Tracy Letts
Tracy Letts
Tracy Lettsis an American playwright, screenwriter and actor who received the 2008 Pulitzer Prize for Drama for his play August: Osage County and a Tony Award for his portrayal of George in the revival of Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionPlaywright
Date of Birth4 July 1965
CountryUnited States of America
divorce defeat embarrassing
Divorce is an embarrassing public admission of defeat.
shade window nighttime
The window shades have all been removed. Nighttime is now free to encroach.
writing august should-have
After the success of 'August,' there were people saying I should change my life. And maybe I should have bought a yacht and traveled the world instead of returning to Steppenwolf to act in and write plays. But I'm from the Midwest, and that's what we do: We go back to work.
beautiful sex women
Women are beautiful when they're young, and not after. Men can still preserve their sex appeal well into old age.... Some men can maintain, if they embrace it ... cragginess, weary masculinity. Women just get old and fat and wrinkly.
entirety john nature performed tracy
The nature of the beast is that film is a director's medium. It's not a Tracy Letts play, it's a John Wells film. 'August: Osage County,' as a play, is done. Written. On the shelf. It'll be performed in its entirety for years.
cut frequently movies plays
When books and plays are made into movies, they frequently want to cut out the valleys and just show the peaks.
believe cut longer patience scene
I don't believe moviegoers don't have patience. Screenwriters are told a scene can't be longer than three minutes, that you have to cut to the chase. Not true!
allow arc audiences characters ends love opportunity scenes
I like it when actors get an opportunity to chew into something. They love scenes with beginnings, middles, and ends - scenes that give an arc to their characters and allow audiences to get to know these people.
I try to write fun - though difficult and challenging - things for actors to do, because I know if they're having fun, they're going to give it everything they got.
fan preference
I'm not a fan - this is a personal preference - I'm not a fan of tour-de-force writing. I admire it, but it's not where my inclination is. I want to hide.
certain director meat provides share shepherd
'Killer Joe' provides a lot of red meat for the theater. Pam MacKinnon is the perfect director to shepherd a group of actors who share a certain bloodlust.
original people quite sure surprised
Some people do stage and film. Some people are film actors, and some people are stage actors. I'm quite sure that any of the actors who did the original production of 'August' could have done the film of 'August.' I don't think any of them were particularly surprised when they didn't wind up doing the film.
bum carry everybody fear great hope lift script shoulders throw time
When I write a play, and we read it for the first time, the great fear is that everybody is going to say, 'You're a bum and you can't write. This stinks.' and throw the script in the garbage. The great hope is that they're all going to lift me up on their shoulders and carry me to the streets, singing, 'He's a genius, he's a genius!'
convey images movies spoken stories visual word
The way we tell our stories on stage is that we use spoken word to convey action, and in movies, we use visual images to convey action.