YouSaid · the spoken record

Kevin Spacey

lines on the record
130
first
2024-06-05
most recent
2024-06-05
sittings or episodes
1
sources
podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

  1. “People go to church every week to be forgiven. And I believe that forgiveness and I believe that redemption are beautiful things. I mean, look, don't forget. I live in an industry. In which there is a tremendous amount of conversation about redemption from a lot of people who are very serious people in very serious positions. Who believe in it That guy finally got out of prison. He was wrongly accused. That guy who served his time and got out of prison. We see so many people saying, let's find a path for that person. Let's help that person rejoin society. There is an odd situation if you're in the entertainment industry, you're not offered that kind of a path. And I hope that The fear that people are experiencing. Will eventually subside and common sense will get back to the table.”

    2024-06-05 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #432 – Kevin Spacey: Power, Controversy, Betrayal, Truth & Love in Film and Life · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  2. “People ask me now. What's your favorite performance you've ever given? My answer is Haven't given it yet. A lot more that I want to. Challenged by, be inspired by. There's a lot. That I don't know. There's a lot I have to learn. And that is a very exciting place to feel that I'm in. It's been interesting because we're going back, we're talking. Know it's nice to go back every now and then. I'm focused on. What's next”

    2024-06-05 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #432 – Kevin Spacey: Power, Controversy, Betrayal, Truth & Love in Film and Life · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  3. “But you could say to somebody you like the series House of Cards, I'd love for you to just look into the camera and tell us what's really going on, what you really feel about blah, blah, blah.”

    2024-06-05 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #432 – Kevin Spacey: Power, Controversy, Betrayal, Truth & Love in Film and Life · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  4. “I heard so many different reactions from politicians about house cards, some would say Oh it's not like that at all and then others would say It's closer to the truth than anyone wants to admit. I think I fall down on the side of that idea.”

    2024-06-05 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #432 – Kevin Spacey: Power, Controversy, Betrayal, Truth & Love in Film and Life · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  5. “And I don't have any memory of that. I was in a program and they were showing us Experiment that they've done with psychologists and mothers and fathers and their children, and the children were anywhere between six months and a year, sitting in a little crib And the exercise was this parents are playing with the baby right there, toys, yada yada, baby's laughing. And then the psychologists would say, stop. And the parent would go like this. and you would then watch for the next two and a half three minutes this child trying to get their parents attention. In any possible way, and I remember when I was sitting in this theater watching this. I saw myself. That was me Screaming and reaching out and trying to get my parents' attention. That was me. And that was.”

    2024-06-05 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #432 – Kevin Spacey: Power, Controversy, Betrayal, Truth & Love in Film and Life · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  6. “Debate club and choir and festivals and plays and everything I could do to participate in that wouldn't make me have to come back home. I did I've had to reconcile Who he became. Because the gap between that man who was in the US Army as a medic. The man he became I could never fill that gap. I've forgiven him. But then at the same time, I've had to look at my mother and say She made excuses for him. He just needs to get it off his chest. Oh, it doesn't matter. Just let him say. So while on the outside I would say, Oh, yeah, my mother loved me. But she didn't protect me. So was the Was all the stuff that she expressed and all of the attention and all the love that I felt was that because I became successful and I was able to fulfill an emptiness that she'd lived with her whole life with him? I don't know, but I've had to ask myself.”

    2024-06-05 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #432 – Kevin Spacey: Power, Controversy, Betrayal, Truth & Love in Film and Life · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  7. “My father became a white supremacist. And I cannot tell you the amount of times as a young boy. My father would sit me down and lecture me. For hours and hours and hours about his Fucked up ideas of America, of prejudice, of white supremacy? Thank God for my sister, who said, Don't listen to a thing he says he's out of his mind. And even though I was young I knew Everything he was saying was against people, and I loved people My best friend Mike. Who still, my close friend to this day, I was afraid to bring him to my house because I was afraid that my father would find out he was Jewish. or that my father would leave his office door open and someone would see his Nazi flag or his pictures of Hitler or Nazi books, or what he might say When I found theater? The eighth grade”

    2024-06-05 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #432 – Kevin Spacey: Power, Controversy, Betrayal, Truth & Love in Film and Life · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  8. “But then when he came back to America And he had a dream of being a journalist. Or his big hope was that he was going to be the great American novelist. I want to be a creative novelist, and so he sat in his office and he wrote. Forty five years And never published anything. And somewhere along the way, in order to make money, he became what they call a technical procedure writer, which the best way to describe that is that if you built the F-16 aircraft, my father would have written the manual to tell you how to do it. I mean, as boring, as technical, as tedious as you can imagine. And so, somewhere in the 60s. Into the 70s My father fell in with groups of people and individuals pretend intellectuals. Who started to give him reasons? Why he was not successful as a white, Aryan man in the United States. And over time,”

    2024-06-05 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #432 – Kevin Spacey: Power, Controversy, Betrayal, Truth & Love in Film and Life · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  9. “Yeah, I mean One of the things that I've been focused on. Very succinctly is the idea that every day is an opportunity. An opportunity Make better decisions to learn and to grow. And I also think that Look I grew up not knowing if my parents loved me. Particular in my father. I never had a sense that I was loved And that stayed with me my whole life. Think back at who my father was. And more succinctly who he became It was Gradual and slow and sad. Development When I've gone back, and now I've looked at diaries my father kept and albums he kept, particularly. When he was a medic in the U.S. Army. Served our country with distinction. When the war was over and they went to Germany, the things my father said, the things that he wrote, the things that he believed were his patriotic as any American soldier who had ever served.”

    2024-06-05 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #432 – Kevin Spacey: Power, Controversy, Betrayal, Truth & Love in Film and Life · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  10. “And so it is. Incredible to be able to embrace the Those things that I admire and that are like me and those things that I don't admire and aren't like me. I have to put them on an equal footing and say I have to just play them as best I can. Decide to wield judgment over them. Without judgment”

    2024-06-05 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #432 – Kevin Spacey: Power, Controversy, Betrayal, Truth & Love in Film and Life · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  11. “I absolutely believe that Wandering around in someone else's ideas. someone else's clothes. Someone else's shoes. Teaches you enormous empathy And that goes to the heart of not judging. And I have found that I have been so moved by, I mean, look, yes, you've identified the darker characters. I put Clarence Darrow three times. I've played a play called National Anthems, I've done movies like recount, I've done films like The Ref. I've done films that in which that doesn't exist in any of those characters, those qualities, pay it forward.”

    2024-06-05 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #432 – Kevin Spacey: Power, Controversy, Betrayal, Truth & Love in Film and Life · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  12. “Well, you call them evil. But the reason I say that I don't mean to be snarky about it, but the reason I say it that way is because I never judged the people I play. And the people that I have played or that any actor has played don't necessarily view themselves as this label. It's easy to say that. That's not the way I can think. I cannot judge a character I play and then play them well. Have to be free of judgment. I have to just play them and let the cards drop where they may, and let an audience judge. I mean, the fact that you use that word is perfectly fine. Your, you know, but it's like people asking me, you know, was I really from KPACs or not? You know, it's just entirely depends on your perspective.”

    2024-06-05 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #432 – Kevin Spacey: Power, Controversy, Betrayal, Truth & Love in Film and Life · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  13. “No, I think power is an afterthought. What he loved more than anything was being able to predict how human beings would react. He was a behavioral psychologist. And he could know like he was 17 moves ahead in a chess game. He could know if he did this at this moment that eventually this would happen. Was able to be predictive. Was usually right. He knew just how far he needed to push someone to get them to do what he needed them to do in order to make the next step work.”

    2024-06-05 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #432 – Kevin Spacey: Power, Controversy, Betrayal, Truth & Love in Film and Life · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  14. “Well, I mean, it might have been the first moment an audience saw him be betrayed, but it certainly was not the first betrayal he had experienced. And once you start to get to know him and learn about his life and learn about his father and learn about his friends and learn about their relationship and learn what he was like even as a cadet, I think you start to realize that this is a man who has. Very strong beliefs about loyalty. And so it wasn't the first, it was just the first moment that. In terms of the storyline that's being built Knight takes king was the name of our production company.”

    2024-06-05 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #432 – Kevin Spacey: Power, Controversy, Betrayal, Truth & Love in Film and Life · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  15. “I'll never forget this. I was in Los Angeles about two weeks after, and I was at Chateau Marmau. There's some party happening at Chateau Marmont, and I saw Chris Walken come out onto the balcony. And I was like, oh, And he walked up to it and he went, Saw you little sketch. It was funny ha”

    2024-06-05 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #432 – Kevin Spacey: Power, Controversy, Betrayal, Truth & Love in Film and Life · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  16. “I know I'm walking a long time and I did a Saturday night live where I did, we did these Star Wars auditions. I did Chris Walkin as Hans.”

    2024-06-05 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #432 – Kevin Spacey: Power, Controversy, Betrayal, Truth & Love in Film and Life · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  17. “Calm me down and help me wink. But that became my first, my very first film. And he was incredible and he let me come and watch when they were shooting scenes I wasn't in. And I remember ending up one day in the makeup trailer on the same day we were working Jack and me. We had no scene together. But I remember him coming in and they put him down in the chair and they put cucumbers, frozen cucumbers on his eyes and did his neck. And then they raised him up and did his face. And then I remember Nicholson went like this, looked in the mirror, and he went. Another Another fifty thousand dollars. Walked out of the trailer.”

    2024-06-05 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #432 – Kevin Spacey: Power, Controversy, Betrayal, Truth & Love in Film and Life · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  18. “I guess about two months later, I get this phone call from Mike Nichols. He's like, Kevin, how are you? And I'm like, I'm fine. What can I do for you? He says, well, I'm going to make a film this summer with Mandy and Merrill, and there's a role I'd like you to come in and audition for. So I went in, auditioned, cast me as this mugger on a subway. Then there's this whole upheaval that happens because he then doesn't continue with Mandy Patemkin. Mandy leaves the movie and he asks Jack Nicholson to come in and replace Mandy Pidemkin. So now I had no scenes with him, but I'm in a movie with Jack Nicholson and Meryl Streep, and my first scene in this movie, which I shot on my birthday, july twenty sixth of'85. I got to wink at Merrill Street in this scene, and I was so nervous, I literally couldn't wink Nichols had to like”

    2024-06-05 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #432 – Kevin Spacey: Power, Controversy, Betrayal, Truth & Love in Film and Life · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  19. “So I learned Mickey. And then one day, I'm told You're going on tomorrow night. Nichols comes, sees the second act, comes backstage, says. That was really good. I mean, that was really funny How soon could you learn And so I became like the pinch hitter on Hurley Burley. I learned all the male parts, including Jerry Stillers, although I never went on to Jerry Stiller's part. And then I left the play.”

    2024-06-05 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #432 – Kevin Spacey: Power, Controversy, Betrayal, Truth & Love in Film and Life · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  20. “And Nichols said, It's all about attitude. If you believe you can beat the shit on everybody on stage, the audience will too. So I then started to learn Philip. And the way it works when you're in understudy, unless you're in name, they don't let you rehearse on the stage. You just rehearse on a rehearsal room. But I used to sneak onto the stage and rehearse and try to figure out where the props were and yada. Anyway, one day I get... A call. You're going on today, it's Phil. So I went Nichols, as told by Peter Lawrence, who's the stage manager, Spacey's going on as Phil. So Nichols comes down and watches the second act. Comes backstage, he says. Was really good How soon could you learn Mic Mickey was the role that Ron Silver was playing. Chris Walken also played. I said, I don't know. Maybe a couple weeks. He goes, learn Mickey too.”

    2024-06-05 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #432 – Kevin Spacey: Power, Controversy, Betrayal, Truth & Love in Film and Life · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  21. “I said, I can't afford a Broadway ticket. He said, We can arrange that. I'd like you to go see that play, and then I'd like you to come in next week and audition for that I was like, okay, so I went to see Hurley Burley. William Hurt, Harvey Keit Chris Walkin, Candace Bergen, Cynthia Nixon. Jerry Still I watched this play. It's played David Ray play about Hollywood. This is crazy. I mean, Bill Hurt was like unbelievable. And it was extraordinary Chris Walker. So there's this Harvey Cittell. Welcome came in later. Harvard tells And I come in and I audition for it. Nichols says, I want you to understudy Harvey Keitel. I want you to understudy Phil. I'm like, Phil. I mean, Harvey Catell is like in his 40s. He looks like he can beat the shit out everybody on stage. I'm this like 24-year-old.”

    2024-06-05 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #432 – Kevin Spacey: Power, Controversy, Betrayal, Truth & Love in Film and Life · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  22. “I think it was Yeah, it was 1984. I went into audition for the national tour of a play called The Real Thing, which Jeremy Irons and Glenclose were doing on Broadway that Mr. Nichols had directed. So I went in to read for this character Brody. And I did the audition and Mike Nichols comes down the aisle of the theater and he's asking me questions about where'd you go to school and what have you been doing? And I just come back from doing a bunch of years of regional theater and different theaters. So I was in New York meeting Mike Nichols was just incredible. So Mr. Nichols went, have you seen the other play that I directed up the block called Hurley Burley? And I said, no, I haven't. He says, why not?”

    2024-06-05 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #432 – Kevin Spacey: Power, Controversy, Betrayal, Truth & Love in Film and Life · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  23. “I said, Mr. Nicholson, I just wanted to tell you I'm extremely excited to be working with you again. It's a great pleasure. And Jack goes, did we work together before? And he says, yes, yes, we did. He goes, what film did we do together? He says, well, we did Missouri breaks. Nicholson goes, oh my God, Missouri breaks Jesus Christ. We were out of our minds on that film. Holy shit.”

    2024-06-05 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #432 – Kevin Spacey: Power, Controversy, Betrayal, Truth & Love in Film and Life · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  24. “Storyism Story was told to me by a sound man. Dennis Maitland, who's great, great, great guy. He said he was very excited because he got on Pritzy's honor, which was Jack Nicholson, Angelic Houston, directed by John Houston. He said, I was so excited. It's my first day on the movie, and I get told to go into mister Nicholson's trailer and mike him up for the first scene. So I knock on the trailer door and I hear Yes And come on in and I come inside and mister Nicholson is changing out of his regular clothes and he's putting he's gonna put on his costume and so I”

    2024-06-05 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #432 – Kevin Spacey: Power, Controversy, Betrayal, Truth & Love in Film and Life · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  25. “Nicholson's always been such an incredible actor because he He has absolutely no shame about being demonstrative and over the top, and he also has no problem playing characters who are deeply flawed, and he's interested in that. I have a pretty good Nicholson story, though nobody knows.”

    2024-06-05 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #432 – Kevin Spacey: Power, Controversy, Betrayal, Truth & Love in Film and Life · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  26. “And also, I think it's the degree with which directors are daring. I mean, Kubrick decided. To cast one actor, to play three major roles in Dr. Strange I mean, who has the balls to do that today?”

    2024-06-05 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #432 – Kevin Spacey: Power, Controversy, Betrayal, Truth & Love in Film and Life · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  27. “But I also, look, I'm allowed to change my opinion. I can next week say it's Lawrence of Arabia or a week after that I can say Sullivan's travels. I mean, that's the wonderful thing about movies, and particularly great movies, is when you see them again, It's like seeing them for the first time. Yeah, and you pick up things that you didn't see the last time.”

    2024-06-05 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #432 – Kevin Spacey: Power, Controversy, Betrayal, Truth & Love in Film and Life · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  28. “Yeah, of course. Look, I think that we can't forget that Pacino is also an animal of the theater. He does a lot of plays, and he started off doing plays. Movies were Panic and Needle Park was his first. And yeah, I think there's that period of time when he was doing some incredible parts, incredible movies. When I did a series called Wise Guy, I got cast on a Thursday and I flew up to Vancouver on a Saturday. I started shooting on Monday, and all I had time to do was watch the godfather in Serfico, and then I went to work.”

    2024-06-05 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #432 – Kevin Spacey: Power, Controversy, Betrayal, Truth & Love in Film and Life · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  29. “You know, the different arguments on different levels and they sometimes have to do with, I mean, look, go back to the Godfather. They wanted to fire Pacino because they didn't see anything happening. They saw nothing happening, so they wanted to fire Pacino. And then finally Coppola thought, I'll shoot the scene where he kills the police commissioner, and they'll do that scene now, and that was the first scene where they went, yeah, actually, there's something going on there. So Pacino kept the roll.”

    2024-06-05 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #432 – Kevin Spacey: Power, Controversy, Betrayal, Truth & Love in Film and Life · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  30. “It can happen in different ways. I mean, I remember one argument we had was we had specifically shot a scene where so that there would be no score in that scene, so that there was no music, it was just two people talking. And then we end up seeing a cut where they've decided to put music in It is against everything that scene is supposed to be about, and you have to go and say, guys, this was intentional. We did not want score, and now you've added score because what you think it's too quiet? You think our audience can't listen to two people talk for two and a half minutes? This show has proved anything. It's proved that people have patience and they're willing to watch an entire season over a weekend. So there are those kind of arguments that can happen.”

    2024-06-05 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #432 – Kevin Spacey: Power, Controversy, Betrayal, Truth & Love in Film and Life · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  31. “Pretty much until Bo Willeman left the show, they got rid of Fincher. And I was sort of the last man standing in terms of fighting against Netflix had never had any creative control at all. We had complete creative control. But over time, they started to get themselves involved because look, this is what happens to networks. They never made a television show before, ever. And then four years later, they were the best. And so then you're going to get suggestions about casting and about writing and about whose music and scenes. And so there was a considerable amount of Pushback that I had to do when they started to get involved in ways that I thought was affecting the quality of the show.”

    2024-06-05 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #432 – Kevin Spacey: Power, Controversy, Betrayal, Truth & Love in Film and Life · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  32. “I give him Huge amount of And not just for what he established. But the fact that every director after. Stayed within that world. I think that's why the series had a very consistent feeling to it It was like watching a very long movie. The style where the camera went, what it did, what it didn't do, how we used this, how we used that, how we didn't do this. There were things that he laid the foundation for that. We managed to maintain”

    2024-06-05 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #432 – Kevin Spacey: Power, Controversy, Betrayal, Truth & Love in Film and Life · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  33. “Was starting to do research. I wanted to meet with the whip Kevin McCar And he wouldn't meet with me. I called his office back and said, Tell him I'm playing a Democrat, not a Republican. And then he met with me. And he was helpful. He took me to whip meetings.”

    2024-06-05 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #432 – Kevin Spacey: Power, Controversy, Betrayal, Truth & Love in Film and Life · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  34. “And the audience fell over in laughter. And then he gave a great speech. And I thought that was a pretty good way to handle that.”

    2024-06-05 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #432 – Kevin Spacey: Power, Controversy, Betrayal, Truth & Love in Film and Life · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  35. “Because the play is about this character that I portrayed named Hickey. And in the course of the play, as things get more and more revealed, you realize that this man that I'm playing has been a philanderer. He's cheated on his wife quite a lot. And by the end of the play, he is arrested and taken off because he ended up ending his wife's life because she forgave him too much and he couldn't live with it. So now imagine this. There's 2,000 people at the Brooks Ackinson Theater watching President Clinton watching this play. At the end of the night, we take our curtain call, they bring out the presidential podium, Bill Clinton stands up there and he says, Well I suppose we should all thank Heaven. And this extraordinary company of actors. Forgiving us all. Way too much to think about.”

    2024-06-05 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #432 – Kevin Spacey: Power, Controversy, Betrayal, Truth & Love in Film and Life · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  36. “And I knew what was happening. Now, first of all, Clinton knows this play. He knows what this play is about. And as gently as I could, said, well, if the president is thinking of leaving at intermission, then I'm afraid we're going to have to cancel the event. There's just no way that. So, anyway, then it's fine, it's fine. Now I know what was happening. What was happening was that someone had read the play. And they were quite concerned. And I'll tell you why.”

    2024-06-05 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #432 – Kevin Spacey: Power, Controversy, Betrayal, Truth & Love in Film and Life · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  37. “Not really at all. I mean, Clinton, you know, look, Bill Clinton. He had a wave talking. You know that he was very slow and he felt your pain, you know. Frank Underwood was a deeper More direct. And less poetic in the way that Clinton would talk. I'll tell you this Clinton story that you'll like. So we decided to do a performance of the Ice Man cometh for the Democratic Party on Broadway. And the president is going to come. He's going to see this four and a half hour play. And then we're going to do this event afterward in a couple weeks before we're going to do this event. Someone at the White House calls and says, listen, it's very unusual to get the president for like six and a half hours. So we're suggesting that the president come and see the first act and then he goes”

    2024-06-05 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #432 – Kevin Spacey: Power, Controversy, Betrayal, Truth & Love in Film and Life · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  38. “I also think that one should just acknowledge that where he was from. There is something that happens when you do an accent. And in fact, sometimes when I would say to Beau or one of the other writers, this is really good and I love the idea, but it rhythmically doesn't help. I need at least two more words to rhythmically make this work in his accent because it just doesn't scan. And that's not iambic pentameter. I'm not talking about that. There is that as well in Shakespeare, but there was sometimes when it's too many lines, it's not enough lines in order for me to make this work for the way he speaks, the way he sounds, and what that accent does to emphasis”

    2024-06-05 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #432 – Kevin Spacey: Power, Controversy, Betrayal, Truth & Love in Film and Life · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  39. “I certainly can't take credit for. Shakespeare having written something that is funny or bewilderman and his team to have written something that is funny, is fundamentally funny. Just depends on how I interpret it. That's one of the great things why we love In a year's time, we can see five different hamlets. We can see four Richard III. We can see two Richard II. That's part of the thrill that we don't own these parts. We borrow them, and we interpret them. And what Ian McKellen might do with a role could be completely different from what I might do because of the way we perceive it. And also very often in terms of going for humor, it's very often a director will say, why don't you say that with a bit of irony? Why don't you try that with a bit of blah, blah, blah.”

    2024-06-05 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #432 – Kevin Spacey: Power, Controversy, Betrayal, Truth & Love in Film and Life · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  40. “But I now understand these wonderful stories that you can read in old books about Shakespeare's time that actors grab Shakespeare around the cuff and punched him and threw him up against a wall. So you ever write a part like this again? I'm going to kill you. And that's why in later plays, he started to have a pageant happen and then a wedding happened. And the main character was off stage resting because the actor had said, you can't do this to us. There's no breaks. And it's true. There's very few breaks in Richard III. You're on stage most of the time.”

    2024-06-05 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #432 – Kevin Spacey: Power, Controversy, Betrayal, Truth & Love in Film and Life · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  41. “Yeah. Well, in that production, that's absolutely true. Also, Richard is one of the weirder weird, I mean by weird. An early play of Shakespeare's And he's basically never off stage. I mean, I remember when we did the first run through, I had no idea what the next scene was every time I came off stage. I had no idea what was next. They literally had to drag me from one place to another. Now it's the scene with Hastings. Now it's the same.”

    2024-06-05 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #432 – Kevin Spacey: Power, Controversy, Betrayal, Truth & Love in Film and Life · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  42. “That's the remarkable thing against their instincts and their better sense of what they should and should not do, they still rallied around Frank Underwood.”

    2024-06-05 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #432 – Kevin Spacey: Power, Controversy, Betrayal, Truth & Love in Film and Life · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  43. “It was so extraordinary where I literally watched people they were like oh I'm in on the thing and this is so awesome and then suddenly he killed the kids he killed those kids in the tower oh maybe it's not so and you literally would watch them start to reverse their having had such a great time with Richard III in the first three acts I thought, this is going to happen in this show. If this Intimacy Can actually land And I think just think there was some brilliant writing, and we always attempted to do it in one take, no matter how long something was, we would try to do it in one take, the direct addresses. So there's never a When we went on locations we started to then find ways to Cut it and make it slightly broader”

    2024-06-05 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #432 – Kevin Spacey: Power, Controversy, Betrayal, Truth & Love in Film and Life · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  44. “Yeah, and there were many times when I suppose the writers thought I was crazy where I would see a script and I would see like this moment where this direct dress would happen. I'd say all this stuff and I'd go when we do a read-through of the script. I go. I don't think I need to say any of that. And they were like, what do you mean? I said, Well, the audience knows all of that. All I have to do is look. They know exactly what's going on. I don't need to say a thing. So I was often cutting dialogue because it just wasn't needed because that relationship between, that I'd learned that I'd experienced doing Richard III.”

    2024-06-05 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #432 – Kevin Spacey: Power, Controversy, Betrayal, Truth & Love in Film and Life · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  45. “And what I tried to do and what Fincher said. Really helped me with in those beginning days of Was how to look in that camera. And imagine I was talking to my best friend.”

    2024-06-05 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #432 – Kevin Spacey: Power, Controversy, Betrayal, Truth & Love in Film and Life · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  46. “I'll give you one very interesting Education that I got in doing Richard III. And closing that show, At Bam in March of twenty twelve and two months later started shooting Ausacard. There is something called direct address. In Shakespeare. You have Hamlet talks to the world. When Shakespeare wrote Richard III, it was the first time he created something called direct address Which is the character looks directly. Each person close by It is a different kind of sharing than when a character is doing a monologue, a opening of Henry Fourth. While there are some people who believe that direct address was invented in Ferris Bueller, it wasn't. It was Shakespeare who invented it. So I had just had this experience. Every night in theaters all over the world. Seeing how people reacted. Becoming a co-conspirator. Because that's what it's about.”

    2024-06-05 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #432 – Kevin Spacey: Power, Controversy, Betrayal, Truth & Love in Film and Life · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  47. “No, they're literally afraid that. They're going to get canceled if they stand up for someone who has been. And I think it's, I mean, you know, we've seen this many times in history. This is not the first time it's happened.”

    2024-06-05 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #432 – Kevin Spacey: Power, Controversy, Betrayal, Truth & Love in Film and Life · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  48. “I don't think it's about the industry. I think it's about our time. It's the time that we're in, and people are very afraid.”

    2024-06-05 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #432 – Kevin Spacey: Power, Controversy, Betrayal, Truth & Love in Film and Life · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  49. “I was sort of being told I couldn't push back. You have to be kind. You can't. I think, you know, even to me now, none of it sounds right, but I don't know that I could have said anything that would have been satisfactory to anybody.”

    2024-06-05 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #432 – Kevin Spacey: Power, Controversy, Betrayal, Truth & Love in Film and Life · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  50. “Well, but you're melding two things together. The lawsuit didn't happen until 2020, and then it didn't get to court until 2022 We're back in 2017 when it was just an accusation he made in Buzzfeed magazine. Look I was backed into a corner when someone says you were so drunk you won't remember this thing happened What's your first instinct? Is your first instinct to say this person's a liar, or is your first instinct to go? What I was what? 31 years at a party, I don't even remember throwing. Obviously, a lot of investigation happened after that in which we were then able to prove in that court case that it had never occurred. But at the moment,”

    2024-06-05 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #432 – Kevin Spacey: Power, Controversy, Betrayal, Truth & Love in Film and Life · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source