Preston Sturges famous quotes

Last updated: Sep 5, 2024

I did all my directing when I wrote the screenplay. It was probably harder for a regular director. He probably had to read the script the night before shooting started.
-- Preston Sturges

#Night #Shooting #Scripts
When the last dime is gone, I'll sit on the curb outside with a pencil and a ten cent notebook and start the whole thing over again.
-- Preston Sturges

#Notebook #Gone #Lasts
The most incredible thing about my career is that I had one.
-- Preston Sturges

#Careers #Incredibles
After I saw a couple of pictures put out by my fellow comedy-directors, which seemed to have abandoned the fun in favor of the message, I wrote Sullivan's Travels to satisfy an urge to tell them that they were getting a little too deep-dish, to leave the preaching to the preachers.
-- Preston Sturges

#Couple #Fun #Favors
I should have had the pickle.
-- Preston Sturges

#Pickles #Should #Last Words
You can't go around the theatres handing out cards saying, 'It isn't my fault'. You go onto the next one.
-- Preston Sturges

#Birthday #Theatre #Next
Film is the greatest educational medium the world has ever known.
-- Preston Sturges

#Educational #World #Film
Now I've laid me down to die I pray my neighbors not to pry Too deeply into sins that I Not only cannot here deny But much enjoyed as life flew by.
-- Preston Sturges

#Life #Praying #Sin
A pretty girl is better than a plain one. A leg is better than an arm. A bedroom is better than a living room. An arrival is better that a departure. A birth is better than a death. A chase is better than a chat. A dog is better than a landscape. A kitten is better than a dog. A baby is better than a kitten. A kiss is better than a baby. A pratfall is better than anything.
-- Preston Sturges

#Girl #Baby #Dog

Oh, treacherous night thou lendest thy ready veil to every treason, and teeming mischief's beneath thy shade.
My downtime tends to resemble my uptime. Weekends are workdays, but toned down. Over the whole weekend, I may have five meetings, as opposed to six on a weekday. I used to play piano for 30 minutes at night, but I had to pull that out of my schedule. I don't have time for nonwork stuff.
Influences come from everywhere but when you are actually shooting you work primarily by instinct. But what is instinct? It is a lifetime accumulation of influence: experience, knowledge, seeing and hearing. There is little time for reflection in taking a photograph. All your experiences come to a peak and you work on two levels: conscious and unconscious.
In film, I find it very useful always to do some preparation before you start rehearsals or start shooting, because there's so much that's against you on a film set.
Once you do a joke and it works it's only good for so long, like shooting fish in a barrel.
Of course, I'm not allowed to talk about the script, but I can say it is a really good story.
There are a lot of roles in Shakespeare, basically. If I feel that the script is a movie, I would be interested in doing any role of Shakespeare's.
I wouldn't say I'm a very controlling person. For instance, when I talk to the actors, I don't tell them exactly what I want because I want them to surprise me. I even encourage them to change some of the verses of the script if they need to.
Whether I'm interested [in something] or not, step one is read the script and figure out if a character is someone I'd want to explore or not.
The first thing that attracts me to any script is the writing. If I find myself becoming lost in a good yarn, then I feel certain that others will, too.

Preston Sturges famous quotes

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