Stanley TucciAs a film director I like to have the actors create their own close-ups. It's an older style of filmmaking.
Stanley TucciThe most I've ever done was twenty-something, but that's wasn't because I wanted to. I feel like to me it's usually somewhere between two and- no, it's very hard to say because it really depends up on the shot, you know? If it's a complicated master shot and you know that this is the only thing that you're doing for that scene, a complicated one-er, you're going to maybe end up doing a few more takes than you normally would. But I'm not a big believer in doing tons and tons and tons of takes.
Stanley TucciBut usually I'll wake up and start writing about nine o'clock. I'll probably write for about three hours, and I'll do that over the next month and a half.
Stanley TucciThere is a joke that I use all the time. I say it to my kids. I used to say it to my wife. She'd be talking to me about something very serious and then I would just look at her and go "Where are you from originally?" And she would go "Humphhh! C'mon. That's terrible!"
Stanley TucciMy partner, Beth Alexander, and I want to produce smaller films, but commercially viable films that will enable me to make the kinds of movies I want to make.
Stanley TucciEarly in my career, people wanted to pigeonhole me as the bad guy because I'm of Italian-American descent, which they often were when I started out. You have to fight against it. One of the things that helps is the ability to do comedy.
Stanley TucciIf you find that thing you love, it doesn't necessarily matter whether you do it well or not-you just need to do it.
Stanley TucciAs a director, I also get to sit and watch actors and learn from them in a way that I don't get to do when I'm just acting.
Stanley TucciI have consciously not taken the role of a gangster, which has been offered to me far too many times.
Stanley TucciI've been playing the father of teenagers for years. People always thought that I was 40 when I was 26. Once you lose your hair, they're like "Oh! He's really old now."
Stanley TucciEvery role is approached in exactly the same way, you have to make it believable and that's all. Acting is really serious, like, pretending really hard.
Stanley Tucci3D movie is tedious, its tedious for everybody, it's hard for the crew, it's hard for the actors. It adds more time. It's more technically complicated, so that just adds more time and takes a little more time away from he acting and that's kind of frustrating but to say "I'll never do 3D again" that doesn't make any sense.
Stanley TucciThe action stuff takes a long time but when you're there and you're doing it and you go into that take and you run and everything is blowing up around you and you're diving onto something it's actually incredibly thrilling and you feel like a kid again. Like a kid, who used to play and pretend all those things would happen and now they're actually happening.
Stanley TucciAs a director you have to be careful you don't over-design the film. You have to be careful that the period aspect does not take over.
Stanley TucciLike Joseph Mitchell, I would scour the streets of New York and find little pieces of what other people think of as junk - and collect it.
Stanley Tucci[Hollywood] studios are handing out money to make independent films now, but they all want the same thing. They want the style and the deadpan delivery of RESERVOIR DOGS or FARGO and so they imitate those movies. They want PULP FICTION, but they get it all wrong! They get the detachment, but that's it. And then it's all about style, and in the end what do you learn about the characters? Nothing. You learn you wasted two hours.
Stanley TucciI think it's important to have a good sense of humor and joke around with your kids. That's what I do a lot.
Stanley TucciThose moments in between the moments, those are the most interesting. What's unspoken, the way we talk around things, the way our actions are inconsistent with what we're feeling, how anger and affection manifest themselves in strange ways at inappropriate times.
Stanley TucciThe constraints of melodrama can be a great blessing, because they demand that all the characters involved - as absurd and extreme as they may initially seem - must stay utterly rooted in their own reality, or the whole project collapses.
Stanley TucciWhat's great is when you're working with somebody with whom you have a connection, it's exciting because there's a shorthand and you trust each other and you have a good time together on the set and so you can go a little farther than you might normally because you're with somebody that you trust.
Stanley TucciI hate movies that take a long time to shoot or directors that labor over every shot or do excessive amounts of coverage and excessive takes and don't keep things moving or constantly cutting.
Stanley TucciI'd read Up in the Old Hotel, and I wanted to do something with Mitchell's stuff for a long time.
Stanley TucciI'm interested in how people shoot because I have a very specific way of shooting and I'm fascinated by the way other people shoot films, particularly if they're smart and talented.
Stanley TucciI didn't know you had to change diapers so often. I couldn't believe it - we must change them 10 times a day - each. So that's 20 diapers a piece a day.
Stanley TucciI'm pretty much a character-driven film director and my movies are smaller. I don't do a lot of coverage. I use lots of master shots.
Stanley TucciSometimes we all make relationships more complicated than they necessarily have to be.
Stanley TucciI don't like things about serial killers. There's so much serial killer information out there in documentaries constantly. A lot of it's just sort of gratuitous or it's almost like pornographic, really. There's no reason for it being shown.
Stanley Tucci