Julie Taymor Quotes
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Going to the Far East was my first eye-opener to a world vastly different from my own. Then when I was 16 I lived in Paris for a year and studied mime. At 21 I went to Indonesia. I had planned to go for three months, but I stayed four years. I just got lost in the culture.
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When I was growing up, there were a lot more arts in the public schools. Politically, America has screwed up on that.
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One of the reasons why I love to do Shakespeare is that this great artist was able to talk to a wide variety of audiences. He could do the bawdy plays and the humor and the clowns-as you know, because you're a wonderful Stephano-that speaks to the populace, the masses, the groundlings, whatever.
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An artist is an entertainer, number one - a storyteller who takes people someplace, who gives them what they didn't know they wanted.
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I believe that if you really have a strong idea, you can say, "What do you think? Let's see how my idea plays off yours."
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I saw bubbling lava, and at the same moment I saw a reflection of a certain kind of inner turmoil. Because at the moment I looked into that crater, I slipped, and a large piece of volcanic rock took a hole out of my leg. The scar is still there 20, 30 years later. But it's one of those things that reminds you of the kind of risk or the kind of moment in order to push yourself.
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Theater is far superior to film in poetry, in abstract poetry.
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I really do believe that if you don't challenge yourself and risk failing, that it's not interesting.
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That's my policy - to be positive, to just hope that something will happen. If you start with all your fears, your receptivity is for the negative.
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It's how you tell the story that makes it new. That's what artists do. They let us look at the world from a different perspective. They let us look at birds in a way that makes us never see birds again in the same way. That's why I don't think computers are healthy for kids. They're too literal. You pop a button and a bluebird comes out. You pop another button and you can take the color blue and shove it into the outline of the bluebird.
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Americans are attracted to the dark side. But which movies should be allowed to be violent and show that dark side, and which should not? I don't believe in censorship, but I do think there are horrible movies that are bad for you.
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Learning is about much more than science and math. Doing theater, music, and art in school really helps children's minds grow because they're using different parts of their brains. Parents who care should insist on that.
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I am creative in my living space - the designer in me helps that out.
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When I was thinking about The Lion King, I said, we have to do what theater does best. What theater does best is to be abstract and not to do literal reality.
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You know, I went to Oberlin. At that time, grades were - you elected to have them or not. It was all of that era where grades were out the window. But I did very well in school. I didn't really study the arts; I practiced the arts.
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Some people become dullards, but as children we are all creative. It's in the programming, the socialization, that we lose our sense of play.
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When we were kids, you picked up a little paper and put it on a stick; and when you waved it back and forth, you understood the power of air underneath the wings. In that way, a child begins to understand abstraction, poetry, metaphor, symbolism. You play with the materials you have and use your imagination to make them into something else. That what's so sad about having everything on a little screen - it's not physical and dimensional, and that seems backward.
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I think that both musicals and opera have a capacity to get to an inner emotional landscape.
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People have become so literal because they're used to reality-based television.
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The idea that all violence in movies is okay simply because it happens is bull. Directors and writers have a responsibility.
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My aesthetic is not a Disney aesthetic at all, but when I met with the wonderful producers at Disney, they weren't looking for me to do their aesthetic. I'd already spent 20 years in the theater, so if they were going to hire me, they'd be hiring me for what I have to offer.
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But I don't think there has ever been anything written on the nature of violent man as deep and as thorough as Shakespeare's Titus. I think it puts all modern movies and modern exploitations of violence to shame.
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We have often been attracted to the story of the other, the outcast. And he and I just loved working together, so it just kept happening, and our relationship is completely bound up with our work. We enjoy each other's art.
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There is incredible power in the arts to inspire and influence.
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I have directed good actors and have gone through the process which is more detailed in theater in a way. You have to get people to stay for two or three hours in a performance. They need more talk and rehearsal than in films.
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Everything amounts to nothing if you don't love someone or something.
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In a way, artists are shamans, facilitators who take what's there, channel it through themselves, then put it out there for people to appreciate.
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Growing up I had amazing parents who really let me be creative and free. I was the youngest of three by six years, the child who was the outsider and observer. When I went off to Boston to act, I was very young - 10. And my parents didn't fear that. They had the respect to let me make my choices.
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I don't want to sound like a heroic woman or to seem full of myself, but I do have a core of trust that I'll figure things out and find my way. And if whatever I try is not a good experience, even that is a good experience. If something turns out lousy, it's interesting.
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In America, the word art has become like the word adultery. It's this big scarlet letter. When you say you're an artist, people are like, "Ugh."
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